Posting x 2

My Silly Boy with his Cute Girl

After updating my blog I decided I would scrap a bit. I wanted to do another Shimelle Laine Scrapbook Starting Point Challenge. So now that it is finished I wanted to post it. I took this picture of Jeremy and Holly last weekend. We were on the escalator and I turned around to snap the photo and this is what I got...two goofy 20-something kids hamming it up for the camera. I eventually got plenty of good ones but this is the one I wanted to scrap....go figure. I guess it's cuz it shows their personalites so well. It's a far cry from their beautiful wedding photos but thats ok...this one is more real. Thanks again Shimelle for the great starting point...it made putting this layout together a snap!

A Little Face Lift

Not for me but for my blog! No thanks no interest in being pulled too tightly and not looking like who I am. I just came across Aqua Poppy Designs and decided I would grab one of their free backgrounds and make my blog all cute! Living in a house with all men I often times crave "cute and girlie" so why not on my blog? It is mine after all. =) Hope you all like it.

Jeremy and I always use to think (and still do) that thunder
clouds look like mounds of whipped cream.

Here are a couple of layouts I have done recently. I have a couple more I need to finish up and then I can post them too...have a great rest of the weekend everyone! I'm off to scrap!

Love that I have pictures of Jason in the same place in the park
15 years apart!

The End of my Staycation

I had such a wonderful time on my staycation that I totally forgot to post on my blog. I didn't do a whole lot  actually we had a quiet Labor Day I made Jason his birthday dinner since we both were working on his actual birthday. I did a few things with some friends during the first part of the week. I also did a lot of cleaning and reorganizing in my studio. One might think I was nuts to spend my vacation time sorting and weeding and throwing out stuff but it so needed to be done and I was in the mood to do it. My wonderful friend Mitzi Dean came over and helped out one of the days and so now I have a really well organized room and I have more space thanks to eliminating stuff and moving things around. So in short...it made me happy. About midway through the week all I could think of was "Man I could get use to this." If only I got paid to stay home all the time...lol

Friday morning my Staycation became a Vacation as we left for Arizona to see Jeremy and Holly. It was a quick trip but a lot of fun. I met up with my fun online friend Janet Bell when we got there. We went shopping at a local scrappy store and then out to lunch.We celebrated Jason's birthday again with Jeremy and Holly at Famous Dave's if you are ever looking for good ribs...Famous Dave's ROCKS! We went to the temple in Mesa with Jeremy and Holly...had really good chinese food for lunch...went to the mall...you know just stuff. We went to a concert at ASU that was beautiful Saturday evening. Most of the time we were just hanging out with the kids. It was great to be together. We saw lots of cool lightening and actually got some rain while we were there too.  All too soon it was Sunday afternoon and it was time to head back to SoCal.
I was really tired on Monday and kind of bummed out that I had to go back to work...and yet grateful that I have a job to go back to. All good things must come to an end so Tuesday back to work I went. Here are a few photos from my Staycation/Vacation




Had fun at the HB Farmers Market with my friend Linda and
company. 



My newly cleaned and organized Studio

My lovely clean desk

That's Jason and Me with Wilber the Pig
drawn by our waiter in BBQ Sauce

Cliff with the kids....of course they noticed the guy behind
them taking a mouthful of his dinner...lol

Jason's Birthday Ice Cream complete with
fireworks! Only in AZ...he shared too it was
yummy!

The boys outside in the rain posing for a picture
to keep me happy....I so love my boys!



Birthday boy



Not sure what to call this  look they are giving each other
but I love it.

Holly's friend Kim came over on Sunday...love her!

It only took us about 4 tries with the self timer to get this photo.

Staycation - Days 1 & 2

I have been looking forward to my little "Staycation" since it was first approved at work the end of July. So here I am already into day 2....so far.....so good! Yesterday I went and had me some fun at one of my favorite scrappy stores, Scrapbook Daisies in Long Beach. After that I was suppose to have lunch with a friend but it got postponed so Jason and I went and had lunch. After lunch we went and ran some errands...one of which was, oh yeah, go to Costco and shop....I so didn't want to go but figured if I could just get in and out quickly I could pretend I wasn't there. It was busy but Jason kept me entertained...he was tired and in his words...."Loopy". He pretty much had me laughing the whole afternoon. I so love that boy...er uh young man!  After all he is now 19...ackkkk how did that happen? That will have to be for another post. Last night I got to play with paper and came up with this really cute layout of my "loopy" son on his birthday...I would post it but alas...I haven't taken a photo yet and it's dark out so that will have to wait for yet another post.

