Simply Fabulous! (Simple Stories)

Have you ever had a collection you loved so much that you were afraid you'd never find such a perfect collection again?  That's the way I feel about Simple Stories "Fab{U}lous" collection!  With my two zany, bright and sparkly daughters, the playful colors, patterns and symbols of this collection were just amazing.  It was love at first sight when I saw them on the Simple Stories blog.  It was sheer joy when they came into my LSS, and I was able to get creating!
I've made a total of seven layouts with the Fabulous collection, and now I'm out of the papers.  I'm thinking about stocking back up for those teenage years though.  :)
Without further ado....

 Sometimes I struggle with papers that already have so many designs printed on them, but this layout fell into place easily.  I loved how the journaling block was built right in, and I added some faux stitching (my sewing machine is broken--boo!) to the edges of the layout to keep the eye brought back into that picture of my girl singing her heart out!  Here's an up-close of the journaling for the full story...

I had so much fun taking the sticker of the birds on the wire and hanging the title "fabulous" from it with the letter stickers! It felt like this layout of my girls with one of their cousins just built itself.

When Erin saw this flowered paper, she fell in love with it and begged me to do a layout of her with this paper.  Of course, I had to comply with her wishes.  I love these baby pictures of her--the scab on her forehead and all!  :)  I layered a total of four of my papers for this one, and used the border punch liberally.

Here's another baby picture of Erin.  Since I was just learning how to scrap when she was a baby, there have been times when I've gone back to a picture of her earlier years I either missed or didn't scrap quite the way I would nowadays.  I planned ahead to mix a lot of papers and patterns on this layout to go with another picture where her clothing is all mismatched, but the colors just wouldn't work together.  In the end, I think *this* was the picture meant to go with this page anyway!

 This is a recent picture of my two beauties--if you count recent as being from last summer!  Seriously, the laughing faces and clasped hands just pull on my Mommy heartstrings.  It's probably my favorite picture of them together-ever-so far, anyway.  I took the paper and cut a hole in the middle for the picture to come through as a sort of frame.  I used the pictures of flowers printed on the paper as a guide for placing some of my real (very neglected) stash of flowers.  They truly are such good friends, and, as an only child, I am so glad they have each other!

This picture from around 4 years ago catches at my heart too.  Erin has always been so attached to me, and it doesn't hurt my feelings at all that she's a Mommy's girl.  She's going into second grade now, and she still loves to be up on my lap cuddling with me.  I look at my face and see pure joy at being her mother. 

This really is me.

Ha!  My girls are growing up--especially Paige--and they were thrilled to wear "high" heels for this year.  Paige still wears them as often as we'll let her, and she loves to wear them around the house and clomp through our kitchen because of the sound they make. 

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

They make her feel so much older.  :) 

I had some fun with the bingo cards here and the bold colors.



Thanks for taking a peek at my turn with the Fab{U}lous collection!! 

:)  Wendy

My Mind's Eye--March Challenge

Today I took some time this morning to play with my newest My Mind's Eye papers from the "Love Me" collection.  A few weeks ago my husband took me on a romantic scrapbook shopping trip.  :)  Yes, it was romantic because scrapbook shopping is the ONLY kind of shopping I like, and he drove me all over the place so I could hit up three different stores.  Love him for that!
The March sketch challenge just went up on the My Mind's Eye blog yesterday, and thankfully for me, I could use any theme I wanted to this time.  (Remember December's challenge?  Oops!) 
I love how the grey colors in "Love Me" worked so well with this shot of the girls.  I've had it for two summers now, but I hadn't been able to find the just right papers for it yet.

The sketch on My Mind's Eye blog looks like this:

(Sketch by Anam Stubbington)

I moved everything over a little bit to make room for my monster-sized title, and I came up with this!

Fun, and bright, and spunky--just like my two girlies!

Thanks for taking a peek!  :)

~Wendy

Today I Took a Break...

..and boy, did I need it!  I don't know why I feel so guilty about taking a personal day from teaching.  Other people take vacation days from their jobs, and I think that's perfectly fine.  For some reason I always feel like I should be at work.  The fact that writing sub lesson plans takes me an hour and half is also a deterrant.  However, I have been pushing full speed ahead through 26 report cards, 26 parent/teacher conferences, planning and running the Scholastic Book Fair for our school, and going to meetings, meetings, meetings.  This past weekend I had planned on taking some time to recoup at home, and then we lost our power on Friday night due to a winter storm.  So we had to stay at a hotel on Saturday.  You'd think that would be relaxing, but it really wasn't.  The girls had the BEST. DAY. EVER!!  We checked in, they went swimming, they went roller skating at a birthday party, they went swimming, we ate out, they went swimming.  :)  The power outage was a boon for them!! 

