Live Your Stories

Cyber Monday at DHD!

2011-11-28T03:00:00.000-05:00

Make sure you head to Design House Digital today to stock up on your holiday goodies! If you aren't in the market for some holiday stuff then snag anything else at 25% off! YAY!! I will for sure be grabbing these to use:

So many adorable holiday goodies! And it's not just Christmas goodies that will be on sale so you have lots to choose from!

Also, it's time for the 20 days of Christmas crafts on the DHD blog! A new hybrid project will be featured every day so don't miss it!!

Lots of fun stuff happening! I so love this time of year!! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and have a wonderful holiday!!!

December Daily

2011-11-19T13:58:00.003-05:00

Ok....I do this every year. I make a plan start the Dec. Daily project and then I fail. I don't know why my follow through is sooo bad, but it definitely is! This year I am hoping to combing digi and paper and actually get this done! To start with I have all of my foundation pages done. For these I used Nettio Designs Holiday Faves Mini Album. Here are all of my foundation pages:

I am really happy with how they turned out! I used Cosmo Crickets Jolly by Golly Papers along with Dani Mogstad's Fa-la-la kit. The stitches are Karla Dudley's Digi Essentials. I wanted something whimsical and fun and I think the mix of these papers turned out great and just what I was wanting! My goal is to get these printed possibly at Persnickety provided they have a Black Friday sale.

Next I have my transparencies! I was told I could buy the transparencies at Staples and just print those from home so I am going to give that a go! These are also from the Nettio Designs Mini Album.

I just took colors from my foundation pages and I will lay these how just how I feel looks best as I am in the process of putting it all together!

Next up is my journaling pages. These are also from the Nettio Designs album and the same papers used and I also used a Kraft paper that is coming soon by One Little Bird and the December Daily Numbers by Sahlin Studio. I will let you know when those are available! The font I am going to use on these pages is LD Cotton Candy.

Ok! That is my base so far! Of course I will have photo pages in there as well but obviously I don't have those yet! :D I will post again in a few days to show you the rest of my plan! I hope you all try something this holiday season. Even if you don't do a Dec. Daily or something complex try to jot down your memories and stories everyday just so you have those to hold onto!

Layout Share

2011-11-08T00:36:00.000-05:00

Well November has already been a busy month with all the goodies that have been out to use. The good thing about it is that is has prompted me to get up and take some new photos for a change! I just haven't been doing that enough lately and that needs to change! Here are a few pages I have done recently for a few of my creative teams.

this moment

This page tickles me! Ezra climbed up the tractor and just sat there and said "look at me mom!" and just gave me that sweet little smile of his so I could take some pictures! For some reason, when it's his idea he will pose for pics. Now if I had asked him to sit up there so I could take some photos that would be a different story!

what matters most

Every once in a while it's nice to take a step back and think about other things that matter. It's so easy to get caught up in things like our work or wanting to get pages done by a deadline, keeping up with the house, etc. These are not the things that matter most! Even if you don't have kids take a few minutes to breathe and reevaluate where your priorities are to make sure you aren't missing something that truly matters trying to keep up with the hustle and bustle!

love you

I have been having a very rough time with Stella lately. She's at that really difficult age three phase where everything is a big deal and she doesn't want to do anything I say. She's testing me lots and we are struggling a bit. I wanted to take a minute and just get out how much I love her and how I pray for her every day. A good friend was telling me today that this phase will pass and that even little ones have a difficult time dealing with sin and I so hope that I can help her work through this with patience!

Create With Love

I really wanted to take a few minutes this last DSD weekend to talk about why I scrap!! It seemed like the perfect time and although I didn't have photos of me actually in the process of scrapping or anything I knew I wanted to get some feelings out about the whole thing. It is such a fulfilling thing to find something like this that I really like to do. I don't consider myself a crafty person at all and I am the queen of good intentions and unfinished projects so scrapping has really been special for me and I am so grateful to have found it!

daily love

This page is for the November Journaling challenge at Design House Digital so I am not gonna tell you everything about it! You will have to go there to check it out and play along! I would love to see your pages!!! :D

as of right now

This is a fun little page about Ezra again! He's getting a lot of camera time lately huh?! Right now it's still warm enough to be able to spend a good deal of time outside as long as the sun is shining and he just loves it! He has so much fun playing with our doggie Shila and running about!

precious

Stella on a good day recently. No matter how frustrated I get or tired or wore down I will always think of her as my precious baby girl. That doesn't mean I will let her get sassy with me, but I will always know she has a good sweet heart and is precious not only to me, but to our God who loves her more than I do!!

Well I think that's about it for now!! I will be back later in the week with more of my silly ramblings! I hope your week is going well! xoxo!

New Goodies!

2011-11-07T00:21:00.003-05:00

Hey there everyone! I know most of you reading this are my fellow scrappers and I so hope you had a great DSD! I know I did! I got lots of scrapping done and also got to put some new goodies out with Sara! I thought I would pop in here to let you know about those! The Lilypad had a few hiccups on Saturday so they are extending it a bit until Tuesday night! YAY!

You can get this awesome grab bag with 8 brand new templates for just $3 dollars!

And the latest installment of our gwl:letters is out too! Grab the November Letters for just 3.15!

I am really excited about both of these! We were happy with the way they turned out and I so hope you guys enjoy them!

Also, all of our past grow with love's are on sale and there might be a few big discounts coming on the past Letters so watch Sara's Shop for that in the next day!

I will be back tomorrow for a layout share. I am posting on Monday since Saturday was such a busy busy day this past weekend! I hope you all have a beautiful week!!

DSD 2011

2011-11-04T02:00:00.006-04:00

Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day peeps!! This is one of the BEST days and part of that is because of all the amazing goodies you can get for a steal, or even for free! WHEEE!! I am super excited to be part of the Design House Digital blog hop! Us Decorators made oodles of quickpages for you guys and I so hope you like them! They are all so unique and different!

Here is my page made with the DHD blog hop kit.

Here is my preview of my quickpage based off this page:

You can click the preview or RIGHT HERE to download it!! In the download you will find this in 12x12 and 8.5x11 so you have options!

Here are the other ladies on the Hop! Be sure to swing by all of them for more freebies and awesome inspiration! Some of these are linked directly to the posts and some are not. If I get a chance I will update all of them!

DHD blog (for Janell Nugent, Jennifer Valencia, Liz Jutila, and Missy Backues' quick pages)
Allison Waken
Anna Drozd
Aria Andrus
Carey Bridges
Christy Carlson
Gennifer Bursett & Celeste Smith
Jen Papadimitriou
Jennifer Hignite
Jen Flaherty
Jeryn Carlisi
Katherine Hansen
Lori Pickens
Mandi Buchanan
Mary Rogers
Sarah Hemmert
Shannon Dombkowski
Tiffany Bodily

That's it from me! I so hope you enjoy the freebies and have a super happy DSD!!

Layout Share

2011-10-29T12:36:00.008-04:00

Hey Everyone! I haven't blogged in ages again have i? I seem to go into spurts but I am gonna try to be more regular! I think Saturdays are good days to do a layout share! I haven't done one is sooo long! Don't worry though. I promise to not overload you and will just do a handful every Saturday from the previous week.

This week was a rough one as my house is fighting the stomach flu. It was a nasty case of it too! I am feeling a bit better and the kids are ok for right now but the hubby is laid up in bed today. :( I am hoping it passes quickly for him like it did for me!

Now here are a few pages from my work at Design House Digital. Also, you might be interested to know that the gallery at Design House Digital is an open gallery. Just no linking up to other places or blatant advertising. It's a pretty awesome community!!

I promise that I really do scrap boys sometimes!! In fact, Design House Digital has something super fun coming up for DSD weekend I scrapped my boys for that! :D

Renan Kneipp has opened up shop at After 5 Designs under the name The Hidden Heart. He has lots of really gorgeous goodies out too! Here's one quick page I did for him!

It's actually a photo of the hubby and I! That rarely happens!!

October is coming to an sooo fast!! The October BYOC at The Lilypad was just AMAZING though and if you didn't snag it you might want to now! Here's one of my pages with a bunch of different pieces from it.

It's one of my boys!!! WOOHOO! I told you I do scrap the boys sometimes. I will say that I don't as much but that is mostly because they are such unwilling camera subjects! I don't know whether it's their ages or the fact that they are boys, but I rarely get them to cooperate for photos.

Last, but certainly not least is a page using my dear friend Peppermints gorgeous Sweater Weather Kit. If you haven't checked out her kits are missing out!! And look!!! It's all three of the kids!!!

Alrighty, that's all I will bore you with today. I hope you all have a beautiful weekend and everyone stays healthier than we are here! xoxo!

Found Poetry Journaling

2011-09-02T19:20:00.003-04:00

Goodness I have been a blog slacker over the Summer haven't I?! Now that "Fall" is here I am hoping to have much more time to blog about the little tidbits of my life and what I am up to!

My boys are in public school this year. EEK! We had been homeschooling Gabriel, but it just wasn't the right fit for us or our family I didn't feel like. I totally admire the people who can do it and get a good flow going with it. My hope is that one day I can come back to it. They seem to be really enjoying school so far, though the hours are hard on all of us. We are normally a pretty laid back family so to have to get up and go to bed by certain times is really rough on us! We are coping though and we so hope that one day soon we will be a bit more adjusted to the schedule!

On another note...I am here today to talk about something fun I have started doing! I have been dabbling in art journaling, mostly just going about it the hybrid way thanks to Tangie Baxter. She has the most AMAZING digi art journal products and I have found printing things off to be such a fun thing to do! I am going to talk about that more another day! I picked up this book with a Barnes and Noble coupon I had to help me because I just don't feel like a creative person most of the time. Plus I am just afraid of messiness and clutter. If you look at my scrap pages I am a fan of white space and I want to break away from that with art journaling. The book is AMAZING and it has a section on Found Poetry. Here is a definition of found poetry.
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. The resulting poem can be defined as either treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the original. (taken from HERE)

I thought this seemed like something super fun to try! I like to read and I like words, but in general I can't just sit and write that well...especially not poetry. I went to a little flea market type place around here and picked up a few old books for about 1-2 dollars a piece. Today I finally sat down and had a play! What is really great about this is that your poem doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you. It helps start the journaling process with that blank page staring at you. (I am terrified of those blank pages which is why I haven't dove right into art journaling!) Here are a few pics of my process!

If you click on the image I think you can see it bigger. :) Here's a list of the supplies I used:

old books
pencil
acrylic paints
watercolor crayons
journal
Tattered Angels glimmer mist

Because my journal isn't a special artsy one and just one mainly for writing I glued two pages together just to make it a bit more durable. I am excited to do more and have a whole journal of my own words...even if I had some help thinking of the words to say. I so hope that if you are wanting to try something new creatively but are scared of going full out like I am/was you will give this a go!

Hopefully I will back very very soon with more fun ideas for you!! I hope you all have a beautiful and safe holiday weekend!

the kids were here and other misc.

2011-06-08T21:31:00.004-04:00

Hello my lovelies! Long time no talk! For some reason I just have not been myself lately. I am not sure what it is...maybe the extreme heat...IDK...so I haven't really posted lately. Please forgive me! I thought I would pop on and share some ramblings with you guys cause I know you love that! ;) No I know...I am dull...but I am going to share anyways!!

At one of my scrappy forums we are doing a photo challenge of "The Kids Were Here" and photos that show your kids were there in some way. I thought I would share some of these with you guys as well, though I make no promises about blogging them all! LOL We all know I failed miserably at P365 (Next year is gonna be my year!!!!), but I think with just a 30 day challenge I can do this! Here was my first photo today. We have had legos out on the table for days and days and I thought that would be the perfect photo!

One of the little lego castle thingies. Oh how boys love their Legos right?! Wish me luck in keeping up with it!

Ok, also, today a friend of mine told me about these amazing makeup videos on youtube. I confess that I am terrible about making myself pretty. I don't wear any make up ever. I can't remember the last time I put some on. EEEK! I just never felt like I could put it on properly ya know??? So I always felt I looked silly when I was wearing it. Well these videos make me want to try! Check out this one with the putting on of foundation.

I just never would have done all that he said. So now...I need some makeup and apparently some good stuff and some good brushes! Just more things to add to my "want" list! It can't ever be too big can it?! I hope you enjoy and watch some of his other videos! Lots of good how to's and tips!!

And Lastly....Staycation is coming sooooooon at PYS! We should have registration up very very soon! We are so excited about this one! It is a more hands on class with us leading you to do more of our "Act" prompts! I will be back in a few days for a promo for you! Be on the lookout for it though and we got to work with the AMAZING Jenn Barrette for this one so I know you won't be disappointed!

Freebie, Goodies, and iNSD!!

2011-05-06T23:00:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone and Happy iNSD!!! There is LOTS to talk about today but I know you are all busy busy scrapping, playing games and freebie hunting so I will try to keep my massive amounts of ramblings short and sweet!

My dearest Sara and I have a super fun Grab Bag available this weekend only to celebrate her 1 year Design Anniversary! Last year when she opened up we had a fun Grab bag so we wanted to do it again!. We wanted to do something different than our normal Grow With Love you find from us and we soooo hope you enjoy these!!

And if you don't like to buy things without knowing what you are getting, here is a preview of what all you get for just 3 dollars!

Also, You might be here from the super fun DSA iNSD Blog Train ! You probably just got here from Sara's blog her fab freebies!! I so hope you enjoyed all your fun and fab free goodies!!! Here's my freebie for all you (I so wish I had had time to make two freebies! Please forgive me!) Click HERE or the preview to go to your download!

You guys can go on hoppin' right over to Darcy's blog for the last stop on the DSA train!

Lastly! I have a fun QP for you from this months BYOC over @ The Lilypad!! I loooved this months BYOC, but I know I say that every single month! I am the first one on this train so you have quite a few stops ahead of you! My QP is based after this page:

You may click HERE or on the layout to download this freebie!

Now head over to Kelly's blog for the next stop for the TLP hop!

I think that it's for now! i hope you guys all enjoy your iNSD weekend and get lots and lots of goodies!!!

Two Blue Birds and a Blog hop!

2011-05-06T01:00:00.000-04:00

YAY!! Happy iNSD everyone!! I hope you are all busy busy getting lots of great deals today!! I have a couple things to tell you about today!

First of all my friend Lizzy of the fab Fizzy Pop Designs and I have decided to start designing a bit together! We have loads of giggles and lots of fun and we hope you enjoy our creations which you can find under Two Blue Birds over at 9th and Bloom! YAY!! Here's the previews for the goodies we have available this weekend!

Wee Clusters Set One

Centered Set One

Blockish Set One

We hope you are inspired and thoroughly enjoy using them!!! Get them now while they are on sale!!

Here are some GORGEOUS inspiration pages too!

With the Wee Clusters:

With Centered:
with Blockish:
We are sooo grateful to everyone who did some pages for us! Be sure to check out the galleries to see these and their full credits!!

You might be getting here from the super fun or the 9th and Bloom blog hop! You probably just came from Jennifer's Blog with her super fun freebie. I have made a fun little quick page for you today! It was based after this page of mine:

You can click HERE or on the layout to go to the DL. I so hope you enjoy!

Now head over to Becca's Blog for the next stop on the 9th and bloom blog hop!! I hope you all enjoy your NSD weekend! I will be back tomorrow with more freebies and more new goodies! YAY!

Things I Love Right Now

2011-04-20T00:00:00.001-04:00

Hello there everyone! I am back again for just a fun little post for now. I confess that I love to share my best buys with those I know and I have sadly neglected you all in this! So..I thought I would share a few things I love right now (not including scrap goodies!!).

1. Jane Street Nook Cover by Kate Spade

This is finally on sale!! When I bought my Nook this was still the outrageous price of like 125, but now it's 75% off and I just adore it! The colors are so vibrant and happy and make me think of Summer time!

^ Front

^ Inside

^ back
*sigh* It's just oh so pretty! You can't go wrong with pink though can you?!

2. A Kiss of Shimmer by Nivea

ok so this may sound silly but I adore this chapstick!! I don't really wear lip stick but this adds just a teensy bit of color and pearly ness. It's oh soooo pretty!! I picked mine up at Walgreens on sale for 2.99

3. Two by Lenka

I have been waiting for this album for a long time! I adored Lenka's first album. The upbeat tempo just makes me sooo happy! This album is seriously fab!!

