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

Grow in Grace

The second I saw the Basic Grey sketch for this week, I knew I wanted to play along.  The problem was getting the time amist traveling and various Christmas celebrations.  I managed to take an hour or so today for myself to play with my "toys"  :) while the girls were occupied with their new goodies to work with the few remaining scraps I have of one of my FAVORITE BG lines ever...Lemonade.  I love how the colors and patterns are still as fresh today as they were the two or three years ago when this line first came out.  This is a picture of my Paige from this summer.  I made my layout simpler than the one on the BG blog mostly because I am running out of Lemonade goodness, and I didn't want to stray from that line.  I apologize for the subpar picture.  Perhaps I need to spend my Christmas gift money on a 12x12 scanner!  :)

I hope you have all had a VERY Merry Christmas and a Happy Birthday to Jesus today!
~ Wendy

Just for Fun!

Lime Rickey Bath Erin!  :)

Two Year Old Erin and a Basic Grey Sketch

Believe it or not...
I actually have been doing some crafting recently (very little, much to my sadness), but as usual the school year has run me over like a freight train.  Today I put my foot down and declared some scrappy time.  Here's the result of this week's sketch challenge at Basic Grey.  You can see the post here. 
I still have plenty of Lime Rickey left over from a little buying spree when it first came out, and I knew I wanted a playful feel to this layout given the state of Erin's hands!

This is my Erin back in the days when she was still a sweet two year old.  Maybe it's convenient memory lapse, but I really don't remember terrible two's with her.  Five years old, on the other hand, had some bumpy moments when she started kindergarten and tried to copy some of the behaviors she saw there.  :)  But that's another story.  Not much to the journaling here...so I made the title spread into both blocks. 

Supply List:  Papers are: Lime Rickey and Wisteria
                    Embellishments are: Lime Rickey Chipboard and Elements Stickers
                   Alphabets are: Obscure alphas, Eskimo Kisses, Life of the Party and Sugar Rush

Thanks for stopping by!  I'm hoping to upload the 5-6 other layouts I've managed to create this fall but haven't posted yet soon!  :)

Basic Grey Sketch #1

The Basic Grey blog is up and running (yay!!!), and they are giving us an opportunity to play with a new sketch challenge every Monday.  I used this sketch from the first challenge:

to scrap some of the pictures I still had of my girls and hubby from this past Easter. 
I seldom do double page layouts, so this was a great workout for me!  Here is the final result...

With a few detail shots for good measure...just because I can!  :)

I primarily worked with Basic Grey's "Green at Heart" line including the journaling paper, the flowers, the decorative clips, the element stickers and the purple paper called "grass".  I also included chipboards from Sugar Rush and the "candy hearts" paper and a strip of paper from Kioshi--"yuriko".

My summer break is rapidly coming to an end (only ONE day left, ack!)...hopefully these sketch challenges will keep me creating at least one time a week during the school year!  :)

Thanks for stopping by!!!!   ~Wendy

To Honor You

First, I want to thank those of you who commented on my "Fix You" layout about our Alex.  Many promised to pray for him, and we really appreciate it.  Some people won't understand, but Alex truly was a member of our family.  Jon and I adopted him when we had been married for less than a year, so he was deeply woven into the fabric of our lives.  He was our "baby" for the four years before we had Paige, and of course he continued to be our baby up until the end.

We made the decision to put Alex to sleep on Wednesday.  It was and continues to be a gutwrenching, agonizing decision.  There is so much guilt connected to the idea of calling the vet and arranging for your child to be put to sleep.  The grief and anguish comes in waves.  In those times, I try to remind myself of how much pain he really was in.  It would have been selfish to keep him alive just because we didn't want to let him go.  It had gotten to be a terrible struggle for Alex to have to go up and down the stairs to our yard for bathroom breaks.  We had to help him lift his back legs to get up off the floor.  His eyes were sad most of the time.  We had run to the end of all medical options and prescriptions, and he was getting worse.

