This last week....

Hello and happy last week of May!!! WOW, summer time is really coming and I'm so ready for it. As of today there is 8 more days left of school, YIPPEE!! The kids are ready for a long break and so am I, really it's because of the long cold winter, just feels so good to see summer weather coming.

 

This past week has been a rough one, we had to put my mom and Kristin's dog they raise together down. She got sick suddenly and in a matter of days sicker. Kristin was away at training camp for her mission trip when it happened. This was hard on all of us but we pulled together as a family and gave Diamond a loving, lots of hugs and tears and thank you for being a  good dog wishes as they put her to sleep. She is a fighter and so strong, now she is in heaven running around like a big puppy and feeling no more pain or hip problems that she's had for years. We love you Diamond.

Thankful for the warm beautiful week we had, spent most of my time just sitting outside with Lucky. My bible with me at all times, reading Nehemiah is what helped me get thru this rough week and will help me again when Kristin does leave. All of a sudden it's becoming real that she won't be here and my heart is breaking just a little, ok a lot. But, already I'm feeling so much better about it and know this is going to be such an amazing, growing, life changing year ahead of her. I'm super excited for her and the others she will meet and help and show her love to. I've been praying like crazy for her and strength for both of us and know with our family, church family and friends and supporters we are going to be ok. One day at a time is my goal now too, not thinking past that.

Did some grid art with Sienna and we both love grids now! Also did some flower art but forgot to get a picture, will share them later. Working slowly on PL, lots of big stories so I'm squeezing them all in. Scrapped 3 more layouts week before last too, YAY!! Slowly getting more done.

We had a great, super, warm long 3 day weekend!! So nice to all be home together and just enjoying the nice weather. Got some yard work done, went out for dinner, tried to sleep in but got up early by habit, bike rides, had our family picnic on Monday, here is the first bonfire/smore's of the year. Didn't want the weekend to end but it did and now we are back to work and school and count down to the last day of school. Hoping the weather will stay warm thru the summer, we are ready for it.

 

I will be back to T Time next week, sharing my second date with my mom. Can't forget to post my Hello June highlights either, love doing these. Will share Project life as it gets done too.

 

Have a great rest of May everyone, thanks for visiting!!

T stands for secreT daTe with my mom

Hello and Happy Tuesday!! My mom is the star of my post today!! I'm sure she's thrilled to know this, are you smiling mom! I took her on a small secret date and managed to get a few photos that count as a  T time post. Before starting that I want to say a big THANK YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the wonderful comments on my layouts last week. It made me so happy to read each one of them, all the support and kindness and excitement for me showed so much from you!! I have more to share from that same big batch with you today. Sadly, my days have been busy and not much scrapping has happened but I'm going to try and squeeze it in this week when I can.

 

Now onto my date night with mom. I had big ideas of taking my mom to our local garden center for a workshop as her birthday/mother's day gift since they are close together. When I called the first workshops were over and they weren't going to start back up till June if they could get enough to sign up. I was really hoping they would be doing a wreath workshop but they aren't. While talking to the owner about this she mentioned that the first 3 Tuesday's in May they were having a special ladies night. She explained that there would be a few vendors, one being Simply Tasteful which is something I've ordered before and love it. There would also be wine and cheese, raffles and discount on plants. I told her that this was something I wanted to do with my mom and she loved the idea and said that is what these Tuesday's and workshops are all about. She wants to bring something to our small community here so we don't have to travel far to do fun things together. I love that and support any thing our town can do to have these more. So I told mom to be ready on Tuesday and it was a secret. Not quite the big workshop I hoped for but just a little time spent together not far from home.

 

I was trying to tell her how to dress and if she should eat before I came without accidently telling her where we were going. This was so funny for both of us, think we did ok except it was colder then we thought it would be. Tonight is the last night and we hope to go again!!

She liked my plan as soon as we got there, I explained it all to her and we got out of the car to check it out. We went to the first vendor that I mentioned above and we loved the samples we got to taste. I bought our Fiesta Dip the kids like to make and liked their new orange pineapple bread. Mom got a couple things she liked too. The lady was so nice and fun and not pushy at all, I LIKE THAT!!

