You had to be there...

One of the lessons recently on Learn Something New Every Day dealt times in our life that are memorable, but only make sense to the people who were there.  I've had lots of instances where that's happened, but one really resonates for me and it's all about "bacon, bacon, bacon."  Any time the hubster and I say that to one another we totally crack up.  It wouldn't make sense to anyone else but it complete does to us.  So this layout tonight was inspired by this week's sketch on Sketch Inspiration and is built upon that memory and I even wrote directly on the layout with my own horrible handwriting!  I never want to do that.  The layout was made with paper from Echo Park's mini collection "The Great Outdoors."  I just love this paper! 

So I've been battling a migraine for a couple of days now.  I even went home from work yesterday because I was so sick.  It's better today, pretty low key, but I'm ever so anxious to have it fully over.  But tonight I notice that certain foods just weren't appealing.  So I stood looking in the pantry for something that didn't make my stomach roll and I saw these muffin mixes I picked up the other day. 

For some reason, they actually seemed appetizing.  So, hubby picked the Cocoa Puffs and I cooked them.  Now I didn't think it was the best muffin I've ever eaten (not the worst either), but hubby seems to like them as I noticed there were a few more openings in the tin than the one we sampled together earlier...

Boston Layout

This week's Sketch Inspiration sketch inspired me to scrapbook the pictures from my trip to Boston a couple of weeks ago and I knew I wanted to use the Brooklyn Flea kit from Studio Calico.  I had so many photos that I wanted to include that I decided the best thing to do was to create a collage of the photos in Photoshop.  After that, the rest of the layout went together very quickly even though I had to cut the bracket about four times in the Silhouette Design Studio before I was happy size.  I even hand wrote my notes for some of the pictures, which is rare for me since I hate my own handwriting.  But I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, except that it looks a little busy to me.  But, oh well, at least it's done.

Loveable

I was supposed to be getting ready for a barbecue at a friend's house today, but I got a little sidetracked in my craft room.  I have pictures from Thursday's trip to Multnomah Falls that I intended to scrapbook today, but when I looked at Sketch Inspiration's sketch, I completed changed my focus.  I have this favorite picture of Matt holding Gandalf as a kitten.  I love it so much that it's on my mouse pad at work.  Somewhere along the line, I printed a copy and it's been in my place card holder that I use to hold my cards when I take photos of them.  I just pop the picture out, put in the card, snap my photo and put the card back.  But, the photo is getting a little used so it's time to put it on paper and this sketch was the perfect one.  I just used scraps from my scrap bin for the paper (I think most of it except the orange polka dots is DCWV), some letters I found in an alphabet bin (I think they may have originally been from a kit, but I'm not sure) and the marigold, which is my newest download from the Silhouette Design Studio.  I used a little white ink to edge the background and tone down the blue on the flower and called it good.  So, now I'm late for the barbecue, but even that worked out because now Matt's going to be able to join me.  Yeah!

Baking and Playing

I spent most of the day playing in the kitchen and my craft room.  A few weeks ago, I found a recipe for English Muffin Bread on Pink Cricut.  We loved it so much, I've made it several times since.  In fact, I used a whole jar of yeast.  I don't think I've ever used a whole jar of yeast before the expiration date before. 

The other day, I made a little change to the recipe.  I added some cinnamon and raisins, which was absolutely divine!  So today I made the whole recipe as raisin bread.

But I wasn't done there.  Yesterday, while playing around on Pinterest, I found a recipe for Jalapeno Cheese Bread from Homemade by Holman.  I decided I just had to try that one too. 

I am soooo happy I did.  It was fabulous (although I only used 1/2 of the jalapenos the recipe called for and used double the red green pepper because I didn't have any green peppers on hand). I'm definitely making this one again.  And my loaf of banana bread is just coming out of the oven.  I used the tried and true Betty Crocker recipe.  We've tried others but it's my favorite by far.

So in my craft room today, I played around with pictures taken from our Friday trip to see the dock that washed ashore following the Japanese tsunami. I used this week's Sketch Inspiration sketch to start and opened a collection pack from Echo Park called Country Drive that I had in my stash.  I just love EP paper!  I decided I needed to copy the flower paper for an embellishment and I just love that I found the cut file in the Silhouette Store.  Yea!  I added a little bling with my Irock, a title, some hidden journaling and a few words and some strips of border from the embellishments in the kit.   

Now and Then...

