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