Christmas Week Planner Spread

I love Christmas. The gift buying, the wrapping, the music, the decorations, the reason for the season-- it all make me happy inside. :) I'm so excited for Kevin and my first Christmas together as well. Have I said I'm excited? 

Here's my planner pages in my HAPPY PLANNER™ this week. I had several different things I wanted to get done this week, so this came in handy and kept me organized. Sometimes I don't get stuff done on the day I have it listed, but I usually manage to get those things done later in the week. It's all about having it visually laid out so I can see it. 

I kept the colors red and green for this week, since HELLO? It's Christmas!!

If I don't "see" you again, I hope you have a MERRY Christmas! :)

So Much Fun

I'm back with another scrapbook layout I made in the hotel room! ;) 

At first, I was totally overwhelmed thinking that I had this and that at home that I was wanting to use on this page. Namely some black mist and sewing machine (I actually don't have a sewing machine at all--- waaaaah!). I just thought my page wouldn't look good at all if I didn't use the elements I normally use. But I was wrong. I finally relaxed and just had some fun making this page. And ya know what? I think it turned out perfectly. I won't add anything else to it, and I like it just the way it is right now. :) I guess contentment is a choice, right? 

I used the same collection that I used on the previously posted layout: the Gather collection by Maggie Holmes. I love that this collection kinda has a "fall" vibe, and I think it goes very well with the photo. 

I needed to add some texture, so I used some itty bitty white sequins from my Holly Jolly collection (they're only $0.99!!) to add just a little something extra to the little banners. 

I really want to hang this layout up in our house somewhere. I just might do that when we get home. :) Tomorrow we get to go home for 12 days!!!! We are SO excited. This will be the longest time we have stayed at OUR house since we've been married. Laura (my sister) is coming up after Christmas, too, so we are going to totally ENJOY being home. Yay! 

XOXO- scrapbook layout

Honestly, it's been ages since I've created a layout. These days I do more Project Life spreads instead of pages. Why? Because it's a much more compact system than scrapbooking every single life event. Since I'm just using pockets in my Project Life, I can include my weekly chai tea photo or that photo of my feet. Thinking of scrapbooking every single thing is overwhelming. So I save the layout scrapping for when I have photos that just BEG to be scrapbooked. And these photos from our Christmas mini session with our wedding photographers were some of those begging to be scrapped.

What's really crazy about this layout is that I used NO patterned paper on it. (whaaaaaaa??) I love me some patterned paper, but I actually didn't use ANY on this page. I bought the Maggie Holmes "Gather" ephemera pack recently and hadn't gotten to play around with it yet. So I just got that out and picked out pieces that I loved and thought looked pretty with the photos. This particular pack has acetate pieces as well, so you get two different textures in one pack- awesome! 

This plaid flair button is actually from my Holly Jolly collection. I think it looks adorable with the leaves and the colors. Plus it helps with that visual triangle of black around that page.

OH-- and those K&H alphas..... they're my new favorite!! Seriously. Love. Them. Check them out HERE. 

And my iPhone didn't take too bad of photos here at the hotel! :P Got me a piece of white posterboard and all is right in the world. :) See you next time!

Festive Planner Spread

Hey y'all! 

I have severely neglected my planner. With all the wedding stuff, I just didn't have time to work on spreads. It was more like, make a huge list of things to do and then just do that over and over. There was no "pretty" factor involved in these lists; they all meant business. But now that things are slowing back down (even though life is still crazy ;) ), I can actually make a pretty planner spread! 

On this spread, I used a few of my planner stickers from my Holly Jolly (designed to fit exactly into the HAPPY PLANNER™) along with some cute holiday stickers and basic planner stickers from me & my BIG ideas (the ones from HERE and HERE). I really love how this spread turned out. I'm totally going to try to do more spreads and share them here. 

BTW, I filmed an unboxing part 1 of my Holly Jolly collection, which you can find HERE. I'm filing part 2 today and hopefully will have that up soon. 

Holly Jolly is on Pinterest!

Hello lovelies! 

