A Day for Play

This layout uses a lot of misc pieces from several My Mind's Eye lines that I thought I'd all but used up.  Luckily in the land of my scrappy hoardes...nothing ever sees a trash can so I was able to pull them together and whip up this layout below.  As you can see, all but my daughter's face has been pixelated out.  I didn't want to assume that the rest of my Girl Scout's parents wanted their kids faces splashed all over blogdom.  :)

The sketch I followed is an oldie but goodie that I've used before and will surely use again.  Thanks to pinterest, I can share the original sketch since I was easily able to find the original source to give due credit.  :)  Just click the sketch to be magically transported over to Scrap Paper Scissors etc.

Thanks for visiting!

♥

School Memories

I told you I was determined to get back into my studio space in the next week and the baby steps didn't lead me astray!  It helps that our temps are forecast to start around -12 (actual temp...windchill is closer to -30...YIKES!) for the next few days and no one wants to get out in that nonsense.  So I told hubby I was locking myself up in this room until I had completed something.  And a little over 2 hours later...voila.

I'm still weeding through the pinterest boards of sketches that I've been curating inspite of my lack creating time the past 7 months and found this one from the New Year's release on Page Drafts blog.  Click on over to be transported to the rest of their awesome sketches.  Below is the one that inspired this layout.

Thanks for visiting!

♥

A look back... A surge forward.

Well lookie who is trying to crawl back out from the mayhem, stress, and utter exhaustion that has been my life for the better part of the last year.  As most of you read a few posts back, my youngest daughter fell from a piece of playground equipment at preschool last May and suffered neurological problems that have required ongoing treatment.  Followed by discovering an undiagnosed congenital malformation of the pituitary gland in the brain that requires frequent medical tests, appointments, treatments, and shots (super fun trying to make a 3yr old understand daily shots..lemme tell you). Add to that 6+ hours twice a week spent at our local children's hospital an hour from home for said appointments including lots of physical therapy and I'm spent.  Did I mention I also have a 4th grader and a 7th grader who need just as much attention as before???  Well once I put it all in print, it's a little easier to understand why I went AWOL from every social media that couldn't be managed easily from a waiting room on my phone.

Things still aren't calming down much even though baby girl and I are getting our routine and tolerance of her medical helmet down pat, but something over winter break snapped in me.  No, not splashed all over the 10pm news kinda snapped, just a revelation of sorts.  There are LOTS of moms and dads with special needs children who still manage to have an identity outside of that.  My goal for this new year is to figure out just how to do that.  No better place to start than jumping right in....right?  So I printed off a goal planner and set baby steps.  Things may not be able to get back to the business of challenges, design teams, and my etsy ventures, but I can and WILL find time to document the memories my family is making inspite of the mayhem.

To kick off my mojo, I would like to jump on the bandwagon of sharing my 13 favorite projects from 2013.  Not a hard task since I stopped cold turkey even going INTO my scrappy space last spring, but I did find 13 things I loved from last year that I'd like to share.  Did you share your favorite(s) from last year on your blog?  If so leave a link in my comments because I'd love to come see them if I haven't found them already!  :) :)  

thirteen

twelve

eleven

ten

nine

eight

seven

six

five

four

three

two

one

Thanks for visiting!

♥