Four in a row...

Kevin's 8 year old all-star team has done REALLY well this summer. Last weekend they won their 4th tournament in a row. Technically they are undefeated, but after last Saturdays pool play, they do have a tie on their record now. Since it was pool play, games were called at the time limit.

Another different rule for this tournament was that they did NOT have a run rule. It was nice not stopping after 5 or 7 runs. At first. But when we were scoring 18 runs in one inning, we felt really bad for the other team. Our boys were hitting like crazy! Finally our coaches would only allow our boys to go one base a time no matter what. Toward the end of the game with a score of 28-3, we had two outs. We were going one base at a time. We still kept scoring...until the score was 40-3 and they called the game.

Have you ever seen a Little League score of 40-3???

That win put us in the championship and we carried home hardware.

And went to DQ with the team to celebrate.

This weekend we are playing in a tournament "down the road" in the next county. I hope the boys aren't too cocky after last weekend and that they can still bring home hardware.

Have a great weekend!

I love watching Blake play ball...

And, I LOVE scrapping his baseball photos, too!

You've seen me use the Generation Z line from Little Yellow Bicycle several times already. I just fell in love with it the first time I saw it at Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff. (The line is currently 25% on in the store!) I loved how it matched Blake's Tigers uniform this season.

I recently took advantage of a photo sale on 5x7 prints and may have gone overboard on ordering the baseball shots! Then I realized that I had 5x7 transparencies with the Generation Z line, so I went to grouping photos together and matching them up with papers/products for layouts.

The result was four layouts in one night this weekend. And, I love everyone of them!

It might be weird to use a guitar on a sports page, but since Blake "rocked the mound" I thought it was fitting! The gears in the line also fit with my "100% Catching Machine" title. I took two die cut papers and overlapped them "off" just a bit and raised the black top layer with pop dots to add dimension. The original photo was really dark, so I edited it and it came out a little washed out, but I loved the effect.

You might be getting tired of layouts of Blake pitching, but I'm not yet. His many faces inspired yet another layout - "the Faces of Determination." I love this kid!

Speaking of love, photos I snapped of Blake "taking a knee" (ok, so he sat on the bag...) while he was on 2nd base during a break in the game really brought a smile to my face. His buddy from school was on the opposing team, but you see them sharing a laugh at 2nd. The photo I opted to enlarge just speaks to me about Blake and his personality. Instead of journaling, I decided to pull words from the rub-ons and sticker sheets from the Generation Z line. I thought it was a neat way to describe this boy that is so special to me.

Sometime before school starts, I need to scrap more Kevin layouts before he starts to feel left out!

CK "Summer Camp"

Earlier this month, the message board for Creating Keepsakes hosted a "summer camp." Throughout the week, they posted challenges you could do to earn your "merit badges." Luckily you had a whole week to complete them. I did most of mine the last weekend before the cut off on Monday!
Although I didn't originally plan to complete all the challenges, I found them quite easy to do with projects I already had in mind to scrap.

I'd like to share a few projects I completed that haven't been posted yet...

For a flag/banner challenge, I completed this layout about my nephew's birthday party. I've had this Sassafrass Lass paper since the end of February. It was good to finally use it!

For the Fire Safety challenge, instead of heat embossing, I opted to their alternate challenge of tearing/inking edges to make them look burnt. I thought it was fitting to use on a layout about Blake's trip to Boy Scout camp this summer. I used some of the Bo Bunny Roughin' It line that I picked up at Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff.

For the Crafting with Kids challenge, I worked with Kevin to make a mini album out of envelopes for our (then) upcoming road trip to Cincinnati. He was proud of our creation.

I've been on a sports-scrappin' kick lately. I'll have lots of new layouts to share soon. I'm enjoying scrapping while I can!

School starts one week from today!

Cool...

I go on vacation and miss everything! This morning I was checking out some blogs and realized that last Thursday, Creating Keepsakes magazine posted their Gallery Spotlight to recognize what they called "fabulous projects" from their week long "Summer Camp" of challenges.

I was happy to see that my "Play Hard - Throw Hard" layout was selected from the layouts posted with their Journaling challenge. (You can see my layout here - it's down quite a ways.)

If you know me, you know I don't think any page is complete without journaling. That's why I scrapbook - to document the stories of our life.

