Happy Halloween!!!

We had a great time celebrating Halloween over the past couple of days.

Tom and Blake were camping all weekend with Scouts, so we waited until they got home yesterday to carve our pumpkins. Mine was the coolest. I made a bat pupkin. I even added "blood" around the mouth.
As I was completing my pumpkin, I turned around to see quite a scary site going to work behind me. (Have you heard me say that this kid just isn't right???) But, in the end, he had a pretty happy, smiling pumpkin.

Blake had to put on his "thinking 'fro" to do his carving. (And Crazy Kev had to jump in the background of this shot!)I love the wicked grin on his jack-o-lantern.Sunday night we went to trunk or treat at our church. Everyone loved Kevin's Edward Scissorhands costume. Blake said he dressed up as "Casual Friday." Teenagers...For Kevin's scissorhands, I traced scissors on glitter foam, then attached them to black gloves using brads. That's Kevin real hair painted black. Too bad it wasn't longer...We only had one trick-or-treater this year. It was a bit sad.Tom and I walked around our subdivision with Kevin. Blake sat out on our porch and scared the trick-or-treaters. I have to admit, he did look a bit gruesome!It was a very nice Halloween. I am blessed to have these two boys. They are already thinking ahead to next year for costume (and makeup) ideas. Oh, I have one more photo to share...

While uploading my pics, I noticed a couple that I did't take. Kevin just might turn out to be a great photographer some day. Don't you love the angle he used to capture his newest lego set?

Happy Halloween!

It's Finally Friday!

It's finally Friday. Yay!

I hope this weekend will allow me a little time to get caught up on uploading/editing my photos. I'm way behind on that.

I have a couple fun little projects to share with you today. When going through my stash last month, I came across the "Apple Jack" line by Sassafrass Lass that I purchased almost a year and a half ago. I was dying to work with this line, but it just sort of sat. For a long while.

I was inspired to use it and paired it up with some crazy shots of my guys that my sister took last year at one of the boy's birthday parties. (Tom must never know I posted this!)
While I had the line out, I also scrapped our nephews' birthday party from a couple years back. I've been scrapping a lot of birthday layouts lately. Afterall, this is birthday season in our house. I'm looking forward to celebrating both boys' birthdays at their "friend" party this weekend.

I'm (Still) An Athlete...

Did that title catch your attention?


Ha! Ok, so I'm not an athlete, but my two boys. It seems I will never run out of photos to use for my design team commitments at Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff. A couple months ago, I used my DT credit to purchase the "I'm An Athlete" collection by SEI. I pulled out the "scraps" from the line recently to complete a couple additional layouts.


It's rare that I make one photo layouts, but I only had one photo of Blake to tell this story. When we went to Kevin's baseball tournment over in New Albany, Indiana, Blake was allowed to go up in the scorer's box and announce the players. He was a great sport and even asked for the opposing team's line-up so he could also announce their players. The layout came together really quick. I even used one of the diecut 12" borders to frame my photo.

I was a little intimidated by the basketball court pattern on this one sheet of paper. Then I realized it would be a great background for a couple collage prints I had made. We had way TOO MANY photos of my guys playing basketball in the driveway with Tom's brother and his kids last spring. By creating the collages, I didn't have to decide on just a few photos to scrap. I added a journaling block, some tickets cut from one of the patterned papers, a pennant die cut strip and some foam stickers from the line. Then, I finished my layout off with some Varsity Thickers.

Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff always has just the right products for my sports-themed pages.

Celebrating with "Animal Crackers"...

I have been a bit M.I.A. since Blake's birthday. Rest assured, I survived his 13th. However, although I'd love to share some pictures from his special day, I have had some camera issues that are making uploading my photos a little difficult. Plus, I just haven't had the time to mess with in.

In the meantime, I'll stick with the birthday theme (while not his 13th) and share some recent layouts I did for my design team commitment with Scrappin' {Sports} Stuff. I was really drawn to the bright colors and fun patterns of the "Animal Crackers" line by Imaginisce. I knew I didn't have any circus or fair pictures to use with the line, but instead felt that it would be perfect for some birthday pages.