The next vendor was from Pampered Chef and not as enjoyable. She didn't carry anything with her like the other lady had, so my mom had to order it and pay for shipping. We felt she should have carried some of her products with her to save the customers money. We might just avoid her tonight.

Then we went to the jewelry vendor and my mom fell in love with several pieces. The lady was so sweet to mom and talked and shared about each piece my mom liked. It was a small fortune for some of these pieces so mom had to walk away empty handed.

Here is my beverage/cup post for today. My mom had a little cup of wine and I tried the cucumber water. You can click on the image to see the wine names better, can't remember which one she had. I did like the water, nothing exciting but it was ok for this event. Notice the mini M&M's too.

Here is the snack table, it was so good and more then we thought. The owner had told me just cheese and wine but there was 4 other things with it. We tried the meatballs in the crockpot first and even had seconds they were sooo yummy!! Then we tried this dip with spinach/tomatoes/cream cheese, this was VERY good and we had lots of it. There was a bean dip too which my mom liked and I thought was ok, a bit too spicy for me. Then the cheese drizzled with olive oil and herbs and crackers with it. These were ok and not what I thought they were going to have out. So that small buffet filled us up along with the samples at the vendors. YAY, love when that happens.

We didn't buy any plants and we didn't visit the purse, spa, dog vendors,  not of any interest to us. We did put our raffle ticket in the Simply Tasteful bag and hope to win it! They pull names tonight.

So not bad for a couple hours together and yummy food! Thank you mom for enjoying it! If we do the workshops later on I will take pictures and share them. Will share if tonight's food is different too.

 

This post already seems long but I will squeeze in some layouts if you can hang in there.

here is ones with my favorite white space!! I must say each of these make me happy and is a favorite story and love the look of each one. Click on the image to see/read better. That first one is really old.

More white and still using that same pad of paper I bought.

More white again, lol.  The top two were made with challenges on the BPC event from this day. These aren't my favorite layouts but the stories are special, I felt rushed when making these and don't like when that happens. They are done though and I just have to keep going.

Here is a non white one for you!! I am trying to use each paper in the pack and couldn't find any pictures to go with this one. Finally found this picture and love how it came out! Sienna took these pictures for me by the way and this one is her favorite along with the one of her and Sam above.

 

I will stop here and save the last few for another time. Hope you enjoyed them and if you read thru this whole post, YAY and THANK YOU!!

Elizabeth is our wonderful hostess today and every Tuesday, to see more T time posts visit her at The Alter Book Lover . Thank you Elizabeth and Happy Tuesday everyone!

P.S. I made my first spring Mandala in the post below if you'd like to see it!

Happy Mandala Monday!!!

Hello!! I have a fun post to share with you today, one that I've been waiting months for. First here's a couple quick look at things going on here this week. First the weather did finally start going back down, some days even cold and freezing at night. Then we had days like the one above and it makes me happy again. Look at the GREEN on the trees and gorgeous sky, I can stare at this all day.

My sister Annie got the keys to her very first house, YIPPEEE!! She is so excited and we are too, lots of new fun adventures I'm sure for her now. This weekend she spent mowing her lawn, her first lawn to mow, YAY!!  A family of baby bunnies surprised her in the yard while mowing, thankfully she didn't hit them and all are safe and scared and hiding again. They are soooo cute and tiny!!

My mom was showing us her jumping skills, AWESOME JOB MOM!! She beat us all at this and looks so good doing it too!! LOVE THIS mom, thank you for always being so fun!!

After all that jumping I had to get an official first feet photo at Annie's!!

The fundraiser for Kristin went better then we could have imagined. More on this later!

My girls made me the BEST AWESOMEST CREATIVE mother's day card ever!! I love them and will probably leave them out all year. All I want is cards and they did so great on them.

Now to share what I've been waiting for! Any guesses as to what I'm excited for??!! Couldn't keep Romeo out of the picture, he kept coming back just as I clicked, lol.