I'm not sure if it's the layout itself or the pride I feel when I look at these photos of Blake pitching and think about how much he's matured as a player that make me love this layout so much. It just makes me happy and I'm especially happy that CK recognized it, too.

WOW...

We returned from our mini vacation last night and I was surprised to find a message from Creating Keepsakes magazine in my inbox. They were informing me that one of the layouts I uploaded to their gallery recently had been selected for their Reader's Pick Poll. I was even more surprised that only THREE layouts had been selected for this.

Voting is open until noon Eastern time on Monday. If my layout wins, it will be published in an upcoming issue of the magazine.

Anyone can vote here. Thanks for your support!

ETA: My layout won the Readers' Pick Poll. Thanks so much for everyone who voted. Keep an eye out for the January 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes!

July is halfway over???

July is past the halfway point and we only have TWO weeks left of summer vacation!

Last weekend we enjoyed watching Kevin's 8 year old all-star team win their third tournament in a row. They are now 12-0! The team had this weekend off, but next weekend will play in a tournament sponsored by the local high school. It will be nice to play so close to home.

This past week the boys and I stayed busy. I worked four full days at school and they attended baseketball camp. Kevin loved it and even came home with a trophy the last day. His "team" won the 3-on-3 tournament they had for his age group. Blake didn't fare so well. He wasn't exactly thrilled with the kids he was paired up with and one day came home with a huge knot on his browbone after a collision on the court. I think it was still a good experience for him though.

Blake also spent some time this week working on his canoeing merit badge for Boy Scouts. They'll work more on it next weekend when they camp out. It's going to take a while for me to get used to having Blake away one weekend a month for camp outs!

I haven't been scrapping much lately, but last night was inspired by these new photos of Blake. I took them toward the end of the season when he had the opportunity to pitch.

I loved how well Blake's Tigers uniform worked with the LYB "Generation Z" line. Right now you can pick up the entire line 25% off at Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff. Check it out here.

Now that I have new photos in hand, I hope to get more layouts finished before school starts back!

Enjoy what is left of your summer!

Time for "Show & Tell"...

When I saw the new We R Memory Keepers "Show & Tell" line, I just knew I had to have it. I requested it over at Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff and was very impressed with how quickly it was in stock. When it arrived last Friday, I could not have been happier!

This year, Blake "graduated" from 5th grade. I loved how this die cut paper matched Tom and me in these photos. Fun papers!This next layout isn't technically finished - I still need to journal. But, since I want to include info about his school and his friends first and last names, I decided to post the layout before including that information. I printed the photos in 4x6 collages and then had to cut a few apart to make them fit to this size. I have the photos numbered so I can easily identify everyone in them in my journaling. Finally, I did a fun page about my new job at the high school library. The wooden "conquistador" we named Juan has sort of become our mascot. I loved the strip of paper that reminded me of the spine of Little Golden Book. I thought it was only fitting to make my page look like a book since I work in a library. I have soooo many ideas for this product line and a ton of products left, too. Stay tuned!

More fun with "Like Father, Like Son"...

I have really been able to stretch my DT supplies from Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff this month! I was able to knock out five more layouts using the Fancy Pants "Like Father Like Son" line. Love it!

First, I created a layout about our nephew Jax. The past three years he's managed to hook his fishing line (complete with bobber) on the telephone line at my mother-in-law's! I loved this sheet of patterned paper with the circles/stars crossing the page. I cut along a couple of them to tuck photos behind. I felt like it needed something more, so I cut 1/2" strips of the stripe and used them to make a border around the page. Then I stitched around them.

For Blake's end of the (school) year reward, I took him out for sushi. Of course, I had to scrap it!

You can't really tell in my photo of the layout, but the orange sections with the "play strong..." words is cut out and then adhered to the page using pop dots to add dimension.

I thought the color scheme of this line worked well with Boy Scout photos, so I used them to scrap Blake's first Boy Scout Court of Honor from May. I used a sketch by Lisa Hidy, but had to adjust it some to fit my photo count. The stars in the corner and most of the circles are adhered with pop dots.

When we went to get dress clothes for Kevin's First Communion, I loved seeing how Blake looked at himself in the mirror in the changing room at Kohl's. Luckily I had my camera in my purse, so I was able to capture the moment. Again, the photos went perfect with this LFLS line!

I added a sheet of Basic Grey's Back to Basics paper and used lots of layers on this one. The buttons were a finishing touch and I thought they went well with the clothing topic.