Thankfully, the girls are taking it much easier than Jon and I are.  Alex wouldn't have wanted them to be sad.  He hated it when any of us were crying or upset.  He's feeling better now, up in heaven...but we keep looking for him here.  We keep thinking we hear the sound of his collars jingling.  It's hard.  So hard.  And so sad.  He is everywhere in our house, in our yard, in our hearts. 

I woke up early this morning working through the idea I'd had last night.  Humans have obituaries when they die.  I wanted our Alex to have one too.  I wanted to preserve those memories and quirky things that made Alex everything he was to us.  It's hard to understand now, but I know there will come a time where seeing this layout framed on our wall will only bring smiles and not more tears.

To read the obituary, click on the layout, and it will be made bigger and easier to see.

Thank you all for taking the time to remember our Alex with us. 

I know there are plenty of other pressing sorrows in this world, but thank you for helping to share ours.

Wendy

My Creative Sketches blog (For Me)

Hi All!  Jillibean Soup and I have made a layout of my Erin's beautiful beaming face.  She had found a small blossom in a park we were hanging out at, and she ran full speed to give it to me.  Aww...cue heartmelting swell of love...

I made this to participate in the first sketch challenge at My Creative Sketches blog. . .
I stayed very true to their sketch, and when I saw all of those circles the first thing that came to my mind was the Jillibean journaling sprouts.  Perfection!

I hope someone gives you wildflowers today, or at least brightens your day with a smile like this!

Cards for Olivia and the My Mind's Eye Challenge

This month for the My Mind's Eye challenge, I did both a layout and a card.  First up, the girls on Sunday, July 3rd in their annual themed dresses.  At church that day, the children sang "God Bless America" and, of course, "Happy Birthday" to America.  Both of my girls had little speaking parts in front of "God Bless America," and they remembered them and did great.  Every single thing on this layout is from My Mind's Eye other than the adhesive (ha!) and the circular brads.  The sketch looked like this...

Then, I read on Stacy Rodriguez' blog about her cousin's daughter, Olivia.  I was planning on trying the card challenge this month, using the adorable playing cards that are geared toward a child.  This seemed like a perfect opportunity to take that 1/2 hour and make a card to brighten Olivia's hospital room.  Read more here: Cards for Olivia drive . 
Here's the card...

Thanks for stopping in...
Wendy

Another Sassafras Challenge!

Hello all!  Long time, no see!  This past month has been very hectic, and now I'm back in my classroom preparing for my 26 angelic second graders who will come to be my students very soon.  In the midst of it all though, I needed a little crafty break for myself so I took up the August Sassafras Lass challenge.  If you remember, I posted about entering the June challenge and told you I'd let you know if I made it into the top ten....   Well, they actually choose a top sixteen that month, but MY layout was the fourth one shown on the page!  YAY!!!  :)  I didn't get the July challenge done, but here's August:

For this challenge, all we had to do was use three different Sassafras Lass alphabets.  Well, that was a snap because I think I have at least 12 different Sass alphabets at my disposal!  :)  These were the first professional pictures we'd had taken of the girls for two years, and I saved a few wallets.  They just forced me to make a griddy layout.  I love grids!  :)
Thanks for stopping by!
Wendy

Thoughtful

Here's a quickie layout of my girl Paige again.  We were at a local park on Tuesday night, and I managed to catch some pretty sweet pictures of the girls there.  This was a nice contemplative picture of Paige looking at some wildflowers she'd found.  Journaling reads:  "Over the course of this summer, I’ve noticed Paige being more thoughtful.. She’s been a bigger help around the house. One night while I was busy doing the “important business” of updating my blog, she even cleaned the whole kitchen for me! When I’ve asked her to do something, her attitude has been better too. What a wonderful change! I’m so proud of her!
July 12, 2011

This collection is Basic Grey's "Out of Print" line.  There are some really great patterns in that line!

 Have a great Thursday!  :)