Did you guess Mandala?!!  I finally got to make one and it's my first spring one, YAY!! I found all these goodies at my grandma's last Tuesday and clipped and brought them home. The wind was out so I had to bring it indoors, not as much fun but just happy to have made one. Click on the image to see the little flowers. I love how it came out, took me  few tries to get it right and block the wind coming thru the window and door/ it was warm out but windy. Happy Mandala!!

 

I made a few others ones while I could with some of the other flowers and will post them in the coming weeks. By then I hope to have more colorful things to work with on my own each week. Whatever I picked here was almost wilted and/or there was lots of them in her yard so I don't feel too bad for picking them. I did save some of these in vases so I could admire them thru the day.

 

The lilacs are growing beautifully and smell so good, they are also on my table. Will try to get pictures for next time. So happy to have spring here and all the green and color around here.

 

I am thankful for Dawn at Girl Unwinding  and her beautiful mandalas that inspired me to start making them last August. She is so awesome and inspiring in all she does.

 

Hope you had a good weekend and will see you on Tuesday for T Time!

A Day in the Life

Hello!! I'm sharing photos and words from last Thursday when I documented our day for Ali Edward's  "Day in the Life" prompt. It was a last minute decision for me and I'm soooo glad I did it. From sun up to sun down this day was better then I could have dreamed and I got some cute pictures that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I too roughly 80 pictures, half on camera and other on the phone. I carried them both around all day so not to miss anything. I didn't take much notes this time, just wanted to let the pictures tell the story. Here is a look at our day...

 

You can see in the above it's morning time and the beautiful sky is calling me outside, love when the sky is gorgeous like this. Let's just say the sky stayed this way all day and as of today we've had a full week of warm/hot temps and it feels sooooo GOOD!! I have had shorts on all week, YIPPEE!!!

this is one of my favorites today, all legs and so pretty

after the kids left I pulled out some photos and scrapped

notice the sun coming in, LOVE THIS!!

Look at this cutie!!! I found him out front after running errands, so cute!

the morning warmed up very fast, couldn't believe how warm it was. took a walk with Lucky around the yard and soaked all that warm and sun. Here you see the leaves are going to bloom soon, YAY!

Lucky and I sat on the deck many times this day, YAY!!

I worked on this layout all day, did a lot of thoughtful journaling on it.

by now it was about time for kids to get home

Lucky and I go out on deck before the kids get home, YAY!! LOVE!

By now it has been warm/hot all day and I haven't gotten much done but am so happy!

So thankful for this picture and these two sharing hugs often.

Once dinner ( Pizza Hut) and dishes are done I head out with Rich and Lucky. Seriously all I want to do is move outside and just live out there now. The winter was too long and cold for me,  so I get a little obsessive about the warm days now I guess, lol.  All week the chores barely got done nor much art or scrapping, it's just too nice to be inside. I think Lucky notices and enjoys it too!!

Summer and I volunteer and finalize plans for Saturday's fundraiser

She took a CUTE CUTE picture of us in the van on the way here, you will see it in my PL.

Once back home, I head straight outside with a book and Lucky to watch the sun go down. Like I said this day/sky was awesome from sun up to sun down!!  Rich was out watering the onions in the garden at this time too. Wish he could have been home all day to enjoy the sun too.

LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! So good to be outside watching for this sunset, beautiful to see and thanking God for all the good in my day.  To some it may be ordinary but to me it's perfect and I'm thankful every day for all these little moments and a way to document them. After this, I went in and packed lunches, did some picking up and getting Sam ready to bed then sitting downs right 9 to watch Grey's Anatomy. Hard to believe it's been a week since this day.

 

So for this day I would say the SUN ruled over most of it and I wouldn't change a think.

 

Can't wait to show you my PL for this week, I didn't use all the photos but like what I did. Documenting this day just made me happy to be scrapping again and looking for more stories and a chance to love my family even more then I do. Hope you enjoyed it.