4. Jellybeans.

Seriously I don't know if I have always loved jelly beans this much or not, but this season I have been eating them like crazy! I really think that I am going to be ginormous by the end of this month. The Jolly Rancher ones are super good because the red ones are just sooo yummy! I don't really need a twelve pack (though it would take a bit to run out if I had it!!).

5. Vera Bradley

My sister and I just went to the outlet sale and scored tons of awesome goodies and I am just as much, if not more, in love with Miss Vera than I ever have been!! This is just one bag that I adore, though there are oodles more!

I think that's all for now...though I could probably show you TONS of different kids clothes to buy! I will be back tomorrow with more informative things!!

Sorriso Sneak Peek

2011-04-19T12:00:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone! Thanks for stopping by my blog! I have lots to tell you about, but this post I am gonna keep short for now and share a sneak peek of the new and gorgeous Sorriso kit by Paislee Press. She totally outdid herself on this one!!

Make sure you head to her store tomorrow to snag this kit! Here is the page that I came up with! There are so many gorgeous papers in this kit I needed to use at least I bit of them all!

It seems like I had the perfect pics for this kit!! Stella loves dandelions, which of course I am not a huge fan of. Lately when it's been nice enough to go outside she loves picking them and sniffing them, which usually results in her having a nice yellow nose!

I cannot wait for you guys to see this whole kit! It's so amazing and one of my faves of Liz!! Now head over to Sara's blog to get another peek!! Come back here tomorrow for more information about the new Self Portrait class as well!

{grow with love: letters} day 12

2011-03-30T20:16:00.003-04:00

Hello everyone and welcome to our last March post! Soon we will be starting the April prompts! YAY! March really flew by didn't it?! I am so excited to be getting to my favorite time of year. It felt like it would never come and even though this past week has been cold, I am convinced that Spring is just around the corner! I hope you are all doing very well! It feels like we have been very busy again, but mostly just with the regular family stuff I think. Let's quit the chitter chatter and get down to business shall we?!

You can find Day 11 HERE in case you missed it and I promise to get my GWL directory page updated ASAP so everything is easy to find from here again! Today's prompt is one very special to me. It is something that the hubby and I used to do for each other a lot. It's kind of what got me excited about a Letters edition. I just seem to be able to open up so much easier in writing than vocally. Let's go ahead and read the prompt then we can talk a bit more!

This one is just oh so special. So often we go through our days and our life having a hard time just opening up and praising people. Complimenting them on the things they do well and the things that we love about them. It's so easy to tell someone when you are angry or annoyed, but for some reason (at least for me) it is hard to be willing to open up that piece of yourself and praise someone. I think it's partially the fear of rejection or the fear of it not being reciprocated if that makes sense. Whenever we open up we want the same in turn, don't you think? Well, sometimes we just aren't going to get it. That doesn't mean that that the other person doesn't love us as much or doesn't see our strengths. Maybe they just haven't gotten to the place you are and are capable of opening up in those ways? There are a lot of reasons why someone else could have a hard time praising us in the same ways we praise them. We need to quit relying on another person before we do what we should do and want to do. A very very sweet and dear friend told me once that she was told "that the more mature person speaks up first". Or something along those lines. This is true in so many ways I think! Not just after a fight...but in general. Just take some time this week and write a letter of praise to someone you know and love. Can be anyone! Celebrate the gifts in another person and don't fear the reaction that may (or may not) come!

I unfortunately have not had time to get this one done, but I so hope that I can get it done later this week! Here are some examples from our dear team though!

by Tracie

by Mandi

by Jacq

by Coila

they are all so amazing and so inspiring! I hope they motivate you to get to praising!! Starting next week, Sara and I will be putting the posts on the Plant Your Story blog so they will all be in one place! I will be here regularly with giveaways and with reminders and other fun things so don't disappear on me!!!

April Letters Winner!

2011-03-27T21:53:00.003-04:00

Hey Everyone! I hope you all had a great end to your weekends! Today was a rough day for poor Shila so we were all a little bit grumpy because of that unfortunately *sigh* She just need a lot of work, but we are more than willing to keep working with her so hopefully we can get her in line soon enough!

Anywho! Thank you all for playing in my contest for the April Letters! Remember you can snag these over at The Lilypad in Sara's shop!

I used the trusty old random generator to pick the winner!

DeAnna, if you could please email me at crystalbella77 at gmail dot com I will get these to you asap!

Sara and I are working on the next GWL which I am SUPER excited about because it is something near and dear to my heart and we have an exciting plan for this one! I will be back on Wed. for the next letters post!! xoxo!

New Blog and New Goodies & Giveaway

2011-03-26T15:59:00.005-04:00

Goodness it feels like there is lots going on around me, but really there isn't. Just been busy with the family which is always a nice busy I think. We actually had some near 80 degrees day! Of course I barely remember what those feel like now that it's freezing again...but they were nice while they lasted! On one of those nice days we got really impulsive and decided to browse the animal shelter...not sure totally what came over me...but what can I do now? lol! We fell in love with this gorgeous Alaskan Malamute (possible husky according to some) and brought her home a few days ago. Here's a pic of Shila (prn. like Shiloh...but with an A)

She's so pretty and so far she's doing well! She had a hard time staying off the couch when my mom was over a bit ago, but after she left Shila hasn't been on it since. That's my biggest quest at the moment...to get her off the couch. She's doing well though and so far we are happy with her! We have her on trial and I am hoping we don't have to send her back or anything!

Also, if you are here you notice my gorgeous new blog! Becca rocked it out for me once again and I am in love! I imagine I will be up late tonight organizing everything the way I want it! Speaking of my dearest Becca, She is having a FABULOUS CT call right now!! You don't want to miss this peeps!

Her designs are just sooo fun and happy! They are perfect for so many pages! Here's my last page with her goodies!

I so hope you will apply! She's super sweet to boot!!

Also, last but not least, Sara and I have a new grow with love: letters {april} out this weekend and we will be posting a schedule for these very soon!

You can get these on sale right now, so now is your chance to snag them! Dont' forget to stop by here on Wednesday for our last March Letters post! The month just flew by!

Also, because it has been WAY too long, leave a comment HERE on THIS blog post and I will give away one pack of the April Letters. Just tell me what you are most looking forward to in the months to come. For me, it's our vacation in May. I just cannot wait to be there on the beach and soaking up the sun and my family! I can't wait to hear from you and I will be back tomorrow with a winner!

{grow with love: letters} day 10

2011-03-16T12:23:00.003-04:00

Hi there Everyone! I so hope you are well and are having a great week so far. I am getting a bit excited because today actually feels like Spring is coming. It's sunny and the kids are happy so I am hoping it stays like this for a bit!

If you are just joining us for the Letters Edition then Welcome! The Letters edition is a fun mini set of templates and prompts that Sara and I do every month. You can find all the sets we have thus far over @ The Lilypad in Sara's shop. These are totally self paced which is nice because you can buy the them and use the templates however you want and always have some journaling ideas ready to go! You can find the past days HERE. Just so you know...some of Sara's links aren't quite working at the moment. She recently did a blog transfer to her brand spankin' new site and a few things got a bit lost in the shuffle. She is working on getting new links for us though!

So today we are on the March Letters and Day 10. This was a really fun prompt I think. It's always nice to spend some focusing on someone else and their gifts and special things that make them who they are. Let's go ahead and see what our prompt is!

Everyone has special characteristics and gifts. Even if they aren't an amazing musician or can't play a sport...there are things about each of us that are special and worth noticing. It's very edifying to a person to let them know about those little special things. It's so easy in this world to get dragged down if there isn't something obviously special about you. I feel like this often. Like I don't have any special gifts or a special purpose, but that's so not true! I just have to remind myself of that sometimes. So today, let's spend some time focusing on someone we know and love and ogling them and their talents and gifts. It can be anyone in your life that you know and love from children to spouses to best friends. Everyone could use some edifying so maybe you would even like to do more than one page for different people in your life just to make sure everyone gets some attention!

Here's the page I came up with. I chose to do my sweet Gabriel for now. He has so many special gifts that just touch me every day. He's the most caring 7 year old. If we have guests he spends some time asking them if they need anything and then promptly getting drinks. He helps his younger siblings almost always anytime they need anything. Don't get me wrong...he's a normal 7 year old full of a bit of sass and so crazy loud I have to regularly tell him to talk quieter...but the thing that stands out in him is his sweet and caring soul. He is definitely a nurturer at heart and I adore that. We are all so blessed to have him in our life!

Lets see what the girls came up with for this one!

by Nicole

by Sara (misfitinmn)
by Nettie
by Lex
by Coila

Such awesome and different takes on this one! I just love that!!! Ok! I think that's about it! Don't forget that Sara will have day 10 up this week and I should get all the archive links fixed ASAP!!

{grow with love: letters} day eight

2011-03-09T19:45:00.006-05:00

Oh goodness! I AM ALIVE! Can you believe it?! I got very very behind with my blogging huh?! So sorry! I hope you guys can forgive me! I had a busy week/weekend and got sidetracked. My biggest boy has turned 7! How crazy is that?! I still remember his birth and delivery and his little baby moments like they were yesterday. He was the sweetest most angelic little thing. He looked like a little cherub. He had such a sweet personality too. Always happy and giggly. *sigh* I miss my baby Gabe...but I am so proud of him and the little man he is becoming. Here's my sweet little baby...

How sweet is that little face?! Every baby loves to get a play in the baby powder right?! Anywho...I thought I would reminisce a wee bit before I got down to the gwl. thank you for humoring me! :D

I am here with Day 8 of the letters...the February edition. I know I know..it's already March 9. I am so sorry! But I am here now so that's what matters right?! You can find Day 7 HERE on Sara's blog and also soon you will be able to find most of the GWL content HERE. Remember, this is a self paced project so no rush and you will always be able to find the links to the past days HERE so you can do them all at your leisure.

Today we are going to look back and get to the heart of what GWL is all about....storytelling. Everyone has a love story..or even a lack of love story...but it's a story nonetheless. We have had ups and down and our parents and grandparents have some kind of story and all those things together have helped to shape who we are and what we think and feel about love and relationships. It's all part of us and affects the way we react to other people. Today we are going to look back and tell a love story. Let's take a look at the prompt!

We all have relationships that are born out of love. Even if we aren't married we have people, siblings, cousins, friends...etc...whom we love and adore. All these kinds of relationships are important in a persons life. They help us to become better people and there's nothing like knowing love in a way that makes you look past yourself and want nothing other than to make someone else happy. Maybe your parents have a story that always touched you..or your grandparents. This can be a story about anyone in your life that has had an influence on you and your life. There are all kinds of perspectives to this one, so spend some time and think about a story you really want to tell or get out there. Let's take a peek at my pages and the team's pages for this one!

by Me
by Tracie
by Sara (misfitinmn)
by Mel
by Mandi
by Jacq

so beautiful and I am so touched by all of the love stories! I hope you guys enjoy this one and spend some time reflecting. We also all have some bad stories. The ones that have scarred us and made it hard for us to trust or even be able to remember the good stories. Sometimes those are good to scrap or document just for the sake of therapy. If you have something in you that has not all be rainbows and roses, feel free to scrap about that! It's all part of what makes us who we are so don't be afraid to get some release!

I hope you all have had a great week! I will be back soon with day 10 of the letters and also some fun and exciting news!!

{grow with love: letters} day six

2011-02-11T10:36:00.002-05:00

Hello Everyone and Happy Friday! I know I am a few days late and I am so sorry..AGAIN! I haven't been feeling that great and just couldn't sit here for very long at all. I am here now though so YAY! I hope you all had a great week! For a bit of basic info head to Post 1 on Sara's blog for the outline and check HERE for a list of past days.

I am loving the Feb. letters as they are all lovey dovey. Unlike a lot of people I love Valentine's day and all the ooey gooey stuff. I love taking one day and trying to make someone feel special, whether it's your kids or your spouse etc. It makes me all kinds of happy! Today we are going to dig a bit and think about what we hope for our kids to find in love. Lets read the prompt!

I know that with these letters we have spent a lot of time talking about what we hope for our kids an their future. I think it's really important to think about sometimes so we can make sure we are guiding them in the right direction. Often, when it comes to love, everyone has different wants and needs. One of my boys is so thoughtful and loves to take care of people so I know he is going to need a lady that wants to be taken care of. Someone who is maybe a bit needy would be perfect for him. My other little man is sooo silly and a bit wild so he's going to need someone who can calm him a bit and be a good balance to him. Stella is still kind of up in the air...she loves to be spoiled like a princess, but she has a stubborn and independent streak. She's so much like me at times..so she needs someone like her daddy...who will let her be opinionated but will also take care of her when she needs it. All in all...There is one main thing I hope for them that I was able to sum up in one page!

Here's my page for this one:

So really, my hopes for them is that they can get a bit of that fairy tale. I am realistic to know that no relationship ever goes just like a fairytale, but there is one key part that I do hope comes true for me and my kids and everyone else....the happily ever after. I hope my kids can learn to have that. To have a happily ever after, you have to go through a lot of compromises and there's a lot of give and take, but it's totally possible! It's about picking battles and learning to see the good in a situation and learning to let go of unrealistic expectations at times. I think it's totally possible and I hope they find it!! I am on the way to my happily ever after so I know they can do it!

so there you go! You can do a page kind of like this that's more open or you can get down to the nitty gritty like in my paragraph up above talking about specific things your kids will like in love. There are a lot of ways you can approach this one and I can't wait to see your takes! Don't forget to head to Sara's blog next week for Day 7!

And also, thank you all so much for your applications to our CT Call! We have been agonizing over apps since they have been coming in and we aren't sure exactly how we are going to choose. It really means so very much to both of us that so many of you are wanting to be a bigger part of telling your stories and growing in love. We love you all to bits!! If you did not receive an email from us letting you know we got your app then it got lost in the shuffle somehow!

{grow with love: kids} day 19

2011-02-03T19:41:00.003-05:00

Hello from super cold IN everyone! I hope you all weathered the "Blizzaster" quite well. I was so worried that it was going to be tons worse than it ended up being. My front door is totally frozen shut and everything is very icy, but it honestly could have been so much worse for us. I hope everyone else fared as well as we did around here!

So here we are on the next to last day for {grow with love} kids edition! I can't believe it is coming to an end already! Today I am here with Day 19. On Monday Sara will have day 20 which will bring us to the end of the kids edition. We are also starting set two of the letters edition and you can read more about that HERE. Plus we have lots more in the works that I think you are going to be really excited about! Let's go ahead and read the prompt for today. It's a heavy one.

This is something that can be really hard to think about it. For me, I confess that I have to try not to let these kinds of prompts overwhelm me because I can end up really focused on the morbid aspect of it and then I just get sad. It can be really hard to bear. I do think it is important to think about things like this occasionally...not all the time of course..but sometimes. It helps gain a perspective I think that can be really grounding.

Obviously, if I were to pass away tomorrow there is a million things I would want my kiddos to know. Just so many things...I didn't even know where to start when I sat down to do my journaling for this page. I took a few deep breaths and I tried to strip it all down. What was the most important thing for me to have them know. Here's the page I came up with:

First of all, how cute are they?! LOL That picture cracks me up. I just love them to bits. Once I thought about it...I decided that to me, the most important thing for them to know is that I loved them. I love them more than anything in the world. Sometimes my priorities get out of whack and I get snippy with them and I feel really quilty...but I still love them the most. More than anything and anyone else. They are everything to me. I felt like if I were to pass away tomorrow, I wanted them to know that. Not only do I love them that much...but there is someone else who loves them even more than I do...which means He loves them in infinite amount because I can't even imagine that kind of love. I just felt like I needed to get those thoughts out to them. There are other life lessons that I of course want them to know...but I will save those for another day. For now, I want them to feel the love oozing out of every fiber of my being and I hope they always can feel that!

Take some time to really think about today's prompt. Let the emotions ride a bit and see how you feel and what thoughts come to you when you really get down to it. If you find yourself overwhelmed, try to strip it all down and find what is at the core of most of your thoughts to your kids. That could be where your journaling idea is at.

I think that's it for now! Don't forget about my big sale and our call that is almost over! Head to Sara's blog on Monday for the last day in the kids edition and then hop back over here on Wed. for day 6 of the letters!

