Update On My House

Happy Friday. Sorry about the lack of posts lately. Seems like I've been saying that a lot. It's just been so busy around here. Monday we had a contractor out to look for a leak in our house. This was the 3rd or 4th visit. I've lost count. After putting five holes in the house (two outside and three inside) he finally found the problem. Now he has to come out two more times to fix the problem and put our house back together. In the mean time my house is a disaster area. I had to remove everything from my scraproom closet so the contractor could put one of the holes in there and check for water. How in the world did I get so much stuff in one little closet?
This is a picture of my living room.

The only thing that didn't come out of my closet is the black sofa table with the plant and picture on it. I can't put anything back in the closet until the contractor comes back out in a few weeks to fix the hole.

This is one of the holes in the outside of the house. The other outside hole is bigger, but I didn't get a good picture of it. I guess I should be glad that it's all covered by the builder and we didn't find out years down the road when we want to sell or something.

Oh, before I forget, I trust that none of you are going to call the hoarders show on me right? Have a good weekend.
Cindy

Layouts from the past

While cleaning my scrapbook room and trying to take inventory of tons of supplies I have in every inch of my room I came across some old albums. I got so caught up in looking through the old photos I never finished going through my room. I will be stuck at home tomorrow so I guess that will be my project for the day.
As I looked at the photos and the old layouts I couldn't help but smile and remember my early days of scrapbooking. Long before I knew what scrapbooking really was I used to keep pictures, newspaper articles, movie tickets and any other memorabilia that meant anything to me. I knew early on how important family photos were to me because my own baby album was lost in a fire when I was 10 years old. All of the pictures I had loved to look at and carefully put into an album with my moms help had been lost.
After having my first son I knew I wanted to document everything about his life. I took tons of pictures, but I also saved pieces of all of the wrapping paper that was on any gift for my new baby. I used the pieces of wrapping paper in his baby album. I wanted to remember everything.
It wasn't until after I had my second son that I learned about scrapbooking. I found out by luck that there was a scrapbook store in my area and that they gave classes. I quickly signed up for every class on the schedule. I was in love with everything I was learning. I was taking layout classes for layouts I would never use, just because it was so much fun. I still have some of those layouts and some of them still don't have pictures on them. For todays post I thought I would share some of those early layouts that did get pictures.

As you can see from the layouts, it was all about the stickers. I used to love the Me and My Big Ideas stickers. I still have a lot of them and can't bare to part with them. The little people are just so cute. I'm not sure when these layouts were made for sure, but I know it was before 2002 because that was the year we moved to a new town and I could no longer go to classes. I still miss that store and those classes.

Lefty or Righty?

The big debate in our family right now is whether Khloë will be Left or Right-handed. So far she uses both hands and we can't tell for sure. My father is left handed. He has 4 daughters and none of us are left handed. My first son (first grandchild in the family) is left handed. Out of 12 grandkids he's the only one. Now that he has his first child we are waiting with aniticipation.

For my layout today I used 3 different Cricut cartridges. I used Art Philosophy for the first font, cut at 1" and the large pink scallop edge cut at 1". For the hands I used My Community cut at 4". Lefty and Righty were cut at 1" from the Alphalicious cartridge. The small purple scallop edge was cut with a Stampin' Up border punch. The sketch was from page 30 of the PageMaps 2 book.

All of the papers I used were from my stash. Some was really old patterned paper from Creative Memories and some was cardstock I bought in bulk at  a scrapbook expo about a year ago. I have so many supplies in my room I could probably scrapbook for an entire year without buying anything except adhesive. In fact it's probably already been 6 months since I've bought anything new. Lets see how long I can go......

The Big House Hunt layout

Welcome to the weekend! The sun is shining, flowers blooming and the birds are singing. Sounds like a great day, right? Well, it would be except that I have a nasty cold that won't let me sleep, breathe or feel like doing anything. Yep, I think it's a sweats and craft room day. I'm just gonna lock myself away and see what I come up with.