What a fabulous weekend!  The girls came over to craft on Saturday.  Well, honestly, not a lot of crafting happened.  Instead we spent a lot of time talking and catching up.  Elaine was probably the most productive us all; she actually finished an adorable layout.  I spent most of my time showing her how she can use the Cameo in her crafting.  After all the time I've spent lately looking at hexagons and thinking I should use them in a layout or card, the first time I actually worked with them was helping Elaine cut some for her layout and now I'm even more convinced I'm going to have to use the hot trend on something. 

I did a little on my applique.  It's coming along pretty well for my first attempt, but I can see the mistakes.  But today I had to take a break.  All those little stitches are getting to me.

So today I used my time to make my first layout since reorganizing my craft room.  A couple of weeks ago, my dear friend Becky sent me her son's graduation announcement and a senior photo.  It's hard to believe that Nick is old enough to have finished high school; it still remember the little boy who ran up and down the hall at night trying to avoid going to bed.  I've been wanting to do a then and now type page ever since I got it, but every time I started, I realized I needed my computer.  Now that it's back and my room is ready to go again, I was so excited to get to it and, when I saw today's sketch for Sketch Inspiration, I knew it was perfect for this layout and I just knew I wanted to use the Note to Self collection kit from Echo Park.  I just love this kit, even more so since there are great coordinating elements for in it the Silhouette Design Studio. Even though this was the very first time I broke out the collection to use, I know I'm going to use every last scrap of it.  I loved the little tab; it was perfect to hide my hand written (gasp!) journaling.

It's also the first time I've ever sprayed Glimmer Mist on a project after I had it "done."  I've watched Shimelle (oh and thanks Shimelle for the preview of the upcoming Echo Park collections, I see more of them in my future) several times and I've always found it a little intimidating.  Yep, it's still intimidating even after trying it myself now.  

Sketch Inspiration - Mini Snow-cation!

I have some exciting news! I'm sponsoring the prize over at Sketch Inspiration this week. I just love this site. I find so much inspiration there, so I was so happy to be able to show my support. So this week features a marvelous sketch that I really found inspiring. In fact, I had picked out my Echo Park paper from the Winter Park collection and my pictures of the furballs playing in the snow, but hadn't yet found the time to put the layout together. Then hubby and I took a three day camping trip to the coast where it snowed! By the time we got home, I knew the furballs pictures were out and the camping trip pictures were in. My absolute favorite picture right now is this one of Chewie and hubby napping together on the couch in the RV. Just too cute! I really had fun with this layout. I speckled paint on the stripped paper to bring it more in line with the speckling pattern in the other papers. I used my great Stampin' Up paper piercer to prepare the paper for hand-stitching with DMC floss. I made the title in the Silhouette Design Studio. The "Snow" is is cut in glitter paper (unfortunately that doesn't show well in the picture). The snowflakes are also cut out in glitter paper on the Cameo. The snowflakes were an image downloaded from Silhouette's Design Studio. Did you know that Echo Park has shapes that match some of their paper lines in there? I didn't until I found these and that just gave me one more reason to love the Silhouette and Echo Park (as if I even needed another reason). I just really love Echo Park paper! This Winter Park collection perfect for this time of year when we all get such great wintry pictures, well except DaisyMae Maus who lives in sunny Sandy Eggo, where it rarely, if ever, snows. But the paper also has some pages that would fit any time of year too. That's why I picked it for the prize for this week.

So, go on over to Sketch Inspiration and upload your take on the layout for a chance to win the entire Winter Park collection pack from Echo Park plus a bonus page of white glitter paper.
If you can't participate this week, stop by Sketch Inspiration any time you can. You'll always find an inspiring sketch and lots of inspiration in the gallery.

New Layout - Our Happy Family in 2011

It's been so long since I made a 12 by 12 layout that I thought I had better give it a try before I get too rusty. The Sketch Inspiration sketch of the week was the perfect way to get back into the swing now that that the craziness of the holidays and such are over. I thought that starting by chronicling our family as it looked in 2011 was the perfect way to get started. Now purple and back wouldn't have been my first choice, but when I was looking for paper, I found this page in the Luxury Stack from DCWV and I just couldn't resist. The I decided I needed some flourishes so I looked through what was available on the Silhouette store and found two that I loved, along with this great "happy family" phrase. I wanted to add the year so I did a little welding (actually pretty easy to do on the software to turn the phrase into the one I wanted. Since the welding was so easy, I welded the flourishes onto some rectangles to frame my pictures. A few flowers, some Black Soot Distress ink, and a little Eye Candy bling and I was done.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I am sooooo excited to announce that my first wedding layout was selected as the winner of sketch #242 at Sketch Inspiration. My poor husband couldn't figure out what was going on. I had just finished breakfast and disappeared into the craft room as he started to watch Talladega and all of the sudden I was making all this ruckus. So, of course, I had to explain to him how exciting it is to be selected. He was really happy for me. I can't wait to see the cool prize pack from Scrappin' Sports and More.