Retirement Sale

2011-01-30T21:22:00.004-05:00

Hi Everyone! The time has come for me to hang up my hat on my OScraps store. I unfortunately just do not have the time or means to put into it everything that it needs to be successful. There is no where else I would rather sell my Jumpers so I am not moving...just retiring...mostly. Sara and I will continue to work on {grow with love} and you will be able to find all of those in her shop. I will no longer have a store front anywhere in digi land. I am so grateful for all your support while I gave the designing a go and I will never ever forget it! I have the best customers an fans ever! You can find all my goodies, excluding a few collabs, 50% off from now until the 15th of February.

The image is linked to my shop for you! You can still follow our gwl posts on my blog and Sara's blog and we do have some new and fun things in the works that I really think you will all be excited about!

Also, we are still looking for a bit of help with our {grow with love} project as we have finally faced reality that sometimes we just don't have time for all the scrapping and blogging if someone gets ill or some other major thing pops up. We are looking for a few really awesome storytellers to help us with example pages! The awesome thing about this call is that you are able to use any kit in your stash! We just ask for punctual pages (which we will have all scheduled out) for us to use on our blog posts and for you to help promote the project for us. Just go to THIS POST for more info.

I think that's it for now! Thank you all so much for everything! Be sure to follow my blog for an occassional freebie and to see what all I am up to! You aren't going to want to miss what Sara and I have planned for the next few months in our {grow with love} journey! I really think you are going to be excited! xoxox!

{grow with love: kids} day 17

2011-01-27T12:24:00.002-05:00

We are winding down the kids edition and I am a bit sad about it. I just love all the reflective kid posts and prompts. We do still have a few days left though and today's is a bit deep I think. Let's just dive right in and take a peek!

wow. How incredibly moving is this to think about? I confess that although Sara and I come up with all the prompts together she does a good bit of the writing of them and this one was written so beautifully I think. From the very first sentence! As a mother I have spent a lot of time just thinking about the future for my kids. It's impossible not to I think. It can become overwhelming at times because we cannot guarantee how our kids will turn out as adults. We can say and do things we hope affect who they are and say prayers for them without ceasing....but we all know that in the end they will become old enough to make all their own choices and sometimes they will do things different than we would like. It's often in the darkest of days that you can learn a lot about a person by how they handle the situations. Whether they make it through with grace or they crumble and fall and need someone to help them back up. How do you hope your kids will handle these rough times?? For me...one thing I know for sure...I want them to be stronger than I am. I want them to be able to not fall apart like I always seem to do the second adversary hits. Also, I hope they learn in the tough times that they are not alone. NEVER EVER! One of my biggest flaws is that I feel like I have to carry all the burdens alone on my shoulders. My mother has often told me that that is not the case but it's a hard to thing to change, so I hope that they learn early that they have their family and God with them and beside them to help whenever it is needed. Here's the page I came up with. You may click for complete credits.

I just love that photo! I love the warmth from the light, which I so hope the kids can always find, and the warmth of the sibling love that oozes out. It is very touching to me.

Well I think that's enough of my ramblings on this one. I cannot wait to see your pages for this one because I do think it's so inspiring! Check HERE for the past days and head to Sara's blog on Monday for day 18! Also, next week we have a brand new letters edition coming out that I think you guys will love!

Also, don't forget that we have a wee little call up and we are loving all the apps so far! It's going to be sooooo hard to pick! If you are on the fence I promise that Sara and I do not bite and we have lots of fun and exciting things in the works I think you will like to be a part of! I will see you soon!!!

{grow with love: letters} day four/ a call

2011-01-26T11:47:00.004-05:00

Well we are finally half way through this week and it's so close to February already! I am so excited about that because that just means one small step closer to warmth! YAY! It did seem like this month just flew by though didn't it? I am so grateful that Sara has posted the last three Letters prompts when I couldn't, but I am excited to be here with this one!

Today prompt is awesome I think and you all know how important I think it is to do some pages about yourself every now and again so I just loved this one! Let's take a peek!

This is another one of the prompts that had me thinking of a million different theme type pages. I could go all about the tv and movies I am into right now. Foods! (food issues are a big thing for me right now). There were a million ideas in my head! If you get like this, don't stress our or give up because you just can't narrow it down. Just go with one for now and then go back and do another..etc.! These are all fun and important things to get recorded so more than one page could totally be ok!

In the end... for now...I decided to go a bit generic. I wanted to get a page done about how I felt right at that moment of scrapping this page (which was last night!). I journaled a bit about some little things that I look forward to everyday or every week and I highlighted those with a different color font (taken from CD's awesome journalers). Then I ended with talking about how all those little things add up to the one big thing I feel about myself right...that I am happy and oh so blessed! Here's what I came up with!

I thought that CD's artsy type elements and papers were perfect for what i was wanting to do, and oh how I wish I could doodle that well! :D You can click the page for complete credits if you are interested! I cannot wait to see what you all come up and have some fun and focus on you RIGHT NOW! It's always fun to scrap your childs latest obsessions, but lets see what you all are into right now as well.

Don't forget that if you missed a page in any of the GWL prompts you can find them all in the masterlist HERE.

Also, Sara and I have a little call going on right now for this! Here's some info for you!
(click to make bigger)

specifically we are looking for digital or paper scrapbook artists that:

consider themselves storytellers and enjoy journaling
can work with a deadline
are active in the community or social media/blogging

our Grow With Love team requirements are:

work with each new Grow With Love series prior to release (you will typically have access to new products at least one week in advance)
upload to your page(s) to your favorite gallery and /or social media

if you are inspired to plant your story with us please submit:

three layouts that showcase your storytelling
a link to your favorite gallery
a list of your current CT commitments
a short bio about yourself

If this sounds like something you're interested in please feel free to submit inquiries to creativecall@plantyourstory.com by 5 February 2011. We will respond to every email we get to confirm receipt.

Can't wait to hear from you!! ♥

So I think that's it for now! Also, I will be having a big announcement next week and the Feb letters are coming up on the 2nd! I will see you tomorrow for the next GWL kids! oxo!

{grow with love: kids} day fifteen

2011-01-19T21:04:00.006-05:00

Well hello again my friends! I hope you are all well! Here in IN we are getting more snow which is totally not fun. I am dreaming of sunny and warm days. One day they will be here! I totally complain about this too much dont I? Once Winter is in full gear I have little else to talk about it drags me down so. It's my goal to try to be more positive about though so I will quit the whining! :D

I am excited to be here with another gwl kids post! This is my favorite of the series I think. It's just so easy and fun to make pages about your kiddos. It feels safer I guess is a way I feel about it. It's really important to reflect and deal with some of the harder issues with ourselves and spouses, etc, but I quite love being able to just ogle my kids and tell their funny stories.

Remember you can find all the past days HERE. Sara had a nice little post about our reworking the schedule RIGHT HERE. We also started the Letters Edition which you find listed on the master list I already linked to. I am so grateful for her helping to pull me along while we dealt with a nasty flu bug. It was not fun around here!

I am here and ready for day 15 though! Today's prompt is really fun I think. It's one of those that gets you communicating with your child and listening to them say super funny and sweet things. I just loved it! Let's take a peek!

How sweet is that?! Sometimes kids have a way of looking at things that can be incredibly touching and make you giggle at the same time. I decided to start with Gabriel on this one and ask him what he was thankful for. He looked at me and said "Sharing!". I prodded a bit and asked him if there was anything else at all that he was thankful for and then he said "hugs and kisses" and giggled a wee bit which of course made me snicker as well. I then said "is that it?" so he looked at me straight faced and said "That's pretty much all I have." LOL! it was hilarious. Never mind all the things he really has lol! I suppose that maybe it is good that he isn't totally focused on his material things?? though a little appreciation would have been nice! ;) I then proceeded to ask the other two what they were thankful for and they just repeated what gabe had said which is totally no surprise! That's what younger siblings do right?! I tried to get Gabey to help me with the page, but he was totally uninterested so I just used a cute boy kit and he said he liked it. hahaha! If you guys get your little boys to be interested in this at all, please share how you did it!

Here is the page I came up with new goodies coming soon and one of Sara's fabu Kids temps!

And here is Sara's AMAZING page from last year that kind of inspired this prompt!

So there you have it! have fun with this one and sit and giggle with your little ones. If, like Gabe, they don't say much spend some time reminding them of the blessings they have. We had a nice long talk about things we could be grateful for, which of course Gabe told me he was super thankful for. He just didn't think of them right away. It was a fun time together and we had a lovely convo together and a few fun giggles...though I totally think we could be grateful for pickles if that's what you are in to, no matter what Gabey says! ;)

I will see you soon with the next GWL letters post on Sunday and don't forget to see Sara on Monday for the next GWL kids!

My One Little Word

2011-01-18T21:08:00.004-05:00

Well hello again everyone! You probably thought I had disappeared huh? I have to tell you that this Winter has been so rough around here. Usually it's mostly just the Winter Blues that I have to fight with everyday, but we have had an enormous amount of sick here too. It has not been fun and I confess that I am even more ready for Spring and Summer than I have been. We long for a good play outside in the sunshine soaking up the Vitamin D. *sigh* I just keep telling myself that it will get here eventually but I confess that I am not 100% convinced!

Anyways, I am sure most of you have already read about Ali's One Little Word idea and probably have read a plethora of stories and words, etc. It took me a bit to decide on a word for this year. There are a lot of things I want to focus on and change and use as a compass for the year. As a Christian I always want to make sure my word is something God centered and something that I know He wants me to work on. It's not all about me or scrapping or anything like that. It's a bigger picture than that. I struggled for a few weeks praying about what my word should be. Nothing felt right. Nothing totally spoke to me. I am not sure what it was..but I am guessing it was my over thinking that got in my way. I sat down to talk to a scrappy friend late at night and we were talking about this and she simply asked me a few questions and immediately I knew what my word should be. Balance.

It's all about balance as a wife and mom isn't it? For me though, I know that I can't just decide to be more balanced in my life and make it happen. That kind of pressure on myself will only make it a million times worse. It's so easy for me to pour everything I have into one thing and then feel totally exhausted and neglect most other areas. This is something that I am so terrible about. I let things weigh me down until finally I just feel paralyzed. There is only one person who can help me with this burden of mine and "His yoke is light". He can help me find the balance in all areas of my life that I so desperately need. It's often a struggle, for me anyways, to feel like my silly stresses are even worthy of bringing to Him. Do you ever feel like that?? I get this idea in my head that I need to work it out and not trouble Him with silly things like my overwhelming stress about the laundry and dishes, etc. This is terrible of me and the exact opposite of everything He wants for me. He wants to be a part of every area of my life. Guiding me and giving me comfort through His grace and helping me to balance it all. So my word for this year is Balance, but it is about Balance through His grace because I cannot do it alone.

I have a lot of thoughts and quotes about this but I am not going to bombard you with all of them at this one time so I will post randomly...honestly as little reminders for myself.

I was lucky enough to stumble upon (ok..maybe not stumble cause I looked for days) the most fabulous Etsy seller, Big Girl Studios, to make me a necklace for my OLW. She was the sweetest and sooo easy to work with. She always got back with me if I had a question or concern. She was totally amazing! She made the necklace special for me and then decided she would make it a listing. So now you can easily get your own necklace made with one word if you are doing the OLW, or with a name if you would like. These are pictures of my actual necklace taken by her and they are linked to her shop listing. I so hope you will check her out and if you do be sure to tell her you found her through me!

I really hope you will check her out. She really was so awesome to work with and her prices are so affordable! Anywho, that's a shameless plug from me, but it's genuine and I don't get anything from it. I was just so pleased and it's nice to buy something from someone who will personally work with you and be so professional about it too!

One of these days I will get around to scrapping my word and thoughts and some quotes and verses, but nothing has jumped out at me and seemed perfect for the page yet. Hopefully it will come together though!

I so hope you will come back here on Thursday so I can get a Grow With Love post up! I know we have slacked, and we feel so awful about that, but what can you do when life gets hard?? We always say that family comes first no matter what and we hope that you all will agree and not hold it against us! I will see you soon! xoxoxo!

Unexpected Happenings

2010-12-29T13:22:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone! I am so sorry I am only just now getting to doing a post. It has been busy around here with christmas and everything. I really really hope you guys had a great time and enjoyed your sweet families! It was definitely nice here! I was surprised by my gifts and I think the kids and hubby were too. We spent loads of time with family and eating and all that jazz. You will have to forgive me for getting behind with {grow with love}. I tried my very hardest to keep up the posts as long as I could, but I confess that I did need a break. There seems to have been a lot of unexpected happenings this month and sara and I are deeply sorry for that. We both have had internet issues which is never fun when your hobby and your job depends on the internet. Also, Sara's father has lost his battle to cancer this past week. I am so very sorry for her loss and my thoughts and prayers are with her and the family. I cannot imagine how she is feeling at the moment. :( As you can imagine {grow with love} has taken a back seat for just a bit while she mourns and spends time with her family and while I try to get back on track. I really really hope you understand. It is never ever too late to scrap your holiday memories though so that will still be continuing as well as the kids edition. This is a perfect time for you get caught up or even just get going. You can pick up any of the {grow with loves} in my shop.

Anyways, I just wanted to pop in and post an update. If you could spare some prayers for Sara and her family I know that she would greatly appreciate it. Hopefully I will be back soon, renewed and on track and ready to tell more stories with you all.

I thought I would share with you, my year in review page as well. :)

{grow with love: holidays} day nine

2010-12-19T18:12:00.003-05:00

Well Hello again! I am afraid you are stuck with me again for Day 9! I know I know...we want Sara back *sigh* She's on the mend I hope though so next week you might be able to see her a bit, but for now it's me again.

Not to be totally redundant I want to link to the master list for those who are just joining us. You can find that HERE and all the days from all the different Grow With Loves as well as links to them in my shop (just click on the images on the master list page). If you want a bit of back story on this project than click on the day one posts for any of them and you will find out how and why we started doing these. :)

We only a few days left with these prompts and I hope you are all ready for Christmas. I know that I am probably doing these alone at the moment, but I do hope you guys will go back through and do them once you have time. It's a fun way to document your holidays and traditions and it is nice that you will be able to always find the prompts readily available here on our blogs. There's no time limit at all!

One of the nice things to me about our prompts is that they get you scrapping things that you may not think of that really tickle you or make you feel really nostalgic. Today's prompt is one of those. It is one of my most favorite things about Christmas (besides the food!)...the movies! There is nothing like a feel good Christmas movie. They are all so full of hope and good cheer and that feeling is so contagious that it oozes out of the screen and into you. I just love it!! Let's read the prompt!

Around here, we watch the same movies every single year. They are the ones I watched when I was little and just the thought of them makes me happy. I remember telling my sister last month or even the month before that I could not wait until the Christmas movies were on. I love a happy ending and you can always count on Christmas time to make that happen. Here's the page I came up with!

Nothing can compare to White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life IMO. The kiddos are all about Frosty too! I of course of oodles of movies that we always try to watch at this time of year but those seem like staples around here. I am going to keep this short and sweet because I do feel like this prompt is pretty explanatory on it's own. Just get mushy and grab a cup of cocoa and tell us all about your favorite Christmas movies!!

Just talked to Sara and she is going to do {grow with love: Kids} day 13 tomorrow! YAY! So head over to her blog tomorrow for that prompt! i will see you soon guys!

{grow with love: holidays} day eight

2010-12-17T12:35:00.003-05:00

Hello again my lovelies and Happy Friday! For me, the week is just starting because the hubby goes back to work today, but I know for most of you the weekend is starting. Are you going to be out finishing up your Christmas shopping? It's only a week away! Sooo exciting!!! My kids are so excited and everyday they ask if it's Christmas Eve yet. It's too cute! I have loved having kids a teensy bit older this year. They really get into it so much more!

Do you have your tree up yet? I think most of you do, but maybe not?? We have had ours up for a bit now. I just love getting the tree up earlier. It makes me so happy and makes it feel so much more like the holidays! Have you scrapped your tree traditions yet?? Well today that's what we are going to do! It seems to me that a lot of people have very strong tree opinions. It can even be the source of many an argument in a family. I hope that it hasn't caused too much bickering in your own homes! Lets read the prompt and see what it says.

