Sunday 29 September 2013

September TM Projects

Now that I've shared all of my projects from the kit I made at Treasured Memories in September, I can show you the projects I did for my usual monthly assignment. 

I had a Theresa Collins kit called Family Stories to work with and I like her stuff.


See the little pleated strip of paper under the photo. I had to do some inventing to use that pattern.It looks like this. I thought it might be nice with a photo of Brad and I. Ahh, a little man and woman in love. 


Sadly, I haven't got any photos of Brad and I... the kids have taken over. So, I folded it so the little man was covered and used it on this page about sisters. 


Now it's about girl love. Sorry little man.


See these cool bark hearts? Seriously, they look just like bark and on the backside, like leather. Very cool. I think they're Prima.


Hope you liked them!

Friday 27 September 2013

Fall Walks

I love fall! Seriously, the air is crisp, the sun is out, the leaves are changing... its my favourite time of year. 

We've been enjoying our walks while Gracie practices with her new bike. She's already hit the 10 km mark on this little pink wonder! Impressive, right?! She loves it. It was definitely a good gift for her. 


She's had three spills, but nothing serious. She actually laughed when she fell with me (both times... yes, 2 out of 3 spills were when I was in charge, but frankly, with a squirmy 8 month old strapped to you, and a dog leash in hand, it's hard to react quickly). She's just happy to be cruising along on her bike.


Emma likes watching the scenery from her carrier and Bailey enjoys the extra walks, so it's a win-win situation.


We've got to enjoy the last days of sunshine before the cold and snow of winter creeps up on us.

Tuesday 24 September 2013

TM September Kit

They revealed the last of the kit I made at Treasured Memories on Monday. Ten layouts in total that I made with this kit, and I had tons of leftovers. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

This is one of my favourite photos of all time. I love this shot of my dad giving his two granddaughters a hug (at the time, they were his only granddaughters). So sweet.


A few close ups:


Cork pins and a burlap scalloped circle, behind a denim heart... I love texture, so these little pieces make me smile. I think a little dimension adds so much to your layouts.


I trimmed the little square alphas (moments) and turned them into flags, just to change it up a bit. Also, do you see those feathers? I love feathers. This is such a great trend. I'm jumping right on the Native American bandwagon with feathers, dreamcatchers, and navajo prints. Why not?


These tags are from Pebbles and I really like them. I probably wouldn't have seen them if I wasn't picking this kit, but now I know to look again.



Yes, hello adventure! Kids are an adventure, but at this stage, when they're just into everything and really motoring around, it's a full on race. Let the games begin.


Love these enamel dots from Freckled Fawn. A great addition to any page.


If you ever feel like your title is a little too hidden, make it stand out more by tracing around it. I used a subtle glitter pen here, but it's my go to. You'll see it in a lot of the layouts I did with the kit. 


This layout was the last one I made. A few little pieces, some cute die-cuts and I love it. Okay, maybe it's the cutie sleeping babe in a snowsuit, but I do love it.


This large S was one of the journaling tags. It had an S in the middle and the word Story below, but I trimmed it up to fit my needs and placed it behind this great wooden polaroid frame.


And I still love those cheeks....


I thought the chalkboard paper be awesome, be happy fit for this picture of Brad and I, but there were so many words on one paper, I had to cut out an odd shape to get those words and only those words. I wasn't sure how to make it work, but the triangle trend is pretty popular, so I embraced it and surrounded it with triangles and covered a bit of it with my picture. It worked.


Okay, that's it. I loved making this kit, and I hope you enjoyed it. I heard it was selling well at the store, so hopefully that's a good sign. 

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Indian Summer September Kit at TM

Treasured Memories released a sneak of three more of my layouts on Monday, so I can post a few more close-ups. 

This one was sort of in my mind as I was picking things. I loved the gold splatters on the background paper, so I pulled some gold into the kit. I am enamoured by gold now, by the way. 

This is also my favourite picture that I took all summer. I love it. 



I like to add dimension by layering papers behind a photo. These photo mats can be made more dimensional by curling the paper edges and applying pop dots between papers. You don't even have to apply the same level of dimension to each layer of paper, lift up one corner or all four. Be flexible.


I folded over a corner and stuck a cute tag in behind. The background was one of the Theresa Collins journaling cards from the kit. 


Gold buttons!

In my opinion, the best thing about this kit is that it's versatile. You can go from sophisticated (above) to light-hearted (below) without leaving the table to get new supplies. The look is easy to change, depending on what embellishments you pull out.


I love the combination of black and white with lots of colours. Plus, I like this moment captured: Gracie is silly and Emma is sweet. These two...


This chalkboard tag from My Mind's Eye had to go in the kit. It was another highlight for me. I think its a good thing I had girls, I'm a gusher. 


This background paper was another favourite in the kit. It says 'I love you' in running lines of script. So sweet. 


Gold arrows make me happy.


American spelling on embellishments makes me sad.

Hope you enjoyed this little tour. There are still four more layouts to come. 

