Happy Memorial Day

We had a lot of great family time this weekend celebrating Memorial Day.

We went to an annual breakfast at my parents' house where they cook up omelets, hash browns, biscuits, bacon, sausage and fruit for around 40 of our family members. We all sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

We usually miss this annual breakfast because we normally go beach camping on Memorial Day, but this year we were home and were happy to be with family.


After the breakfast, we all went to a cemetery where a few of our family members are buried. It was a nice way to spend Memorial Day...remembering those who have sacrificed for us so that our lives are what they are today.

Hope you are looking forward to a fantastic week. Our kids will be finishing up school tomorrow and we are all looking forward to summer break!

Friday Finds #16

Wow, it's already Friday! We are enjoying our last few days of school here and things are starting to heat up. I may have to venture into the pool this weekend. We are looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home.

Today is the day I like to share a few of my favorites things that I've discovered during the week. I hope you enjoy them!

Fabric Button Bracelet Tutorial by White Water Crafting

Photo Source

This tutorial shows how to make your own fabric buttons and use them on a bracelet. These buttons also look great on rings a necklaces.

Necktie Cookies by Munchkin Munchies


Wouldn't these make a fun Father's Day treat? A few of these together in a centerpiece would double as a decoration and dessert.

S'mores Ice Cream Terrine by Baking Bites


Regular s'more aren't my favorite dessert, but this ice cream/s'mores combination looks quite delicious. Perfect for a hot summer day when you don't want a fire for roasting marshmallows.

Mini Firework Cupcakes by Lady Behind the Curtain


These would be such a fun summer treat. I'm thinking that I need to buy some push pops so that I can fill them with cupcakes.

Lemonade Stand Party by La Belle Parties


This lemonade themed party would be so much fun this summer.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Mother's Day Tea

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter's 5th grade class hosted a Mother's Day Tea. Audrey had filled out a questionnaire about me and said some really sweet things. The kids all served the moms treats and we enjoyed time talking together.

The photos for the page were from my phone and are not very clear, but they are definitely better than nothing.


I am so thankful to have such a wonderful daughter!

Layout supplies are from the Scrapbook Circle June Garden Party Kit.

11 Years Old is Awesome

Today has been a very productive and creative day. I love it when I actually have a day where I can spend time at home catching up on things.

The first layout I created was about my daughter who just turned 11. The "Little Things I Love" journaling card was the starting point of this layout.


The photo was taken on her birthday last week and I wanted to remember some of my favorite things about her right now.


All of the layout supplies are from the Fancy Pants It's the Little Things line.

Also, the June Kit, Garden Party, just went live at Scrapbook Circle.


My favorite thing about this kit is all of the little embellishments we put together for this kit. Can't wait to share a few more ideas using this kit soon!

11th Birthday Celebrations

This past weekend we had our family over to celebrate Audrey's 11th birthday. We had a great time being together!

For one of Audrey's gifts, I altered a little shopping bag to make it more festive. I used the Fancy Pants Beach Babe line to add some fun embellishments to the bag.


One of my favorite things about the birthday celebration was the cake. We reused the banners from the cupcake tower from her friend party and it worked out great on this round cake. We just made sure to angle the candles away from the paper banner!

I baked the cake on Saturday and put it in the freezer once it cooled so that it would be ready for assembly on Sunday.


On Sunday I sliced each of the 2 cake rounds in half so that I had four cake circles and then layered up the cake with fudge frosting in between the cakes layers.


Right before serving, we topped the cake with fresh whipping cream and raspberries. This could be one of my favorite desserts and luckily it's one of Audrey's favorites too!

Fudge Frosting Recipe

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup cocoa
4 cups of powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the butter and water in a saucepan. Add cocoa and mix with hand mixer while the saucepan is still on the stove on low. Add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time and the vanilla and beat until smooth. Add a little milk if you want to thin it out just a little bit. Continue cooking on the stove for 2 minutes while you beat with the mixer.

The frosting will be thick and will harden up as it cools. Work quickly while frosting. If frosting cools too much and is difficult to spread, just reheat on the stove and possibly add a little milk to get it back to pouring consistency.

Friday Finds #15

This week I had fun collecting just a few of my favorite things I spotted while a read through blogs and tweets throughout the week. Hope you enjoy these! Let me know if you give any of the recipes a try.

Peanut Butter Sauce from Creations by Kara


My first choice when I top my ice cream is hot fudge, but I'm thinking this Peanut Butter sauce sounds really good too. Maybe a little hot fudge + PB sauce would be a perfect combo!

