Born to be WILD!

If any of my babies are 'born to be wild' it's my middle child.  She is a handful sometimes, but such a sweet beauty many times too.  She definitely would have been more aptly named 'Karma'.  LOL.  This is a photo of her and my father at a the St. Louis City Museum.  She convinced this poor man to trudge through multiple stories of tunnels overlooking the city's skyline....and he hung on like a champ!  This title work came from this week's challenge at Scrap It With a Song.  The song this week is 'Born to Be Wild' by Steppenwolf. Such a fun song...click on over to play along. 

This layout also fits the following challenges:

The Pink Elephant - childhood

All American Girl

I absolutely ADORE the sketch at Creative Scrappers this week.  You really should go over and play along because it's their 125th sketch!!!  The stars in the sketch inspired me to go with an Americana theme which happens to be the color inspiration over at My Time to Craft.  The pic is of my daughter when my parents took the oldest two kiddos to NYC.  She was standing waaaaay too close to the edge in this mommy's opinion, but really how often do people get to look over all of New York City from that high up in person???  :)  This is for her memory album of the trip. 

Layout catchup...

I am trying to get caught up on a few layouts that have been sitting here.  I wasn't happy with the way they turned out so they were sitting while I 'thought about it'.  I finally am redoing some of them.  So far I feel MUCH better about them :)

First up is the layout of my daughter's school Halloween party.  I followed the sketch at Sketches In Thyme and the photo inspiration at Papercraft Star... and it fits the challenge at Stamp, Scrap & Doodle too. 

Second up is the layout of my daughter's sixth birthday.  I so love her sweet face and how excited she was at every moment of her big day so I wanted to document her smile everytime someone would sing to her or tell her 'happy birthday' or give her a package.  The sketch is from Creative Genealogy. 

The last layout is of baby Allie.  I do love the first layout I came up with but needed a second one for another album and decided to make a brand new one.  The sketch is from Stuck Sketches.  The colors were inspired by the Design Dollies challenge this week and it's also fitting for the Scrap that Baby! challenge: baby parts. 

Grandparent's Day

Here is a set of layouts I just finished to showcase all of my favorite pictures of my kiddos with my parents. It's true that there is no love quite like a grandma and grandpa's love. I can't wait until I have grandbabies to dote over. Well, no...scratch that...I can certainly wait considering my oldest is only TEN! LOL. I followed the two page sketch over at Sketchy Thursday's this week. :)

Scrap It With a Song reminder

Hey everyone. Just a reminder that you still have 5+ hours to enter the Scrap It With a Song challenge. Normally the challenge closes at noon, but since we got a late start last Monday you have until Midnight (EST). If you look at the challenge page it shows a countdown for you on the link app. The winner from this week will receive a yummy assortment of primas!! You are free to create a layout, card, or anything else your crafty self is inspired to make.



Upside Down Challenge

I actually ended up making two projects. I almost always scrap each even twice. Once for my digi album and once for my paper/scissors album. First is the layout listed under the DT examples, my digi layout showcasing all of my fav photos. In the paper layout I had to make (2) 2pagers to fit them all, so I'm only showing the one that I incorporated the challenge on.

The bigger 2 were feeling neglected

....because most of my layouts lately have been about the baby. So I did this layout for them of all of my favorite shots from the past year or so of just the two of them! I decided to follow Mission to Create #23 because I thought the photo strip would work well for incorporating several smaller pictures. In the end I think I was able to tackle every challenge.

#1 Use photobooth style photos - These weren't from a photobooth, but the photo strip style none-the-less. Hope it counts :)

#2 Use brads - in the center of the flower on the bottom of the layout is a fancy shmancy butterfly brad embellie.

#3 Use 6 pieces of 1x1 or less patterned paper - the pink polka dotted paper is trimmed into six tiny pieces before being used in a strip formation.

#4 Stitch a border - there is a faux stitched border around the outside of the layout.

#5 Use this photo below as inspiration -
......and voila..... As an added bit of awesome, the challenge over at Practical Scrappers this week was stitching too! YAY!!! Two-fer :) Click to check out that challenge .... there's still time to join in :)

Baby Love...

My hubby and I are falling back into our NFL season routine. Tonight is Kansas City's preseason opener and we have the tv tuned in and are parked next to each other on the couch. Him filling his face full of food and me on the laptop blogging (okay and farmvilling..lol). I have to stop from time to time to yell at some idiot on the tv so pardon me if I lose track of my thoughts. And this is only the pregame show!!! hahahaha

I've got a few layouts to show you that will be posting over the next few days so stay tuned. First up is a layout I just finished of my favorite picture so far of the baby girl. It's so hard to believe she's SIX MONTHS OLD ALREADY!?!?!?! It seems like just yesterday that what I thought was a serious case of the flu was actually this sweetpea starting her journey into the world.

