Monday 29 June 2015

Biking in March

It seems like the girls were on their bikes more in March then they are in June. They were so excited to get outside, the snow had hardly melted off the sidewalks and they were out there. 


Anyone else bothered by the American spelling of favourite??? It makes me cringe every time I see it on a scrapbooking element. Oh well. I used it. Probably no one else notices.


The only bad thing about pocket pages is they are slightly larger than 12 x 12, so my scanner cuts them off a bit. 

Saturday 27 June 2015

Treasured Memories Layouts


I got to work with the Secret Garden line by Kaisercraft this month. 

The best part of working for Treasured Memories is getting lines that I might not pick up myself and trying them out. I am constantly surprised with how much I like these lines and I've actually changed some of my favourite companies based on these kits!

Flowers usually aren't my go to element, but I love how these papers look with my tea party pictures of my two little princesses. 


This big die-cut doily is so nice and so easy to use. It's soft and pretty and delicate.

Here's a close-up.

 

The flowers, butterflies and bright colours look great with my old-fashioned looking photos.

I made another layout with some of the ephemera doilies, because I thought the circles would make a completely different style of layout with the same products. I like to show that the products are versatile.


And a closer look:


Last scraps went into a quickie card. 


Love this line. I recommend it!

Thursday 25 June 2015

Adorable Em

A little layout featuring Bazzill Basics and Crate Paper, with a bit of My Mind's Eye and Fancy Pants Designs thrown in. 


I love this photo overlay and the bright colours on the background paper.


Tuesday 23 June 2015

Storm the Fort

Brad and I ran the Storm the Fort obstacle course race in Fort Saskatchewan last Saturday.

It was really fun. 

The obstacles were great. There were about 15-20 different things we had to complete throughout the run. We had to carry a 5 gallon pail without a handle filled with cement up a hill about 30 m, weave over and under through a giant log pyramid, carry a sandbag 30 m, hop a mini obstacle course with our feet tied together, crawl through a ravine, jump rock to rock through another ravine, lots of ladders, lots of gates to jump or crawl under, nets to crawl under, tubes to crawl through, tires to run through, and I don't remember what else.

I got a few pictures of the obstacles:


A giant slip and slide. Which, despite the look on my face, was awesome.





This rope ladder.



The Arctic Enema....


Yep, that's ice stacked up beside the giant dunk tank.

We had lots of fun and ran it together. I won't say who was the fastest, but I found this picture posted online. Haha! 


"Just out here waiting for my wife." 




We finished! 
And we went faster than the last time we did a similar race. 
Yay us!




And the kids ate donuts and cookies and enjoyed themselves immensely.



I've already scheduled it in for next year.




Thursday 18 June 2015

Old photos in Pocket Pages

These are a great way to catch up on old photos. 

I have lots sof pictures from family get togethers and this is a great way to get them scrapped!


These are so old. That's Kale, Gracie and Paige when they were little. 


And a few more of Kale and Gracie going for a stroll. I looked up the story behind these photos on my blog (so handy) and they made me smile. 

Quick and simple and they're in the album!

Tuesday 16 June 2015

Swoon June

 May was good! It was busy, but we had fun, and so far, June is coming in pretty nicely as well!


Emma is learning to take selfies. 
That makes two pint-sized photographers in the house now.


Brad came in second in a cross country bike race (first place didn't stay for the awards ceremony). Haha!


I went out with my cousins and besties for my future cousin, Taya's wedding shower and had far too much fun. (Fake ID at 32, check!)


I've been loving the weather, it makes me want lighter, more colourful meals. Yum! 
Bye bye crock pot! Hello Bud Light.



I've been going for lots of runs in the river valley, which I love. Even if the people I run with will always be faster than me, I still enjoy it.


Gracie's bringing home truckloads of crafts and projects from school in preparation for the end of the year! Yikes.  

I love this one. What fun teachers she had this year. Lucky duck. 

Next year, she starts school at 8:30, so I guess we can look forward to that for the next two months. No more sleeping in Emma Gem. 

All is well with the Malackos.


Sunday 14 June 2015

Edward the Emu

Gracie's class stuffed animal came home with us a few weeks ago for a sleepover. 

Gracie got to keep Edward the Emu for one day, and then had to make a journal entry describing what she did with him to present to her class. 

This is what we did.


We bought some plants for our fairy garden.


He helped us design, plant and decorate our fairy garden.