 

Have a great weekend and I will be posting my T time post on Sunday or early Monday morning.

 

If you didn't see my post below yet, please take a look. I posted my first 12 layouts out of 29, YAY!! I've been on a scrapping roll and am thrilled with them and with sharing them with you. Thank you!

 

T sTands for Tons of scrapping and fun

Hello and Happy Tuesday! This week has flown by again and I'm glad because now I can show you my layouts. You may remember this was the same "cup/beverage" photo I shared last Tuesday, figured we could just pick right up from here. This was right at the end of my scrapping day at church, wish I had more pictures of the room and the yummy food and fun friends there. Will try and be better about that next time. Are you ready to see some very simple but "Dawn" style layouts??!!

First off, here is the paper pack I brought with me to use, only this pack and a pack of white cardstock. Since cleaning my space in January, I don't have much cardstock left and what is there I knew wouldn't inspire me to much so a new paper pack was needed. Did it inspire me? YES! Was it enough paper? YES! Do I love this paper pack? YES!! I loved that it cut down on decision making and didn't take up much room for packing or finding what I needed. So with that I began...

I am going to share some in batches like this so to take up less room. My "Dawn" style mostly consists of white background and strips/scraps of pattern paper and using one photo. Click on the images to see/read better. I kept my journaling minimum and/or used the words in the pattern paper to tell the story. I did use my punches on most of my pages, especially hearts. The bottom two are my favorite stories and pages from this day. My dear grandma looking happy and Summer/Sam taking a picture on the bus, LOVE THIS!! 

 

A reminder this was National Scrapbook Day and I had a goal of 10 layouts before leaving this day. Not an easy goal for me since I rarely scrap anymore and I am a slow scrapper. I went in spurts thru the day and it did take me all 9 hours to get these done. Not much talking or playing around and I ate fast when needed and got right back to work, still it took me all day to finish these.

Here is another group, I love working on black cardstock for bright pictures. Sam wears a lot of neon yellow/greens so it was an easy choice to use black for this one. The paper pack I bought is double sided, love that and included some solid colors which helped too. I did a bit more writing on these pages and if given more room probably would have written more. The pack also included some journal cards and 2 sheets of numbers which I used on the bottom right. My goal also was to do pages about each of the kids so it would be fair to them. I did pretty good with this goal, YAY!

I used both 12x12 and 81/2 x11 sizes and like them both. My friend Diane helped me with the one on top. I wanted to use both the LOVE and the black journaling card and couldn't find a way to fit them and like the page. She switched it up and it worked, that's what's nice when scrapping with friends, you can ask for help or for another pair of eyes to see what you may not see. This probably works with any hobby you have. The bottom one is pictures from last summer when we found baby frogs in the ditch, remember those??!! I decided to use 2 pictures for this one, such a fun memory it was.

I love seeing when others use patter papers as their backgrounds, I'm not that good with it but do try when I can. This paper just spoke to me so I gave in and used it and like how the page turned out. I did use two pictures again, had 5 of them from this little mini photo shoot we did but narrowed it down to these. Have you been counting the layouts here, yep, passed 10 and will get to that soon.

I love this one so much! Little Sienna and Lucky just sitting together under the tree. I love the picture and can still remember this day so well. These two played together so well and she was showing such love and kindness towards Lucky. She always has but some days if I really look I see it more deeply. I saw them as friends this day and just the two of them in their own little world and am grateful for that. I have taught her mini steps how to take care of Lucky without either of them hurting each other. This angle of strips was kinda new for me too and I like it.

 

Notice how even using the same paper pack my pages don't look a lot alike and I did use hearts on 6 pages. I love using hearts on everything!! Do you have a favorite? Do you like the paper pack?

When I got home from scrapping, I unpacked it all onto the table and finished 2 more layouts that night. YIPPEE!! I was up till midnight and loved it so much that I'm still scrapping. Every day I've gotten from 1 to 4 more pages done a day. As of now I have done 29 layouts this week, 29 layouts in this week!!!!! That is record for me, still can't believe it !! They are simple but hey a page is a page right and these stories are getting told and my heart has been so happy this week. I am seeing the world in a whole new light again, like the old scrapper in me did before Project Life showed up and took over my scrapping days. I'm so thankful for my PL and now am thankful that I love scrapping again. Now I can mix the two and have more fun and more stories.