So, today my amazing secretary at the school where I work tracked down a sub for me so I could have a day.  ALONE.  In my house.  I am NEVER alone.  I like being alone.  Alone is so nice.  Ahh...

I ate a peanut butter sandwich and potato chips for breakfast.  I watched the latest episode of Dance Moms (I know!  I know!  It's a terrible, awful show.  I know.  But I love it!  hee!).  I turned on my music and I sang along WHENEVER I wanted to!  (Jon doesn't like it when I sing along.)  Then I cranked out four layouts!  It was interesting that the headache I've had for almost three weeks straight didn't show up until 2:40 when I had to climb in the mommy-van to go to pick up my daughters.

Anyway, here are my latest layouts in all of their glory!

 This is Little Yellow Bicycle's Paradise collection.  The flower kit they sell is really interesting, but I admit I felt pretty dumb for a few minutes trying to get the accordian folding spiral flower to play nice.  Then, in the end, I didn't even use it on this layout!  I'm sure it will appear in the future.  Erin is just such a hilarious child.  She LOVES to talk, and today when I was playing on my iTunes I found five voice memo files from Erin talking and singing to herself on her iPod early in the morning.  Listening to them was such fun!  I laughed out loud over and over.

I have developed a fondness for gluing fibers down on my layouts lately.  I framed out Paige's picture with orange fiber, and then I decided to just go all the way with it and make a grid for embellishments to live in. 

 I was trying to be artsy and quirky.  Haha!  Basic Grey Picadilly collection here--I won it from playing along with one of Basic Grey's Monday sketches months ago, and this is the first time I've used it!

This is also Basic Grey Picadilly.  I really love the B sides of these papers.  I'm starting to wonder if I suffer from a pattern paper phobia??  I used to LOVE pattern paper, and lately all I want to use is really small patterns or just plain paper.  Hmm... 

Vanessa at my LSS--The Scrapbook Nook--sold me this totally awesome Martha Stewart heart border punch.  Can you tell I like it?  (I used it on Paige's layout too.)  The expression on Erin's face in the middle and bottom picture is funny here.  I might have been teasing her about a certain someone she thinks is pretty special in her class at school when I took these pictures.  (Mean Mommy!)

Then, I dove into Dear Lizzy's Neapolitan line for these last two layouts.  I adore this picture of my girls with their newest little cousin.  They love babies (especially Paige).  She is so careful and tender with them.

The colors in this line were soft and sweet and perfect for this picture.

Finally, I got the design for this last layout from  Susan Stringfellow's blog.  I just loved all of the banners and the heart for the title space.  I created this layout by following her sketch exactly.  It was great inspiration!

I hope you have a very peaceful and relaxing weekend with no power outages...unless you really want to go swimming for hours and hours at a party hotel where people stand outside your room late at night and holler!  :)
~Wendy

Merry and Bright

Hello again!  I just love this picture of my girls I caught at their Grandparents' house this past Christmas!  They truly embody "Merry and Bright" to me.  I also adore this collection from My Mind's Eye--12 Days of Christmas.  The colors are so spunky and fun!  I designed this layout for their current sketch contest on their blog, but only when I was finished did I realize I'd forgotten to focus on the theme of "New".  Now, the doll in the picture is new, but that wasn't the direction I'd taken with this layout.  So, oh well!  I love it just the way it is anyway.  :)

Thanks for stopping in to take a peek. I hope your days are Merry and Bright too!

Wendy

Yes! Round two...

So, God loves me a lot because I got to have ANOTHER snow day today!  Tomorrow I will definitely have to work since it's a teacher PLC day (meetings to improve our math and ELA curriculum), but my girls will be going to their FAVORITE daycare in the world.  They are more than a little pumped about having 5 days off from school in a row.  Me?  I'm completely satisfied with two escapes from reality!

