Carving Pumpkins

On Friday, we took advantage of the fact that there was no school to carve our pumpkins for Halloween.

Sage was right in there from the beginning, willing to cut and scoop. (She ended up letting me cut for her though.)



Jonah definitely didn't want to cut or scoop, but I managed to talk him into drawing the face that he wanted and that I would cut it out for him.



A picture of Sage working hard at scooping out the seeds from her pumpkin.



Austin decided that for his pumpkin, he wanted to cut. So he cut the top off the pumpkin and then let me scoop it out (what a guy!) He had printed the silhouette of a wolf howling off of the computer, cut it out, traced it onto the pumpkin and then cut it out himself. I was very proud!



And a couple of pictures of the end results:



Jonah's pumpkin is a shark and Sage's pumpkin is an owl (like their costumes).



And after rinsing the seeds and letting them sit overnight to dry, I made Pioneer Woman's Pepitas (a.k.a. roasted pumpkin seeds).



So the pumpkins are carved, the seeds are roasted, the costumes are completed (Sage's & the boys') and the candy is purchased (& not all eaten... yet! ;) )

All that's left to do is go trick or treating tonight.

Have a happy (& safe!) Halloween!

Halloween costumes 2010, part 2

I already shared Sage's costume in the Part 1 post. Today, I thought I'd share Austin & Jonah's costumes.

Once again, I was inspired by this link from Fiskars to make their Halloween costumes.

I loved that their ideas stemmed from using already made clothing and adding to it. So much easier (& cheaper!) than starting from scratch!

For the boys, I lucked out at the Thrift Store and found a black hoodie for Austin and a grey one for Jonah. A trip to Michael's took care of the felt (both regular and the stiff kind) and after a little bit of cutting, pinning and sewing, I ended up with these:



Jonah is a grey shark and Austin is a killer whale. Very easy and comfy to wear, too.

Thanks for looking!

A SSD layout and some sneak peeks...

.... of the November MSS kit.

First the layout...



I made it last Saturday at SSD, using a Pencil Lines sketch and some Crate Paper goodies, some October Afternoon rub-ons, some Pink Paislee foam letters & a Maya Road Chipboard snowflake.

For the snowflake, I inked it all over with white ink and then pressed a Hero Arts handwriting stamp into the ink while it was still wet.



And here are my sneaks from the MSS November kit:







Thanks for looking!

A personal challenge

I remember when, years ago, I fell in love with these Scrapworks tailored letter tabs. I thought they were so cool. But, they were also pricey, so I refrained from buying them.



Then, a couple of years later, my friend, Anita, had a garage sale and had some of her leftover letters in a little baggie for sale. I think they were priced at a dollar or something like that, so I snatched them up. I made this layout with them, back in April 2007:


(Look how cute & little Jonah was here!)

But I haven't use them since then.

Until, I came across them last month when I was cleaning through my supplies and getting ready for a garage sale of my own. I was tempted to price them and sell them, but I remembered how much I liked them. So I sat down and tried to figure out some words I could spell with them. One of them was "Austin", which I knew I could easily incorporate into a layout. The other words were partial, but I figured I could substitute other embellishments for the missing letters. So I challenged myself to use up the rest of the letters and here's what I came up with....

A layout about Austin, using some My Mind's Eye paper:



Two cards, using some Crate Paper:





A third card with some more My Mind's Eye goodies:



And another layout, which I shared last week:



So, I think I did fairly well. I have a Q, F, X and D left, so if you have any suggestions for words I could use with these on a layout, feel free to let me know. ;)

(It's really too bad I couldn't get a picture of the FoX we saw on the gravel road the other day. He was just too Darn Quick!)

Thanks for looking!

Feeling on top of things....

.... even if it's ever so briefly. ;)

This week, I worked on Monday, which was good. Then I had Tuesday & Wednesday off. On those days I managed to:
... catch up/spend time with a good friend
... clean my house
... prepare some food for a lunch at church on Sunday
... prepare some more food for a family gathering on Sunday evening
... start cleaning through my scrap supplies
... create a scrapbooking layout
... pick up groceries
... have a children's ministry meeting at church
... get my hair cut

(Whew, was I productive or what?)

Then, yesterday was another day off. And I spent it shopping in Grand Forks with my wonderful friend, Val. I picked up a few things for myself AND made a huge dent in my Christmas shopping purchases! Gotta love that!