There are so many different ways and traditions one can have when it comes to decorating your tree. Maybe you do a theme or certain colors. I have done this before and I looooved it! Do you do the same thing every year or do you mix it up? Spend some time writing your thoughts and traditions when it comes to the Christmas tree. Then scrap it. Sometimes it's easier to get the journaling done before hand. Just in a blank document start writing your thoughts. Then you can decide which way you want to take your page based on what thoughts and feelings came out the strongest. Maybe you could scrap the arguments and go a bit light and funny with a he said/she said type of page? Or just pick one simple aspect of your Christmas tree and scrap that!

We almost always have had an artificial Christmas tree. I personally just like it better. It's not as messy and it doesn't require trekking through the freezing cold to get it. It's always seemed nice to me to be able to fill in any holes by just moving the branches a bit. Plus. I like a white tree! I get this from my mom I think because she had the most beautiful white Christmas tree in the past. It looked amazing so when we could we bought a white tree and I loved it! The ornaments really stood out on it and I loved the way the lights seemed to glow against the white. It really just made me oh so happy! This year the hubby decided he wanted a real tree to "save space" though that was just his cover. lol! off we went in the snow and sleet one day to find the perfect one. This wasn't a fight around here at all so I decided to just scrap our first Christmas Tree hunt! Here's what I came up with for this one:

Honestly, the kids did not love this part of Christmas as much as I thought they would. Little Ezra actually even seemed a wee bit miserable, but we kept on plugging until we found the perfect one. I confess that even now, I do not love the real tree. Not even the smell (which isn't that strong anymore) can make up for the bright and glowy feel of my old white tree. *sigh* I will have to save that for another page I think. However, the hubby loves it and had fun out getting it and if he's happy then I am happy (though next year I will get my tree I hope!).

I cannot wait to see what you guys come up with for this one! It really has a lot of possibilities and is really open to however you feel moved so be creative and get your memories captured! I am off to pick today's Gallery Standouts! You can check here and Sara's blog tomorrow for the next post and check HERE for the master list! I am not quite sure who will do it yet. Last night Sara was still very very sick so please continue to pray for her and her sweet family. I so hope they get better before Christmas comes!

{grow with love: kids} day twelve

2010-12-17T01:14:00.003-05:00

Hello again everyone! I hope you had a great week! I am wee bit late getting this post up because we ran some errands tonight and finished up most of the Christmas shopping! It feels great to be pretty much done! I just need one more present...well two if you count the hubby I suppose! Hopefully you guys are getting close and aren't stressing out too much. It really can be hard to not feel overwhelmed at times, but remember to take some time to breathe and maybe scrap! ;)

I am really enjoying these kids prompts because it has allowed me some time to focus on other things besides spending oodles of money on presents and worrying about the weather all the time. Plus it is always just so much fun thinking about our little ones and the things we want them to know about us and to remember years to come. It's nice to get retrospective I think and sometimes a bit nostalgic.

Today's prompt is such a good one I think. It asks us to get a bit deeper with our little ones and notice them. Really pay attention to them and the things about them that you admire or make them stand out. Let's a take a look and then I can chitter chatter some more about it!

I know that as scrapbookers we are often bragging about our kids and the things they do. It's impossible not to I think. Today I want you to really focus on them and notice the things that they really excel at. This could be in any area too. Not necessarily a "talent" the way most people like..like an instrument, or singing (though those are perfect things to brag about!). This could be something more deep inside your child that you notice. Their caring natures or giving hearts. Maybe they are super good readers? Just really pay attention and try not to just put the things you WANT them to be good at, or that maybe you encourage them to do, more than they actually love to do themselves. You have a lot of options here I think and it will be nice to take a break from the holiday hustle and bustle and notice your children. Also, don't just scrap the page. Take a minute to tell your kid/kids how proud you are of them and how good they are at the things they do. This will really really encourage them and we could all use a little boost couldn't we?!

I have a few pages in the works for this because I really want to be able to focus on each of the kids by themselves. Sometimes, if you have more than one child, it's hard to really focus on just one of them at a time and I want to make sure they all three get their own special pages and time from me. So...for this first page I just scrapped the three of them. I am so often amazed about how well they get along. They are such awesome siblings and I am sooo proud of them! It honestly is an overwhelming feeling to see them playing together so beautifully. When there is lots of bickering I can tell that something is awry amongst them. So here's the page I came up:

Like I said, I definitely am going to do this prompt for all three of the kids, but I wanted to take a sec and focus on the three of them as a unit too cause really they are awesome and love each other so much. It's quite amazing to see and I am definitely blessed! Plus I haven't had time to do all three of them yet unfortunately! It's a busy busy time!

So I really hope you enjoy this one and take some time to really admire the strengths and talents of your kids. Some of those kinds of things come out so early in their lives and are noticeable straight away in them. If you want to find a master list of our {grow with love} series click HERE. You can head to Sara's blog on Monday for day 13 of the kids edition and come back here tomorrow for gwl holidays day 8! Later gaters!

{grow with love: kids} day eleven

2010-12-16T10:29:00.003-05:00

Hello again Everyone! I am here again for day eleven of the Kids Edition! I know you are probably super sick of me and long for Sara's awesome way with words, but alas you have me for now!

For a bit of back story and to start at the beginning of this edition, you can find Day One over on Sara's blog. She explains why we started doing these and how much they mean to us. We are so glad that you guys have joined in and seem to want to tell your stories as much as we want to help you to!

I confess that I am not 100% prepared to do today's post and I am so sorry for that! It's just such a busy time and although I am having tons of fun doing most if not all of the prompts, I am having a hard time getting all the scrapping done. Sometimes all my blog ramblings take a bit of time too! I need more hours in a day! Today's prompt is a super fun one though! We do all kinds of things for our children for Christmas morning and different school/ family parties and get togethers, but today we want you to do something totally out of the blue and unexpected. Take a minute to show your kids you are thinking of them and love them tons! Let's take a look at the prompt.

The super awesome thing about this prompt is that it doesn't have to cost money, because I know that we have put nearly all our extra funds into nice presents. Take a bit to think of something you know your kids will just looove! Maybe your kids are always asking to help you bake some cookies or brownies but you are too busy usually or think it would just go faster alone (this is me...LOL)? Maybe they love to sit down and read books with you?? It can really be anything that you know would touch your kids and would slow the super busy down just a wee bit. If you are feeling generous and are able, maybe you have a little present you can give them? The possibilities are only limited by your means and resourcefulness!

Although I haven't done a page specifically for this, last night we rented a movie and watched it all together. It seems like we do not do this nearly enough and the kids were so tickled by the family movie fun! I confess that I didn't get pics or anything, so I am going to do this prompt again when I can get a good photo for a page. There are just so many things that you can do for this one! I hope you that you take a step away from the computer and think of something super fun and surprising to do with your child/children! I will be back tonight with Day 12!!

{grow with love: holidays} day seven

2010-12-15T20:07:00.003-05:00

Happy Wednesday peeps! I hope your week is going wonderfully! It's so bitterly cold here, but I am so grateful that the hubby finally has a couple days off to spend with us. He works way too much! I am going to keep this one a bit short because we have movie time coming up and I want to get some family time in tonight. Plus this prompt is pretty light so I don't think my ramblings are going to be super important or helpful.

Let's get some basics down first! You can find a list of all the prompts done so far HERE in the master list and once there you can click on the images to be taken to my shop if you want to pick up one of these {grow with love} sets. They are so special to Sara and I and we love being able to share all our ideas and journaling prompts with you. The templates are just a fun bonus to make the storytelling a bit faster! Don't ever forget that if you have any questions or want to share you can email me HERE. I always love hearing from you and I love to be able to help whenever I can!

Ok..todays prompt is a super fun one IMO! One of my most favorite things about Thanksgiving and Christmas is the food. I look forward to it every single year! It seems like the food of this time of year really makes us feel warm and cozy and brings back lots of special memories and treasured family recipes! let's go ahead and read the prompt!

So much fun and I could have gone a million different ways with this one because I do so love the food! there are some things that I totally only think of at Christmas time and some things that I remember eating every holiday growing up. I decided to go with a new recipe I found this year that the hubby and Gabey both just loved! I found a super yummy new cookie recipe that I think I will always think of at this time of year and might become my new christmas cookie! The one that I bake after Thanksgiving just to get me in the mood for christmas! Here's my page:

And here is my new fave christmas cookie recipe! It was quite yummy if you like these types of cookies. The texture was perfection for a cookie like this! i would highly recommend it!

So scrap one of your fave holiday food stories! Whether its a new tradition or an old one, or food someone always makes that you can't stand...etc. Just get the story down and have fun with it!! I can't wait to see your pages!!!

Come back here tomorrow for the next {grow with love} Kids edition prompt..or two. Sara is still super sick, so I might do two days in one post if I can! Just hop over here tomorrow and I will let you know! I will see you soon!!

{grow with love: holidays} day six

2010-12-14T23:50:00.004-05:00

Wow! What a weekend! It was crazy here again without internet. :( The unfortunate thing is that it seems to be a super easy problem to solve just time consuming getting them to come and fix it. However, it is back up and running so I am gonna try to get some of these posts up this week. Our dearest Sara is ill so until she is feeling better I am afraid you are stuck with me! I hope you don't mind too much though!

If you are just joining us for the {grow with love} holiday edition you can find it in my shop HERE. It is never ever too late to get started! You can find day one of the Holiday edition over on Sara's blog and a master list of all our {gwl} posts right HERE. So hop around and make yourself at home and never hesitate to drop me a line if you have questions or want to chat.

Today's prompt is one of my favorite types. It is about capturing the little things. The everyday that you may sometimes overlook and not quite see. I love these little moments. The ones that sneek up on you and then melt your whole heart. You can just feel love and pride oozing out of you. Let's go ahead and read the prompt.

If you are anything like me you are shocked that Christmas is actually only a week from Friday. How on Earth did that happen?! It seems like just yesterday we were anticipating Thanksgiving and planning the meal plan, and now we are headed towards the busiest holiday of all and so close to it being a brand new year. It's a crazy feeling, feeling like life is flying by. Sometimes it is sooo hard to take a sec and just stop and breath and notice what's happening around you. It's all the time "go go go!" and often that is totally unavoidable. Today though, I want you to take a step back. Just stop and look at your little ones, or your spouse, or something else that you may not have had time to just notice. Don't wait until the wrapping paper is flying to get that camera out. Take a random photo of something from your everyday. It may even seem mundane to others, but it's something from your life that once you stop to notice really takes your breath away or speaks to you. Sometimes it's these little things that shape our lives more than the huge holidays and events. Here's the page that I came up with for this one.

I did this prompt last week after our first big snowfall. I was of course a little grumbly about the snow and not at all excited about it and I was going through picking up the house and then I went into the dining room and I found this little guy just watching it all fall. Longing to be out in it I am sure and I confess that the love (and guilt about the snow hating) I felt in that moment was overwhelming. Ezra isn't one to stop for long. He's a busy little bee, but he was so excited to see these flakes. They mark the time of year to him and the snow looks as if it would be as fun as a giant sandbox to him and he loves it. I just loved this random moment I caught of him especially since these breaks are few and far between.

So go on and unplug and take a few deep breathes. Take some time to notice those you love and capture that small special something from your day. You won't regret it! Go ahead and plan on coming back here tomorrow for day 7 so we can give Miss Sara a bit more time to rest and pray that she and her family can get well soon! I will see you all soon!!

{grow with love: kids} day ten

2010-12-09T14:02:00.003-05:00

Well hello! You are probably all sick of listening to my ramblings by now huh?! Don't worry, tomorrow you get Sara. I hope you are all doing well and having a great week so far. It's going here. Seems to be dragging a bit but not too terribly. I am excited to be back here doing a Kids page with you again! If you are just joining us then welcome! We have hit the middle marker in this kids journey, but it is never ever too late to start telling your stories and maybe get some journaling ideas. You can read some more info on the Day One post on Sara's blog. If you would like to see all of the posts done so far you can find the complete list HERE.

I have been particularly enjoying the Kids version this go around. It is really nice to be able to to record things that I want the kids to know and remember. I have found it much easier to tell them things that are personal than I did with the marriage edition. Probably because I ogle them all the time anyways so it was much easier to do on paper. ;) I really hope you guys have been enjoying the pages and prompts as well! It's been a bit hard for us to get our example pages done super promptly but we are trying to add them in as soon as we can!

Today's prompt is one that can be hugely reflective and moving. It's about digging deep and tellig your children you may not just sit and say to them. Let's take a peek.

The good thing about today's is that it is really open to however you feel moved to interpret it. You can journal and document this any way that you feel inspired to. Often times it's easier to say things if you feel you are writing letters. I am one that writes letters regularly as a way of expressing my feelings and thoughts. The words just seem to flow a teensy bit better for me in that medium, though I confess I am just a rambly all the time. There are oodles of things that as parents we hope and wish for our children. We all have moments of worry and thoughts about their futures. It can keep us up all night and really be something that you think about in the back of your mind nearly everyday.

I decided to write a letter to all the kiddos at once to start with, though I think i am going to individualize this for each of them later. There are just things I think about for each of them that may not be relevant to the others. For now this is what I have and came up with.

Once again my journaling is a bit private, but I wrote about how I hope they learn to trust in our faith and if they do that then everything else will fall into place. If they can do that then they won't have the need for constant worries and fears because they will know someone else is always watching them and in control.

Take some time and really think about this one and let your heart and soul pour through onto your "paper". Tell them things that you maybe haven't said or can't say because they don't totally understand quite yet. Just be creative and enjoy the process!

I think that is it for now! I will see you soon though! Make sure you hit Sara's blog tomorrow for {grow with love: holidays} day 5 and on Monday she will have the next day for the kids version. That's it for me...for now! I will be back before you know it! xoxo!

{grow with love: holidays} day 4

2010-12-08T00:56:00.004-05:00

Well hello again peeps! Long time no "see" eh?! I hope you had a great day yesterday and are eager to get into another prompt! Today is the hubby's birthday so I wanted to get my post up nice and early because we all know how needy men really can be. ;)

I loved today's prompt! It is a nice and fresh spin on the traditions that are always brought up at this time of year. We all have things we have done since we are little...but what about those things you have seen or heard about that you have always wanted to try? It is absolutely never ever too late to start fun new things with your family. Let's go ahead and read the prompt.

There are so many things that I hear about from others and I think "I want to do that!" but often it never ever pans out. I decide that it's too much work, the kids are too little to enjoy it, or so many other excuses. I have had a bit of fun this year trying some new things with my little ones and we are loving it! One of the main things we have started doing, which was totally inspired by Sara (SHOCKING right?!)..is the Jesse Tree. You have probably seen the posts on my blog already about it, but I really loved using the prompt to get it documented a bit which I hadn't done yet. As a Christian, I personally am enjoying spending more time in God's word and teaching the kids about the lineage of Christ and talking more about things like why we needed Jesus. The kids have been eager to find out what ornament they will get to put out next. It's been really nice for me to spend so much time with them and even little Stella sits there and listens to the passages we read, though I don't think she's 100% paying attention. lol! Here's the page I came up with for this prompt!

I used tons of this months BYOC over at the pad and I think I have done at least three of these pages with it. It's perfect for this {grow with love}.

We also have a little elf that we just got so we started a bit late on him, but we already love him. Meet Toby!

He is a bit mischievous but he hangs around to keep an eye on everything. Sometimes he hides and you have to find him in the morning. The kids are super excited about him and although it's really just been one morning so far they were excited to see him someplace new.

So I really hope you guys have fun thinking of something new and fun you can all do together! It doesn't have to cost money or be tedious. It could just be a fun game every night until Christmas. Doing a certain craft together. The possibilities are totally endless so dive in and have TONS of fun!!!

Also really really quick cause I haven't had a chance to make a separate blog post...I am the featured designer over at The Daily Digi this week! YAY! So hop over there and take a peek and snag this months digi files for a fun set of temps made by yours truly! there might even be a coupon in my feature! Just sayin...! I am gonna head off of here now but I will see you again tomorrow for the next {Grow with love} kids edition!

