Chipmunk's Winter Nest

Last year, we decided a BBQ was in order on Easter Sunday.  The weather was incredible!!  A warm and sunny 70 degrees.  The grill had been covered and unused all winter.  So we grabbed a fresh propane tank and cleaned off the patio table and chairs.  When we uncovered the grill, we found where the squirrels and chipmunks had been feasting all winter long.

It was pretty funny to see the mess they made.  Looks like they ate pretty well too!!

Looking ahead to summer, here is a layout from our day in Atlantic City watching the air show, Thunder on the Boardwalk.  I used a sketch from Inspired Blueprints.

Sketch first:

More orange for you too!!  I used Green at Heart by Basic Grey, Bazzill Cardstock and few other scraps.

I used SCAL to cut the title and then I stickled it.  The more glitter there is on a page, the happier I am.

A cute little metal bird from Dear Lizzy and a vintage little card round out the bottom corner.  Abbie doesn't like the card, but I do!!

Thanks for stoppin by and enjoy your weekend!!

Easter Cuties

Easter is just around the corner so here is an Easter layout.

Have I told you how much I love orange yet??  I know, I have.  But here is more proof. 

These were mostly scraps of patterned paper.  I used a Fiskars punch and the buttons are from CTMH.  I used Color Box inks for the edges.  The brown letters are from my Cricut and the orange ones are Thickers.

Looking forward to a fun weekend!!

No Real Snowmen Here

Only the one on the paper.  I think we have only made one or two snowmen at the most.  It always seems like the snow just isn't wet enough.  So here's my version of a snowman:

I added a little sparkle to the page by adding some Stickles to Frosty's scarf.

And by adding a little Stickles to the snowflake.

Well, that was the last of the snowy pages for a while.  I have lots of pics from this year, but those won't get printed for quite some time.

Looking forward to the weekend!!  Hope you enjoy it!!

My Cute Little Snow Bunny

The best part of the snow storm is taking the pictures to show just how deep it was.  And our front walk is perfect for that.

The paper is still Echo Park.  But I don't think that red swirly one is.  Can't remember.  And I made the weird little red border from some elements on a Cricut cartridge.

I better wrap up these wintery pages.  I have some cute Easter pages I did and can't wait to share them with you.

Back Yard Sledding

Our back yard has a pretty awesome slope that is perfect for a little sledding and tubing.  And we take advantage of it during every snow storm.  Usually at night too.  I'm worse than the kids, I can't wait for it to stop snowing and get on tube too!!

It's funny how the snow flake blocked out Abbie's face in the one picture.

I used Bazzill cardstock and the rest of the paper is Echo Park.  I made the snowflake border using my Cricut, but can't remember which cartridge it was.

That's all for today.  Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the blogosphere.

Another Sketch

Sketchy Thursday had this cute sketch on their site:

So I picked some of the left over beach pictures to creat this 4 photo layout. 

I love to get lots of photos on a layout because I take soooooo many pictures and I stink at paring them down.

I used lots of left over scraps for this layout.  I know some of the stickers are Soft Spoken and the letter stickers are from My Little Shoe Box, but that's it.

Can't wait for summer!!

Where's the Car?

Yup, that's right.  I actually had to ask that question when I looked outside from the craft room.  The snow drifts were so high before they plowed I couldn't remember where the car was.  And my poor hydrangea bush.  I could hardly see it by the time it finished snowing.

Here is the before:

And the after:

Tom worked so hard to clean out the cars...then the back hoe came by to help...after all the work was done.

Let the work week begin!!

Scrap Whispers Reveal

A few months ago I joined in on a game over at Scrap Whispers.  Here's how it works:

One person starts the game by creating a layout.  That layout is sent to a player to scrap lift.  When that player is done, her layout is forwarded to the next player to scrap lift.  And the game keeps going.

Our team's reveal is up at Scrap Whispers.  Here is my layout:

You can check out everyone's layouts and see the progression here.

Work starts again tomorrow so that means lots of laudry today...my least favorite chore.  I think I'll scrap a little first to lift my spirits:)

Have a good day all!!

Winter, Again???

No, it isn't going to snow...at least I hope not!!  But I have been staring at these snow pictures for so long without inspiration.  But while at the crop, one of the vendors had a great Echo Park kit that I knew would be great.  So the next few days will be a chilly blast from the past.  Grab a cup of hot cocoa and enjoy!!

Poor Tom always gets the brunt of the shoveling!!  And he does such a great job too!!  No wintery, snowy layout is complete with a little bling and a border punch, don't you think???