Finally, I used this line to do a rare (for me!) 1-photo layout. I only had the one photo from my "date night" with Kevin to see Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. The background paper is another sheet of Basic Grey. I was actually trying to use up my supplies from this line, but still have a couple full sheets and several scraps left. They may be making another appearance on the blog soon.

For now, I'm distracted by my latest DT package from Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff.

Stay tuned...

Weekend Update (4th of July holiday)...

I knew this weekend was going to be a busy one, so I had to fit in a little scrap time on Friday! I finished this layout of pics from our Spring Break day trip to Frankfort. I used new Bo Bunny products. I kept the layout simple...On Saturday, Kevin's team played in pool play in a local baseball tournament. They looked sharp in their new uniforms! Saturday they wore navy.Kevin was 6 for 6 at bat in the two games. We won both of them! I love watching this kid run bases, he's so fast!Saturday night, I went to the movie with my sister Kaitlin to see Eclipse. We had fun going out together, but I wish I'd saved my $8 and waited to rent it at Red Box in a few months. It was not a good movie! Sorry Twihards...I loved the books, but the movies...ehhh not so much.

While fixed up (ok...cleaned up after the ballpark!), I took a new head shot of myself. I need one to submit with my submission for a design team I'm going to try out for. (Wish me luck!)

The single-elimination tournament was Sunday. We had the #1 seed!!! Our first game was delayed quite a bit, but it was worth the wait. One of our players hit not one, but TWO out of the park homeruns. Kevin is really good friends with Ethan and his mom was my best friend in school (I don't remember ever NOT knowing her!). It was so fun watching the team meet him at homeplate!I missed my favorite moment of the day when Kevin and a teammate chest-bumped each other in the outfield after the teammate made a great catch. These kids are so fun to watch.

After winning the first game by a landslide, the second game - the championship - was much closer. We one 24-20. Whew! It's so much more fun when you go home with hardware!I feel bad that Blake seems to be missing from this update, but he was on the sides with us cheering his brother on. We didn't leave the ballpark until 9:00, so we missed out on the family 4th of July cook out. We could have swung by for fireworks, but we were all too exhausted and just wanted to eat and head home. We did catch fireworks in the sky practically the whole ride home though.

Today was father/sons day at the pool. I stayed home and scrapbooked. ;)

Happenings around here...

It's July already??? That means my summer is halfway over.

July will bring weekend tournaments (likely every weekend) for Kevin's all-star team. Now that we have the pop-up canopy, it should be more bearable. I am going to try to enjoy every moment of the summer vacation that we have left. I love spending time with my boys.

Kevin and I have been playing a lot of Sorry and Trouble lately. I don't think Blake likes playing with us. Tom doesn't. We tend to gang up on him!

This week we ventured to the dentist in the town where we used to live. Yes, it's been 6-1/2 years since we moved, but I can't stand the thought of changing dentists! I stopped in a little store over there (where Tom used to buy his suits) and picked up a nice little necklace and earring set for myself. They have the best deals on these things. Unfortunately, that night when I was getting ready to put it away, I went to try it on again and two of the three strands came out of the claspy-thing (I'm so technical, right?) and beads went flying down my sink! I have everything else scooped up into a baggy. The store said they'd try to get another one just like it for me. If not, they'll exchange it.

I've been reading a lot this week and making the boys do the same. I am now impatiently waiting until August 24! I read "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. I really didn't think I'd like it, but was encouraged by one of the librarians at school to give it a chance. Oh my...it was amazing! I had to stop by school to get the second book on Tuesday to read. I almost couldn't put it down. Tonight after dinner I finished it. These books literally grab you and you don't want to put them down. The second one left me hanging. I almost wish I hadn't read the first two before #3 came out!

Speaking of dinner...
I hit my hydrangea bushes up again. I have fresh flowers in our formal dining room, in a mason jar on the mantle and now in a small bud vase in the kitchen, too. They make me smile.

I also decided that tonight we'd have dinner in the formal dining room. And eat on the good china. Why not? I'm going to enjoy it. Blake said it made him feel special when they get to eat off "the fancy stuff." That made me smile, too.


And finally, I have a layout to share from yesterday. I put my book down long enough to create one page. Blake had the craziest hair while swimming last summer. I used American Crafts' "Heat Wave" line for this one.

That is our week so far.

Happy July!