Todays layout has actually been done for about a week, but I haven't had to the energy to take pictures and post it. When I finally decided to post it today I realized it didn't even have a title yet! Good thing I'm spending my day in my room. I cut the title out with my Cricut and the Jubilee cartridge. Then I printed the Must Haves list and Like to Have list from my computer.

The sketch is another one from PageMaps 2. This one is pg 74. It was a single page layout that I made into a two page spread.

The leafy vines were cut at 2 1/2 and 3 inches from the Circle Exclusive cartridge Sophie. Also from this cartridge are the bird cut at 6 inches, the Circles cut at 5 1/2 and 3 1/2 inches and the Scallop Circles cut at 4 1/2 and 3 inches. The notebook border punch is from EK Success.

The left side -

The right side -

What a difference a title and little journaling can make. LOL. Now I can call this layout done. Have a wonderful weekend. Cindy

When Life Hands You Lemons

As a mom and now a grandma I love to watch little kids as they explore and learn new things. I enjoy the innocence and the amazement when they discover something new. The little voices, big smiles and infectious giggles can't be beat. I cherish every moment I get to spend with my little Khloë.

The layout I just finished includes pictures from St. Patrick's Day. We had gone out to lunch with the family and were enjoying a nice meal when Khloë discovered lemons in a dish on the table. She loves all kinds of fruits so I'm sure she was expecting something sweet. To her dismay it was not at all SWEET.

Khloë was such a good sport. She didn't like it, but as soon as she was able to have a drink and wash away the sour taste she was back to her normal smiley self.

For this layout I used another pagemaps sketch. Here is a picture of it:

The sketch is a single page, so I was on my own for the coordinating page. The papers are a mix of Creative Memories, Cardstock and Echo Park. The lemon was cut at 3" from the Paisley cartridge. The scallop edges were cut at 1 1/2" from the Art Philosophy cartridge and the title was cut at 1 1/2" from the Feeling Groovy cartridge.

This weekend is Easter and I'm sure I'll have a lot more photos to scrapbook and memories to record.
Take care, Cindy

New Glasses!

Good morning. I didn't have time to make my post last night, so I thought I'd give you a little explanation as to why. (I actually have an excuse this time!) I had to go into town to pick up my new glasses. I only need them to read and it's a little hard to get used to them. I'm fine when I'm at the computer, but when I glance away to talk to someone or do something else, everything is blurry. I definitely can't wear them to walk around in. I would be running into things.

I was told by the eye doctor that my left eye is a little far-sighted. The right eye is very slight, but because the left eye is bad they are both working harder to work together. By the end of the day my eyes feel very tired. I'm hoping the glasses will help (if I can get used to them).

So here is a picture of me and my new glasses. What do you think?

Now that I have the new glasses I'm wondering if I should cut my hair shorter? Maybe add a little more blonde to it? Oh, I think I need new clothes too....

Have a great day. Cindy

Cone of Shame

Happy April 1st. The start of another month. I think it's a good time to get focused again. I've been slacking off lately and need to get back to the crafts I love.
To start off the month I'd like to share a two page layout I did of my doggie. Sorry there's a glare on the photos. I didn't notice until I downloaded my pictures to the computer.

We have this big 130 lb Bullmastiff and two 12 lb cats. One cat loves the dog, as you can see in the 3rd picture. They were watching t.v. together. The other cat totally despises him. She won't go after him and start anything, but if he gets too close to her she will make it clear to him that he should back off. Fortunately the dog has learned to stay a paws strike away from her. UN-fortunately it took a scratch to the eye and 3 trips to the vet before he learned it. He was so humiliated when he had to wear the cone around his neck to keep him from rubbing his eye.  I may have to add a picture of the perpetrator cat to the right side of the layout. For now I'm calling it done.
Thank you for stopping by and for hangin' in there when I was slacking off. Cindy