 

The other reason I'm on this crazy roll is a challenge on Instagram, hosted by Big Picture Classes. I took my first online class with them for scrapping and took two more after that one and loved it. Just finished up a PL class there too which is also helping me in my PL and scrapping. All these things rolled into one week and turned my world upside down all in a good way.

So about that challenge from BPC, they wanted us to reach the goal of 10,000 layouts posted to their IG account on National Scrapbook Day. Well that day came and we barley had 7,000, I really thought we would make it one day, thousands of us were scrapping all over the world and posting. When the goal didn't get met, they decided to keep the challenge open till we do it hit it. Again, I thought easy enough, but again it's been just over a week and we are in the 8,000s now. This has bothered me and is inspiring me so much to keep scrapping till we reach that goal. Sounds crazy but me and a lot of others are still posting and trying so hard to get us to that number.

 

I am still using the same paper pack and am just now a little tired of it and feel it's limiting my pages getting done. So today I may break out some of my older papers and see what happens. Will be posting them here again for you to see, that will also keep me motivated! Hope you enjoyed my pages today and won't get too tired of seeing more of them in the next few weeks along with some PL too.

 

I did make time for a butterfly swap with 12 other ladies, you can see them in the post below. I had a great Mother's Day, not many pictures to post of it but it was so good. Hope all of you did too.

 

Meeting Rich for a Red Lobster Lunch today, YUM and YAY!! So off I got to scrap more before I meeting him. Hope all of you have a great day and thank you for visiting.

 

To see more T day posts like this stop by and visit Elizabeth , thank you for hosting us again.

AROUND HERE

 

Around here I made these butterfly ATCs for a private swap

 

Around here we are getting ready for Kristin's spaghetti fundraiser tomorrow

 

Around here it's been a GREAT week

 

Around here I just did A Day in the Life yesterday, photos coming soon

 

Around here we have YELLOW flowers, YAY

 

Around here the onions have been planted

 

Around here the temps were up to 80 yesterday, YAY!!

 

Around here I'm still scrapping, YIPPEEE!!

 

Around here I took my mom on a surprise date, FUN

 

Around here the girls are wearing new spring clothes

 

Around here Sam got banged up in soccer and dodge ball

 

Around here Kristin turned 25 and spent a week in Miami

 

Around here the birds are singing and popping up daily

 

Around here Sam is loving grilled cheese sandwiches

 

Around here I am reading a new book

 

Around here all is well and good, YAY!!

 

Happy TGIF and Happy Mother's Day! Have a great weekend and see you on Tuesday for T Time or earlier for A Day in the Life recap from yesterday. Hello Nancy, will see you Sunday!

T stands for naTional scrapbook day

Hello and Happy Tuesday!! I am on a scrapping roll and can't stop, YAY!! As some of you might know it was National Scrapbook Day on Saturday, YIPPEEE!! I love this day so much, even if I'm more of a Project Lifer it still is so fun! Went to the crop at my church, this is the picture I remembered to get with my drink when I was cleaning up for the day. The rest you will have to wait for because today still counts to turn in your layouts at BPC and on Insta-gram!! They are trying to reach 10,000 by 11:00 tonight May 5, we have over 7,000 right now!! YIPPEEE!! So I'm off to scrap a little while babysitting then going to my bible study group tonight and back home quick I hope to keep scrapping!! Yes, Nancy I'm still scrapping, isn't that great!! I will post my layouts next Tuesday so everyone can see them. Anyone do any scrapping? Cards? Project Life? It all counts!!

 

Hope everyone is having a good day and I will be by to say hello!

Thank you Elizabeth for hosting another week of T Time!!

To see what others are doing stop by and say hello Altered Book Lover !!