Then we ran through the sprinklers. 


Edward watched.


Gracie completed her journal entry. 
(See her fairy garden, her, and Edward under a blue, sunny sky?)


Okay, she did three quarters of it. I finished her homework for her... 
"Writing just takes soooo long....."

Haha! She was only the second kid in the class to try and write their own, so I guess it's okay. 

You're free to hold an intervention if you see me building a volcano for her 4th grade science fair.

Thanks Edward for the fun day!

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Beach Babe Layout

I love this great die-cut shape we got in the TM kit a few months ago, and I like how it worked with these cute pictures of Em on the beach. 

I paired it with some Heidi Swapp patterned paper, Jillibean Soup and American Crafts alphas and sequins from MME. 


I like how it all came together.

Treasured Memories Kit, Part 2

The second line I got from TM this month was American Crafts Fine and Dandy, a Dear Lizzy line. 

I loved it. I thought that red would be hard to use with so much pink, but it works. 


This layout captured our Happy Meal date. 
It actually works well with the red McDonald's packaging in the photo. 


I didn't have a ton of leftovers, but I wanted to give them  little more to display, so I made these three cards. 


This one is super simple. I used the bottom, border strips for this one, as well as a thin scrap from patterned paper I had for the background. Simply trim the ends to make them look like ribbons, and make them random sizes. I added a vellum die-cut and two stickers with pop dots, and drew on some stitching with a black pen, and it was done!


Some more quick doodling and a sticker on the inside. Simple and cute.


These two just used a simple square of patterned paper on cardstock, more stickers, vellum die-cut shapes and more doodling. 

Done like dinner!

Monday 8 June 2015

Treasured Memories Kit

I got a new kit this month from TM. 

The first line was Kaisercraft's Say Aloha collection. It was so bright and colourful, I really liked it.

I thought of re-scrapbooking some beach pictures, but I have so many pictures to scrapbook, I can't afford to redo any. I chose some great zoo pictures from last summer. 

The zoo theme still seemed to work well with the kit. I made two pocket pages first. 


The first used this awesome die-cut paper mounted on another sheet of the patterned paper. I chopped it up to fit in the pockets, which isn't as labour intensive as it sounds and added my photos, title and embellishments. This die-cut did all the work of decorating the page for me!


The great thing about pocket pages is you can use the backside of double sided paper so easily! This pink pattern was on the back of the black sheet on side 1, and worked well to  mat 16 photos (!! yep, I fit 16 pictures on this!!)

Usually, for a trip like this when I have a ton of photos, I would make a mini album, but pocket pages allow you to cram in so many pictures, it was even easier!


I used the rest of the kit to make this layout of Miss Emma, aka. my little wild child. These papers are really pretty. I really enjoyed this emerald green and bright pink especially. 


I still had tons of photos left from the zoo trip, so I used the scraps from the other projects and added some other scraps to make these two pocket pages to finish it all up.


I've got to admit when I got this black and white spotted paper from Glitz, I had no idea how I would ever use it... I think it looks very animal-y and perfect for the zoo. 

Haha!

Also, the zoo tickets are so bright and colourful, they're perfect embellishments. 

Thanks TM for helping me get all of these pictures off my table and into albums! 

Hurrah!



Saturday 6 June 2015

Art at School

Gracie's school took part in a very cool project this year. 

The kids in her Kindergarten class drew a monster on a large piece of paper. 
It was sent to a Grade 4 class who coloured it in. 
Then it went to a Grade six class who added texture.
Next a Grade 9 art class took over.
Lastly, a High School fashion class made some of the monsters into stuffed animals. 

It was a very cool process. Once it was all completed all of the kids got together to meet and see how their artwork turned out.


They had all kinds of centres to participate in. Colouring their original monsters,



making play-doh monsters,


and decorating cookies.


They got cool monster t-shirts, 



made chalk monsters,



and met all of the kids who worked on the project. 
Grcie's artwork only made three of the steps because there are so freakin' many kindergarteners in her school. Haha! No other class had 70 students, so they did what they could.

This is Gracie's finished monster. 

Hers started out as a flying monster that was circled by smaller monsters. The other kids added all the rest. 


How creative is that? I was really surprised. 


Also a little worried.... 
Is that monster perhaps a mother? With all of those little babies??

Am I reading too much into this? Haha!


Either way the kids had so much fun and  enjoyed the project and the fun field trip.

Ahhh, Kindergarten.