Maybe Someday...

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope y'all had a wonderful holiday. I actually had a blog post ready for Thursday, but as you can see, I didn't get it posted. :( Maybe I'll share it later.

You know I love sketches! So of course I played along with the Chic Tags sketch challenge. 

I had these photos printed, planning on making a fall-ish layout. I even die cut the title with my Silhouette and started pulling products from my stash that I wanted to use. But it just wasn't working. I'm not a huge fan of season-themed layouts. I like more of documenting life… everyday moments.

Well, I had my 8x8 mini pad from October Afternoon's "Travel Girl" collection out from another project I was working on, and it totally inspired me to document Laura's love of travel! Ok, well she doesn't like to travel per say, but she has always loved the thought of going to other countries. I actually pieced two 8x8 papers together for the bottom pattern (the one that says Paris, New York, London, etc.). Shh! Don't tell anyone. ;)

I also used my pink gelato to bring a little artsiness to the page. I used some white mist as well, but I don't think you can see it very well. 

Have a fabulous Saturday! :)

SUPER EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!

I get to add this cute little blinkie to my sidebar! 

Woo hoo! 

Melissa actually CALLED me last week to tell me I made the team and so I thought that was super special. ;) I really enjoyed guest designing for them in October, and starting in January, you'll be seeing me around SFTIO a lot! Today is the official announcement on the blog, so make sure to check out the other ladies I'll be working with! 

I really enjoy the concept of what I call "diary scrapping." Sometimes those pages are the hardest for me to do, but in the end I always love them. I love that I document my life and how I feel about certain emotions right now. It's all about being honest with yourself. And I like that. :) Plus the kits from SFTIO are always super awesome and what's better than documenting your life with beautiful scrapbook products?! I'm so excited about this!!

Project Life: Weeks 41- 46

Goodness gracious. I was looking back over these spreads as I was photographing them and WOW- a lot has happened in the last 5 weeks! I'm going to try to hit the highlights of each week… we'll see how much I actually remember. LOL I guess that's what PL is for, right? To remember the good stuff?

Week 41 (Oct. 6- 12)- This week was my birthday week. Woo hoo! I turned 19 on Friday. My little sister got her permit after a couple weeks of waiting to get her correct birth certificate from the state. (She didn't get to get her permit on her birthday because we didn't have the 'official' birth certificate or something like that.) I also applied for more jobs. I HATE applying for jobs. Have I said this before? :P I used the Maggie Holmes "Flea Market" line for this spread. I also mixed in pieces of the "Finnley" collection from Glitz and I thought it matched so perfectly! 

Week 42- This week consisted mostly of getting a job at Bath & Body Works (YAYAYAY!) and doing a yard sale. I also rearranged my room. I used the Dear Lizzy "Polka Dot Party" for this spread.

Week 43- Pretty sure this is the fastest spread I've ever made. I used the PL cards from the "Winter" set (that just so happens to be the same colors/ designs as the "Bundled Up" line from Crate) even though this week wasn't winter-y. I love taking products out of their "context." 

I had a job interview at Goody's (bottom left photo) and ended up getting that job too! So now I work 2 jobs! So within one week, I got 2 jobs. How crazy is that? I had a fun photoshoot with Laura this week. Laura and I also painted some M&M shirts for Laura and her friends for Homecoming Week at school. We also went shopping. Pretty simple week! 

Week 44- Marty & Alyssa's wedding! I thought the "We are so Good Together" journaling card was perfect to document their wedding! Didn't think I'd be using this card for me any time soon (haha), so I used it for their wedding! This week was also Halloween. Mom made some cute cupcakes (bottom right photo) for that. 

Important question here-- have you ever eaten an Air Delight Hershey's chocolate bar? If not, you should totally go buy one and try it. It's my favorite candy bar EVER. I used to find them everywhere. Wal-Mart, Dollar General, etc. But now I only see them at convenience stores/gas stations. Still. I LOVE THEM. It's chocolate. Only better. ;)

Quick side note on that white placement card. I was inspired by Pinterest to hand draw some fun PL cards. I love typography. It makes me sad knowing that I won't be studying typography in college. That's about the only thing I regret about not going to college though. :) I was reading my Bible one day and found this verse in Job 23: 10.

"But he knoweth the way that I take…"

I don't normally read in Job, but finding this verse brought tears to my eyes. It's like God knew just what I needed. I have no idea where I'm going in life, but it's a comfort knowing that he is leading me each and every step of the way. So this verse is one of my favorites right now. :) I knew I needed to include it in PL so I made a cute hand-drawn version of it.