Today, I slept in a bit and then got up and made hopefully my last trip to Costco til after vacation...had to get gas...the line was just too long yesterday and I wasn't willing to sit in it. We came home had a leasurely breakfast and then we took off and went to Huntington Central Park for their annual Civil War Reenactment. Jason had been but Cliff and I hadn't so we thought it would be something fun to do today. It turned out to be an interesting event. Seeing everyone dressed in period costumes, listening to music and of course there was the "battle". Actually we got there too early for the battle so we left and had lunch picked up a few groceries and then Cliff and Jase went back to see a little bit of it. I was really tired by then, my back was bothering me, so I took the groceries home and then went and picked them up. Let me tell ya...those cannons can make some noise. The boys said it was cool to see. I loved seeing all the cool artifacts. They really try to keep the costumes and things authentic to the time period. We even chatted with "Mr. Lincoln".

Jason took this one with his new camera
while we were at lunch.

Mr. Lincoln waving to the crowd



Cliff and Jason with Abe



Don't you know I had to take the photographers photo

We stopped and talked with this woman about her costume

How cute is this  sewing machine and iron?

Loved this chair with the "chamber pot" next to it

This lady was sewing.

This man was playing cool banjo music.

Part of the Confederate Camp

Yep I did get a photo of one of the cannons.

I loved how neat and tidy this tent was.

Perhaps I should try wearing this at the door
at work this winter??

So that is pretty much it for today. I came home and got a little nap and did my lesson for Sunday School and the really cool thing is it's only 8:40 PM If had worked today I would be in much worse shape by now. So heres to tomorrow and more "Staycation"!

Scrap Friendzy

I've been on pins and needles this week waiting to hear about the Scrap Friendzy Design Team call and as you can see from my new pretty blinkie on the side bar I am now one of the proud Design Team Members! Woohoo! I've been hanging out over there for a while so when the design team call came up my wonderful scrappy sister Linda encouraged me to apply I figured "why not"!  I am looking forward to being on the team and sharing my work. So if any of you (who happen to read my blog) are looking for a scrappy place to hang out....come on over to http://www.scrap-friendzy.com/ and play along with us. It's a great bunch of girls and the challenges are always a lot of fun.

Bingo Cards and Butterflies

Some of my favorite photos taken over the last month or so

I managed to get one more of Shimelle's challenges done this week. I had planned on getting a couple of them done but alas work got in the way. The Butterfly and Bingo Card tutorial jumped out at me as I really love scrapping little photos. Since I didn't have a real set of photo booth photos I decided to make a photo collage that looked like a photo booth strip. I didn't have a Jenni Bowlin Bingo card but I had free download of a bingo card on my computer so I went to work and I am totally happy with the results. I must say I tried to do the layout without the polka dot stamp but when I happened to see one in Michaels...well I couldn't pass it up.

Shimelle's Online Crop

I was reading over some of the challenges that Shimelle posted over on her blog at http://www.shimelle.com/ and decided I would try a couple of them just for fun. I have done online crops before but usually they were hosted stateside....Shimelle lives in England so I found the time difference...well different. But scrappers are scrappers no matter where they live so I thought why not play along.  The challenge that I chose to do was the "Starting Point" Challenge you can find it here:
http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1159/scrapbooking-starting-point-challenge-with-basicgrey/

 It was such a great starting point for my layout below. This wedding photo of Holly has been calling my name for a while now and I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it so I decided to use that for this challenge. I also picked out my absolute all time favorite Pink Paislee paper (Queen Bee) to use with it. I wanted to use "Joy" in the title because that is what the photo brought to my mind when I saw it. I found a quote to use for journaling and "Tada" it was done. Thank you Shimelle for this great challenge...with any luck I will be able to do at least one more of  the challenges in the week to come.