Christmas Gifts 2 con't.

Here are two examples of the dessert sections. I found these great puffy metallic stickers and some wonderful gems and they all looked so good together.

All the papers used in this project come from Bazzil, Hobby Lobby, My Mind's Eye, Me and My Big Ideas, and Die Cuts with a View. The embellishements I had in my stash for the most part.

Christmas Gifts 2

This gift is for my sister-in-law, Sandy. She has wanted a family recipe album of her own since she saw the first wedding recipe album I scrapped a few years ago. This time I decided instead of several 6x6 albums, I'd try a 4x6 2-up photo album. It worked well to get all 200 or so recipes in. It won't close, but neither would the 6x6 albums. It's a top of shelf type book. The cover had a photo slot, so I used it to put in the title. Each section has a section label and themes. Main Dishes I used flowers and brads to decorate. Side dishes uses chipboard and buttons and Desserts (divided into mini-sections: Cakes and Breads, Pies and Cobblers, Cookies and Candy, Drinks and Treats and Fun Stuff) all use flourishes and bling. I'll add a couple of scans of a dessert catagory in the next post, they wouldn't fit in this one.

Christmas Gifts Number 1

I'm working on some gifts for Christmas. The first is a set of handmade cards. The bird cards use stamps from Stampin' Up and say "Hello There" The flower uses a Cuttlebug embossing folder and Stampin' Up stamp "You've got a friend in me" and the bouquet uses another Cuttlebug folder and a Stampin' Up stamp that says, "A special note of thanks" I added ribbon to these after running them through my Xyron X. It's hard to tell in the scans, but the flower is on two shades of blue. The rest use various scraps I had. All the ink is Versa Magic multi-surface chalk ink. I have at least one more project to finish. I'll post samples of it when I complete it.

Update!

Life in our house has been busy the last few weeks (hence, no new posts.) Band has pretty much kept us hopping. Kat is a drum major and Archie is a section leader. Between Band Boosters, getting things ready for trips and going to games and contests, I haven't had much time to update. But today, our band competed in the Regional Contest in Brady and received Division 1 ratings. Now they'll advance to Area. It's in Grosbeck (near Waco) next Saturday. We're so proud of them! Here's a couple of pics from the trip. Now I need to scrap them for my turn at the Scrap Whispers challenge.





Drum majors and band directors with trophy.

Kat playing gong. Archie is the trombone above and to the left.

Kat has a flute solo.

Archie is the tallest and last trombone on the left line.

Band takes the field. Kat as drum major on left.

Teaching is Hazardous

Now follow me here. It's the second day of school. I've had a child screaming her head off all morning. She manages to get out of the PE building onto the playground with her brother and is fine. Mean teacher (me) comes to get her and makes her go inside with our class. Up the steep staircase. She's going along complacently, still screaming, but moving. Her brother calls her name from the playground. Midway up the stairs she turns and starts moving back down. I take a step backwards to block her. Backwards--on a steep stair case. My foot hits air. I quickly shift my weight forward to the other foot. Another child is standing still on the stairs in front of me. I shift sideways and back to aviod stepping on him. Again, my foot meets air. There is no saving me now. I'm going down. Sideways and down. I see the railing below me and have time to think, "Well, that was stupid! Oh this is going to really hurt!"

I was right. I have badly bruised ribs, my left arm has deep bruises from underarm to elbow and I have some torn cartilage in my chest. But nothing's broken.

So I returned to school the next day and have gritted my teeth and am making it through most of my normal activites.

The bright side...

The little girl hasn't tried to run away from me since then.

My classroom

My daughter was with me at Meet the Teacher and took a couple of shots of part of my classroom. As you can see, even with all the storage, my big stuff has to stack on top of the lockers. Here's the magnets that I made with my Cricut as well. I cut the butterflies from DCWV Nana's Kids pack papers and then added the info on each, laminated them and stuck a magnet on the back. Then the parents could take them and put them on their fridges at home. Most parents seemed to love the idea.

Back to school

I've spent the last week with my daughter (and occasionally my son and husband) fixing up my room for the coming school year. Friday was our first "offical" day back as teachers. We had a "welcome back" meeting in the morning and then in the afternoon we worked in our rooms. My teaching partner and I mapped out our first three weeks of lessons and set our schedule for the year.

My room is nearly finished. I have a couple of little things to finish and I'll be ready for Meet the Teacher Night next Friday.