Now...what better to do on a snow day than show off my FALL layouts!  :)  I'm not really a big autumn lover, generally, because I know that means winter is coming.  But this year I was able to find two fall collections I really thought were sweet!  I used Little Yellow Bicycle's, "Hello Fall" collection to do Fall 2010's pictures of my precious girlies.  We have. . .

Both girls together.  I took this photo standing up on a ladder above them--it's a fun, new perspective!

Then we also have Paige alone...

You absolutely have to LOVE a Michigan girl who "rakes" the leaves with a snow shovel while wearing a pair of sandals.  LOL  The color is posting a little faded here--cloudy day again.  The background is really a nice green color.

Then we have the Leaf Monster, Erin...

So. Much. Fun!

This year I used the Jillibean "Apple Cheddar Soup" collection for my babies.  I loved it so much I bought a TON of the papers and all of the embellishments I could at my LSS.  I wound up making 5 layouts, but I'm only showing 4 here.  One of the layouts is my application for a design team membership on the sketch blog "Stuck?!"  I love working from sketches, so I would love to be added to their team.  Cross your fingers for me!  Anyway, here are the four I can show you...

Even though autumn isn't my favorite season, how can I dislike opportunities to hang out with my girls at the pumpkin patch?  :)

Thanks for stopping by!~  I'm off to create some more!  Wendy

The Phone Rang at 4:23 a.m., and I. . .

I actually woke up from a deep sleep with one word erupting from my mouth..."Yes!"  Most people might be frightened or worried by a 4 a.m. telephone ringing, but *I* am not most people...I am a school teacher!!  There is only one reason my phone rings at that time of the morning, and it's to tell me to go back to sleep.  Yes, it's the best reason of all to live in Michigan in the winter--a SNOW DAY!  :)

Snow days for me are like a freebie sent from God.  It's a day when what I was supposed to be doing is cancelled.  So.................then I get to pick whatever I want to do!  Yeehaw!  And, can you guess what *I* want to do  is?  I'll bet you can!

This post will be quite layout heavy, actually, because shortly after Christmas I put on my big girl panties and dug into the drawer of doom.  This is the drawer where I shove those layouts for which I have lost my inspiration.  There they languish.  In the drawer.  Sad papers and pictures that once had a purpose but now only collect more rejected layouts on top of them.  Heh.  Many times when I would sit down to create, I would pull some or all of those layouts back out and look at them.  Had I regained my mojo for them?  Nope.  Back into the drawer they go!  But, like I said, I finally CLEARED the drawer out in the few days I had after Christmas before life reared its head again.  So....without further ado...

This is the oldest drawer-sitter.  The title block had stymied me.  Originally I had used some Webster's storytellers for the "manicure" word and they kept bothering me because the scale was too small.  Once I switched to Thickers, I felt much better and I was able to build on!

This one is pretty basic I know, but I really wanted the focus to be on the picture of my daughter who was one of the leads in her school play last year--"The Tortoise and the Hare".  Once I gave myself permission to keep it simple, I was able to journal what I wanted to say and wrap this one up too!

So here are the swim lesson pictures from...June.  Creating these finished up the last of my Fancy Pants "Beach Babe" line of papers.  Yay!  I love to buy those awesome new lines, and then I love to finish them off so I keep my stash relatively small.  (Depends on what relative means to you, right?)  :)

On to Halloween!  I'm making progress, right?  Actually, these are from Halloween LAST year.  As in 2010.  Yeah.  When Doodlebug came out with their Halloween line this year, though, I was completely inspired by this cutie stuff!  The girls are pretty cute too, right?  :)

Ahh...the yearly Halloween costume melt-down.  Good times.  Good times. 

 We've set a record of three years in a row so far. 

I started and stopped this layout several times!  I cut part of one of the pictures off and then tried to tape it back on...it was a nightmare!  :)  Finally, Simple Stories came to my rescue!

This is the last layout from my Island of the Misfit Layouts drawer.  I am a reader.  I love, love, love to read, and I have ever since I was in kindergarten.  It took my daughter, Paige, until the end of second grade to start picking up books just for pleasure.  I was so relieved!  Sorry that the color is a little off on this one.  I was snatching the tiny bit of sunlight I could through the storm door to photograph these, and then the sun went away!  These Michigan winters are cloudy and grey!

Tune in tomorrow for 7 of my 8 Fall layouts I've created this fall.  I'm secretly thinking there MIGHT be another snow day tomorrow.  More free time for me!!  :)
Thanks for stopping!!
Wendy