10 favorite layouts of 2010

Today's the last day of 2010. I can't believe another year is almost over and not to mention another decade! But before I say adieu to 2010 I wanted to share my 10 most favorite layouts I made this year. It was hard to narrow it down but going through my file, these are the ones that stood out the most....so in no particular order....

1. 10 reasons

Everytime I make a page about my feelings about hubby is a special page to me. Plus the photo is also one of those ones that I treasure. I also loved how I played with some misting techniques here.

2. 1st day of 1st grade

Can't believe my son's growing like a weed. I love this page because he had a great haircut (one of the few times I give him a good buzz) and all the fun layerings I was able to do with the products.

3. My family

this one is a fave because most of my family is in one photo. This is becoming really rare nowadays. Plus all the fun vintage papers that was added to give that antique/precious feel to the page.

4. Mister Personality

How can I not add this to my fave this year? I love my son's photo. Oh how darling he is in his church shirt and tie plus that smirk and the folded arms. How can you not love that?! Oh the page was fun to make too.

5. A mother's love

love this page because of the fun photos of me and kids holding a flower vase that they gave me for Mother's day. I also had fun going through all the Upsy Daisy Designs paper collections to punch out my butterflies.

6. I am blessed

Truly feel blessed everytime I look at these photos. I also love how I added transparency over acrylic tags to add a subtle design.

7.Snow Fight

I love this because of the fun snow fight between my son and husband captured on the photo. This year, I really tried to get out of my comfort zone and try some new techniques. Sprinkling glitter over my title was one of those techniques I tried this year.

8. A Dreamer

this photo is one of my favorites this year. It was one of those lucky ones that I had concocted in my head and when I tried to execute it, it actually worked! I also love how the colors of the papers and embellishments makes me smile.

9. Be true to you

this page is so sweet and feminine which is the best descriptions for my sweet daughter. I love Maddie's smile and her curly hair on the photo. I also love those sweet floral ribbons sprayed with glimmer mist to match my layout.

10. Downtown Disney

I had a hard time picking my favorite double page spread. I love them all but this one exudes fun to me. A thing that you can almost, always see in my layouts. I also love how I made my pattern papers look like Disney ears to match my layout theme.

So that's it. Thanks for stopping by and Happy New Year to all.

Till next time,
Grace

Our Christmas Morning

Here's how our Christmas morning shaped up. Sorry it's a bit late. That's my story lately.

The kids have been waking up earlier than we have for the past few days (Kids go to bed at around 9pm while Mitch and I stay up watching TV till 12 0r 1 am) Anyways on Christmas day they didn't make any fuss but Mitch decided that at 7:45 we were going to wake up and start the opening of the presents. I was not happy being waken up that early but I forced myself to get up so I can take photos.
He told me that he would just let the kids open their presents while I stay in bed. Is he nuts? Sometimes I wonder if he really knows me. I mean c'mon, I'm a scrapbooker. Why on earth will I sleep in while my kids open their presents on Christmas morning????
Anyways here's some photos of the morning...


It's funny how the buying of presents took a whole month and the wrapping was about 2-3 hours to do and all this work for only about 15 minutes of wrapping paper ripping and a few oohhhs and aaahhhs. There were even no screeching or screaming for surprise.


Marcus got a lot of stuff. This box is from Grandma and Grandpa Tolman's. It was a sweater. Somehow we all knew that was coming. :) He also got two DS games and a pair of pants from Lolo and Lola


This was from Uncle George and Aunt Alleli


Santa even gave the kids each a personal letter. Here's Marcus trying to read his' all by himself.


Then here's Maddie with her sweater from Grandma Tolman. Maddie also got a Princess Jewelry set, princess toy celphone and an outfit from Lolo and Lola.


Then a DS from Santa. Pink! a perfect gift for this Pink Princess.


Then here's Mitch opening up our family gift from Santa and it was a....


WII!!! Yes we've been that good that we finally got a WII.

and as for me, I got this....

I guess I was pretty good this year too. *wink*

and here's the mess afterwards.


and after opening up the presents, we ate this for breakfast...