{grow with love: holidays} day 3

2010-12-07T01:35:00.005-05:00

Hello my long lost friends! Oh how I missed you!!! My internet woes seem to be solved for the moment *knock on wood*. It's at times like that when you realize how insanely addicted a person can become to their technology. I felt extremely disconnected! I had some nice family time though so I suppose I should be grateful! I do feel bad I missed the gwl postings though, but I am so glad my dear Sara puts up with me and covered for me though! She's awesome like that!

Anyways, you are gonna be sick of me now! You have me three days in a row! EEK! Can you believe how fast December is flying by?! I do so hope that in all this hustle and bustle are able to take a bit of time away from crowds and busy-ness and soak up some holiday spirit! Although it's bitterly cold and snowy I am trying my hardest not to be a Scrooge. Anyone in my family..and my closer friends...can all tell you how much I hate the winter. It makes me so depressed. It's always a struggle to giggle with the kids at the snow but I am making a concerted effort to put on a happy face and let my Christmas excitement take over my lack of excitement about the cold and snow.

Let's quit the ramblings and dive in shall we?! You can see the whole holiday schedule HERE. Like Sara said on Day One though...we need to not get too wrapped up in the schedule of these. You can work on these at your own pace we just want to make sure we have the posts up for you before Christmas. Take your time on these though because we know this time of year is busy busy and we really want you to enjoy your families and things. You can find day one and day two over on Sara's blog if you are just jumping in! Let's go ahead and look at Day three!

I have such fond memories of past Christmas's. It was always a special time of year for us at home. The only bad thing was that I couldn't really find any piccies of my young Christmas's. I was a little sad about that, because it was like that whole time just felt like magic. my mom and dad did the best job at presents. Always getting you what you really wanted and then getting you something you saw 6 months prior and had totally forgotten about. I did however find my most favorite picture of my sister and I when we were younger. On this day I apparently didn't hate the snow. lol! I honestly don't remember wanting to play in the snow that much, even when I was young. Here is my page:

That photo has just always made me giggle! We were such goofballs! :D It was just super fun today to think back and remember past good times. They make me happy! I so hope you have fun today thinking back to past times that make your heart smile! These are such fun things to get recorded I think! Don't forget to stop by here again tomorrow for Day 4. I am trying to make up for our sweet Sara having to post so many days in a row! :D You can find days 1 and 2 over on her blog though! I will see you soon!!

{grow with love: Kids} day 8

2010-12-02T19:36:00.004-05:00

Hello Everyone! I hope you are having a fantastic week so far. I am still fighting off sick and though I feel a bit better I am quickly going through the kleenex. Anywho...I will quit the whining and get on with todays prompt!

I hope you are enjoying the prompts so far! I know I am having fun with them and scrapping my sweet kiddos! Don't forget to check HERE for a list of all the prompts and where you can find them. It's so much easier than scrolling through all the posts I think!

Today's prompt is quite a fun one if you let it be I think! It is a bit difficult though because we are asking you to take a break and step back from the computer a bit, which we all know can be hard to do! We all know it will do us good though don't we? so really really try to make an effort on this one and your kids will be so grateful! Let's go ahead and take a look at the prompt.

Obviously, you can go a lot of ways with this one. We are not asking you to tell your kids they can do whatever they want, but really try to loosen up a bit and say yes to those silly kinds of things that don't hurt the little ones. The things that we usually say no to just because of laziness (for me this is the biggest thing anyways.). Maybe let them stay up a bit later tomorrow since it's Friday? Let them pick dinner or play a game together. I really think your kids will be so excited and will make for a super fun day filled with lots of love and memories. Just let go and create beautiful moments without all the distractions of the computer or the cell phone. They will always remember that fun day with mom when they were super silly and giggled together for hours!

I am going to spending tomorrow doing this, hoping I am feeling better, so I do not have my page done yet. I will be updating this tomorrow night with it though! Don't forget to go to Sara's blog on Monday for Day 9!

Also, starting tomorrow Sara will have the first post of the {grow with love} holidays edition! We are going to be pushing quite a few pages and posts out before Christmas so I am going to apologize in advance if our pages are not all done before we post. We are working so hard to inspire you all with journaling ideas and fun templates to make things easier and I hope that that shows even if we don't get the pages done right away. We really want to make sure we don't skimp on the story telling and the blog posts because to us, that is what matters the most and that is why we do these collabs together!

I also posted a fun little post over at VanillaBee's with lots of Christmas kit inspiration if you are still looking for the perfect kit for your holiday stories and pages and projects! We are revamping VB's so watch for fun new exciting things including a new look, new challenges and awesome new sponsors! If you are a designer and interested in being a sponsor for us then email me and I will get you the sponsor packet! It doesn't have to be a digital designer either. If you have an etsy shop and would like featured, or anything then holler!

I think that is it for now, but I will see you soon!! I hope you all have a great weekend!!

ETA: Here is my page finally!!

Black Friday deals!

2010-11-27T00:08:00.003-05:00

Even though it's now saturday I wanted to let you know that there are still some black friday deals going on!

I still have a huge sale in my shop and The Lilypad has some awesome steals too with a super fabulous collab with Sweet shoppe!!

If you are a book lover, Barnes Noble has some really fabulous sales as well!

30% off one item! Use code D7W3R8D -offer expires 11/28! Code applies to only Bn.com members.

Black Friday Sale! Get 50% off Deluxe Cookbooks , offer expires 11.29.2010

BlackFriday_Sale Save up to 50%!

2 Peas has over 3000 specials right now! Just check out the Specials category.

I went out over night and snagged lots of goodies from Target and also ordered some things online from Best Buy, Crazy 8 and Gymboree! There are all kinds of sales to be had and I know there are more digi sales in the scrapping world I just haven't had time to check them out! I just wanted to pop in and give you some info cause I love sharing deals when I find them!!! Ask my friends! xoxox!

{grow with love} holidays winner!

2010-11-26T12:17:00.002-05:00

Hello Everyone! I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving! We had so much awesome food and I was eating until sooo late! LOL! If you went shopping this morning, I hope you had a good time and got all the deals you wanted! I went out and had some fun with my sister, mom and brother. We giggled and froze and had a good time!

I am beyond pooped so I am here to say that {grow with love} the holidays is live! YAY! I am really excited about these (I always say that don't i?!) and I will be back sometime soon to fill you in on all the blogging deets. The winner of this set was Davita! YAY! Please email me and I will get these to you asap! So for now I will let you go and talk to you soon!!

xoxoxo!

{grow with love:kids} day 6 and other things

2010-11-24T17:06:00.008-05:00

Hello Everyone and Happy Thanksgiving to all you American Folk! I hope you have a great turkey day and enjoy your families tons and tons! I know that you are all super duper busy but I have so much to share today!

First it's a Black Friday sale! You will not get another sale so huge from me ever so now is your chance to stock up! I will be retiring some things at the end of the year. I want to spend more time focusing on other things so there will be no more regular jumpers from me. I am so moved into storytelling and really Sara and I do that so well together and we have so many new and exciting things I can't wait to share with you all so my original jumpers (non collabs) are on sale for 50% off! Even bundles! WOOHOO! You will also find my Paislee Press quickpages 25% off and our new {grow with love} holiday edition will be 20% off on Friday and through Sunday!

Click on the image to head to my store and get your shop on!

Next, I would very much like to give away one of the new {gwl} sets! Here's the preview!

These are so fun and perfect for your holiday memories! Just leave a comment here by Friday morning lets say 11am Est. and then I will pick a winner! Easy peasy!

Last...but certainly not least...it's day 6 for {grow with love}the kids edition! You can find day 5 HERE and for the history and beginning info day 1 is HERE. I also have a brand new page where you can find all the days in one spot so now you will never get lost or confused!

Ok day 6 can actually go very deep if you let it. It will take you into yourself so be prepared for some self reflection and it might bring up some hard or unpleasantness. Let's go ahead and take a look at it then we can chatter a bit more.

There were a million and half things that immediately came to mind when I read this. honestly there are tons of things about myself that I hope my kids can learn not to embrace and I have made a plethora of mistakes in my life that I so hope they do not repeat! I definitely think I will do this prompt a few times. If nothing else, I was able to spend a lot of time saying some prayers for my little ones. It's so hard to watch them and realize that they have picked up a trait of yours or that you think they will.

For now, because I am short on time...I decided to just do one thing but I am coming back to this because there are soooo many things I thought of! I have a tendency to be very sensitive. I take most everything very personally. I try sooo hard to not and to be able to soak things in and realize that people who love me are not going to intentionally say or do mean things to me but it's not always that easy. Then...even in scrapping...it's hard to not be sensitive if you feel overlooked..or cheated..or maybe don't make a team. We have all been there. In general though...People are not out to get me!! (I hope! LOL!) So I need to try to step outside of myself and my own feelings sometimes and look at the big picture and realize a lot of things I am so sensitive about are not important in the grand scheme of things anyways. I know so many of you have been there! So I decided to scrap how I so hope Stella can learn to be less sensitive than I am. Here's what I came up with.

I used mostly Vinnie Pearce's Placid kit which is so beautiful and I was inspired by her amazing gallery as well. I always feel like I need to lift or embrace her style if I use her goodies because I feel so totally unworthy for them lol

So that will be it for now because I know you are super duper busy and want to enjoy your sweet families and I have rambled lots already! Dont forget to post here on my blog for a chance to win the {grow with love} holiday edition! i will see you soon!! xoxox!!!

Jesse Tree and Layouts

2010-11-23T19:16:00.004-05:00

Hey Everyone! I thought I would pop in here and just do some rambling for you. I decided this year, since I have a working printer!, that I was going to do Jacque Larsens Jesse Tree ornaments. I love them! I am going to get a little tree just for these. They each have a picture on them and then a corresponding Bible passage for you to read when you hang up an ornament. You do one everyday in December until you get to Christmas.

The Jesse Tree represents the family tree, or genealogy of Jesus Christ. It tells the story of Gods salvation plan, beginning with creation and continuing through the Old Testament, to the coming of the Messiah. The name comes from Isaiah 11:1, "There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots" (NKJV)

I printed off the fronts of the ornaments here at home and then Garret took them and had them laminated. I just used regular yarn to hang them on the tree. They are so cute and I feel like they will hold up pretty well laminated! Here's some piccies:

Next year, I might invest in ink beforehand so I can put the backs on them too. So much prettier that way. The package comes with all the Bible references you need too. I have not totally decided if I am going print them off for easy reference yet but everything you need comes in the package. It's a fun and meaningful tradition that I am excited to start!

I also thought I would pop in and share a few layouts. I haven't scrapped an enormous amount this month but here's a few I have done for 2Peas for now :)

^ Used Yuletide Memories by Scrap Originals

^ Used Pippin by Lauren Reid

^ Used Super Bad by Lauren Reid

^ Used You Make Me Happy by Hazel Olive Designs and a template by my dear Sara.

That's all the layouts I will bore you with today! :p You can always see my complete gallery if you want to take a peek at some others. :) I hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving! I will have the next {grow with love} post up that day as I hope to get it scheduled tonight or tomorrow. I will also be doing a giveaway of a brand new {grow with love} that is coming this Friday! So exciting! I so hope you have a great week and enjoy your families! xoxox!

ETA! I almost forgot! At the top left you will see a link {grow with love} if you click on that it will take you to a separate page with all the links for the posts here and on Sara's blog. It was brought to our attention that some of the posts are hard to find and I really want you guys to be able to work at your own pace and maybe you aren't doing the prompts but want a journaling idea for the future? now you can find them all in one spot!

Challenge Results!

2010-11-22T17:44:00.002-05:00

Thank you all soooooooooooooo much for playing in my contest!! I loved seeing all the pages. You guys are so talented!! I am sorry I am a bit late in getting results up. We have been fighting sick here lately. :( Anywho here's the results!

For 1st- $50
Corey aka junebug

For 2nd- $25
Ann aka nzingha

For 3rd- $10
Rebecca aka rebecca_lovell

If you girlies could please email me and I will get you your prizes straight away! Thank you all so much!! I will be posting another contest for my newest product later this week so make sure you check back!!

{grow with love: kids} day four

2010-11-18T14:28:00.002-05:00

Hello Everyone! Welcome to Day Four of the {grow with love} kids edition! I hope you have been having so much fun remembering all these little stories about your children. I love the nostalgic feeling that comes with some of these prompts. I spent hours looking at baby pictures while we were creating these prompts and It was so inspiring. Just thinking about my sweet little angelic babies gets me teary eyed...could be my cold too though I guess. lol!

So here we are for day four! YAY! If you're just joining us, welcome! There is still lots of time to dive in and you can hop in anytime along the way! If you need to catch up on the organizational posts (backstory, schedule, giveaway/prize details and such) feel free to check out Sara's first post to capture all that information.

Today's prompt is a fun one I think though I have only gotten one of my kids done thus far. Today we are going to take time and get to know our kids a bit better by watching them and seeing what they are in to. Let's go ahead and take a peek at the prompt. :)

This could be hard or easy I think, but in general it will only require you to take a bit of time out of your day/week and just watch your child and spend time talking with them if they are old enough, to find out what they are loving right now...at this exact moment. I confess that I have only done one of the kiddos thus far because I have been sick and haven't had a chance to follow the boys around yet. lol Stella was easy peasy. Once she has her favorite things she carries them around with her everywhere she goes and sleeps with them. Plus she is only two ;) Here is what I came up with:

My darling little girl is such a girly girl. She has a purse that she takes every single place she goes and sleeps with it even. It's a cute little bag I got for cheap and it matches a bag of mine which she was very excited about too! She also loves anything teeny tiny (that she put in her purses of course!) and these new little things called Squinkies she just adores as does my niece. They really are adorable!

So I really encourage you to maybe a take a bit of a break from online for a bit and go hang with your kids. Maybe you will discover something you never knew they were into?! Don't forget to go to Sara's blog on Monday for Day Five! I will be back this weekend with more ramblings and the contest winner!

Update and a Peek!

2010-11-16T13:59:00.003-05:00

Hello Everyone!! I thought I would pop on here and update you quickly! Thank you all so much for participating in my contest! Give me the rest of this week to get voting in and then sometime this weekend I will post the winner. The pages were all soooo amazing!! You are the best and I am so thankful for all of you!

Also, I wanted to give you a peek of what Sara and I have coming for Black Friday! It is another {grow with love} and I bet you can guess the theme of this one! ;)

We so love all of your suggestions for these that we get and we will do our best to work up prompts and templates as you guys give us ideas.We have so many things brewing and stirring in our minds and I am excited about all of them!!

I also have a few things coming in December which I am very excited about! a few features at a couple of my most favorite sites so YAY!!!

Remember to come back here on Thursday for my day 4 post. I have to confess that I am agonizing over my pages for that post. I only have one done and I do not love it which is aggravating me! Hopefully I will get it all sorted out before then so I don't look looney in my post. I will see you soon!!

{grow with love: kids} day two

2010-11-11T17:10:00.006-05:00

Hello Everyone!!! Welcome to Day 2 of {grow with love} the kids edition. I am super excited about this edition and I so hope you are all moved and inspired!

Let me get some basic info out there first of all. Sara and I were just so inspired by the idea of getting people to get out and tell their stories and also ACT and do things in their real lives to hopefully change things for the better. We felt like this was something missing in our hobby and though we all love scrapping it's so easy to get wrapped up in everything and forget to live! The Marriage Edition was so near and dear to our hearts and we so loved watching you guys grow and do the prompts with us. parts of it were hard..at least for me but I am glad I did it and so glad I had others going along with me! The Kids Edition might not be as difficult because frankly we all love talking about our children right?! I do hope we will inspire you tell stories about things you may not have thought about. Sara has a lot of fabulous insight and back story over on her blog on day one for those of you who would like to know a bit more about how this all came to be. She's so much more eloquent than I am!