Armed with Sketches for Scrapbooking Volume 8 by Allison Davis, I was able to sit down with this line, my photos, and a fun assortment of alphas and quickly knock out some documented memories.

First, I scrapped Tom's birthday from August.
2-page layouts make me so happy.

Pop dots turned shapes cut from patterned paper into instant embellishments.

The die-cut pennant strip was one of my favorite embellishments from the whole line. (LOVE those colors!)

Next up was Blake's 12th birthday.

It's obsvious from the pics that he really enjoyed his dinner out at the local Mexican restaurant.

I only used one side of the sketch for this single page layout. I used another of the pennant strips and added a couple different Thicker fonts, too. The pennants made yet another appearance on a page from Kevin's birthday last November. This layout is for Blake's album. Kevin loved the Cars set Blake gave him. In addition to Thickers (2 fonts), I also used alphas from Paper Trunk and Sassafrass Lass.

Our fun family game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey needed a page to itself. My youngest sister won the game at Kevin's party last fall.

I used the ribbons from the line to help frame out the page. Several pop dots were also used on this layout.

I converted a couple of my favorite photos from Blake's 12th birthday to black and white. I'm glad I did since I think they look so nice on this next layout. They aren't competing with the bright colors on the rest of the layout.

Since I was out of my pennant borders, I used pennant paper!

When I have a lot of photos from one event, I often print them as photo collages. I did that for pics of Blake with his gifts. I like to document what he receives each year, so we can look back and remember his interests. In this case, I printed the photos as 2-up 4x6 collages. This made it very easy to get six photos on one page.

I used a set of Thickers, a set of Cosmo Cricket chipboard alphas and a sheet of Scenic Route alpha stickers for my big title.

To further accent the page, I added some scraps in the upper corner, a piece of ribbon and a Jenni Bowlin vintage looking button from my stash.

While going through my stash, I decided to use up some older (and large) chipboard alphas by Heidi Swapp on this final 2-pager. This layout shows off the gifts Blake got from family at his party last year.

I didn't have enough letters to spell the word I wanted, so I used the negative "scrap" from a G and just backed it with patterned paper.

Once again, I cut shapes out of the papers and adhered them with pop dots for dimension.Now I want to print out photos from this year's birthday and scrap them!

Happy scrappin'!

My Monkey...

Not long after we moved into our home, we planted some trees in the backyard. Many of them didn't make it that first year and had to be replaced, but the Maple we planted in the center of the backyard thrived. Today, I am impressed with how tall it's grown in just 6 or 7 years. Kevin is really starting to enjoy the Maple.Sometimes I'll look out into the backyard and panic because I can't see him. Then, he'll peek out from INSIDE the tree to let me know he's still there. The photos of Kevin in the tree make me smile every time I see them. So, when I received them in my photo order, I couldn't wait to scrapbook them to document this memory.

(Products used - Jillibean Soup papers, Pebbles felt tree accents, American Crafts Thickers)

Now I have this memory documented for Kevin, too.

Happy Scrappin'!

Take me out to the ballgame...

I realized I am WAY behind on sharing the happenings around here. A month ago I had these photos uploaded to the blog awaiting to post...

Kevin's Cub Scout Pack attended Scout Night at the Louisville Bats game several weeks ago. It's a pretty big deal with Scouts from all over Kentucky and Southern Indiana attending. The Scouts and their families get to walk around the ballfield before the game. Kevin got to lead his Pack around the field as he carried their flag. !!! He was so excited and I was so proud of him. He did great!

We stayed and enjoyed the game. (Really, Blake enjoyed himself. He's just going through this "serious" phase whenever I take photos!)

We spent a lot of the game snacking. We had sno-cones, roasted nuts, icecream, and a special cookie purchased from the bowl that the "cookie lady" carried around on her head. (I should have gotten a pic of her!)We never get tired of baseball!