I am popping in for a short bit here to share with you that I've started some Holly Jolly boards on my Pinterest account! I made a board of all the products, so you can now easily add any of your favorites to your wish list boards. ;)

Holly Jolly Products Board

There's also a Holly Jolly inspiration board, which I will continuously keep pinning projects I find that feature my Holly Jolly collection! How fun, right? Make sure you share your work if you use my collections-- you might just find it on one of my collection inspiration boards! :) 

Holly Jolly Inspiration Board 

Be sure to follow me on Pinterest so you can keep a tab on all of the crafty goodness that is going on around here! 

Happy Sunday to you! I'm looking forward to going on a date night tonight with my hubby. I miss him since he works 12 hours a day... :'(

Wedding Inspiration Planner

So for one of my last me & my BIG ideas design team projects, I shared my wedding inspiration pages that I had made to go into my wedding planner extension pack. I loved doing this because it helped me see everything that I wanted out and on a visual mood board. 

When I had first started wedding planning, I knew I wanted a very deep burgundy to be one of the colors of our wedding. I feel like it's such a fall/ December-y color and I knew it would be nice to pick a color that I could actually find flowers in! :) 

Then I saw this pin. And totally LOVED the colors. I feel like the peach is such an unexpected color with the burgundy. Very unique! Plus I wanted deep magenta bridesmaid dresses, so this color scheme was perfect.

Then we ended up settling on champagne bridesmaid dresses, and that changed my whole ideas. Champagne just does not jive with coral if you ask me. So this is what we came up with: burgundy, a lighter pink-y coral (ended up just using that color in our invitations... no where else), and blush. 

So here's the overview page on the left and then the decoration for the chapel on the right. We used a local church and Oh. My. Goodness. It was gorgeous. I remember taking a little tour of it when we were looking for wedding churches and I was so in awe of it. It was built probably 100 years ago (?) and such charm to it. 

Here are the reception area plans. We diy-ed everything, including the cakes (which we kinda wish we hadn't done)! I bought this wedding cake topper from Alexis Mattox Design. That was one of my "splurges." I didn't HAVE to have a cute and fancy cake topper, but I got one anyway. ;) Alexis Mattox Design have really cute designs for wedding cake toppers AND any occasion cake toppers. 

We bought fresh eucalyptus from a wholesale florist in Birmingham for the reception tables. It was wonderful. Looking back at these photos, we didn't use NEAR the amount that this picture shows, and I kiiiiiiinda wish we would have added some more greenery down the tables to make it look more full (I'll show you pictures when I get them), but what's done is done. And we stayed in budget. ;)

Wedding vow ideas (we wrote our own in addition to reciting the normal ones) on the left page, my bridal wear inspiration board on the right. 

Bridesmaids/ Groomsmen and invitation planning! We hand punched confetti to put in all of the invitations. I designed the invitations on a pre-gold foiled invitations from Office Depot (I found them on clearance! Yay!). 

I really wanted the girls to have burgundy flats to wear with their champagne dresses... I looked all over for them, and couldn't find any that I wanted that were in my price range. And then one day at Walmart-- tadaaaaa! $5.87 shoes. Bam. Done. They were the perfect color and I was sooooo happy to find them! 

And my favorite page-- floral inspiration!! We used Whole Foods to do the flowers. I don't know if you've ever been to a Whole Foods, but their flower section is absolutely GORGEOUS. When I saw online that they did floral arranging, I knew that I wanted them to do the flowers for our wedding. This was a BUDGET wedding, I tell ya! :) They turned out gorgeous. Can't wait to show you pictures of them. 

This project went up on the me & my BIG ideas blog back before the wedding, so if you want to see that blog post, click HERE (I didn't want to share it her until after the wedding).

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Bright & Happy Birthday Card

Happy December 1st! I wish I could say that I have a ton of christmas projects to show you, but with traveling with K most of the time, I haven't gotten around to making many holiday projects this year. Plus it's so hard to find good lighting to take pictures of projects when you're staying in a dark hotel room. :\ 

So instead of sharing a Christmas project with you, I have a fun, bright, cheerful birthday card to show you today. (Which is actually fitting since we are currently in Miami, FL where it's nice and warm and sunny!) For my birthday back in October, Mom actually picked up something scrappy that I had told her I wanted-- the She Blooms collection kit from Illustrated Faith. It's available at Hobby Lobby, and so with a sale, you can get it for about $5. Super, duper cheap for some really pretty papers and stickers.

