Happy May!

Not only have I been a bad blogger, I've been a bad scrapper. Many of you may have heard about the devastating tornadoes that hit Alabama, and although my immediate family came out unscathed, it has affected many of my friends and family, including my grandbaby and his mom, who live in Tuscaloosa. They are fine, but their belongings are largely gone, as are business and roads and power is not expected to be restored for several weeks.

So, if you've wondered why I haven't been to visit all of your blogs, that is why. Hoping my life will return to some amount of normalcy after next weekends recital.

My shares with you are weather related, if you haven't already seen them on my Facebook. Here was the forecast from weather.com the morning of. The white "greatest risk" area? The forecast was EERILY ACCURATE.



And here is what it looked like over my house, not awful in comparison to the devastation west, north and east of us. :-( It's a miracle we were spared.




Here's hoping for a much calmer May. Scrappy hugs to all of you, thanks for checking in on me. :-)

It's the 15th!

You know what that means! Well, besides being tax day... LOL It's new challenge day in the kitchen! And speaking of the kitchen, exciting news!




Kitchen Keepsake is cookbooking at its finest! Come and find your creative culinary muse!

The designers have cooked up some fun challenges, games, and prizes!

All challenges will be posted on Friday, April 29th and will be due on May 4th.

We hope you'll join us in the kitchen and get those creative juices flowing!

www.kitchenkeepsake.com

Whew, I thought I was broken for awhile there. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't create anything. Photos didn't inspire me. I tried sketches, lifting, even my old standby of trying a new technique didn't work. But then voila! Not sure exactly what happened, but the stars aligned or something and I seem to have gotten it back! WaHOOOO!!!

Laura challenged us to create a funny food foible in honor of April Fools Day. That reminded me of this layout I did several years ago in my Creative Memories Days, thus the corner triangles. LOL



I updated it using Little Yellow Bicycle. I recycled a tag that one of my girls had from a new shirt, it says POOF, which I thought was perfect for this story. :-D



For this one, I tried making my own zipper flower. I dunno, I'm not wild about it, but neither did I want to pitch it. Shrug. The photos aren't great either, they were taken with my iPhone. The story is sweet though. :-)



Thanks for visiting! Hopefully, I'll have more to show you soon. At the very least, I'm amused with my May calendar, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. YIKES! May already! Hope to see you in the kitchen! :-)

Happy April!

No joke, it is!

See those poofy clouds at the top? I'm very amused with them. I dusted off my big red Sizzix machine and punched a couple of clouds from a Christmas card that I had received a few years ago. It was in the shape of a polar bear and wearing a white coat of fuzz and a red scarf. I most definitely didn't have this in mind when I saved it, but I like them! :-D

New techniques have been inspiring me lately. On this next layout, see the green flower? I made it using mulberry paper by wetting a Q-Tip, making circles of various sizes and tearing them, being careful to leave the edges frayed. Important note: They must be fastened with a brad, gluing the circles didn't work. :-P And see that pretty little white crocheted flower? Amy surprised me with a few of these and now the hoarding begins! LOL I will use them sparingly, as I am not as talented as she to replace these in my stash. Thanks Amy!



Lets see, what else... OH, here's one that isn't quite finished. Still needs the journaling, but this cat CRACKS.ME.UP. She's an indoor/outdoor cat, but apparently she prefers stalking squirrels from INSIDE the house. Thanks to my friend Stace for helping with the title. I'd link her up, but she hasn't updated her blog since last year. LOL



Cutting that "frond" was a pain in my patooty, but the flower is something I will try again using double sided paper next time. You can see the technique on the Fiskars site.

There's a new challenge up at Kitchen Keepsake! I LOVE DT member Laura's sense of humor. Lest you thought all things cooking were serious... Come over and check out her April Fools challenge! :-D

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, happy crafting! :-)

Long time, no see

I know, a bad, bad blogger I have been! It's been a little nuts on the homefront and I haven't scrapped in what seems ages. I hope that I've mostly caught up on my reading! Y'all have been busy too! But I do have a couple of shares. :-)

There was a DT call on Kitchen Keepsakes and we're extremely excited to have added two new uber creative members to the team, Amy Bender and Janet Miller. And we now have a Facebook page, WOOT! If you haven't already, please come over and like us! LOL

Here's a layout I did for Kristie's banner challenge this month.



And just because that was so much fun, I made another. LOL I got the idea for the paper beads from the Cosmo Cricket blog. :-)



And did you know that we now have monthly sketches on Kitchen Keepsake? Yep, we do! Here's my layout using this months sketch.



Umm, yea, there were some bad words flying putting that pineapple together. :-D

I promise I'll be back soon, I have to to show you my April calendar page! Can you believe it? Almost APRIL already! Scrappy hugs! :-)

Happy March!

Moving right along, my friend Denise reminds me that there are only slightly less than 10 shopping months left until Christmas. Seriously? I just would like to enjoy spring for a minute. But for those of you who like to get an early jump on it, yea, slightly less than 10 months. :-D

Today is also the day that we have a new guest designer on Kitchen Keepsake. Come on over and get to know Sarah. :-) Also, the uber talented Kristie has posted a new challenge and wow, did she ever rock it!

