C'est Magnifique sketch challenge

A couple days ago I created the following layout for a "new to me" blog - C'est Magnifique. Here is the sketch they gave and my interpretation of it.

Lain's prompt for Day 21 was "My Hometown". Anyone who knows me knows that I moved around A LOT as a kid (literally all over the world!) so pinning down a hometown is a bit difficult. Before now, I probably spent the most time in Prince George but while there I lived in 3 different houses. Currently, Greg and I have lived in Ladner, BC for about 9 years - the longest stretch I've ever lived anywhere! So I could have scrapped about any of those places. But ... I had come across the picture at the top left of this page earlier this month and I knew this was the story to tell for this prompt. 

The journalling kind of tells it all so here it is: "The story goes that wen I was 2 weeks old my parents dragged me, my brother (3 1/2 at the time) and my Aunt Jean "house hunting" in a little village near Cambridge called Bar Hill. This was the house. We lived in this house whenever we were in the country - in between trips to Indonesia and Iran - up to the time we immigrated to Canada. I have many houses that I think of as "home" but this was the first and still holds the dearest spot on my heart. In 1985 we visited friends in Bar Hill and went to see the "old house". I took the picture above that has my Dad in it. In 2004 when Greg and I brought Marley to meet the British relatives, we again went to see the "old house". I hope that we can visit it again the next time we're in Britain - whenever that is!"

The title is the address of the house. The street, that is. When I figure out which number it was, I will add it on but right now I can't remember that detail.

This layout is also for my Apron Strings Bake Your Cake challenge - I used lots of stickers (fruit filling) on this layout, mostly of the word variety but the quilled butterfly - which is also my Twelve embellishment - is a sticker too. Here is a close up of that.

Another close up of the stickers. This time a journalling spot, a heart and an expression tab.

I had a lot of journalling and didn't want it to overtake the layout by being a huge white rectangle on the bottom of the page. So I cut it up into strips to lighten its visual weight.

Well that's it! Thanks for stopping by. I've got a birthday party to get ready for today so will probably get even further behind on my LOAD layouts! Oh well. I would dearly love to accomplish the 29 layouts in 29 days goal but since I am currently at 22 done so far this month, I think I'm doing pretty well! Have a great weekend everyone.

Challenge layout

I haven't been showing you too many of my LOAD212 layouts but as this one is for several different challenges I figured I'd do a post on it.

Lain's prompt today was "So You Say it's Your Birthday" (and it really is Lain's birthday - hope it's a good one!!) which for some reason made me think of some of the cakes I've made for the girls over the years. I used this sketch from Elle's Studio Sketch Thursday challenge ...

... and came up with this.

This also has components on it for a couple of the Apron Strings Birthday month challenges - namely Day #9 (create a layout in less than an hour - this took me 53 minutes) and Day #11 (create a floral embellishment.)

Here is a close up of some of those floral embellishments. I used my Big Shot and the Fun Flowers die from Stampin' Up! The title was a last minute "aha!" moment. I was looking for a large 6 in all my letter stickers. When I saw the @ symbol the title just came together!

All the patterned papers are from American Crafts Celebration line and I love how this one has this embossed pattern of fabric swags or bunting. Seemed perfect for a party layout but a little goes a long way! To finish the grouping I added some more scraps and another flower.

Here's the third layered flower that I made.

Thanks for looking! Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day

Today I have some fun pictures for you. First off, this is what I made for the girls this years.

I found these little tin buckets at Dollarama and couldn't resist. I'm going to put more detailed descriptions about the heart cards on my Stampin' Up BLOG so if you're interested please follow this link.

I think the girls could care less about the cards or the buckets, they just wanted what was inside them!

And Greg got this card which I made at an Upline meeting a couple weeks ago.

And now for something a bit fun!