For this go around we will have the same format of hopping back and forth from my blog to her blog and back here again. We did decide to slow the hopping down a bit because it's a super busy time of year and we know it was overwhelming last time. So we just have two days a week for these. It gives you more time to get your pages done and so much less stressful for us too! Sara will be doing the blogging on Mondays and I will be on Thursdays. Here is the schedule:

Week One: Monday 8 November (Sara) and Thursday 11 November (Crystal)

Week Two: Monday 15 November (Sara) and Thursday 18 November (Crystal)

Week Three: Monday 22 Novembe (Sara) and Wednesday 24 November (Crystal)

Week Four: Monday 29 November (Sara) and Thursday 2 December (Crystal)

Week Five: Monday 6 December (Sara) and Thursday 9 December (Crystal)

Week Six: Monday 13 December (Sara) and Thursday 16 December (Crystal)

Week Seven: Monday 20 December (Sara) and Thursday 23 December (Crystal)

Week Eight: Monday 27 December (Sara) and Thursday 30 December (Crystal)

Week Nine: Monday 3 January (Sara) and Thursday 6 January (Crystal)

Week Ten: Monday 10 January (Sara) and Thursday 13 January (Crystal)

*This is just an outline. You can scrap at your own pace. We will keep these prompts and posts on our blogs indefinitely for anyone to peek at and join in.*

We would sooo love for you to do the pages along with us though because it helps keep us motivated. :D Those of you who do will automatically be entered into our {giveaway} at the end of the process, eligible to win gift certificates and your pages printed in your very own 20 pages photo book!

Ok, let's dive in to Day Two!

ok...I am going to just lay this all out on the table. I am a name addict. I love them so much. I love finding the meanings and the history and coming up with the perfect combos. There were notebooks full of lists and ideas during all three of my pregnancies. These lists would include the first name options and the meanings and then middles names that flowed nicely along with the meanings of them as well. I would say the names with my last name lots of times to make sure it didn't come out odd or hard to pronounce. etc. To me, a name is a very important part of someone and who they are. Others may not feel the same way, but I will hold tight to that belief for as long as I will live!

The problem for me when it came to naming my sweet little babies was my husband. he did not share my firm belief that names are a vital part of a human being, but he did however have strong opinions about names that I loved and held dearly. It was torturous for me at times and I had many tears shed because of this. He just didn't like anything that I thought would be suitable for our children. It was so stressful! For me, once I found a name that I loved and adored, to have your spouse tell you they hate it, was very crushing to my spirit at times. Maybe I put too much into it? I don't know...I just know that it can be difficult to name children when the parents do not agree 100%.

In the end, for those that do not know, our childrens names are: Gabriel Allen, Ezra Paul and Stella Greer. They are perfect for them too! And yes..even though the hubby says no more kids at the moment, i do have names in my head "just in case". Though they change regularly...they are sitting up there just waiting to be used. (currently I am in love Violet for a little girl or Ruby..if I had a little girl with red hair like her daddy I would name her Ruby in a heartbeat! Oliver is my current boy name love. So strong yet sweet and sensitive sounding. I love it!) If anyone would like for me to name their babies just holler! LOL!

Today I want you to spend some time remember those days of name pondering and list making and tell us about how your kids names came to be! Were they named after someone special? Did the name meaning speak to you? Did you win a coin toss??? I want to hear all about how it came to be. These are things that kids will love to hear about when they get older! I love knowing my sister picked my name even though she didn't get her first choice of Frank for me. It is so fun and tickles me! Here is the page I came up with about the kids names!

I used one of Sara's fabulous templates from our set and a mix of Sahlin Studio goodies. I absolutely cannot wait to see what all you guys come up with because I am hopeful that there are other name nerds out there like me! ;) Make sure you go to Sara's blog on Monday for the day three post!

Also don't forget to check THIS POST for a fun little contest I am doing right now! I will see you soon as I have lots of things I need to get blogged! xoxox!

ETA: Sara's beyond amazing page:

A Contest

2010-11-08T21:32:00.006-05:00

Hello everyone! I hope you are all recovered from DSD and had lots of fun! I always feel like I need to have a better plan each year but it never happens. I think I need to pick one site and just stick out the weekend there. I get overwhelmed and hop around. it's a wee bit stressful. There were a few good deals to be had though and I have scrapped a few new goodies already which I always love! There is nothing like new products to make you feel inspired!

I also wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who is so supportive of me and my scrapping endeavors. It means so much to me and I confess that in this industry I often feel discouraged and worn down so to have such a supportive fan base makes me feel so blessed! I have been trying to think of a fun way to show my thanks to my fans and those of you that buy from me and I decided to do a little contest. It's nothing too hard so don't fret! Just scrap a page using a template of mine from my shop and then post your page in my designer gallery at OScraps. After that, just come back to THIS POST and leave a comment with your link in the gallery. I will have my team vote (that's the easiest and fairest way I could think to pick a winner...though bribery is always good! ;) ) to find the winner. Want to know what you are playing for???

1st place: A $50 dollar gc to my shop
2nd place: A $25 dollar GC
3rd place: A $10 dollar GC

You have 1 week to get your pages posted lets say. So by next monday night at 11:59 pm or Tuesayd midnight

I cannot wait to see your pages! Thank you so much for everything!! And if you happened to miss the DSD sale, here's a coupon for 30% off my shop.

Code: 30off_lateDSD
expires Nov. 15

Now get to scrapping! And make sure you come back Thursday for Day two of the {grow with love kids}. Sara should have day 1 up or will very shortly. You can see my day 1 page HERE. I will see you soon!

ETA: questions and answers

Q- "can we submit as many Los as we want or limited to one??"

A- You may submit as many as you would like but the votes will just be on each person not on each layout if that makes sense.

ETA AGAIN: so sorry about the coupon code! 30off_lateDSD Is working on my end now so don't hesitate to let me know if you have any issues!

Happy DSD!

2010-11-05T22:00:00.001-04:00

Hello Everyone!! Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day!!! You have made it to my little stop on the train sponsored by DigiScrapAddicts! There are over 40 FABULOUS freebies for you to snag that I so hope you enjoy! You probably got here from Heather Roselli's blog, but if you are lost on the train you can head over to DigiScrapAddicts for the complete list!

Anywho, here's my template! It's a super modified template based off of a page by my dear Leslie. I so hope you like it. You can click HERE or on the preview to DL it! I will leave this up indefinitely for you, so as long as I don't have storage issues it will be here!

Now you need to head over to the Geek Chic Scraps blog to get your next gift. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy all the forum hopping and freebie hunting and awesome sales today! There's lots of fun out there to be had!

Also I am sooooo excited that {grow with love} the kids edition is here!! YAY!! I am in love with this and I think the prompts are super inspiring and I so hope you guys will think so too! We will be doing it a bit slower this go around so as not to be as overwhelming. Starting Monday we will be doing the prompts and will only do them twice a week. So on Monday you go to Sara's blog to start this journey and then you will come back here on Thursday...etc.

So here's the preview.
You can snag it HERE or click on the preview! Tomorrow I will be back with tons of awesome pages from my super fantabulous team!

Also, I wanted to let you all know about something super fun and exciting Sara and I have planned for next year! We have made it our goal to get people to tell their stories. not just the super happy birthday's or holidays, but the once that you might not even know you have to tell. The ones hidden deep down in your heart and soul just waiting for their voice. This was part of the mission of {grow with love}. We just know that sometimes scrapping takes you away from your family and becomes a bit of a competition and we feel it is important to get back to story telling and still be taking time with the people you love. That is why we have a lot of "act" prompts. To get you out of your chair and living a bit! We also know that some people struggle a bit when it comes to sitting down and actually doing the journaling. Learning to open up and let the words flow without being forced. We have decided to start offering some different types of actual classes where we can work with you in a one on one type of setting and help teach people how to actually embrace the {grow with love} sentiment and put it into their pages. We are ironing out all the details still but we are hoping to start an early registration on Black Friday (where we will also be releasing a very special {grow with love} holiday edition as well!).

Just because I love you guys, the first 5 people to use the code: 20off_DSD to get another 20% off your order in my shop on anything..for a total of 50% off! YAY!

Also I want to announce the winner of the kids edition! Thank you so much for all entering! The winner chosen at random is:

woohoo! congrats! email me at crystalbella77 at gmail dot com and I will get you your goodies! Now off you go! Have a super fun DSD and snag lots of great deals! <3

{grow with love} kids edition giveaway!

2010-11-05T13:48:00.003-04:00

Hello Everyone! I so hope you are enjoying the DSD festivities this weekend! I am just going to pop in here real quick and giveaway one {gwl} kids edition that will be released tomorrow! Please make sure if you post here to enter that you will come back in the morning to see if you won! I am going to keep it short and simple today cause I know you are all busy bees!

Here's the preview! I am so excited about this one!!

And here is my first page with prompt number 1. <3>

^ I used Remember When by Amy Wolf and Aja Abney which you can get at 40% off right now!

so, if you would like to win this then please just post here in the comments and tell me one thing on your DSD wish list! I will be back tomorrow with a freebie on an awesome blog train!

PS: You are all so sweet!! It doesn't have to be something of mine on your wishlist, though that of course makes me happy!

Layout Share

2010-10-30T12:03:00.005-04:00

Hello Everyone! I hope you had a great week! I am sure you are all super busy with holiday plans but I thought I would sit down here for a minute while I had the time and share some layouts.

^ Using Sincerely by Polka Dot Pixels

^ Using Journalique by Diane Rigdon

^ Using In Pink*Petite Collection by Designs by Anita

^ Using Moody full Collection by Hazel Olive

^ Using Roar! by Jen Martakis

^ Using It's a Hoot kit, solids and add-ons by Michelle Underwood

Also, I would love love love it if you could take a minute and vote for 9th and Bloom in the Battle of the Creative teams. Anyone can vote and it just takes a second! You don't have to register or anything! Thank you so very much! I am going to get off here for now but I will be back soon!

My December Daily

2010-10-27T17:59:00.005-04:00

Hey Everyone! I know I am a few days late, but as promised, here's my Dec. Daily album so far. Please no judging. this is the first time I have ever done anything like this. It might look a bit amateur, but it will be perfect (I hope!) for it's purpose.

Here's a look at everything I have so far. I got the cutest Basic Gray paper (closeups below) and I have an American Crafts Modern album. I still need to get some big sheets of paper to cover my album.

One of the adorable closeups. I love it!

Another closeup. How adorable is that little santa?! I love it!

I don't have a working printer so I ordered these adorable little tags on Etsy. They were super affordable at only around 2.30 with shipping. I figure I can spruce them up with some glitter...

I couldn't afford a bunch of transparencies, so I ordered a bit notebook type thing full of glittery paper. It works out perfectly for me!

I got some Martha Stewart glitter, which I will tell your right now is INSANELY messy, lol! But oh so pretty! I just used glue on the numbers for my glitter.

Here are some of the finished numbers..no poking fun. lol I couldn't think of anything else I had on hand that would be more precise than regular craft glue.

I used the foam square adhesives on the numbers to give them some depth. These were recommended to me by Amy Martin cause she too loves the depth they create. You can't see in this photo...but I used a cute little heart hole punch for the holes as well.

and a number up close.

So there you go for now! As it gets closer to the time I will start making it prettier with flowers and stickers and putting some paper pieces on my cardstocks. This is all the progress I have so far. I hope that anyone else who is thinking of giving it a go but is scared of doing it if you are mostly digital will just jump in with both feet!

{grow with love} winner

2010-10-24T19:10:00.002-04:00

Thank you all so much for playing my quick little giveaway!

Megan is the winner! YAY! You can email me at crystalbella77 at gmail dot com and I will get you your new goodies!

Sara is going to post a giveaway over on her blog as well in just a bit! So check back over there for another chance to win these! Stay tuned for the giveaways for {grow with love} the kids edition!

Tomorrow I will be posting my December Daily piccies that I have so far. I do not feel even close to being done but I am making progress! :D

{grow with love} giveaway

2010-10-23T14:27:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone! I hope you are having a beautiful Saturday! It's dreary here and I popped in the best movie of all time...Pride and Prejudice (the BBC/Colin Firth version of course) to scrap to while the little ones nap. I just can't decide what I want to scrap with first!

Sara and I were up until the wee hours last night getting all the prompts for {grow with love} the kids edition last night and I am so excited for it to be live! You guys are hopefully gonna be so inspired! We sincerely hope that you are moved by these projects. While I was sitting here this afternoon I thought I would do a giveaway of our last edition: the marriage edition. The templates can be used for any type of page of course but I hope you will take a minute to at least read over the prompts and pick a few to do. :) Here's the preview for those that haven't seen it.

So, if you would like to win these please just post here and tell me what you have going on this Saturday. I will pick a winner tomorrow!

Also, if you don't want to wait on these here is a code for 20% off:

Code: gwl_20off
1 time use per person
expires Nov. 1, 2010

The preview is linked to take you to the shop.

Also, I would love you forever (though I already do..so I guess that's not good bribery...) if you would pop over to DSA and vote for our team 9th and Bloom in the Battle of the Creative Teams. You can see our teams layouts HERE.

I have spent a bit of time today prepping my Dec. Daily project and will have photos for that tomorrow. The putting it together is going to take some time, but I am making progress so I am proud of myself! If you want to read more about Dec. Daily you can head over to Ali Edward's blog for info. I will say that Sara and I might have a Dec/holiday prompt project coming too. :) Though it won't be like the Dec. Daily..hopefully it will give you some ideas for things to scrap and journal about!

Fall Fun!

2010-10-21T21:32:00.005-04:00

So I was sitting here tonight trying not to get overwhelmed by the oodles of things I have to get done and I remembered that I had taken loads of pictures at my mom's house a few weeks ago. The only good thing about Indiana in my opinion is the gorgeous Falls. It seems like they are always short lived though which is quite sad, but they are beautiful and tons of fun while they are here. The kids had a blast jumping and running through the piles of leaves. The leaves are already (and were then) at that crinkly stage. The kind where you have to step on them to hear that noise, so they just loved jumping in and listening to the crackly noises! Here's a little collage of some pics from that day.

It just looks like tons of fun doesn't it?! Stella was "sleeping" in the piles at one point which I confess made for a huge leaf mess in her hair and her clothes. When we got home I wasn't thinking and I just took her little boots off and sooooo many leaves just fell all over the floor. Gabey was super excited about being able to vacuum them up though. (have I mentioned how awesome it is to have a 6 year old that loves the vacuum?!). I know not everyone gets these kinds of Fall seasons and I wish I could send you some of mine because it really is one of the only things I can appreciate about the Summer fading away here in the MidWest.

I also though I would pop on here and share some of my 2Peas layouts from October so far. So many new designers are showing up over there and it's hard to not use every single thing! Here are the ones I have done so far and I have more in the works!

^ Using Sincerely by Polka Dot Pixels

^ Using Wilna Furstenberg's Leaves Collection.
This page was for a Creative Inspiration challenge

^ This page was made using a whole mix of goodies!
-Wilna's Doodled Leaves frames
-Erica's Cut it Out Alpha
-Autumn Assortment Papers by Betsy Tuma
-Papperazzi Cardstocks by Polka Dot Pixels
-Capture the Moments Elements by Edeline Marta

^ Using Mostly the Sew Lovely Collection by Hazel Olive Designs

^ Using Mostly the October Past collection by Hazel Olive Designs

I think that's enough layouts for now though don't you?! :D Thank you for letting me share! I haven't scrapped the last few days because I have been busy with real life stuff but I have some more pages I can post in a few days. :)

I will leave you guys alone for now so I can go watch my TV. Real Housewives to watch tonight. wooot! LOL I hope you all have a great weekend!

It's me!

2010-10-20T02:12:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone! I am here! It looks like I disappeared because my old domain at everydayramblings.com is no more! It was a mess all due to the fact that I was incompetent at running WordPress. I am here though at my new home and I love it! I am much more familiar with blogger and I have had this domain for a while now and didn't know what to do with it. I thought of it one night and I felt like "Live Your Stories" was perfect for me in some way. Live is the first part of my last name and I am sure you all know by now how much I LOVE telling stories. It's very important and so often us scrappers get caught up in living to scrap and not just living. We do things for the sake of that new kit we saw at our fave store. However I do think it's important to record bits of our lives and our stories so we don't forget or just for the sake of getting things out if you need are a therapy scrapper. So! I was super excited to finally be using this new domain name that fits me so and I am sorry for being a pain and jumping around, but here I am to stay! Thank you so much for your patience with me this last year I have been designing and getting into the swing of things. It means a lot to me to have awesome fans/friends like you!