How often do y'all back up the photos on your computer? I do it every two months and keep the disks in a binder. I also keep all of my layouts at Photobucket so that they are always accessible. Just wondering if anyone has a better method, as today is backup day. :-)

Have a scrappy week!

Shh, a secret...

No, I didn't make another design team and in fact, have no interest. :-D (However, Kitchen Keepsake IS looking for a techie/marketing person, if you're interested.) The extremely creative guest designer on Kitchen Keepsake, Laura, challenged us to make a dedication page to include our photo and handwriting. In light of the fact that Caitlyn will be attending Culinard in September for a grueling 36 week certification in Culinary Arts, I thought the mini that I just completed would make a perfect graduation gift. What do you think? (no wise cracks about the mugshot please, LOL)



Here are some other creations I've made recently.

Remember this handsome guy? Like his hat? :-D And, hmmm, looks like Anne is growing a margarita out of her head now that I'm looking at it...



These pics of Ayden cracked me up. I'll admit, they gave me a bit of a mojo block since I didn't really want to go all Christmas-y, but I was amused at the title. :-D



And I forget...did I share this already? I don't think so. Caitlyn makes my head split. One minute, she's a cowgirl, the next a princess and then a hunter chic. While at Walmart, she found this camo jacket and was dyin' for it. I mean, it's her money, but seriously? And yes, she was wearing her cowboy boots at the time. Iyiyi!



I have some recipe album layouts to share, but I'll do that later, as I have another in the works, also courtesy of Laura. Thanks for stopping by! :-)

Finished!

Just a quick post to show you my completed mini. I LOVE how it turned out! Now, just to fill in the holes with some of my fav recipes. :-)







Thanks again to Amy for the thoughful and now beautiful gift! :-) Thanks for stopping by, have a scrappy week!

Snow day!

Well, not a whole bunch, but enough that the girls called a "weather day" from school, so yay me! I worked on three more pages of the mini album. :-)







And a recipe album layout for the Comfort Food challenge on Kitchen Keepsake.



That's all. For now. :-D Thanks for visiting!

John's Cafe and Cemetary

I'm back from the retreat and I wish I could say that I'm feeling rejuvenated and such. These women



= CaRAZY fun!

Okay, you're probably wanting to know the story on the blog title, right? So, Anne and I are driving, following Lady Garmin's directions precisely. We're on this windy country road (picture: Deliverance) and we pass a sign that says John's Cafe and Cemetary. We were AFRAID! How creepy IS that! Well, long story short, what the sign REALLY said was John's Cafe and CATERING. We were relieved, yes. LOL

I made a new friend.



His name is Canusayluis. Alright, in the end, we finally figured out his name is Luis, but it took us a long time to figure that out. I think he really liked me, he kept trying to give me his phone number, even after I told him that I was too old for him and lived in Alabama. It was a very confusing conversation. LOL

I did manage to start working on my album that my friend Amy sent me. I don't know WHAT I was thinking! I totally thought that it would be an easy to do project that I could complete over the retreat weekend. Ummm, that would be a big, fat NO! Apparently, I don't follow directions very well, and my retreat mates kept yelling at me between howls of laughter when I f'ed up sheets of paper trying to size to the album. Oh well, I like the album so far anyway, I got three whole pages done. LOL







I'll keep working on it Amy! I might be finished with it by the end of 2011!

What else... OH, so it was REALLY.COLD. Who didn't bring a jacket? Moi. So I decided I'd like to get a sweatshirt that said Spartanburg on it as a souvenir. We already knew that turning right from the retreat leads to John's Cafe and Cemetary, so instead of turning right, Suzanna and I decided to turn left. Well! There's a whole cute little community called Converse, complete with quaint college and "I" thought it would be fun to find a sweatshirt that said Converse and have a pic taken with my Converse sweatshirt and shoes. Suzanna thought that was the stupidest idea ever. They also have COWS in Converse. I was very excited to get a closeup photo but wanted to make sure cows didn't bite first. Turns out, it didn't matter since the cows were enclosed in an electrified fence. :-( Anyhow, that got me telling the story about the roosters that I was so enthralled with during my August retreat, and these girls I was with this weekend are apparently experts on the whole rooster/hen thing. I still don't get it. Anyhoo...

I did break my spending freeze resolution by stopping at Archivers both on the way and back from the retreat. These were my needs:



I did find out an interesting tidbit of information that save me some money. The WRMK Sew Easy has been on my want list since I've heard about it early last year. I asked for a demo and I have to say, not diggin' it! So I bought some Bazzil templates instead. :-)

Thanks, my scrappy friends, for the laughter and the memories! :-)

Happy February!

Iyiyi! WHY do I do this to myself! More stitching, see all the calendar squares? LOL And just in case any of my family members are creeping, KEEP YOUR MITTS OFF MY CALENDAR! Sure, it's hanging on the fridge and you should feel free to LOOK at it, but step away from the pen.