Today's LOAD prompt was "Love Lasts" and I could have gone in so many directions but I took it in a totally fun one. Greg gave me a Toblerone rose this morning and while I was listening to Lain's video message I was reminded that my love of Toblerone goes back to when I was a kid. We didn't get a ton of candy so whenever we did it was a special event! Santa used to bring us a Toblerone in our stockings and if anyone came to visit us from overseas they'd inevitably bring one from the Duty Free. 

THEN I opened Stacey's Twelve email which contained a picture of a heart made out of ribbons and stuff. She included a link and I'm going to encourage you to follow it too. Here it is. http://acreativemint.typepad.com/a_creative_mint/2011/02/happy-hearts.html

Instantly the words "Toblerone" and Love" came together in my head and led me to create the following layout.

I cut up the box to use as the title, created a heart out of buttons like in the blog post and used a sketch for Elle's Studio Sketch Thursday. The picture is one of me in Switzerland on our Honeymoon pretending to take a bite out of a monster sized Toblerone bar. What the picture doesn't show, is the fact that the Toblerone bar is actually the top part of a bike rack!! Ah, the Swiss!!

The red tag with the second part of my title on it is my Twelve Personalities embellishment. I figure this story paints a pretty good picture of my personality, don't you?!

And a close up of my heart. I must say, I do love this!

Well, there you have it.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

Hope you are all as high on sugar ... er ... love, as the girls' and I are!! :)

12 on the 12th - February

I have become SUPER bad about posting onto this BLOG ... sorry about that. I've been uploading all my scrapbook layouts to my Flickr gallery so you can check them out there.

Yesterday was the 12th of the month so I tried again to get 12 pictures. Here they are ...

Sunday in our house means soccer games for Marley and Paige. Greg made hot chocolate for Marley's team yesterday and put it in the entrance with the cups in a bag. I grabbed Marley's soccer cleats and created this little vignette.

LC's most favourite thing right now is to play on the computer. And yes, she can turn it on AND get to the desired web site all by herself. Sigh. Not even 3 people!! This morning the web site of choice was Strawberry Shortcake. Oh, and in the cup and all over her mouth is the extra hot chocolate that didn't fit into the thermos.

Marley has been decorating the house for Valentine's Day for over a week now. This is the little display over the computer in the kitchen.

These next 3 are all from the fireplace mantel in the family room.

She's a crafty and busy little beaver, isn't she? Where DOES she get it from?!

The not so pleasant chore ... laundry. 5 people seem to generate a LOT of dirty clothes in a week!

Marley was also invited to attend a fundraising event with her basketball team yesterday. It was to raise money and equipment donations for Hoops for Hope. The Men's and Women's UBC teams came out to show their support and inspire these future basketball players. Marley was a bit (okay, a lot!) reluctant to go but had a ball once there. 

Here she is shooting (and making) a basket with the Women's team.

And here she is with her best friend Amanda waiting on the side line for the next drill to begin.

I was going through some of my Twelve handouts and one of the photo prompts was to take a picture of your phone so I snapped this. Then I read another prompt which was to take a picture of 3 things together. Hmmm ...just did that too! Sweet!

And here are Amanda and Marley in the bleachers with me.

Funny story .... at the beginning of the proceedings when the kids were first told to go and sit in the bleachers, even though I was sitting in plain view with lots of empty space around me, Marley chose to go and sit with her friends in the top row and the farthest corner from where I was sitting. Gack! She's too young to be doing stuff like that already, isn't she?

Later that day it was time to make these ... Marley's birthday invitations.

Yup. It's that time again!

And last but not least, I had book club last night and this was the book we were discussing. If you haven't read it, DO! It's awesome!! Just beware  it WILL lead to needed to read the next 2 books in the series and an intense desire to see the movie that's coming out next month!

Apparently LC has a present for me in her pull-up. Sigh. Gotta go.

I'll post later and show you some of the layouts I've done lately. Until then, have a good one!

Been too busy to post!