Getting closer to more recent life happenings! Yay!

Week 45 (Nov. 3-9)- Probably the most exciting thing that happened this week was that we got a contract on our house! SOOOO excited! The people that are buying the house are really nice and they LOVE the house. Like, even the imperfections of the house they love (it's over 30 years old, so there are some things that are… let's just say, quirks). The almost-dirt road at the end of our road they LOVE. My goodness. It's crazy how much they like our house. ;)

I got 2 scrapbook packages this week. Woo hoo! Who doesn't like more scrapbooking goodies?? We also had Triton and Saige over to our house on Thursday. They are the children of some friends of ours. I think technically we are third cousins or something like that. But anyway. Triton is 3 years old (still my FAVORITE age!) and he is just hilarious. He and I went outside to play. And we found that there were 3 ripe strawberries on Anthony's strawberry plants. So of course we picked them and while we were bringing them up to the house, Triton kept holding them up to his nose and saying, "They smell so good!" Which, they DID smell really good. Momma hardly had them washed and de-stemmed before Triton had them consumed. ;) Apparently he likes strawberries. I thought the photo I got of him smelling the strawberries was SO cute! (bottom right photo) We love having kids over at our house!

Week 46- We signed a contract to buy our NEW house (top left photo) and so now the builders are working on finishing the basement for us. Anthony is going to have a room/ bathroom downstairs and there's also going to be a living room downstairs. Laura and I got moved out of our rooms (We're having inspections and an appraisal done on our house and supposedly you can't have rooms in the basement.), so that's fun. Our house is in an upheaval right now. My word for it: craziness. 

Oh- and Laura and I found a new music love: Hunter Hayes. Love his voice. :) Laura bought the whole Encore album off of iTunes. My music obsessions usually start out by Laura getting the music and then me listening to it. ;P Favorites from the album are: "Everybody's Got Somebody But Me" (fun tune about being single :P), "Faith to Fall Back On," and "I Want Crazy." I made sure to document my "current obsession" on my PL spread. 

And did you notice that I typed the journaling? Yeah. It didn't exactly turn out like I wanted. The "Today" journaling card went crooked on me. :( I want a typewriter so I can manually type it all on my cards. Now that'd be cool!  

Ok so that's my PL up to date! Sometimes I don't really want to do PL, but then I get back in the mood and I love it. :) Still trying to decide whether I want to do it next year. The keeping up with it is what I'm not sure I like...

I Love Stickers...

I love stickers. I'm pretty sure that stickers were among my first scrapbooking items I ever had. So when I saw the sticker challenge over at Scrapbook Circle, I was so excited to dig out some of my stickers and put them to good use! :)

I recently got an AWESOME prize pack from Scrapbook Circle for winning one of their challenges. My prize included most of the "Color Wash" line from Pink Paislee. I remember oohing and aahing over this collection when it first came out for CHA. It has lots of faux watercoloring on the papers in this line. It's just gorgeous! It's like the hard part has been done for you! Yes, please! I HATE it when I watercolor and the moisture wrinkles the paper or my colors don't come out like I want them to. This way the paper is perfectly smooth but you still get that awesome watercolor effect. 

I used the canvas stickers on this card, along with one of the chipboard word stickers from the Color Wash line. I love that I used stickers and still included some texture on this card. This card was super fast to make. Just some cutting, sewing, and placing stickers! Oh yeah, and then I added some tiny staples and some white mist to top it off. 

That's it for today! I consider it an accomplishment to have typed out a whole blog post for today! :P

What If...

I have always loved this quote. I think I originally found it on Pinterest here. I hadn't really thought about making a LAYOUT about it, but when I go back through my scrapbook albums, I realize most of the pages about Laura and I are entitled "Me & You" or "Sisters" or something very basic like that. So I thought I'd go out of my comfort zone and title my page something different. I think this quote is appropriate for this page because I am SO thankful for my sister. She's just awesome. ;) 

I used the Crate Paper Maggie Holmes "Flea Market" line for this page. I keep buying more and more bits and pieces of that line, which stretches and stretches my little 6x6 paper pad that I bought from that line. I did buy a couple of 12x12 papers, and I used one of them here for the background. (the border around the cream card stock) I was inspired by Paige Evans's page here where she diecut the title and put patterned paper behind the negative. I used one pattern per line of the quote so it wasn't so busy with patterns. 