I do need to get out my Cricut and cut some shapes for magnets. My teaching partner had the best idea. Make magnets to match your room theme and put your name, school phone, e-mail address and conference times on it for parents to keep handy all year long. I have "Goin' Buggy" theme this year, so I need to look for something in my Cricut carts to go with that. Butterflies, maybe?

I'll take pics and post them of the finished room soon.

Altered tins

These are three tins I whipped together. The round one is an old Altoid's tin. It will hold my DH's headphones to keep them from getting tangled up in the computer carry case. The other two are alterable tins from Oriental Trading Scrapbook. The one in the middle uses rub-ons and the other one is stamped and hand colored with watercolor markers.

Board Book Cover and all over view

The front of the book has two tags with the kids intials hanging from the ribbon. I added the year '09 on the binding and a quote from Billy Graham on the front. Dad was pleased with the whole thing.

Board Book

Each year I try to make my dad something that has the kids' pictures from the previous year on it. This year I made him a board book. Each set of pics has a quote that fits the pictures since he loves it when I do that.

The paper I used is from My Mind's Eye. I added ink and stickers along with some chipboard (basic grey and something else from my stash) and some rub-ons.

Altered items Clipboards

These are two altered clipboards I made last week. The first is a schedule board that I plan to use to keep track of who has to be where when this year. The second is a Farkle rules board for my sister. It lists all of the ways to score points in Farkle. They are both made with scrap papers, Making Memories glazes and dye inks. I used rub-ons on the schedule and thin chipboard pieces on the Farkle board.

Home and Refreshed

Well, once we catch up on missed sleep and laundry!

What an awesome week. The two preachers this year were Dr. Dennis Wiles from First Baptist, Arlington and Dr. Duane Brooks, Tallowood Baptist in Houston. They both were amazing preachers. We feel challenged and blessed and ready to serve.

The music was led by Jim Cleveland of FBC El Paso. Jeff and Kathleen both sang in the choir and in a smaller ensemble. Kathleen even got to play her flute one night for a congregation of nearly 1,000. It seemed a little strange to hear her announced as Kat Mills.

During the free time we had, I got to scrap some. I didn't have the pictures I thought I had, but I did make several cards and some altered items. I don't think I've scrapped that much at once in weeks!

I'll post some pics of the altered items and cards in future posts.

Off to the mountians!

We're leaving in a few hours for our annual trip to Paisano Baptist Encampment between Alpine and Marfa, in the Davis Mountains. It still feels strange to be standing in nearly 100 degree weather packing for temps anywhere from the 100's to the 50's, but that's what it's like. We'll take the spoiled brat, aka Amelia the cat. She's fun to watch on the screened in porch. She'll slink around chasing bugs and then jump on the window ledge to meow at birds outside. I'll try to get some pictures of her doing that.

I'm taking along 2 small acrylic albums. Maybe I can get over my fear of them and get them done. I'm also taking some cards along to make and a couple of altered projects. It's nice to sit in the quiet and just relax and scrap in the afternoons.

This year's Bible Study leader is the pastor of a friend of mine from Houston. She says he's fantastic, so that will be enjoyable.

I'm also taking along some things to make hymnal markers for the choir at church. I'm tired of torn bulletin pieces falling out of my hymnal each Sunday.

So, I should have some good crafts and some fun pictures to post when I get back.

See you then.

Some Scrapping!

Well, cards actually, but hey, I used my Cuttlebug, inks, Bazzil, and ribbons!

These are thank yous for the friends who brought us meals after my surgery. I didn't think I'd like the tan one when I first embossed it, but now it's my favorite.

The Reason I Haven't Updated Sooner

What a week! My in-laws were here for the Fourth, and stayed over to do some stuff at their cabin at the farm. So my dear Mother-in-law, Clarice, and Kathleen and I did some shopping on Monday. It was fun. On Tuesday we got the kids eyes checked and Jeff left to go to the funeral of a very special man in Marfa.

On Wednesday our very special friend and family member Cheryl called. She was trying to paint her house and her helpers had to back out due to a case of mono. So on Thursday we got up early, headed to Cheryl's house and painted. We finished up Friday. The house looks great, but July in Texas is a tough time to paint. It was 104 in the shade and we weren't in the shade most of the time. The best part is we all had fun visiting with Cheryl and it didn't seem like the chore it should have been. And Cheryl, Kathleen and I went and got pedicure when it was over. :)

The Beginning

Well, this is my first post on this blog. My hope is that this can be the place I display my scrapbook layouts (the scraps) and share random thoughts about life (the snippets). Over the next few posts I plan to get organized and adjust the look of this blog to my tastes, but for now the template will do.