Today is my fourth day off in a row and once again, the house is clean. :)

And tomorrow, I'm spending the day scrapping at My Scrap Shoppe's Super Scrap Day. That's right, the whole day. Twelve hours. I cannot wait!

And here's a layout to share, because I don't like posting without a picture. ;)


I made it using an October sketch at Page Maps as well as The Girl's Paperie, My Mind's Eye, October Afternoon and Stampin' Up! patterned paper, Pink Paislee letter stickers, Creative Imaginations stamps, The Girl's Paperie brads, some really, really old Scrapworks woven labels and an October Afternoon diecut.

Have a great weekend!

Halloween costumes 2010, part 1

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Fiskars with a link to some great Halloween costume ideas. I let the kids look at it and Sage decided that she wanted to be an owl.

Which I thought was great, for several reasons:

1. Her name means "wise one", and the owl thing has just always been connected to that. (One of her first outfits was a cute little Baby Gap one that was covered with little owls. Oh and it was sage green, too!)

2. I love owls.

3. The costume looked quite doable.

So, we hit the thrift shop and bought some corduroy pants/jumper/shirt to make the feathers. A great way to repurpose and save money! (In hindsight, it would have been probably better to just go with polar fleece & felt, as I didn't realize how much the corduroy would fray. Oh well, next time...)

I used an old tank top of mine and sewed the oval shapes (feathers) to it. We decided to use the tank top to layer over a brown long sleeve top (for the daytime/insde parties) or her brown jacket (for trick or treating, because, well, we live in Canada, and it gets cold here.)

The hat I found at Superstore and I followed the Fiskars' directions for making it, changing the colours slightly.

And here's the end result:







Isn't it/she adorable?

Thanks for looking!

Fall Sketch Friday

I've been posting sketches on Fridayss on the MSS blog for a while now. Click here to check out this week's sketch.

Here's the layout that goes with it:



I used a mix of products for this one: My Mind's Eye patterned paper, Stampin' Up! metal embellishments, Studio Calico letter stickers.... and a cork heart that was sent to me last year when I was on the DT at Scrap for a Cure.

I kept the layout pretty simple but was quite happy with how it turned out.

Thanks for looking!

Yet another back to back layout

I've been in love with diecut patterned paper for a while now. And I've gotten pretty good at making layouts on both sides of it. Now, My Mind's Eye makes it even easier, as they've made their diecut patterned paper with pattern on both sides! So great!

So here's what I made on the front:


(On this layout, in the journaling, I talk about how I hope the kids will have good fun memories of me in their childhood. The photos were taken by Cameron at the Mall of America this summer.)

And on the back:


Another layout about me! ;) This is from my birthday this past August. Photos also taken by Cam.

Thanks for looking!

I am thankful...

1. For Jesus and His incredible love & grace.

2. For Cameron.

3. For these guys:




4. For the close friends God has blessed me with.

5. For my church family.

6. For areas where I can serve God.

7. For my job.

8. For our lovely town.

9. For our home.

10. For vehicles that work.

11. For fall in all its splendor.

12. For a hobby I love.

13. For friends I've made through #12.

14. For chocolate M&Ms.

15. For opportunities to learn new things.

16. For praise songs that get my focu back where it belongs.

17. For books and the gift of literacy.

18. For movie nights where I can snuggle with my kids.

19. For meals shared with love ones.

20. For each day.

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!
Emjoy your weekend!

The 2010 Olympic Torch

The Olympic Torch run came through our town this past January and I was so glad I'd brought my camera along to school that day, to capture the event. (Despite the fact that it was terribly cold out!)

I created this layout using a sketch, created by Danielle Flanders and some My Mind's Eye goodness:



(It's also posted on the MSS blog today, as my Fall Sketch #3.)

Thanks for looking!

Some tae kwon do layouts

I was mentionning recently how I was trying to get "caught up" in my scrapbooking-- i.e. trying to finish up scrapping my 2009 layouts. And I thought I was successful, until I realized I had a 8x10 collage waiting to be scrapbooked, as well as a 4x6 photo and a collage of 2x2 photos printed out as a 4x6.

And they both happened to be photos taken at two of the tae kwon do tournaments we attended last year.

So here's how I scrapbooked them:





It's always a little hard to scrapbook these photos. The lighting is never good and honestly, I never look that great in the photos. Oh well.

Thanks for looking!