Blast Off!

I've been having a lot of fun creating with the Scrapbook Circle July Kit, Blast Off! this week.

I have a couple layout peeks to share with you today.

This kit was not designed as a patriotic kit, but with the red and navy combos in a few of the papers made a perfect background for some 4th of July photos from last year.


The 2-page printable that goes with this kit is one of my favorites so far. This layouts used a lot of pieces from the printable.


The full Blast Off! Kit is now up on the site and will start shipping on July 1.

The Summer Album Part 3

Hope that you have had a great weekend. We went to Tucson (about 90 minutes south of our house) for part of the weekend. While we were there we saw a snake just outside of our hotel room and a scorpion in the kid's room. I never see snakes are scorpions at our house, so we felt like we were having a real desert adventure!


Before we went to Tucson, I had a chance to add a couple more pages to our summer album.

I'm still mainly using the Scrapbook Circle Garden Party Kit, but the journaling tag on the left is from the upcoming July Kit printable. Those printable pages have been perfect for adding bit of journaling to this project.

This spread talks about last weekend when my kids all sang the National Anthem with the Chandler Children's Choir at the Diamondbacks game. Such a fun night and fantastic experience!

On this spread, I strayed a bit from the Garden Party Kit and added this fuzzy transparency from the Fancy Pants Baby Mine collection. I'm planning on matched up the same sized photo on the back side of this page.

Looking forward to a busy a fun week with my kids. I think I'm enjoying summer vacation as much as my kids!

New Glitz and Scrapbook Circle Peek

Have you seen the new lines that Glitz will be releasing at CHA this summer? The blue and yellow color combo in the Vintage Blue line is just gorgeous. Can't wait to play with these lines!


Also, have you seen the July Kit sneak from Scrapbook Circle?


Can't wait to share more of this kit with you!

Walking Along the Beach

Hope you are having a happy Wednesday. This morning I got up early, made a cake, exercised and then attended a funeral for a wonderful older lady, Barbara, who attends our church. The funeral was very inspirational as the family shared the special qualities that their loved one possessed. It gave me new focus on things I want to improve on in my own life. I'm thankful to Barbara for her example of unconditional love, kindness and desire to help others.

Today I'd like share a layout I made using the Garden Party Kit from Scrapbook Circle. It's another page about the beach. What can I say, I just loved out time at the beach and just want to document it.


Here I used one of the photos I took on my phone with an Instagram filter.


I'm thankful for you and that you take time to stop by and see what I'm up to. Hope you have a wonderful Wednesday!

Playtime at the Beach

Earlier this month we were fortunate to get to take a quick trip to the beach. The beach really is one of my favorite places to visit. It's so relaxing sitting in the sand, listening to the waves and watching my kids play.

I tried to take a lot of pictures while we were at the beach. Luckily my kids are used to it and seem to enjoy having their pictures taken.


I took the pictures on this layout on our first morning at the beach. We just threw clothes on and went out to collect shells. We filled a bucket and my son even found 4 sand dollars that day.


I used the Beach Bum collection from Fancy Pants for this layout. I love all of the little tags and stickers that they have for this line because it makes putting a page together so easy.

Father's Day

We had a relaxing and fun day celebrating Father's Day yesterday.

One of the gifts I put together for my husband was a quote book that I bought and then added pictures to it.

I started out with this book.


There were 30 quotes in the book, so I printed out 30 2" x 3" pictures so that I would have one photo per page. I just went through our photos from the past year and printed out pictures of the three kids together, a few family pictures and pictures of the kids with their dad.



There were a couple of blank pages in the back of the book and each of the kids and I wrote a note to my husband.


The concept of adding photos to a pre-made book could work well for many different gift occasions.

Hope you enjoyed celebrating Father's Day.

Friday Finds #18

Another week has just flown by and I have no idea how it is already Friday again.

The past couple of days have been filled with dance recital dress rehearsals, a party a Peter Piper Pizza and swimming. Perfect summer days!


There are a few Friday Finds that I'd like to share today.