Balloon Banner by Design Mom


Who wouldn't love to have this up at their birthday party? Check out the link for instructions on how to make one.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie by Skip to My Lou


Chocolate chip cookies are probably my favorite dessert especially when they are warm and gooey right from the oven. This cookie pie version looks like something worth trying.


Fabrics & Fonts by Jennie


My talented friend, Jennie, just started an etsy shop where she sells adorable products created with fabric. She even has card sets where she has cut the fabric and then sewn it onto the card. She also does custom orders and can cut fonts and many different shapes out of fabric. So fun!

Baby Shower Decor by Preppy & Pink


This baby clothes garland is perfect for a baby shower and would be pretty easy to duplicate. The garland would double as decor and a gift!

Hope you have a great weekend!

P.S. Did you know that Scrapbook Circle is doing a giveaway every weekday in May to celebrate their 5th anniversary? Today's giveaway is a $50 credit to Vintage Rose Wraps. These are really cute and comfortable headbands. My daughters and I have a few and we love wearing them! All of the giveaways for this week close tomorrow, so stop and and comment for your chance to win.

A Notebook for Hannah

For Easter this year, I made notebooks for each of my kids. I'm happy to report that they are still carrying them around and using them!

Today I'm sharing Hannah's notebook on the Fancy Pants blog. We were asked to create something using their new chipboard banners.

I choose to go with the Beach Babe line because the bright colors remind me of my daughter's bright and happy personality.


The polka dots are flocked and on a transparency, so it was fun to layer things above and below the polka dots.

Hope you have a wonderful day!

Wedding Celebration Card

One of the things that I enjoy about being invited to a birthday party or wedding is that it is an excuse to make a card. I don't ever just sit down and make cards unless it's about 30 minutes before we need to leave for a party and then I quickly put something together.

Maybe I should consider making a bunch of cards to have on hand, but then I would have the last minute stress of creating a card! For some reason, I like leaving that task to the last minute.

Over the weekend we went to a wedding celebration dinner for my father in law and his new wife. We had a lovely time together. Right before we left for the event, I put this card together for them.


That wood grain paper from Crate Paper is one of my favorites! This card is an early sneak look at the upcoming June Scrapbook Circle Kit.

Getting Crafty Birthday Party

Last Friday night we had my daughter's 11th birthday party at our house. It was a busy and fun night and I think all of the guests had a fun time.

Audrey wanted cupcakes and I decided to take inspiration from all of the banners I've seen on cakes lately and make some little banners to decorate the cupcake display.


I cut diamond shaped pieces of paper that were folded in half over pieces of bakers twine to make little triangle pennants.


With the help of the cupcake holder, I think we had a fun cupcake display. I made the cupcakes and blue buttercream frosting using Leah's recipe and the delicious chocolate frosting was amazingly rich and creamy.

My daughter loved the banners and it was fun to see her excitement about her cupcakes.

One of the activities at the party was making bottlecap necklaces. I glued magnets to jewelry bails and hung them from necklace chains. The bottlecaps can be interchanged with the magnet on the necklace.


Here's a look at a couple of the girls' bottlecaps.


I made paper cones for the girls to store the bottlecaps and necklace.


We had a fun night celebrating!

Friday Finds #14

Hello and happy Friday to you. I wasn't sure if I would get to share my finds today because I've spent the entire day preparing and then hosting my daughter's 11th birthday party. With 12 kids at our house we had a loud and fun time! I'll share some of our party creations soon.

Tonight I'd like to share a few of my favorites finds from the week.

100 Free Things to Do with Your Kids


With only 12 days of school left for our kids, I'm starting to think about some fun things to do. This list is a great compliation of free things to do with the kids this summer. A couple favorites...#62 Blow up Diet Coke with Mentos and #49 Use magazines to make mosaics.

Dulce de Leche Carmelitas by Lolly Jane


Chocolate + caramel. What a perfect combination.

30 Hairstyles in 30 Days


The My Yellow Sandbox blog is posting a new tutorial video everyday this month on new hairstyle techniques. Even though my hair isn't very long, I want to give some of these a try. My girls would love to have some of these techniques used on their hair too.

The ScrapMaBob


Drinks are not allowed on my scrapbook table, but I think this cool gadget would be perfect for keeping the drink safe from spilling and keeping it close by. The little trash is cute, but I think I would use it to store tools or snacks.

Tiered Pie Tin Organizers


This is such a fun way to recycle pie tins and candlesticks. It would look great on a kitchen counter with food or in a scrapbook room filled with paint, glue and stickers.

Hope you've had an enjoyable week!

Easter Sunday

My parents gave each of my kids a new church outfit to wear on Easter Sunday. So I made them all snap a few quick pictures before changing out of their clothes. Sometimes that is easier said than done, but we did get a few good pictures.


