My Word? ENJOY!!!

Hey friends, almost the weekend!  Phew, I'm beat after 3 weeks of vaca :D  Looking forward to a 3 day weekend!

Today I am sharing another Swirlydoos challenge. It's the Round Robin, where the team leaders go first and then the rest of the team riffs off of each prior layout.  The challenge was your word for the year. I don't know about you, but I do NOT do resolutions. In my opinion those suckers are recipes for self loathing and despair if you find you couldn't keep it. On the other hand I find a choice of word much more doable and pleasing. You have a lot of wiggle room with it and  you don't feel like the failure of the century if you don't quite live up to it.  Click *HERE* to check it out and see what the girls have done so far. If you're not familiar with Swirlydoos check them out.They are all inclusive, you don't have to be a kit subbie, though I highly recommend it, they are stunning, and the gals are the best!

My word choice is ENJOY. Life is way too short my friends. You lay your head down at night and who knows if your eyes will open, or what the next day will bring you. I don't mean to sound morbid or a downer, but just look at the ESPN announcer Stuart Scott, that man battled the beast hard and at a young 49 he left this world, my sister-in-law fought it for 20 years till it took her in 13 at 52. Life is meant to be lived with joy and exuberance. Sharing it with others, you don't know how you may lift that stranger's spirit by a big smile and a hey :) I am going to embrace ENJOY and try my best even if it's just in the little things, be it planting some flowers, decorating my porch, laughing with my kids or cooking dinner.

My layout features the July kit Celestial Summer, packed with Blue Fern Studios gorgeous Ombre Dreams line.  I think the pic I chose suits the point perfect.  What do you think -

It was a bit of a double challenge since we were encouraged to use some goodies from our stash a year old or more.  Except for the kit papers and the chippie title which is also from the kit, everything is anywhere from 1-7 years old.  I wanted to extend the feel of the water with the papers and I think I was able to do that. My journaling is tucked on the two tags in the upper left corner of the pic. It reads "A goal for me is to enjoy life. This pic of my kids, grandkids and nieces from this past summer shows what life is supposed to be. No one knows what tomorrow holds. Enjoy, I'll embrace it!"

I love stash raids, and I hope you like it :)  Till next time,

Ro Beef!

Hi everyone!  Happy New Year.  Yes, a couple of weeks late.  I went from a bunch of posts to nothing since December 1st.  Hope all's Holiday's turned out perfect.  Another Christmas down and done.  I'm ready for spring break! lol!

Today I have a layout for a challenge that I'm hosting over at Swirlydoo's.  Click on the name to check out the gorgeous kits, and click *here* to go to the challenge itself. You don't have to be a kit subbie to play :) Now, no laughing when I tell you all about it.  The challenge was to go back and do a layout of your first love.  It could be what ever you wanted, toy, person, pet, you name it.  Mine? Roast Beef, yes it's true roast beef was my first love when I thought back to the very first thing. When I was a baby I'd say "ro beef Ma!"  Yeah I know, food, hubs wasn't' surprised.

I used the beautiful September kit Vintage Love, filled with gorgeous Prima Time Traveler papers. Here's a very small step out followed by pics -

I did a small stamping around the page followed by layering my matting before the pics.

The journaling is on the back of the pretty tags in the lower left corner. It says - "Yes it's true, I loved roast beef! I would say to my mom "Ro beef mom!" My grandma would make me roast beef and it was so good. My grandpa would take the Italian bread and dip it in the bloody juices. We call it boonzy. One would think pasta for this Italian girl, but nope. I love my roast beef and potatoes."

The cute hearts were cork and I glued glass beads on them.  The brown netting like paper was from holiday packaging which hubs said would be good for scrapping, and it is. The chippies is a combo of Blue Fern and Creative Embellishments. The book pages I have in my stash as were the title letters. 

I hope you like it!  Thanks for the visit.

Christmas Pajamas

Hey friends! December first! How do you like that :) Are you a prepared kinda person all finished and presents wrapped if you celebrate, or a last minute kinda dude or dudette?  I'm in the middle.  There's always something I need to get done at the last minute. Oh well :)

So, today I am here with something that made me so very happy!  Em Stafrace owner and designer of Page Drafts, the most amazing sketch blog out there, asked if I would be a Guest Designer for her Christmas release!  Are ya kidding!?! In a heartbeat :) Her collection of sketches for the holidays are nothing short of amazing. Go, go right now and click on her blog and let that second window open up, yeah, that's right I won't go away another window will open, and check it out.  Awesome right?

So I picked my sketch and my layout is about a wonderful tradition we've been doing for many years now. All the nieces and nephews on Christmas Eve put their Christmas pj's on and take a picture.  It is such a wonderful tradition because even though some of them are now in their late 20's, even early thirty as far as my daughter Victoria goes, married, kids of their own, those pj's get put on and they line up. Picking out the pics was a trip down memory lane. To see how big my youngest and granddaughters have gotten made me smile. In one pic Santino is being held because he was so young yet.The inclusion of husband, boyfriend and family visiting from out of state have also been in the pics.

Em gives you a jumping off point and you take off from there, which I did. The paper is from MME's Christmas line "Joyous". This line is stunning and I'll be going back to my lss and grabbing more for sure.  Here is the sketch I chose and my take -

sketch #37.4

I used my cricut to cut the pretty flourish Christmas trees, banner, and the poinsettia flourish, and my big shot for the frames around the pics and my pine cones and green sprigs. If you look at the close-ups you can see some flourishy swirls embossed in the red paper, that was my folder and a brayer and elbow grease rolling as hard as I could since my paper obviously is too big to go through the big shot. I debated using my rolling pin, but I was too lazy to go downstairs to get it :p The twirled ribbon is just the paper scraps cut thin and wrapped around a paintbrush. Some flowers from my stash, both Prima and Petaloo collections, ribbon from my stash, glitter and stickles for sparkle. Hubby said but some gold, maybe bells, so I did :) I always ask hubby before I'm done, his artistic input is invaluable to me.

Here's a couple of pics of the paper line -

These are from what I have already, you can see the whole line here MME

Thank you for visiting, and go see Em and her blog Page Drafts!