Also how cute it is that he's been making a digital scrapbook of our cruise to Victoria with my parents and aunt and uncle a few years ago. He bought me the software a couple years ago but I've just never really been able to move to the digital side. I love playing with paper too much, but he's pretty good.

My first wedding layout

So, this month, as you know, hubby and I celebrated our 7th anniversary and I'm hesitant to admit this, but (deep breath) I've never scrapbooked our wedding pictures. Sure I managed to get all the pictures in an album, but I haven't scrapbooked a single page yet even though my mother has finished an entire album about my wedding. Although I do have to point out that she's retired and I still work a full time job, but on the other hand, my parents have such an active social life I need a calendar just to keep up with them. But I've decided to let it all go. No more shameful hiding of my secret. It's out there. You know what? So what? I don't care. There, I said it. I have decided to let inspiration dictate what and when and if I scrapbook it.

Funny enough, just as I came to this conclusion, I became inspired to do my first by a memory that came back to me over the weekend. Saturday night, hubby and I were at the hockey game. We ended up sitting in this quiet section. I was looking down on the seats at the end of the ice and this memory popped into my head of the game years ago. I was sitting in that section I was looking at when I bought my white jersey back in high school. It made me smile thinking about how back then buying the jersey didn't seem like all that big of a deal (although it quickly became my favorite to wear), but in fact, it would eventually become my wedding "dress". I knew that night I would have to scrapbook that for my wedding album and the next night when I saw the sketch from Sketch Inspiration, I knew it was the one for that idea.

This time I chose to showcase a number of things that I don't usually do or take things one more step than I usually would. Lately, I've been pushing myself to move out of my comfort zone. First, this is the first time that I've printed my journaling directly onto the background paper. Yes, I know that I've had a fabulous 12 by 12 printer for nearly a year now, but I've spent so much time working on 8 by 8 pages, that I never got around to using the printer for what I wanted it for in the first time. Also, I've hand-stitched on layouts before, but I haven't added beads to that stitching on a layout until now.

I've used stamps and Stickles, but rarely do I use Stickles over the top of stamps (here I was inspired to try it because my ink was just not quite the right color):

Although I've inked edges quite a bit and do a little distressing, I've never quite gone so far as to distress and ink an entire large flower before (actually I really like how it turned out).

So I encourage you to join me and let go of that mindset that says "I have to scrap something" as if scrapping should ever be considered a chore or something on a to-do list. It's incredibly freeing. Scrap what you want to scrap when you want to scrap it. Then drag out your supplies and give them a try in a way you haven't done before and stop by Sketch Inspiration (or become a member) for a little inspiration of your own.

A little inspiration

This is my last weekend to finish up the "what we like about" pages for my team at work, but I have to admit I haven't really felt inspired lately. Tired, yes, but not inspired. But this morning I wandered down to my craft room and logged on. I immediately saw a notice on Facebook that Creating Keepsakes was hosting a one hour challenge that would start at 10:15 that morning. So I decided to find a way to use their sketch to get at least one page done. Wouldn't you know it, but the sketch was perfect and inspiring and I finished a page for Jeff and uploaded it with nearly 15 minutes to spare. That was all I needed to get my creativity jump started today and I decided to try to do another page in just an hour; this time using the sketch on Sketch Inspirations. Well, that one took longer than hour because I had to find a turtle to add to the page and I had to go fold a load of laundry and play fetch with Chewie for a while, but if you subtract out all the non-scrapbooking stuff, I think I might have made the deadline. So then I pulled up this week's sketch on Sketchy Thursdays. Add a little laundry, some more fetch, a quick trip down to the post office and the grocery store, a short appearance at the neighbor's holiday party (wow that punch really packed a punch) and dinner with the in-laws and my one-hour challenge took more like eight hours, but I got it done. Three finished last weekend, another three today, four to go. I guess tomorrow will have to be less laundry and more scrapbooking, but that doesn't sound too bad to me. Now it's off to watch Sex and the City 2 on Netflix so I can mail it back to get the original Tron for Matt.