Or some sort of snow flake embellishment LOL!!

All the patterened paper is from Echo Park.  I cut the banners by hand, that was fun!!  The border punch is from Fiskars and the bling is from Recollections.

Have a happy Sunday all!!

SCAL and Sketches

So you all know that my Cricut carts were lost for several months, right??  During that time, I realized that having spent all that money on cartridges was a big waste of money.  I had a Cricut machine just sitting on my desk gathering dust.  A constant reminder that I lost all that money. 

So I started looking at alternatives.  And one of them was SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot).  When I use the Cricut, 95% of the time, it's to cut a title or shape.  I rarely use those cute cartridges that cut out flowers,or people, or pumpkins, or bugs.  So the thought of using any True Type font that was already on my computer was music to my ears.

Last week, I took the plunge!!  I broke my "no scrappy spending" pact with myself.  And I'm so happy that I did!!  This thing is AWESOME!!  I watched tutorial videos, played around with different fonts and settings, download a few fun fonts and dingbats.  And I don't think I'll ever buy another cartridge again!! 

Here is a layout I did using a title cut with SCAL.  I used a sketch from Sketchabilities.

First the sketch:

My version:

I used Bazzill cardstock and the patterned papers are from the Nutmeg collection of Cosmo Cricket.  Really love the colors.

I used a piece of tulle from Glitz and tied some fibers on it.  The bling is from Recollections and the little letters are from My Little Shoe Box.  I cut the title with a font that I already had and added liquid glass from CTMH for a little shine.

I bought these Prima Flowers 2 years ago and could never find the right colors for them.  I was so happy to finally use them.  Not sure flowers belong on a beachy page, but I'm stickin' with my decision.

It is a beautifully sunny Saturday morning here, so Abbie and I are going food shopping!!  Doesn't that sound exciting??

Hope your Saturday is a little more fun than mine...wish me luck!!

Light House at Sandy Hook

We are pretty fotunate to live in a state with so many wonderful and historic sites.  One of those is the light house at Sandy Hook.  New Jersey has many light houses, actually, though we have only visited a few.  Now that the weather is warming up, or supposed to be warming up really soon, we hope to spend more time outside and visit a few of those light houses.

I got all these supplies from my Scarlet Lime kits.  I don't know what brand the papers are, but I loved them!!  The cute little pebble with the bling is from Prima.

The charm is from Dear Lizzy and I love these great vintage looking cards.  I wish I knew where they were from!!

Enjoy the weekend all!!  I know I will.

Lunch with Christine

We love going to NYC.  That's no surprise.  But meeting up with my best friend from 7th grade makes it that more special.  We spent the weekend with Christine first in NYC to show her all of our favorite spots.  Lunch at Stand 4, Central Park, hot chocolate at Jacque Torres.  And then headed to Long Island to spend the rest of the weekend with her and her husband.  We had a great time, as usual!!  We already have our next trip to NYC almost planned...with a stop at a donut shop that was featured on Food Network.  I'll let you know when we go!!

I used mostly So Sophie for this layout.  There is a Basic Grey brad as the bird's eye. 

And a Melody Ross paper clip at the top.  I'm not sure where the rub ons came from.

Have a happy Wednesday!!

Cherry Blossoms

I'm sad not to be Washington DC to see the Cherry Blossoms this year.  So the only thing better is to finish scrapping my pics from a few years ago.

It truely was a glorious day.  The trees were gorgeous, the air was warm and the smiles were plentiful.  I had taken Abbie's pink easter dress with us too and she was all to happy to twirl and pose among the blossoms.

I used mostly Basic Grey from the Green at Heart collection.  I think I used a K and Company sticker too.

Hope you have a glorious week!!

Crop Stats

I went to another AWESOME crop last weekend in PA.  (Thanks Jeni for all your hard work!!)  Here are a few of my stats:

Hours at the crop - 64  Arrived at 6pm on Thursday and left just before 4pm on Sunday
Layouts completed - 16
Number of photo scavenger hunt pictures taken - 21 out of 40  Obviously we didn't win.
Number of times Keegan fell asleep on me - 2  Cutest little baby!!
Pieces of chocolate consumed - countless!!
Quarter auction baskets won - 0  That's because Tina won them all!!
Raffle prizes won - 0  That's because Beth won all of those!!
Times I got to pick from the prize table - 2  Once for favorite luau costume (you'll see that beauty later!!) and once for best homemade snack...cake pops!!