Thanks for stopping by! Life is crazy 'round here because we will be (Lord-willing) moving before the end of the year. We have a contract on our house that we signed last week and then we signed a contract on a brand new house yesterday! CRAZINESS!! But a good craziness. :) OH- and then there's also Thanksgiving and Christmas in the middle of moving. Oh what fun!

Cutest Halloween Cupcakes Ever!

I used up my leftover Halloween products on a layout about some super cute cupcakes my mom made for Halloween. I had bits and pieces from the "Tricks and Treats" line from Pebbles. I think this Halloween line is so cute! I had some leftover stickers and I thought they were an AWESOME fit for this sketch from Chic Tags. 

I used a piece of paper from the Amy Tangerine "Yes, Please" line for the background. I thought the light grey bamboo pattern was so cute! I think that was one of the last pieces of full 12x12 paper I have left from that line... 

Thanks for stopping by for this super short blog post! 

Fall Photoshoot

Ok I said I wasn't going to share these photos just yet, but I feel like it. So I think I will. ;) I have made some of these into a little mini album, but I haven't photographed the album yet, so I'm going to go ahead and show you some of my favorites from the photoshoot I did of my sister a couple of weeks ago.

I think they turned out so good! Laura is so pretty! But then again, I might be a little partial. ;)

Confetti Fun

Confetti is such a fun trend in scrapbooking right now. When I saw the challenge up on the Scrapbook Circle blog to use confetti on a project, I knew I just HAD to play along! 

I had this confetti patterned piece of paper from the Allison Kreft "Recorded" line leftover from my SFTIO "Belonging" kit and I thought it would look awesome as a background for a page. So that is what I did! I love doilies and I just bought a pack of different sized ones at a local dollar store (I was super excited about this find!!). I thought the doily would make a great anchor for all the other embellishments I was going to add to this page. I ended up sewing the doily down… it adds some awesome texture to the page, I think.

 Mostly everything from this page is from the SFTIO kit. Additions are as follows: wood veneer title alphas, pink arrow paper clip, tag/envelope/twine for journaling, sticker tab, doily

Recently I have LOVED using hidden journaling. I just love how it looks on the page! It's fun to play with tags too… this tag I actually made myself and watercolored it. I'm loving the watercolor trend too! :)

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! :)

Project Life: Weeks 35-40

I'm behind sharing my Project Life spreads! So, I'll catch you up on what's been going on in my life. *Note: I typed some of the week descriptions a while ago, so they might not be "current." Like... say, some of them say I am wanting a job. And now I have two. :) So just keep that in mind when you're reading this. 

Week 35- This week I used the "DIY Shop" collection from Crate Paper for my spread. I just LOVE the colors in this line. This spread turned out to be one of my favorite PL spreads ever. I just love everything about it! You know when something just turns out perfectly? That's what happened here! I had been buying a lot of product it seemed like and hadn't used it! So, I was solving that problem. I got out my chevron wood veneers and Heidi Swapp mist-resist hearts and gave my new products a work-out.

Something new I tried on this layout was painting the word "week." I don't know much about different types of brushes... or art for that matter. So probably you shouldn't do what I do. :P I used a round-tipped brush to paint and at first I hated how it looked. Then after it dried, I kinda liked it! It gives it a not-so-perfect feel. I mean, life isn't perfect, right? Now I'm totally in love with my messy painting. Someday I'll know the right brushes to use, but I'm content right now just being ignorant. :P

As for life happenings… this week I baked 3 different types of cookies for a Labor Day gathering we were going to. Coffee house cookies, "Juanita" cookies (we call them that because Sis. Juanita always made them!), and iced sugar cookies. I had fun making them all! I also iMessaged MarLeah. We iMessage a lot. It's so cool having your whole conversation right there. So, I screen-shot my favorite part of the convo. I read a book this week too. Shock, shock. It's called "The Vow." I loved it. Mom had read it and she was talking about it, so I read it before we had to return it to the library. I would TOTALLY recommend this book. It's such a sweet story. I didn't watch the movie, but I think the movie is different than the book, so you gotta read the book if you've only watched the movie!! 

 Week 36- This week started out with the Labor Day gathering in Missouri at my aunt and uncle's place. I applied at Cato this week. I desperately need a job! I actually wouldn't mind working at Cato though. :) I've shared this layout before because I entered it into a My Mind's Eye challenge. I used basically all MME products on this page… the new "Cut & Paste" collection. Our house got shown this week (yay!). We know the real estate agent really well… so she left me a note on my scrapbook table telling me hi! Of course I had to put it in my PL.