Monday 16 September 2013

Family Photos

My brother's family and our little family teamed up to get our parents a family photo for their anniversary this year. It's been ages since we had a professional photo taken, in fact, the last time, I was in grade 6 and my mom got sick the day of, so she wasn't in them... so... we were in desperate need of some.


My mom picked her favourite local photographer, Jill Clayholt, and we set a date.


I could not have been happier with the pictures!


With four kids under the age of 4, we expected problems, we had them prepped, but one of our wee ones was sick, one was eating grass for most of the photo shoot, and the adults weren't much better. In fact, I know I ruined a ton of pictures. I couldn't stop talking to the kids, adjusting someone's clothes, fiddling with something... seriously.



Somehow, the pictures turned out fabulous! I know mom and dad love them, but I feel a little like I cheated and gave myself a gift, too, because I have a CD full of great pictures!






These were taken about 3 weeks ago now, but it wasn't the photographer's delay. She had the photos ready within days of the shoot!! Amazing. If only I operated as fast....

If you need some great photos, contact Jill. You'll love the finished product.




Saturday 14 September 2013

Weekly Recap


Gracie's first day of preschool was a success. She had lots of fun, tried to learn her teacher's names, played in shaving cream foam, played at the park, and brought home some magic play dough.... Pretty good day!


She said it was 'easy peasy' being left by herself and her teacher told me after that Gracie took a real leadership roll in the class... I bet she did ;)  (apparently, she told some girls who were talking they were supposed to be listening). So... Leadership, we'll go with that, I guess.

She also started gymnastics again, and I think she may be a little out of her league with her new class. She's the smallest by at least a head and can't reach the bars or anything by herself. Plus, they started off with cartwheels and backwards somersaults, which aren't really in her repertoire. We'll see.

We watched her little buddy one night, so she had her first sleepover this week, to top it off. It was funny and they were sweet, but I think they were about 3-4 hours short of sleep the next day. At one point, Berlyn started to miss her mom and Gracie reassured her, "you can call my mommy Christa." (her mom's name) Ha! Cute. 






















I'm not sure if you can believe this, based on the picture above, but Berlyn fell out of bed a few times that night.... Berlyn also woke up when Emma awoke and poked her head out of Gracie's room and asked if I could tell 'him' to be quiet :)



I picked up a new kit from Treasured Memories, went to strollersize, went to a craft/scrapbooking show, got new dishes, and had a little shopping extravaganza in IKEA. I also baked cookies and muffins and stocked my freezer full of herbs, shredded zucchini and cooked spaghetti squash.


Brad has been biking lots, has played two games of hockey and he took in the hills and stairs of strollersize with me this week. He also helped set up for a bike race Friday and Saturday morning.



Emma is still working on her next tooth, I think. It's been months, so any day it will appear.... She's also walking with her little car shown above and she likes to back it into this other noisy toy ( I call it the parallel bars) so she can maximize the noise output. She's also started sleeping through the night, so we're starting to be less like zombies!!


We're getting ready for company this weekend, Gracie's birthday next week, her party, and swimming lessons starting, so no slowing down. 

And that's the update.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Treasured Memories September Kit- Indian Summer

Here's a look at the layouts I made with the kit. I'll post them slowly, like they are on the TM blog, so I don't spoil the fun, but I have a few close-ups for you. 

If you haven't already, head over to the store and see the kit and my layouts in person and if you're there, tell them you love it, please, so they ask me to do it again :)


I wanted to show how versatile this kit is, so I pulled in some colours that weren't in the kit so you could see that you can really use the product with anything. This purple cardstock isn't part of the kit and there really isn't any purple in the kit, put it makes the layout really pop.


I love these wooden, polaroid frames. They may have been my favourite part of the kit. Or maybe the envelope that's layered behind it... I have to put the story behind Gracie's big soccer goal in here so I remember it. 


My friend gives me cards that have this saying on them all the time and I love it. It's silly, but it's true. I used the you die cut and layered it over the heart and speech bubble die cuts and then used two different alphabets to make the title. There are actually four different alphas in this kit, so you can mix and match like crazy!


This is a pretty simple layout with an 8 x 10 photo and a triangle of embellishments around it. 

A few of the wooden embellishments in the kit. I layered a flag over a button here. 


I printed this photo out as an 8 x 10 so any little bit of white space was a great spot for journaling, and layering became really easy, because I wasn't worried about covering up something important.


The die-cuts in this kit are so great! Nadine cut them out for me and there are a ton of them. You can use them for titles or embellishments, or whatever you'd like. I layered them over a journaling card for my page title.


I loved this blue floral paper. 


Another wooden embellishment and a sticker tucked in between two layers of photo mats. 


A cute little banner with some butterflies and a wooden heart scattered around. They told me I couldn't add anything to the kit besides cardstock and I took them seriously, so I nabbed the string for this banner from one of the tags in the kit...

So there's a glimpse at the first three layouts. Next Monday, there will be more on the Treasured Memories blog and I'll add some more pictures here.