First is the Joy the Baker blog. Where have I been? This blog not only shares fantastic sounding recipes that I must try soon, but the writing is very entertaining too. Just added this blog to my blog reader.


With recipes like Browned Butter Banana Bread, Homemade Churros with Warm Dark Chocolate Sauce, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Brownies and Chewy Molasses Chocolate Chip Cookies, where should I begin?

This ABC Crayon Set is so clever and playful. This would be a fun baby shower or birthday present.


This set of hand painted mustache glasses would make a cool gift or a great talking point at a party.


The last share for today is a recipe for Mexican Hot Chocolate Ice Cream. I first tasted this flavor of ice cream 10 years ago when I was visiting San Antonio and my husband and I tried it in a small ice cream shop along the Riverwalk. It was so delicious and I can't wait to try and make this.


Love the look of these hand dyed paper doilies. These would make a great addition to any party.


That's all for today. Hope you have a wonderful Friday!

Fancy Pants Filter Embellishments

One of my favorite things released at CHA in January was Fancy Pants' new filter embellishments. They came in a few shapes, but they only came in white.

With the new Baby Mine release from Fancy Pants, they came out with patterns printed on the filter embellishments.

I had a chance to create with these and I had fun layering up a few on these on a layout.


Today the Fancy Pants design team is sharing a few filter flower ideas on the Fancy Pants blog. You can check it out here.

The Summer Album Continues...

Today I had some time at put together the next few pages in my summer album.

I love that the design is simple, the format is smaller than a regular scrapbook page (my pages are 5.5" X 7.75") and that our summer is being documented.

All of the paper is from the Scrapbook Circle Garden Party kit. I've decided to just stick to the paper in this kit because it simplifies the project and I'm loving the bright greens, yellows and oranges. Perfect for summer!

The little number strips where I did my journaling on the right side page are from the Garden Party printable. I've already printed off 2 pages of the printable and just keep cutting it up and using it.


Got to say that I really like the full page photos in this album. Not only does it make a simple page to design, it had a nice impact too.


On this spread, I misted one of the Fancy Pants Filter Embellishments from the kit with Tattered Angels Apricot Mist. The filters really do a great job taking on the mist.

Isn't that a cool desert photo? My husband took it on his phone while he was camping last weekend. This was the view from their campsite. I love that our phones have cameras because if they didn't, we'd miss out on photos like this.

You can see the first pages of the album here if you would like to see them.

Hope your summer is going well. Thanks for taking the time to stop by!

Scrapbook Circle Card Challenge

Did you know that Scrapbook Circle has a card challenge going this month that uses a sketch from Sketchy Thursdays?

I was in need of a wedding card this week, so I used the challenge sketch as inspiration for my card.


Everything came from the Garden Party Kit. The yellow tag and banners are from the printable that come with the kit. I love cutting up and using the printable!

I hope you will play along with the challenge. A Crate Paper Neighborhood collection kit will go to one lucky challenge participant.

My Precious Girl

A couple weeks ago at a family party, Hannah decided to model a pair of sunglasses while I shot a few photos. I love how she likes to pose for the camera.

A few of the sunglasses photos just made their way onto a layout this week. What do you think? Does she like being in front of the camera?


I used the new Baby Mine line from Fancy Pants on this layout. Even though this line is a baby line, it also works well for other themes too with the pink, blue and green color combos.


Thanks for stopping by today!

Friday Finds #17

It's Friday! I hope you have a great weekend ahead of you.

Today I thought I'd share a few of my favorite summertime treats that have been spotted over the past week.

S'mores in a Jar by how Sweet it is


I'm thinking these would be great made in smaller jars so that so much marshmallow wouldn't have to be eaten to get down to the chocolate.

Patriotic Fruit Pizza from the Idea Room


Fruit pizza has been one of my favorite desserts to make each summer, but I've always made one big round pizza cookie. This smaller individual size would be easier to manage and serve.

Raspberry Lemonade Bars by sophistimom


Don't these look delicious? Lemon bars + raspberries = need to make this soon!