Week 37- I mixed together Allison Kreft's "Sweet Notes" and "Composition and Color" 3x4 cards for this spread. I like how parts of each collection mix with the other. I used a couple of Elle's Studio tags on this too. We looked at two different houses this week. Both in the same subdivision. The first one we looked at (on the left spread) was gorgeous. But the basement needed work. The family had, like, 10 foster kids at one time so you can imagine the wear and tear of the house! Then, my dad happened to call a contractor about fixing the basement of that house and the contractor told him about this other house they were building in the same subdivision. He gave us the code to the lock and so of course we had to go look at it! It's a lot smaller than the other house… plainer too. It's the plain one in the subdivision. BUT, we could get all that we need in a house for a very reasonable price if we decided on that house. We'll see what works out. We still have yet to sell our house here! 

 Week 38- I used basically all Elle's Studio products on this page. A lot of the new line "Penelope" mixed with a few older patterns that fit well with the new one. This spread was inspired by my guest design spot over at Scrapbooking from the Inside Out. I loved the colors in the October kit "Belonging" and so I used that to jump off scrapping this week. Our cat brought her kittens back to the house (they're so cute!) after taking them to who-knows-where for a couple of weeks. We love kittens at our house. Then of course it gets to be too many and then we don't love them so much. LOL 

Lots of just everyday photos in this spread… making cookies, my sister's friend, Courtney, coming over, a pretty sunset, driving, a campfire… I do like that I remember to take photos more now than I did before I started Project Life. Albeit, they're nothing too special, but they are capturing my life at this moment. And I like that.

 Week 39- Ugh. This week. I went looking for jobs this week. I HATE applying for jobs. I feel like a failure and insufficient human being whenever I do that. But I DO want a job. It's hard to balance the two feelings. I did have a job interview this particular week though. But I never heard anything from them. Poo. :( Someday I'll find the perfect job for me. And I will be so glad that these other ones didn't work out. Someday.

I used Crate Paper's fall line from last year called "Acorn Avenue." I love the artsy feel of this line. Kinda reminds me of the company Sassafras. I wonder if one of the designers from there made this line. I've always wondered… I used some free cut files from Two Peas in a Bucket on this spread. All the kraft colored cards are from them. I did tweak the designs a bit to fit my needs. That's what I love about my Silhouette Cameo. :)

Week 40- Positively one of my FAVORITE PL spreads ever. I just love how this one turned out. I love watching Two Peas videos while I scrap and so I recently watched Marcy Penner on one of the Project Life videos.  She had challenged "us" to use a card and jump off that to make your spread. Just from that one card. I LOVED the challenge. So, I picked out my card and got to work. I chose a card from Amy Tan's new line "Cut & Paste" that had a little cluster of flowers in the top lefthand corner of the card. (the title card) I loved that there were a lot of colors to work with from this one card. I used some more of the "Cut & Paste" line for this spread, but I also used pieces from other collections as well. I loved how all of the colors are tied together with that one flower cluster that I started out with.

This week was my little sister's 15th birthday! Ahh! She's getting old! LOL Guess that means I'm getting older too. ;) So we had her birthday on Monday. And my brother surprised us with a visit! He totally got all of us! None of us knew… except Mom. And she only found out the afternoon that he was coming! He had went to see his girlfriend and decided to go ahead and come out our way! So he got in on all the birthday festivities! 

We celebrated my 19th birthday on Thursday (even though my b-day  wasn't until the 11th). Mom made chocolate cupcakes with white icing. They were beautiful cupcakes and they tasted amazing! I am kinda thinking I want those cupcakes for my wedding. Whenever that is to happen, that is. Haha. 

Friday we went garage sale-ing. I got a lot of good deals! I think that's the most I have ever spent on garage sale items. I think I spent like $25 or something like that. But I got a lot of good stuff! Like an old Pentax camera for $5 (it works too!), a little tin typing table (found that out from Dad… he looked at it and said "We used those in school!") for $4, and some frames to use in my new bedroom… if we ever move. :) Plus lots of other stuff that I won't bore you with naming out.

Then on Saturday we got to go see Josh Turner again! Woo hoo! We had to travel almost 2 hours to get to the concert, but it was worth it. It was at a fair and so after the concert, we were trying to get to the fair part of the arena and we accidentally went out into the parking lot! And then they wouldn't let us back in without buying another ticket! It was annoying because they saw us leave (even said "Have a nice day" or something like that) and then we didn't even know we were heading into the parking lot of all places!! So we didn't get to ride the ferris wheel or buy a funnel cake. Boo hoo. :(  

So that's my life through week 40. I'll share the other spreads soon. :)