Sorry everyone, I've been neglecting this blog and visiting other people's blogs in favour of crafting my little butt off! What have I been crafting? Well, I'm still working on my Twelve layouts, as well, I had two Stampin' Up! group meeting this week in which we swap cards so I had to come up with two different designs and then make a total of 25 cards over 2 days. ('Cus you know I tend to do these things last minute!) What else ... LOAD has started (see blinkie in my side bar to find out what that is) and I am actually caught up. In fact, I'm sort of ahead of the game ... keep reading to have that one explained!

Here are quick pictures about my most recent layouts. For more detailed info please visit my Flickr Gallery. Thanks. Oh and to those of you who don't give a you-know-what about my scrapping ... I will endeavour to do better about taking regular life pictures and posting them too. I was looking through my January pictures and  was appalled at how few I had taken of life last month! Pathetic!!!

But I'm digressing ... back to the layout pictures ...

This was done using a sketch from Studio Calico (see below).

In my "to be sorted/scrapped" basket are a stack of team photos of both Marley and Paige (although, mostly Marley!) so this is me trying to get them scrapped!

This was also inspired by the Studio Calico sketch below but since this one actually used some Studio Calico products, this was the one I submitted to their Sunday Sketch challenge. (By the way, I just have to add that I actually WON a Studio Calico Sunday Sketch challenge for this layout. Yay me!) 

Aren't the apples so cute?

Next we have this one.

This one was a bit of a slog for me. I spent about 3 days fiddling with it but now I am pretty happy with it. Please check out the details on my Flickr Gallery - there are some subtle ones that you can't see from this picture. 

In Twelve Stacey encourages us to celebrate the every day things and I decided it was time for a layout about LC's blanket - Dee-tee. It's been such a part of her and we are slowly asking her to give it up. I wanted to have something for her to look back on when she's older so she can remember the love she had for her blanket.

Journalling reads: 

"Ah, Christine and her “Dee-tee” …

It’s a gorgeous cream coloured (when it’s clean!), satin backed, furry blanket. My dear friend Shalan gave it to her at birth and for the first few months it just sort of hung out in her crib. We started to encourage her to cuddle it at nap times and bed time – especially when we realized that she wasn’t going to take a soother. She’s the only one of our kids to suck her thumb! And oh, how she loves that thumb!!

When she started talking we realized she called her little blanket, her “dee-tee” and ever since, the name has stuck. She had to take Dee-tee everywhere! It’s been to Maui (and thrown up on – but that’s another story), to the PNE, to visit Santa, to the Fire Hall and to Granny Camp. Now she only gets Dee-tee at nap time and bed time. All other times of the day it lives above the fridge in the kitchen so there is no “sneaking a thumb suck” in the middle of the day."

And now for my LOAD212 layouts.

Day One's prompt was "You've got good taste" with the suggestion of scrapping a favourite restaurant, recipe or other food related memory. While going through my pictures I came across the Guinness is Good For You postcard (picked up in Ireland back in the late 90's)  and remembered the St. Patrick's Day feast I made last year. So, my totally simple, totally fast layout was done before I knew it. So fast in fact that I had time to scrap another very important food memory ...

... my Mum's shortbread recipe. This one took a bit longer but not much.

All in all, Day One was a huge success!

Onto Day Two and the prompt of "Favourite Photo".

During my sort of the aforementioned basket, I'd come across this picture of me and Marley from 2004. It has always been one of my favourite pictures of myself so I knew it would be perfect for this prompt. The layout took awhile though and I've realized I've forgotten a title. But it's done for now ... a title can be added later, right?

Why do I love this picture? I'll be honest, it's because I love how young and thin and happy I look. 

Life with one kid was SO easy!!! (comparatively!)

 I was running, I had been playing Ultimate. I had a great haircut. 

Sigh.

Anyway, there you have it . I have to put the kids to bed and then I will try and get some pictures up on my other blog showing off my cards but no promises!

Talk to you later.