I mixed the March, April and Anniversary Kits from Scrapbook Circle on this layout. The blue wood grain paper from Bella Blvd is still one of my favorites. I plan on using up every last scrap of it!

Mothers and Daughters (and a Son too!)

Since we just celebrated Mother's Day, I thought I would focus my first layout today on being a mom. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I have the opportunity to be the mom to three great kids. Really. It's pretty amazing. Of course, we have our crazy moments, but through it all, I love being a mom!

I took these photos on Easter with my kids all dressed up with hopes of having a great photo of my kids. Every picture I took has someone looking away, squinting or just not quite right. Oh well, I still love the pictures anyway!


The next layout I'd like to share is about my daughter who is about to turn eleven years old. As soon as I saw the Glitz Paper Layer that says "The Whole Wide Wonderful World is at Your Fingertips," I knew that I wanted to use it on this layout. Isn't that such a great quote?


This Butterflies paper from the Glitz Designs Laced with Grace line is one of my favorites in this collection. It's just so pretty. For this layout, I cut out five of the butterflies to use on the page.



Thanks for stopping by today!

I Love Being Your Mom Supplies

Glitz Designs "Laced with Grace" Paper: Plaid, Polka, Stripe, Rose
Glitz Designs "Laced with Grace" Glitzers
Glitz Designs "Laced with Grace" Whatnots
Glitz Designs "Laced with Grace"Journaling Stickers
Glitz Designs Teeny Wood Grain Alpha

Wonderful World Supplies
Glitz Designs "Laced with Grace" Paper: Polka, Butterflies, Stripe,
Glitz Designs "Laced with Grace" Paper Layers

Happy Mother's Day

We had a nice evening last night celebrating Mother's Day with my mom and my husband's mom.

I put together cards to go with a small gifts for each of our moms.


Still loving the Fancy Pants It's the Little Things line. The colors and designs are just so pretty.


Hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday!

Muffins with Mom

Happy Mother's Day today! I hope you have a wonderful day celebrating with those you love.

On Friday in my daughter's kindergarten class, they had a muffins with mom program that was so sweet and cute.


Each of the kids had colored a place mat, written a letter, filled out an about mom page and decorated a little pot with a flower in it for their moms. It was so fun to have Hannah read everything to me that she had written.


We were treated to breakfast with mini cupcakes and fruit. The kids then all sang some cute songs to the moms. What a perfect way to start Mother's Day weekend!

Hope you have a wonderful day!

I used the Scrapbook Circle Anniversary Kit for this layout.

Glitz Challenge #2

Happy Saturday to you! I'm excited to share a new Glitz challenge with you today. The challenge is to cluster something on your layout or project. Sounds like fun, right?

Here I decided to cluster a few paper flowers, a journaling card and sticker in the corner of this album that I made for my daughter for Easter. It's a fun way to add some layering to your project!


Are you up for the challenge? Just create something with mostly Glitz products and link up your project over on the Glitz Designs Blog.

If you play along, you have a chance to win a beautiful collection of Afternoon Muse goodies.


I hope you have a great Saturday! We're heading out to volleyball and football games this morning and then two of my kids are in a choir concert tonight. Looking forward to spending the day together as a family!

Sweet Baby Card

Last Saturday I needed a card for a baby shower and decided to use the Fancy Pants It's the Little Things line for the card. I really love the soft cozy color palette of this line.


One of my favorite things about the latest Fancy Pants line is the filter flowers. They are so lightweight and add a cool touch to projects.

For my card, I folded the filter flowers in half and created a scalloped border along the side of the card.


Thanks for stopping by today. I'm taking a break from Friday Finds this week because I've been too busy to put together my favorites. Hope you have a great weekend!

Going to a Birthday Party...

My daughter went to a fun fire truck birthday party for a boy in her kindergarten class on Saturday. I had a few extra minutes before the party, so I decided to make a gift tag to attach to the gift.

I decided to pull our my Fancy Pants To the Moon products since they were perfect colors and theme for what I wanted to create.


Don't you just love that chipboard robot? So fun.

Since this was a tag and not a card with a back that let the card stand up, I had to grab something to help prop up the tag. The first thing I saw was my son's cereal (no milk) he had left from that morning. It was the perfect size to hide behind the tag. Just keeping thing real here. :)


Here's my sweet girl just before we headed out to the party with the present. We punched a hole in the corner of the tag and tied it to the bag.


I used to think that it was a waste of time to make cards for kids, but I've decided that it's a great way to use up my supplies to make room for new stuff. Plus it's a quick and fun creative project. What do you think?