I made a breakfast casserole (prepped the night before) some cinnamon rolls and apples. Plus eggnog to drink. Yummy!

So that's it. Hope you all had a great Christmas and wishing you all a Happy and Blessed New Year.

Till next time,
Grace

Temple lights

I know it might be a little late to show Christmas related project but I know that most of the people out there still have their Christmas lights on so I think I'm still within the "time frame".

Anyways here's a layout share featuring some wonderful acrylic pieces from Clear Scraps...

Temple Lights

I used the buckle shaped frame to house my title. For my papers I used the Jovial line from Basic Grey and added some lace, ribbon and flowers to add texture to my page. I also personalized my frame around the page by punching a decorative border from the paper, cut it out and adhered it with pop up dot. This way, there's a distinction between the design of the border and the design of the background paper.


for the frame, I added glitter on it. To make this a super easy (but messy) technique, I just ran some of the Tombow vellum adhesive onto the acrylic piece and then dumped glitter on top of the piece. I pressed on a little bit to make sure that the glitter gets adhered really well onto the acrylic. I will warn you though that it's a pretty messy job so make sure you do it with paper underneath so you can catch all the excess glitter.


I also added a little acrylic ornament that came in the Believe Clear N Chip pack. I smeared some bronze powder on it to add color and then made a flourish with liquid pearl. Make sure you let it dry before adhering onto the frame.

To that's it. Make sure you check the Clear Scraps items used here and all the other cool stuff Clear Scraps has to offer here.

Thank you for stopping by.

Till next time,
Grace

This is what's it like to live in Colorado (Grace's Version)

Happy Sunday everyone. Hope you all had a great Christmas.
This was our first Christmas away from family so it was a bit strange not going to Lolo and Lola's and also Grandma and Grandpa Tolman's home. But we were blessed to have friends around us, they invited us to dinner and that was nice. As for gifts, I guess we were all good this year because Santa showered us with some great stuff. I'll share the photos of our Christmas morning soon but until then, let me share you what I think of Colorado so far.

I've been here about two weeks and here's what I think sets Colorado apart...

You can eat some great country style food like Fried apples, meatloaf (so yummy) and


and collard greens. We tried Cracker Barell for the first time a week ago and I was very happy with my meal. They even have a cute country store infront of the restaurant with all sorts of old style candies and some fun knick knacks. I scored a great decorative plate with a Christmas theme for $10. And the best part of it all.... they're only 1 mile away from our home.


Average temp for this week was around this much...

Cold, cold, cold!!!

Fog can be super thick that you can hardly see anything...

this was our view on the way to a friends house at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. When we got home that night (9pm) it was super duper thick that we were solely relying on our headlights. It was pitch black out there.

but there are also days where it's super clear and beautiful...

this is the day after the super fog day. We got frost due to the cold and moisture and seeing the trees white was so lovely. See the mountains in the background? Yeah that's our view every day. Isn't it gorgeous?


beautiful frost. Taken with my 55-200mm lens through one of our sky lights.


layering up with clothes and STILL be cold! On this particular day I had a tank top, long sleeves shirt, this little knitted cardigan and a thick jacket. I'm having a hard time being fashionable around here. I seem to gravitate to sweaters and jackets all the time. When can I wear my cute clothes again? LOL

and finally....my most favorite "only in Colorado" share....

Yes that's a fox that you see. Where is it you ask.....in our backyard! Marcus saw it first and I quickly ran to my room so I can grab my camera. I didn't have time to change lenses so I can only zoom up to this much but as you can see, he's as close to us as we would want him to be. The kids wanted to get out and be personal with Mr. Foxxy but I didn't think that was a good idea.

So that's all for today. Thanks for stopping by.

Till next time,
Grace

a layout share

Hello everyone. Thanks for all the nice comments on our home. Yes we feel very blessed, which overpowers the stress feeling of getting all the boxes unpacked.

Anyways, I thought of sharing a layout today since I haven't done it in a while

A Place of Learning

As seen in the CK Sketch/January 2011 of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher

This layout is all about one of our favorite hangouts in California- the Cerritos Library. We've been to the library here in Colorado Springs area and although libraries tend to be similar to one another, there's a part of me that's still missing our "great" Cerritos Library. I'm glad I was able to document that part of our "California life".