I saw the sketch over at Pencil Lines and was excited to give it a try. Click the link above to see the sketch and try it! :) I then saw this challenge at Off the Wall Craftiness and just KNEW I was going to have to try it too! I've never thought of putting sky blue and purple together, but I LOVED the look of it. Here is the photo we had to use as inspiration:

And finally this is my finished layout. I so adore this photo of her!!!

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It's hay!?!?!

This past weekend when my best friend (a south Florida native) came up to BFE Kansas to visit it was quite the sight. I take for granted the fact that I can't even go to the grocery store without driving past field after field of corn, bales of hay and buffalo. Yes, my neighbor has buffalo?!?! We got this picture of her standing next to a huge bale of hay to take home to show her hubby because she just was beyond amazed! I thought it'd make for a good layout about finding the wonder in things that we take for granted. I followed sketch #116 at Creative Scrappers and came up with this:

Monkey...funky funky monkey

That is a sing song little chant my older two kiddos seem intent on singing to the new baby whenever she shows the slightest bit of silliness. It's quite amusing most of the time. She just eats it up which is what counts, right? :)

I captured this pic of her learning to blow raspberries....a skill she has mastered to put it mildly...HAHAHA! I absolutely love how it turned out. I followed the uber fab sketch from Sassy Lil' Sketches. Follow the link to check it out! :)

I ♥ sketches!!

One of my favorite sketch blogs is the fabulous Liz Qualman. I have used her sketches several times before and it has led to some of my favorite layouts. Here is yet another of her brilliant pieces of inspiration HERE. I created the following layout based on her sketch:

Happy 4th of July!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July for those of you stateside. And for those of you overseas.....I hope you had a wonderul weekend! :)

This week at Scrap It With a Song, our challenge was quite patriotic. Though there were plenty of ways to look past the red, white and blue and go in a whole different direction with it. Our DT hit a homerun with it and gave you lots of ideas to start off. The song is America the Beautiful and I used the line Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies to scrapbook pictures of fireworks last year lighting up the beautiful night sky.

I'm so behind!!!

I've made no secret about how frustrating this back injury has been. Beyond just hurting like heck nonstop, it's really getting me down to not be able to do the things I know I should be able to do. I can't sit at the scrapbook table, pick up my kids, drive, do the dishes....okay that last one I could do without LOL. I was able to sit down tonight and get a few cards done....yay. Before I share them, I wanted to catch up the last 2 weeks of challenges at Scrap It With a Song. First up was the song 'Riding Solo' by Jason Derulo.

Next was the song 'I Can See Clearly Now'.

Scrap It With a Song layouts

Hi all. I totally dropped the ball last week with posting my DT layout for week #8 over at Scrap It With a Song. My back seems to be getting worse and worse as the physical therapy goes on .... not better! :( Fingers crossed though that we see a miracle turnaround because this was the last step before surgery on the herniated disc. :(

Last week our song was Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper. Here was my take on the song...

This week the song is I could Not Ask For More by Sara Evans. Such a sweet song! Our sponsor is the adorable Sew Many Stamps. For your chance to win 5 digi stamps from their collection, click on over to Scrap It With a Song. Here is my take on the song.

A day of scrapping

The challenge this week at Fab 'n' Funky challenges is a sketch. It was intended to be a card sketch, but I made a layout out of it. The kit is by Baby Einstein....how cute is it?? The journaling says, "One day Allie looked up and found her mobile, then her whole world changed."

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My Partner in Crafting Crime's challenge this week was create a birthday 'something.' I don't have any birthdays coming up that need cards so a layout it was!! My nephew just celebrated his 16th birthday so voila! I followed sketch #65 at The Scrappiest.

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I've been catching up on April and May's photos for my digi album. Yes, I scrap everything twice...sometimes more than that! :) This first layout was my daughter's 6th birthday party. I followed the sketch at Sassy Lil' Sketches.

Feeling challenged!

I have been catching up on some challenges I had flagged that I wanted to give a go. My first layout is my new favorite picture of the baby. It also led to the last layout of the baby food fail! At Katie's birthday, her grandma's got together and fed her chocolate frosting!!! Her smile is a far cry from the disgusting scowl I got last night! For this layout, I used Creative Scrappers sketch #105. I also used the color combo at The Play Date Cafe. The colors were pink, light green and pale yellow. You can also use neutrals so I felt okay using this set that has brown/creams as the base, since the main colors are what pop! :) :) :)

Next up is the layout I created with pictures from my daughter's first music program in Kindergarten. It made her day that her grandma and Allie could come since Daddy had to work. I followed Liz Qualman's sketch found HERE. I also drew inspiration from the Creative Prompts challenge #16. I added a frame around the journaling on the bottom left and tried to model the colors in the pic. I also followed the color challenge at Cupcake Craft Challenge #92. I had to choose one color to add to black and grey. My color was yellow. :) I also thought the 'admit one' ticket fit well since it was a music program. That was the challene over at All Sorts week #53.