We packed the car really well...and by well I mean over flowing.  I had to pare things down quite a bit because there were 4 of us this time.

Here are some of the scavenger hunt pictures:

Us with Denny Long in a luau costume.

Us on an orange tractor.

Us in a school bus.

Shannon on a rolled bale of hay.

Me wearing a local's bifocals.  Smokey was awesome!!  He helped up out with lots of the pics that we needed around town.

The one that really got us stumped was "you and your partner petting a llama".  Now the guy with the alpaca farm moved 2 weeks earlier and wasn't living with his alpacas at the moment.  We found his farm but it was so incredibly dark out that we were too scared to go wandering around it on our own.   So after 2 hours, we decided to call it quits.  Tanya and Megan completed the scavenger hunt in a little over 2 hours and were declared the winners!!

An now, for the luau costume...this one is awesome!!

That's me in the center with the HUGE blue hat!!  Crazy right??  When I shook my hips, the tassles went flying all over the place.  It was really fun!!

So over the next several days I'll show you some of the layouts I made.  Some I used sketches so I'll show you those too.  But first an original creation by yours truely!!

I was very happy to finish all the pictures from the March 2010 snow storm.  There were so many pictures and I made it a personal goal of mine to get them all done at the crop.

Here I used Bazzill cardstock, Echo Park patterned paper, Stickles for a little shimmer, and Thickers for the letters.

And here is the best news of the whole trip.  Shannon found my Cricut carts!!!  They had been packed up in the bottom of her jukebox.  And because she hasn't scrapped in months, she hadn't looked there.  I was just thrilled to be able to use my Cricut again!!

I'm still trying to catch up on sleep, so off to bed I go.  I'll have more for you tomorrow!!

Getting Ready for Easter

Sort of anyway!!  Abbie is already putting a list together of possible gifts for the Easter Bunny.  She is way too funny!! 

Can you believe I have all those egg dying kits??  Shannon was teasing me for it too.  There is no shortage of supplies in this house.

I used some Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey green rub-ons, a Dear Lizzy green butterfly, Kaiser Craft lace flower and brad and a Fiskars punch.  I dug into an old stash of easter/spring themed paper for the patterned paper.

Are you all ready for spring and Easter???

I'm Back!!

Ahhhhh, it's so nice to have my computer back!!  I have a new hard drive and it's working like a brand new computer.  Tom is so awesome!!  I have all (most) of my pictures on a seperate hard drive now.  There are just sooooo many that my computer was really bogged down.  I am missing my pictures from Oct 2010 to present.  Tom is running some photo wreck software on my SD card as we speak to recover them.  I should be able to get most, if not all of those back.  I'm also getting another hard drive to have a second copy of my pics.  That should keep up safe for a while.

I'm glad to be back and see that I haven't lost any of my lovely readers!!  I even acquired a few new ones!!  Welcome!!  Hope you enjoy what I have created in these many weeks that I was gone.  I can't wait to share all the layouts with you!!  But before I do, a few signs that spring is closer than we think.

We have flowers blooming in our front yard.  I love this time of year!!  My lillies are starting to poke out from all the dead leaves and winter debris too.  And did I mention the tulips??  They're sprouting too.  Each day gets me one step closer to the warm weather.

On to one of the many layouts I have to share with you.

Easter is pretty late this year and I wanted to finish up my pics from last year before taking many more this year.  Abbie spent almost 2 hours with her eggs last year.  She wanted to make sure that each one was absolutely PERFECT before she placed in her carton.

I haven't gotten a clue what is used on this page.  I am making a serious effort to use up left overs.  Summer expos will be here before you know it and I want to make room for some new stuff.

I'm glad to back!!  Thanks for sticking with me.  I really appreciate it!! 

Have a great week all!!

Getting Ready for a Crop

I am going away to a weekend crop in 4 weeks and I'm so excited!!  I just finished the last layout from my last crop, just in time to take a whole bunch of new scrapping and scavenger hunt pictures.  Here it is:

Ah, 4 whole days of game and scrapping fun!!  I can't wait!!

Wishing for Summer

It's so much fun to play along with challenge blogs.  I played with Scrap Whispers a while back.  Someone creates a layout, then we take turns scrap lifting each other's layouts.  It was really fun to do too.  Here is the layout I created from one of the other players in the game.

I posted these pics of Tom and Abbie's sandcastle during the summer.  This was really fun to do too. 

Ok, I'm off to work...another super busy day!!