Oh and before I leave, some people that stopped by for the Clear Scraps blog hop asked what kind of adhesive I used to adhere the transparency to the acrylic tag. This is the adhesive I used. I just started using this adhesive about a month ago and I'm really liking it. Hope this helps.

Thanks for stopping by and till next time,
Grace

sneeks of our new home *photo heavy*

ok so here's the much awaited photos of our home. It's not all of it. It's been a bit of a task for me to unpack the 40 or so boxes that we've stuffed with things that made up our lives for the past 8 years plus coming from a 3 bedroom house and trying to fill all 5 bedrooms of this new home has been a challenge. Let me just tell you that I've gone to Walmart 3 times in the last 7 days. The other four days was spent in Home Depot, Bed, Bath and Beyond and Costco. LOL


so here's us in the front of the house. Sorry for the blurriness. If you look closely, I'm using my remote for the camera, therefore there was no way for me to adjust the lens at this time.

*let me tell you a little back story first**
The house closed on the 3rd of December and Mitch flew in on the 4th to pack up our rented moving truck and we were all supposed to leave on the 6th (Mitch driving the moving truck while I followed with the Expedition).
Anyways, on the 3rd (Friday) the expedition started acting weird. It was shaking and the "check engine soon" light was blinking. Of course this freaked me out but by the time I took it to the mechanic place, they were closed. So I waited for Saturday, took it to the dealership only for them to keep my car for the whole weekend without even touching it. That annoyed me so much.
So we went to the dealership on Monday, took it out of there and brought it to the mechanic that was close on Friday afternoon. He took it in and by noon called us up to tell us the bad news. Apparently it's something to do with the intake manifold and that it won't be done by that day. With this development, Mitch and I had to make a quick decision. He'd drive that day to Colorado in the moving truck and I'd follow with the kids in the expedition whenever the car was done.
This proved to be another blow to what I thought was a planned move. Again, the Lord has shown to me that I'm not in control of my life and that he can easily change the course of it anytime He wants to. I was upset and was terrified with me driving the 1500 or so miles by myself (with kids in tow) to Colorado.
So after a few days of panic and waiting, on Thursday afternoon we finally got our car back and it was in working condition. I started my journey that same day and thankfully got to Colorado in one piece (for all three of us) on Friday night.

Ok so now that's out of the way, here's what my home looked like on Saturday morning......

the kitchen


Maddie's room


the family room


our bedroom

and after a week of intense unpacking and reorganizing here's what they look like now...

the kitchen


the family room


Marcus' room (Maddie still had to sleep with her brother because we haven't purchased her a bed yet)


Maddie's room


Upstairs bathroom


Master's bedroom bath


our living room (view from the stairs going upstairs)


upstairs view (the two doors on the left are Maddie and Marcus' room and the two doors on the right are the bathroom and the master bedroom)


the dining room area. See my cute model? :)


our bedroom. Not as big as our Norwalk master bedroom but we love the view. We can see the mountains from our bedroom window. Sooo cool!


the laundry room (this one is in the same floor as the family room.)


our extra 1/2 bath/powder room across the laundry room.


stairs to go down the basement.


here's the weight room.


and here's my future scrapbook room that will double as a guest room. I left this room last because I know this one will take the most time reorganizing. As most of you know I have a TON of scrapbook stuff to go through so making this an effective and less crowded workplace is going to be a challenge.


and here's a sneek peek of our deck in the backyard. This photo was taken on Thurs. when it started snowing. On Friday morning, this whole deck and the yard was covered in powder. It was beautiful to behold, if only I had the extra ounce of energy to take a photo of it, it would've been better. Maybe next time.

So that's it for me. As you can see the walls are still bare and there's still room to fill up and reorganize. This week, I have a few organizational things to do but my main focus would be preparing for Christmas. Aaahhh, can't believe we're only 6 more days before the big day.

Thanks for stopping by and till next time,
Grace