On another note I will tell you that {grow with love} the kids edition (we are still pondering perfect names..) is halfway done! I cannot wait to show you guys and see all your beautiful pages and read your awesome stories! It's going to be a fun one I think! If you don't have kids don't worry! This is going to be one super awesome set of templates you can use for anything!
We are on Week 3 of Scrap Your Freakin' Heart Out as well and I have been seriously blown away by the weekly entries! It's been amazing to see so much inspiration in one place! I have been so incredibly moved! However it is making the judging soooo hard! I would love to see you all play in week three! The challenge is really creative and I think you will moved:

So hop over to The Pad and get your scrap on peeps! There are some super fab prizes to be had!

I am working on my December Album as well and hopefully I will start posting some pics for you all to see. You will probably be very entertained by my lack of skillz in that department, but I am excited to give it a go and learn and get crafty!

That's going to be it for now! Thank you so much for popping in! Pardon the dust while I fiddle with things around my new home too! Don't forget to snag the freebie by me over on Lizzy's blog! There are also quite a few other freebies over there!

Saturday ramblings

2010-10-16T19:17:00.001-04:00

well hello there my lovelies! It's been a while since I have blogged or popped in with any news huh? today I am just here to ramble on and on. Hopefully I am not going to bore you too much! I always like to chitter chatter but I confess that I feel like I have nothing very interesting to say. lol! Today was another regular day around here honestly. My hubby works shift work and he has to work tonight and then tomorrow and then he will be off for a couple days. By this time in his shift we are all a little antsy around here.

Here are a few shots from our day today:

I did a bit of school work with Gabe today which means drawing and art time for Ezra and Stella (she was adamant about not being in pictures...so I got Squinkies instead. lol) He is doing sooo good! I am so proud of how well Gabe is picking up school work this year. He was very unexcited about it because he gets so nervous about pressure and feeling like he's not quite good enough and it ends up making him scared to do anything. I think he gets this from me but he really is embracing it much better than I thought he would and it makes schooling him so much easier!

So like I said...Stella was so not into the mamarazzi stuff today...well really it's been the past few days now that I think about it. She did ask me to take a photo of her newest found treasures though. I don't about you guys, but the little girls in my family love anything tiny that they can carry around in bags or purses or just in their pockets. The tinier and the more there are the better! Well these new little things called Squinkies are seriously the perfect thing. Stella adores them and so does my niece! They are actually kinda squishy..and they come in little plastic balls. It's really as if they are just some cheap bubble gum machine toy. they jack the price up though and make them look more desirable hahaha! They really are cute though and will make for good gifts I think!

I also decide to make some snickerdoodles today. They are my most fave cookie and I finally decided I would try to make some recently (usually my sister spoils me with them so I don't have to, but I got tired of waiting for the next batch lol) and I found a recipe by Martha Stewart that is super yummy! I found THIS recipe on her site, but it is not the recipe in her Cookie Book so I will share that here. :)

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I totally spelled flower like 6 times just then lol)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups plus 2 Tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture

2. Stir together cinnamon andremaining 2 Tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into twenty 1 3/4 inch balls; roll in cinnamon sugar. Space 3 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

3. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment in airtight containers at room temperature up to 3 days.

So there you go! they really are super yummy though I didn't have any parchment and I didn't even know I was supposed to be rotating my sheets. LOL! oh well! They turned out delish nontheless!

On a design note, I do have things in the works so be on the lookout for an awesome DSD release. Sara and I do plan on having {grow with love} the kids edition done by then so yay! And I have a few other things around town coming up too! If you head over to Miss Lizzy's blog you can snag a freebie by me and be entered into some fun contests! Seriously who doesn't love free stuff?! So chop chop! Head over there and get your goodies!

On another note...I have been bitten by the urge to paper scrap. I have never in my life paper scrapped and I confess that I used to sit around and think how silly all those paper scrappers were. I can sit on the computer and do so much and re use my supplies CONSTANTLY. I never ever got it. Until the last few weeks. I just want to play with the gorgeous papers and start spraying on some paint and feel like I am doing something more productive but still crafty. It just sounds and looks like so much fun! I like the thought of actually being able to sit at the table while the kids do some other types of crafty things or just make something that I can touch in the end (I am sooo awful about getting digital layouts printed.) Seriously I have this obsession with looking at all the paper supplies online now. It's a bit overwhelming though! I am not sure I will be good at it and I am not sure how long it will take me to convince the hubby to let me give it a go but I am going to make this happen eventually! I am just a little backwards from most people so I started in digi and I want to go paper! Jenni Bowlin is calling my name.....

Freebie!

2010-10-11T12:36:00.002-04:00

Oh I feel awful because I had this post drafted for a long while and just forgot to post. *Cry* please forgive me and let me tell you about an awesome charity kit!

This is an amazing kit put together by the designers at MScraps and 9th and Bloom. It's for such a good cause and I hope you will pick it up. {Snag it here} You won't be disappointed! The CT has put together another some quickpages with the kit and here is mine!

You can click on the preview to download or you can click HERE. I had to use 4Shared and I have so many problems with them so I hope it works!

You can get to the masterlist with all the quickpage links HERE!

Just some things...

2010-10-05T08:22:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone! I hope you had a great weekend! It seems like I haven't gotten any sleep lately so I am just pooped! I wanted to pop in and share some layouts among other things! Let's start with a few pages!

^ My nephew just turned 8 on Sept. 11 and this kit was perfect to scrap that!

Mostly used Jo Hanna's The Benjamin Party Collection

^ My little girly got her first set of silly bands the other day and she adores those things! I had no idea she would like them so well and would entertain her that much or I would have bought them sooner LOL!

Awesome new Papparazzi Craft Solids by Polka Dot Pixels
Fabulous new Stay Connected Frames and Brads by Kerry Stewart

^My little man just adores playing in the rain on a Summer day!

Most everything from Jo Hanna's new kit Early Morning Rain
I also took part of Kerry's new Stay Connected Frames :)

This is inspired by love defined by Emily Powers

^I tried desperately to do a photo shoot the other day with the little ones. This is about as good as it gets. lol

Using Mostly Capture the Moments by Edeline Marta

I think that's all the layouts for now. I wanted to let you know that Prompt 1 for Scrap Your Freakin' Heart Out is up as well!

so head over there and get your scrap on! The prizes are amazing! Your truly is one of the judges and although I am excited about it, I am so nervous and I know my job will not be easy. I so hope you will all play along though!!! I will see you soon!! xoxo!

Layout Share and Ramblings

2010-09-28T09:49:00.000-04:00

Hello again Peeps! I am trying to blog more as you can see! :D Hopefully I am not just a bore though. lol I really never ever have too much to say that is very interesting. I hope your week is going pretty well. It's only Tuesday but the kids and I are already anxious for the week to be over I think. Everyone is a little antsy of some reason. Daddy is working lots and lots lately so maybe that's mostly what it is. It has been nice and cool which means I have indeed been enjoying soup this week so far! I made a yummy potato soup last night. I got the recipe from Sara and you can find it HERE if you are interested! Tonight is going to be spaghetti though I think because I need to throw something in this week that the boys will eat well. I don't know about you, but my kids are such picky eaters it's insane! Soup is a no go for the boys. Stella will eat just about anything I guess so it's really just the boys that are super picky.

I thought I would share a few layouts today because I have been a busy scrapper! It seems like the designers have all had such gorgeous goodies this month and I am not complaining! :D You can find credits in my main gallery HERE.

[gallery link="file" orderby="ID"]

I think that's about it for now! I have more pages but I do not want to bore you! LOL I am gonna get the kiddos down for naps but I will be back soon! don't forget that my new jumpers are still 20% off at the moment! <3

Winner and New Jumpers Inspiration

2010-09-26T21:10:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! I hope you had a good weekend! It got a wee bit chilly here! It's only supposed to be in the 40's tonight. brrrrr! For those that don't know...I cannot stand Winter...so although I quite like the break from the heat, the thought of freezing has me quite unhappy. The good news is that I am getting ready to go make some hot chocolate! That is one of the only things that helps in the cold to make me happy. lol!

Anywho..lets get down to business! Thank you all so much for playing in my giveaway! I will try to do this more often when I have a release! I let Random.org do the dirty work for me and here's your winner!

Which means that Gemma won! YAY!

Congrats Gemma! You can email me at crystalbella77 at gmail dot come to get your goodies!

You can pick up my new jumpers in my shop and 20% off today and tomorrow!

Here are the fab pages my CT did for me!

So totally amazing! I think that's it for now!! I hope you like these and I will see you tomorrow for a layout share! I have been scrapping scrapping lately! Talk to you soon!
xoxo!

Giveaway!

2010-09-25T06:41:00.000-04:00

Hey There everyone and happy Saturday! I can tell it's going to be a beautiful Fall day here and I am so excited...other than the fact that I have to grocery shop..which is the total worst. boohiss! Though I am excited to break out the soup recipes and the chili cause that's one of my favorite things about cool weather. I thought that it had been way too long since I did a giveaway so here I am! I have a new set of Jumpers coming out on Monday and I would love to give one away!

I hope you like them!! It had been a while since I had a regular set so I thought they were due. Like usual the Jumpers are based on my own scrap pages.

For the giveaway just post here in the comments for one entry and share on twitter and FB for additional entries. Just make sure you link me up so I know where you posted! I think that's about it! I will be back Monday morning to pick a winner! xoxo!!!

Recent Layouts

2010-09-23T20:43:00.000-04:00

Thank you so much for replying to my last post about journaling! I really am glad to know that it does not turn people off to not be able to read my journaling very often. It often feels like I do based on the comments I get at times so I feel a bit more at ease now! I don't always hide my journaling necessarily, but I will at times try to find a font that is a bit harder to read from the normal web size. I really appreciate you guys popping in here to let me know what you think!

I also thought I would pop in and share some of my most recent layouts. I had had two blogs where I did this, but it is just too much for me so I am putting everything onto this one I think. Becca made it so pretty for me I want to get my use out of it!

Here are some of my recent 2Peas pages and the credits:

(Using Mostly Chocolate Truffle by Polka Dot Pixels)

(Using Spring Fling by Jo Hanna)

(Using Freshen Up by Edeline Marta)

(Using Sweets by Polka Dot Pixels)

That's all I will post for now cause I have actually been trying to get caught up in scrapping and have done quite a few more pages. eek! When the mojo is flowing you gotta embrace it right?! Especially when you have no idea when it will just up and disappear again like it likes to do lately. Maybe in a few days I will pop back on and post some of my other pages. Plus I might have some new templates coming out next week to post! I think it's time for another giveaway as well so watch for that on Saturday or Sunday!

Update!

2010-09-23T01:01:00.003-04:00

Hello Everyone! I just wanted to pop on and say that I am gong to just stick with posting on 1 blog for the time being. I am super busy at the moment but I want to be able to do layout shares and everything so I will just do that on my one blog: Everyday Ramblings. I think next year *IF* i attempt a p365 of some sort I will do that here on this blog! So for now you can just watch my other blog for all the goings on..including freebies and my pictures and pages. :D

Let's Chat Journaling

2010-09-22T20:37:00.000-04:00

So, if you followed along with my {grow with love} posts with Sara Gleason, you know that I don't share my journaling online. It's just something I am not always comfortable with doing. I suppose that I am not one of those people you could call "an open book". It's not that I have things to hide. It's just that parts of my life I want to stay close to me. The scrapping community is so incredibly amazing and supportive and I know there is a huge group of people ready to lift people up and offer prayers when needed or wanted and I love that. It's a relatively tight knit group if you are active in a forum or two. We look at each others kids daily and often hear of each others triumphs and struggles in the form of a scrap page. For some reason I just can't quite cross the line into posting my journaling in my credits. I often get comments in the galleries that say things like "I wish I could read this journaling." I had one page called "Confessions" during the {grow with love} project and I got quite a few comments asking me if I would share what I was confessing. I was just not comfortable with sharing. A lot of times I will do a page for scrap therapy and I have quite a few amazing creative teams so I will use goodies that require me to post my pages in online galleries. That's part of the dilemma about not buying much scrap supplies.

I often wonder if my not sharing the journaling turns people off. There are times I will be browsing the galleries for my Gallery Standouts posts and I am so often moved by someones incredibly touching journaling. It draws me in and sometimes makes me laugh or actually cry. What is it that makes me not able to put it out there like that? Most anyone who looks at my pages will be people with whom I will never have any face to face contact with. I am not going to be changing my mind about sharing the journaling on my personal pages. I know that. I did wonder what you all thought...when you can't read someone's journaling on a very journal-centric page does it bother you? Are you turned off by that?? Maybe you don't think much of it and just take in the whole page in general? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Popping in!

2010-09-20T06:52:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone! It has been way too long since I posted! I have been busy busy with family stuff and a few work things and just haven't had time. I hope everyone is well! I am super excited about my blog revamp! I needed a change and my dear friend Becca really did awesome with it. It's perfectly me!! Because I am so excited about my new look I would love to offer my readers (if there are any...lol) a little discount to anything in my shop!

Code: luvMYnewBLOG

good for: 20% off anything in my shop

expires October 1, 2010

*I time use per person*

Now is a good chance at snagging something you have been wanting! It will be a few months before a big sale in my whole shop!

I am also excited to say that I have a few things in the works! Sara and I have a couple different {grow with love} projects coming up and I am so excited about them! The Kids version is up next and I am really really excited! So start snapping lots of pics of your kids and finding those baby pictures! Make sure you get yourself in on the pics as well! One thing I know your kids will want to have when they get older is pics of their mama. They won't care how done up you are or anything. They will just want to see you. So make sure you snap some pics of you and your kids too. Or hand the camera over to someone else to get some good pictures of you with your family. You will not regret it!!

Well, I think that's really about it for now! I hope everyone is well and I will see you soon!!

xoxox

Layout Share

2010-09-14T15:21:00.004-04:00

It's been so long since I have popped on and done a layout share so I thought I would post a couple new pages here for my sister cause she looks and anyone that happens to stroll by. :)

Sweets by Polka Dot Pixels @ 2Peas
template by Sara Gleason

Freshen Up Bundle by Edeline Marta @ 2Peas
stitches by Vinnie Pearce

I think that's about it for now! I haven't actually scrapped a ton lately because my hubby is home on vacation for a bit. It's been super nice having him here though it does get in the way with my scrap plans! LOL! I hope you are all doing well!!

My little beach babe

2010-08-23T12:28:00.004-04:00

I have so many beach pics from this years vacay so I couldn't resist entering this one! Here is one my most favorite pics. I was back quite a ways and Miss Stella was just having so much and stopped to wave at me. It was too cute!!

Head over there to see more beachy fun!

CatScrap blog hop!

2010-08-19T05:00:00.000-04:00

Hello my lovelies!! Thanks for stopping by! you must have heard about all the super fun party activities over at CatScrap! They are turning 4 and we are having a celebration!!! I have a little quickpage for you today and I so hope you like it!! I don't have a fancy schmancy preview or anything so I am sorry!! Here's what you are getting though!

For some reason I couldn't get box.net to work right today so I had to go a different route! Let me know here in the comments if you have any troubles at all!! You can click on the image or HERE to download.

I hope you like!!! Now make sure you head over to Suzanne's super fabulous blog to pick up her freebie!!

Hands Across the Gulf

2010-08-14T08:15:00.000-04:00

For more than 90 days, oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico before the leak was finally "capped" in late July. It is estimated that approximately 4.9 million barrels (or 205.8 million gallons) of oil spilled into the waters. It has been one of the biggest environmental disasters in decades. Hundreds of miles of beaches, wetlands, and estuaries along the northern Gulf Coast have been impacted. The spill, though temporarily "capped", continues to cause extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats as well as the Gulf's fishing and tourism industries. Families are without work and marine and land animals continue to suffer. And there are still many unknowns about the long term effects of the oil and of chemical disbursements used in attempts to curtail the flow and impact upon the regional coastline and waters.

Forty-five designers across the digital scrapbooking community have united with one shared cause: to raise awareness and to support recovery efforts for the environment and those impacted by this tragic disaster.