January flew by. I finally relinquished all DT responsibilities and can now devote all of my time to the things I want to do. Feels great! When I sit at my table, I don't have to torment over what's due, or which products have to be used, or using creative brain cells on coming up with challenges. I can just CREATE. I like it! And if some of you have noticed me missing from various forums, it's true. I've made a conscious effort to devote my online time to my true love, Kitchen Keepsake. It's a drama free zone, gotta love that!

I am a bit in a photograpy funk though. Other than layouts, I think the last photo I took was on New Years Day. Just not much going on I guess, or maybe I need a new camera to inspire me. Loved my Nikon D80, but I gave it to Caitlyn as I just wasn't using it to it's full potential. Any suggestions on a small photy-box that takes great pics?

This photo was cropped harshly by Walgreens, but I used it anyway. Peyton was so cute, she wanted to celebrate the new year like a birthday, so she dug out two mismatched "1" birthday candles and lit them. It's times like these that remind me she is still just a kid. :-)



Yes, I don't know what I was thinking to do that many border punches and glue them down. It didn't turn out quite like I was envisioning in my head. LOL

Like my title on this one? :-D



I crack myself up! Only "I" would think to take a photo of backsides. LOL

I'm preparing to go to a retreat, so hopefully I will actually get some scrapping done and have something to share with y'all next week. Thanks for stopping by and have a very scrappy week!

Recipe album layouts

Go away, Glen. :-P

Now that the Kitchen Keepsake crop is history, I can share my layouts. We had so much fun and the winner of the fab grand prize is the talented Laura Schaaf! Too bad I can't link up her blog since she doesn't have one, but you COULD see her work in the Kitchen Keepsake gallery. :-) Congrats Laura, enjoy the LYB Savor kit!

This layout was for the Suzanne Says challenge. I gave step by step directions and then we compared layouts to see how well everyone followed directions at the end. LOL



Then we made recipe tabs to go in our albums. Sorry for the crappy photo, but you get the idea...



And because they were so much fun to make, I made another set for one of the kids recipe albums.



This layout was for Kristie's bingo challenge. I used the packaging from a bling container and put my title under it. Clever, huh! :-D



I used a sketch by our January guest designer Janet for this layout. Janet's layouts always make me hungry. LOL



I think this layout was done using Kristie's recipe challenge, but I can't remember for sure. LOL



Janet posted her challenge to use various shades of brown to create a chocolate recipe page. I used one of Amy's sketches to aid me in the process. I know, the dog bones are a little cheesy. LOL



Speaking of Amy, remember that awesome gift she sent me last month? Well, it's all packed up and ready to go to my scrappy retreat in a couple of weeks! Wahoo!!! Maybe I'll actually get something done this time, instead of being a disturbance. :-D Have a scrappy week, and it won't be too long before I'll be back with the February calendar page. YIKES! This month flew by! Thanks for stopping by! :-)

Hi honey!

So, the cat is out of the bag. The hubs decided to do his semi annual google check on our names, found my blog and saw his Valentine's Day gift. :-/ Sheesh, the least he could have done is left me a nice comment. Hey Glen...



Just one share today, a super simple layout using Kristie's sketch on Kitchen Keepsake. These photos of Megan and Peyton wrapping Ayden's Bumbo cracked me up! Sometimes I scrap just to amuse myself. But y'all probably knew that already. LOL Never did I think my doodling would be the main embellishment on my page! :-O



AND, the Kitchen Keepsake crop starts tomorrow, come on over and say hi, would ya? (But not you Glen, go away, shoo!)

Ice Day creation

Hi girlies, just wanted to share a few things I've been working on. Our big "snow" event was actually an ice event, so no fun photo ops. And with a long weekend, you know what that means. Very little time in my scrap room. :-(

But I did get a few minutes so I decided to do this fun tutorial from my friend Suzanna. She said to cut a card stock circle and sew some fabric in a pleated circle. Hows THIS for an Ice Day project? Flowers! LOL




I also put the finishing touches on this shadowbox. It started off as a layout, and then I like it so I put it in a shadowbox, and then it needed more dimension, so, well, now I guess I have a Valentines Day gift for the hubs, even though we don't really DO Valentines Day. LOL



Hope all of you are finding some scrappy moments. I'll be back soon with all the creations made for the Kitchen Keepsake crop, which starts on Friday. Hope you'll join me and the rest of the girls for the fun. :-)

Sketch layouts to share

I almost never do 2 pagers, BUT, there is an exception to every rule. :-D

I made this layout using the two page sketch that Kristie challenged us to do on Kitchen Keepsake. It worked perfectly for my photos!




This one I TOTALLY lifted from my friend, Kayla. I can't remember if she used a sketch, but I saw her layout and knew immediately that it was perfect for my photos of the very unhappy Ayden. LOL I also tried the fun flower tutorial from my friend, Amy.



And speaking of Amy, she's sprouting out and sharing her hand drawn sketches on her blog. Here's my take on the first one. Thanks for sharing them, Amy! :-)



So, it's January 4th and I've gotten 5 layouts completed. Not bad, considering the girls and I also started back to school after a 6 week break. Has your new year been scrappy? Thanks for looking! :-)