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream from David Lebovitz


This recipe has a lot of steps, but the picture of the creamy caramel ice cream makes me think it would be worth the effort.

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes with Lemon Curd from bellaimento on the Babble Blog


Yet another creative cake in a jar creation. Lemonade desserts sound perfect for summer.

What do you think? Any of these look good to you? Do you have a favorite summertime treat you like to make?

Hope you have a fantastic weekend.

My Summer Album

This summer, I've decided to put together an album to track what our family is doing. I'm keeping the design and form very simple so that filling the album will be something fun and not something that I feel obligated to put together.

There is not a set format such as a photo a day or daily journaling. As I have photos or a story to share, I will add it to the album. I'm printing all of my photos at home onto matte photo paper because I've noticed that glossy prints tend to show fingerprints more and these pages won't be in page protectors.


I started the album with photos from June 1 since that was our kids' last day of school. I'm not sure when the album will be finished because the kids go back to school on July 25th and that still seems like the middle of summer. I'll just add to the album until it seems finished.

So far, I've loaded the photos that I want to use into Photoshop and then created collages for a couple of pages at a time. I arrange as many photos as possible onto a page so photo paper isn't wasted.

On this page, I used a sealed envelope for a smaller page. It was a perfect spot for two photos.


I'm looking forward to a great summer and it will be fun to document it along the way.

Album supplies: Scrapbook Circle Garden Party Kit and Elle's Studio Tags found (here and here.) I'm also using a printable set from Elle's Studio (Summer 2010 Documented) that is now retired.

Out of This World Card

Today I got to share a card featuring Fancy Pants rub-ons on their blog. There are several fun ideas for using rub-on on projects.


Hope you'll stop by and check it out if you get a chance!

The Almost Flourless Chocolate Cake

Last month I read the very enjoyable book, A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg. This book is a collection of Molly's favorite recipes with a story about how each recipe became important to the author. Not only was the writing very entertaining, but I really want to make a majority of the recipes in the book. My mouth was watering throughout the book, so I recommend reading this after you have eaten.

Ever since reading the last chapter of the book with the story and recipe for the Winning Hearts and Minds Chocolate Cake, I've been wanting to make it. This is such a good recipe that the author made 20 of these to serve as her wedding cake. Luckily for you, Molly has the recipe on her blog!

Yesterday, was finally the day I had time to make the cake. A bonus was that I had all of the ingredients on hand and didn't need to do any extra shopping for the cake.


This is a VERY rich cake, so if you aren't a big chocolate lover, you've been warned. I thought it was fantastic. The recipe suggests serving it with slightly sweetened whipping cream, but we didn't have any, so we served it with vanilla ice cream.

Now I just need to decide which recipe from the book to make next: the Banana Bread with Chocolate & Crystallized Ginger or the Coconut Macaroons with Chocolate Ganache.

(There are also really great sounding savory dishes in the book, I just have such a sweet tooth, so I tend to want to bake treats!)

Last Minute Beach Weekend

At the beginning of last week one of my husband's clients asked if he could come to San Diego for a business meeting later in the week. Normally, he just goes alone, but the kids were going to be out of school so it seemed like a great opportunity for a quick family getaway.

San Diego is only a 5 hour drive from our house, so we loaded up the car late last Wednesday and drove to San Diego. While my husband was working, the kids and I enjoyed a couple of days at the beach on Thursday and Friday. He was luckily able to join us for a while on Friday.

I love the beach! It was so beautiful and relaxing. Of course, I took loads of pictures on our regular camera, but I also snapped a few on my phone with the Instagram app. Here are a few of my favorites from the weekend.


I'm excited to have some new photos for layouts and maybe a beach mini album.

Glitz June Challenge

This month the challenge over on the Glitz blog is to use this sketch for a card or layout creation.

I decided to use the sketch as inspiration for a birthday card for my sister in law.


This is a card that just has a front and back (doesn't flap open.) On the back I attached a library card holder where we could slip in a gift card and write a message.

All of the challenge and prize details are on the Glitz blog, so I hope you will stop by and check it out.

Happy Saturday to you!