She's Got Eyes of the Bluest Skies

Have you come over to play along with Scrap It With a Song yet??? Well if this song doesn't inspire you...I don't know what will. I've been jammin along to Guns N Roses all week thanks to this week's song! The awesome sponsor this week is:

They are offering up a $10 gift certificate to their fabulous site to one lucky winner, so jump on over and play along. The song this week is 'Sweet Child O' Mine' by Guns N' Roses. Aren't so sure you know the song well enough? Well, that's okay. We always post a video so you can listen along while you scrap and we also post the lyrics if you work better reading them like a poem. We are a multi-craft challenge blog, so feel free to create an altered project, card or scrapbooking layout (digi or paper). You can take any set of lyrics and use them in your jounaling or title, take them as just a cue in selecting your embellies and/or photos or just let the overall theme of the song inspire you. However it floats your creative boat....let it! You have until high noon Sunday, May 30th (that's BFE Kansas time....lol) to submit your creation. So click HERE to come over and play!

Here is my layout. I used the line 'She's Got Eyes of the Bluest Skies' as my title because I absolutely LOVED how pretty blue my daughter's eyes looked in this photo. :)

The rest of the DT knocked it out of the park too, so don't forget to check them out :)

It's a Love Story

This week at Scrap It With a Song, we are challenging you all to create a layout, card or any altered project based on the song Love Story by Taylor Swift. We are having so much fun and I hope you'll come play along. This week's sponsor is PaperMom.com and she has some wonderful digi images she's giving the winner AND the rest of the top 5. The DT did wonderful this week so click HERE to come play. Here is my take this week.

A Mother's Love

I found a fun new challenge blog called XOXO where each week the 'lipstick chicks' each post a layout and you pick and choose as many as you want to scraplift elements from to create your own layout. How fun is that??? This month is sponsored by Color Me Miki and they have the most generous kit I've seen up for grabs this month. So go play along!! My title is from Scrap That Poetry challenge #15 and also fits the challenge this week at The Pink Elephant. Listed below my layout are the lipstick chicks I shamelessly scraplifted ideas for this layout from. :) Click HERE to see the originals.

Aliana - floral print with denim
Natalie - stitching
Zoa - photo/paper/circle placement
Tina - journaling strips
Monica - lace element
Michelle & Lacee - lettering font used on title
Emma - adding a photo corner
Sarah - adding buttons

My Allie-Gator

I went out of my comfort zone for this one. I have never been able to use kits that are grungy and uber texture filled. I tend to gravitate towards clean lines and simple patterns. Don't get me wrong, I quietly stalk several scrappy blogs that are more distressed and free. Their layouts are gorgeous and never cease to wow me. Just never thought I could pull it off. I finally decided to just jump right in and try. What's the worse that can happen? I hate it and rescrap it. Well....surprise....I LOVED this process. It may not be the greatest layout ever, but it's fun and free and chaotic and I LOVED it even if it's only a little gravitating towards the style. :) The sketch I followed is from Sketches! {by tamara} Challenge #118.

True Colors ... and a whoo hoo!

Happy Day after Mother's Day everyone!!! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend whether you are a mommy or not!! We spent the day with my Mother-in-Law and had a YUMMY lunch (that turned into dinner after the 2hr wait) at Olive Garden. It was so worth it though...YUM! Other than our Yummy Mother's Day, I've been out of the loop this week. I have had to quarantine our family up in our house for the better part of the past week as we all have had strep and I had a double ear infection on top of it. FUN....NOT! So since I've been a bad blogger and not shared anything in nearly a week, I will try to get a few scrappy projects done to share with you.


First up is my DT contribution over at Scrap It With a Song this week. The song we have for inspiration is True Colors by Cyndi Lauper. If you'd like to give it a try this week, we'd LOVE to have you play along. It's a multi-craft challenge blog so feel free to come play scrappers, digi scrappers, and cardmakers alike!!! This week is sponsored by Sew Many Cards...and they have the super-dee-duperist cute images you will find!!!

While I'm posting I need to toot my horn with a loud and proud WHOO HOO!!!!! I had lots of scrappy fun last weekend. I kicked off my National Scrapbooking Day fun early and played all kinds of games and participated in all kinds of challenges. I actually won TWO of them!!! And they were by far the best surprises I could have asked for. First I won the random draw of a $15GC from Paper Poppy over at Creative Scrappers. Have you seen their monthly kits??? UBER adorable!!!! If you remember, a few days ago I posted a layout I created based on one of the NSD challenges over at Sketches! {by tamara}. You can see that post HERE. Well the layout I created based on the recipe challenge was picked to win the RAK donated by their DT member Joan. Double WHOO HOO!!! I am so very excited. I'll be sure to share when I get my goodies from each!! :) :) :) :)