I made this card for my sister-in-law, Cara. Lately I've been in a creative funk, so I went with one of my old faithful designs-- lots of paper strips with little bits and pieces tucked in here an there. I think it turned out cute! 

On ONE Christmas note, I can't stop listening to the new Pentatonix Christmas album: A Pentatonix Christmas. It's amazing. Maybe this awesome music will inspire me to make some holiday themed projects that I can share with you soon. I hope so-- stay tuned! :)

Thankful... for Baby J

It fits that I share this album right around Thanksgiving... in case you didn't know, I have an adorable little nephew named Jordan. He just turned the big ONE at the end of October and I wanted to make him a little album documenting his first year. Well, of course it's not really for him, but for his momma and daddy. ;)

How does this connect to Thanksgiving? Well, I am very thankful for little J. He's the cutest little thing and has brought so much joy into our family. My parents love being "Papaw" and "Mamaw" and to see them just light up with Jordan is around is one of the cutest things ever. Not to mention getting to SPOIL a little nephew! It's a lot of fun. 

So here's a peek at the little book I made for baby J (that's what I like to call him... although he won't always be a baby!). I used a needle and embroidery floss to bind the little book together. Also, I had to use my phone to weigh down the cover or else it will flip open. Hah. Good thing I had just bought a new phone case.  

I mixed a lot of products in this album. I just dug though my stash and picked out things I wanted in the album. Baby things and not-so-baby things. I like the mix. 

On this last page, I put an envelope with some extra photos (more recent ones) inside. You can see a close-up of it a few pictures down. 

These photos crack me up... every time I would take my phone out and take a picture of J, he would totally ham it up for the camera and laugh and smile so much. He's adorable. :)

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I think the thing I will be most thankful for this year is being home with my husband. :)

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Happy Happy Happy {summer vibes}

Hello! 

It's been a while! Well, I am now a MARRIED woman ;) and life is fabulous. Kevin and I got married on Saturday, November 12th, and the day was simply amazing. It was more than I had ever dreamed of, and everything went perfectly. I had several people tell me, "Be prepared for something to go wrong, because something will." But nothing really did! The night before the wedding, after rehearsal, there was a little scare that we didn't have the mom's corsages, but that was solved the next morning when we found them. 

I will try to share some photos of the wedding whenever I get them. I know it will be a while before we get the professional photos back, but I will have to ask around and see if anyone has some snapshots of our day. 

For our honeymoon, we spent a week at an all-inclusive resort in Cancun, Mexico. It. Was. Amazing. We didn't want to come home. :) But here we are. I guess there's this thing called reality. I am traveling with Kevin (he was already traveling for work before we got married), so I might be blogging more considering that I will be stuck in a hotel room a lot of the time! :P I'm looking forward to it though. I love traveling, plus having my hubby around will be a great plus. 

I suppose it's better late than never to share a card I made with my Summer Vibes collation. :) The collection is still available in the Pretty Little Studio shop, so make sure you pick some up before it is discontinued! I made this card for my good friend Katie back in September. I think this was the very first project I made with my Summer Vibes line and it's one of my favorites. It turned out even better than I had expected it to.  

To make the cute sentiment, I stamped the letters on various patterned papers (Shoreditch alpha stamp set from Kelly Purkey) and then cut them all out. I typed the extra parts of the sentiment (the "belated birthday" part) with my typewriter and then adhered it all down. I added some machine stitching to make the card more textured. Also, the gold polka dot pattern that I used for the background of this card is actually VELLUM, which I think is super cool. I'm a fan of gold foiled anything, though. 

I'm very happy with how this card turned out, and I hope Katie liked it too! :) 

Hopefully I'll be back soon with some more crafty adventures! 

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