Participating designers include: Aja Abney, Amy Martin, Biograffiti, Boutique Cute Dolls, Createwings Designs, Deena Rutter, Designs by Cindy Schneider, Designs by Crystal Livesay, Dido Designs, Dunia Designs, Emily Merritt Designs, Fiddle Dee Dee Designs, Fizzy Pop Designs, FruitLoOp Sally Designs, Laurie Ann (Heaven's Gate Designs), Holliewood Studios, Holly Designs, Holly Spring Designs, Jazzmin Designs, Jennifer Barrette Designs, Jacque Larsen, Juliana Kneipp Designs, Kay Miller Designs, Kaye Winiecki, Kitty Designs, Kristin Aagard Designs, Lauren Grier, Leora Sanford, Loreta Labarca, Micheline Martin, Nikki Beaudreau, Paislee Press, One Little Bird Designs, Sabrina Dupre, Sahlin Studio, Sarah Cornish of My 4 Hens Photography, Shabby Miss Jenn, Studio Basic Designs, Sugarplum Paperie, Tickled Pink Studios, Tiny Toes Designs, Tracie Stroud, Vera Lim, Vinnie Pearce, and zinnias and swallowtails.

Hands Across the Gulf is our heartsong for this cause. This gorgeous kit representing the varied styles of the scrapping community, is positively overflowing with beautiful papers, unique elements, templates and Photoshop actions. All told, designers have contributed more than 100 papers and 200 elements, 2 full alphas, 18 templates, and 4 PS actions to Hands Across the Gulf.

Available for sale for one month only, 100% of the sales from this kit will be donated to the National Wildlife Federation and to the United Way's Gulf Recovery Fund.

Hands Across the Gulf arrives Sunday 15 August 2010 at After Five Designs.

Creative Inspiration

2010-08-12T11:58:00.002-04:00

I don't know if you are familiar with the amazing blog Creative Inspiration. It's a super fab site set up by two of the most amazing scrappers Kaleigh and Tara. They have awesome challenges and just pure eye candy and inspiration. They are celebrating their 2 year Anniversary this week! YAY!!! Soooo exciting! If you get a chance pop over there and do some challenges. I know you will be inspired!! It's impossible not to be.

Here is my most recent page for one of their challenges: So anywho I just really wanted to pimp them out a bit!

{grow with love} day 20

2010-08-06T07:33:00.001-04:00

Well here we are. The last day of this project. You might be feeling relieved or maybe just overall reminiscent. We both really hope that you grew and enjoyed the process. It really was our hope to get people thinking and hopefully help change their lives and/or perspectives a bit. Hopefully you had a bit of fun along the way and learned a bit about yourself and your spouse/partner.

If you are just joining us that's ok too! You can find day one HERE and a bit about the rules and guidelines. The only thing that has changed is that you do not have to use all the templates along with the prompts in order to be eligible for the grand prize. That was originally our intention and along the road we both realized that that just might not work for everyone and we didn't want to stifle people's creativity too much. It's hard to scrap when it's forced let alone with you already have a forced page design. So we opened up and anyone who participates and does all the prompts will be entered into the drawing. You can find a bit more about this change on Sara's day 17 post.

Let's go ahead and take a look at the very last prompt.

Today we are going to look back at where we have come since we started this project. Remember the word that you chose at the beginning? Does it still seem to fit or are you thinking you should choose a new one? Maybe throughout this process you struggled a bit and had a hard time with the prompts? That's ok! Talk about that a bit and maybe what needs to happen for things to change in your relationship.

Here is the page I came up with.

I really just wanted to get the journaling out so I didn't worry about trying to find a photo or anything. For me doing this project had it's ups and downs. I confess that I struggled at keeping up some of the time but I am glad I did it. It helped me to reflect a lot on my own actions and the way I relate to my husband and some things that I could be doing better. It also showed me some of the great things about my hubby that I don't always recognize or acknowledge. Even if you didn't get tons out of what we did here I do hope you enjoyed it and made some pages that you love. A lot of these stories are ones that your children and/or grandchildren might appreciate hearing one day.

I really think that's about it for now! Remember you have about 10 days to get your pages done. Be sure to link them up to the appropriate posts on my blog and Sara's blog so we can see your beautiful work and enter you into winning some GC's and the photobook from Shutterfly! I am so grateful that you guys who are participating allowed us to help you tell your stories! <3

9th and Bloom QP Blog Hop

2010-08-05T06:14:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone! Have you heard the news?! There's a new and totally fabulous and exciting shop and you can find it at 9th and Bloom! It's got the most amazing line up of designers and I am so honored to be able to be on the Creative Team. I really really hope you will come by the forum and say hi and maybe take part in the fun challenges we have going on. Make sure you post all your pages you do with the goodies you bought in our gallery! We would love to see your work!

Anywho, we have put together a fun little blog freebie hop of quickpages for you with the amazing store collab. Here's mine!

You can click on the preview or --->HERE<--- to download!

Here is my page (which was for the August: Inspired Impressions challenge!)

Thank you so very much for stopping by! You can snag the next freebie over on Olga's blog!

{grow with love} day 18

2010-08-04T11:38:00.001-04:00

Hello everyone! We are nearing the end of this project and I hope you are hanging in there and enjoying the process still. Sara posted yesterday a bit of info about prize eligibility. We have decided that you do not have to use the templates in order to be up for winning the custom photo book. It is something we thought a lot about but we decided that we really did want people to just be scrapping their memories and stories so as long as that is getting done we are very pleased. We both are feeling a bit burnt out and haven't used the templates all ourselves so it only makes sense to keep it a bit more open. We really want people to be feeling moved to making pages and inspired and not just scrapping to get them done.

I hope that you all are understanding with us as things change a bit (like the prize eligibility). This was our first time doing something like this and there is a lot of trial and error. We have other projects in mind so hopefully eventually things will be running perfectly smooth!

So onto today's prompt:

Today's is definitely a heavy one, so please don't feel like you have to let the world into your journaling. I personally am not always comfortable with that so no judgement here at all. I really want you to dig down though. We all have fears, anxieties, stresses...etc..that we aren't always comfortable airing to our spouses. For me, I just hate to feel incredibly vulnerable. What if I tell him how I feel and he thinks I am silly? What if he gets mad?? The ultimate thing for me is upsetting him or ending up fighting and saying hurtful things. In general I keep pretty quiet and keep most things to myself not because I can't trust my husband but because I am not always sure I can trust myself. I have a huge sassy side so I know that sometimes if something comes to an argument I might say something I will regret. So unfortunately a lot of things just sit there inside me. a lot of my fears don't get out or relieved. I am working on it thought so this prompt was very cathartic for me. :)

Here's the page I came up with:

I wanted to go for a journal type feel for my page. As you can see I used a font that is hard to read at this size and made it quite small. Feel free to do that or to blur it or whatever you are comfortable with. This prompt is all about just airing things out and letting your feelings out. If you are up for it try talking to your spouse about whatever you are journaling about. It might be hard but it really will be worth it. The thoughts I journaled here are things I did bring up to my husband and it's very relieving, although definitely a bit stressful to put yourself out there. Just remember to do what feels right with you!

I think that's it for now! Make sure you go to Sara's blog for tomorrow's post! then I will finish you up right here on Friday! <3

{grow with love} day 16

2010-08-02T09:08:00.001-04:00

Hello Everyone and welcome to our last week on this journey! i hope that so far you have been enjoying the prompts and having fun going a bit deeper than you are used to. If you need to start from the beginning head to Sara's blog for day one then just hop back and forth for all the posts along the way!

Here is some basic info for you!

The backstory: Sara and I have had it on our hearts for a long time to collaborate on a project that was something more than "just" templates. But also a project of journaling prompts so that anyone who wanted to delve into a special kind of storytelling could join have place to start. We were inspired by our own real life musings and reflections into our loves and relationships and so Grow With Love: Marriage Edition was born. It is a series of 20 templates and 20 journaling prompts that we hope will inspire you to scrap about and improve your own loves and relationships. You can snag the templates and prompts here or here.
To recap: We are spending 4 weeks or 20 days exploring the journaling prompts together. Each day (Monday - Friday) we hop back and forth between my blog and Sara's blog, exploring a fresh prompt. Anyone is welcome to join us any time. You can tackle all the prompts with us, or just the ones that touch you most. This is a self-paced project. And you are welcome to scrap with both the templates and prompts or just the prompts, whatever inspires you most. Though if you'd like to be eligible for the prizes (including a fabulous photo book of your very own Grow With Love project!) you will want to check out the Day One post for details. You'll probably want to check that out anyway to learn more about the project. lol.

And now we are on the final week. It's been a long and tough journey for me and I hope you have all felt moved and inspired. Today's is a lighter page but it's a fun one I think! Let's take a peek at the prompt!

We all have them...I think! LOL Nicknames and pet names for our spouses and they probably have some for you! Around here we are both Honey most of the time, but we have a few others we throw out there! you can take a couple different approaches to this page. You can pick just one of your nicknames (for you or your spouse) and just scrap around the meaning of that. A list and a he/she type page would be tons of fun if you have more than one pet name! Just do whatever feels right for you and however you are comfortable! If you don't have pet names then scrap about that! Just talk about how you don't have them and why. Lots of different ways to go with this one!

I am going to be working on my page late tonight so I don't have it ready to post yet. I have been working on my marriage in other ways, one of which has been less computer time while he is off of work. It's definitely helping with things at home but it will make me a teensy bit behind on getting that page for this post. I hope you understand and be sure to check back because I will be posting it soon enough!! I hope you all had a great weekend and have the most happy week! I will see you very soon! Don't forget that Sara will be up with Day 17 tomorrow!

9th and Bloom QP Blog Hop

2010-08-02T06:00:00.000-04:00

Anywho, we have put together a fun little blog freebie hop of quickpages for you with the amazing store collab. Here's mine!

You can click on the preview or --->HERE<--- to download!

Here is my page (which was for the August: Inspired Impressions challenge!)

Thank you so very much for stopping by! You can snag the next freebie over on Olga's blog!

{grow with love} day 14

2010-07-29T16:36:00.001-04:00

Hello again peeps! this is my last post for this week and then we are on the last week! I so hope that you feel like these have been helpful or maybe inspiring at least? Sara had a great recap posted on Day 11 this week for those of you who are just now starting or maybe just want a refresher on the info. :)

If you are like me you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed about keeping up the pace. Seriously do not feel like you have to rush these! We will be giving you 10 days or so after it's over to be entered in the giveaway, so don't pressure yourself or force it if you just aren't feeling it. unless you are the type of person who just really really needs an awesome push and then more power to ya! :D

So here we are with day 14. We have spent some time looking at ourselves recently and now it's time to focus on our spouse/partner. Really pay attention to them and listen to them this week. Let's take a look at the prompt.

so this week we want you to spend some time noticing your spouse. Maybe your hubby has obvious interests or pursuits like golfing or some other sport. For some people these kinds of things might be a bit harder to find. Sometimes it's something small that people really pour themselves into. Whatever the case may be for you in your marriage just pay attention and try to notice something..maybe even something you didn't realize was important.

Here's my page using one of Sara's templates from this collab.

It's pretty basic as my hubby doesn't have any hobbie's per say...he's just really into anything outdoor and anything that he deems "manly". He's really the typical "guys guy" I think and I wanted to capture that with my photos and with my page. It's one of the things that I do love about him...his manliness. lol!

So, what kinds of things does your spouse like to do? What does he/she find important and feels like makes them part of who they are? this is another one where you can get heavy or deep depending on how you are feeling about it. Remember to go to Sara's blog tomorrow for the last day of this week and then I will "see" you all on Monday!

{grow with love} day 12

2010-07-27T09:05:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone! I hope you are all doing really well this week. :) It's only tuesday and I can already tell that it's going to be a super long week. I hate when that happens and it's probably going to be super long because I decided it was. Funny how that work huh?!

Yesterday Sara posted a lot of helpful info and the back story and everything for those of you who are just joining us. So hop over there to find out some of the basics or to just be reminded. We are more than halfway through the process now and I really hope you are all enjoying the reflecting and growing. It's not always easy to get deep on some subjects like marriage, but I really do believe it is worth it.

So here I am with Day 12. This is another reflective page that really encourages us to get pretty deep. Let's take a peek at the prompt shall we?

This is always a hard one for me. IT's just hard to sit and reflect on only myself without thinking "Well but if he hadn't said that I wouldn't have said this!". Honestly though, the only actions we can control are our own. Those are the only ones we can fully change and control. It really doesn't matter what anyone else says or does. We are responsible for our own actions no matter what situations we are in. It's definitely not an easy thing to do to step back and take out every wrong that has been done to you and honestly look at yourself, but it is definitely a necessary thing to do I believe.

Maybe you aren't quite ready to go that deep. That's totally ok. This is about you and what works for you. Maybe you just want to reflect on some general things without getting too heavy quite yet. Just start where you feel comfortable. Maybe one day you will want to come back and redo some of these prompts going a bit deeper when you are ready.

Here is the page I came up with.

I kept mine kind of basic, but i really did try to openly reflect on myself as best as I could. :) There are definitely lots and lots of things that I could be doing better! I so hope that this helps you or inspires you a bit. You could even pick one thing..like say doing the laundry and scrap a themey page. It's really open to interpretation a bit and we just hope that you feel compelled and moved. <3

I think that's about it for now. Head to Sara's blog tomorrow for day 13!

{grow with love} day ten

2010-07-23T18:35:00.001-04:00

Hello Everyone! It has been a very long day so I am apologizing in advance if this gets cut short or I ramble on and on. I hope you guys have been enjoying our little snippets about the prompts and our takes on them. If you are just starting You can find Day 1 on Sara's blog and then hip hop back and forth from there to here Mon-Fri for the rest of the days. :)

Today is another prompt that's a bit heavy. At least for me it was. Let's go ahead and take a look at it before we delve into it.

It's a whopper isn't it?! I have found that with these prompts the ones where I have to reflect the most have been the most eye opening. I guess it's because I cannot lie to myself. No pretending in your own mind if you actually sit down ready and open for reflection. When I sat down to think about this prompt a plethora of things came to mind that I can and should be doing to nurture my marriage. It's hard to say why some of the most basic things don't always come naturally. I guess it's just natural human selfishness. If you are like me, you can sit and make a HUGE list straight away of all the things your spouse/partner should be doing better. If only they would do this you would do that right? This is definitely how I am! Once Sara and I set out on the project I really did go into my heart of hearts and DECIDE to open up and be willing to love and do what I needed to do to help strengthen my relationship with my husband. It's sooo hard to do at times though!

For my page I settled on something that really seems basic. For me, I get clouded by old resentments a lot. So much so that I tend to not notice things. It's hard to brush away those clouds from your vision once they have moved in I think. Here is the page I came up with.

I really wanted a page that was super duper clean and crisp to really reflect the theme. This is showing how I am stripping clean of resentments and promising to notice more. To notice all the good things my hubby does and to notice all the not so nice things that I do. It's going to be a long road, but this is what I have chosen to do to help nourish my marriage. However, I do think this is something realistic that I really can accomplish.

For your page maybe there is a specific habit you do that bothers your spouse? Maybe there isn't? The choice of topic might come really easy for some but might be more difficult for others. Just keep yourself grounded. Don't give yourself unrealistic expectations. You know what you can really do!!! The choice is all yours and I promise that it will definitely be worth it!!!

I have to cut this short for now, but please remember to head to Sara's blog on Monday for Day 11!! Don't ever hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns throughout this process!!

{grow with love} day 8

2010-07-21T15:00:00.001-04:00

Hello everyone and Happy Wednesday! I hope everyone is doing well and is having a great week so far! We are halfway done with the week which is a good thing to me! I hope you have all been following along with our project so far. No worries if you haven't. You still have lots of time to catch up. You can find the very first post over on Sara's blog. Then you just hop back and forth from there.

I am here with prompt 8 today so lets take a look see at it!

I confess that my hubby is in general way too good to me. He is always taking care of me and loving me no matter how insanely selfish I am being. Not to say he's perfect, but he's perfect for me I think. I tend to be a grudge holder and a bit of a pessimist at times but he's always patient with me and tries to be very understanding. I don't know why but sometimes I do find myself picking away all the bad things he does or says even if those are fewer than the good things. It's so easy to be hurt once and then just hold tight to picking someone apart so this was a very good prompt for me. It got me to sit down and really notice all the little things (and some big) things that Garret does and says for me. You know every time he's off he lets me sleep in even though I am sure he's tired from working soooo much?? You know I often feel entitled to those few extra hours of sleep?? All these little things like that really add up!

Here is the page I came up with for this prompt.

Did you know that this past year we were actually supposed to go to the mountains for vacation? Our plans got changed a bit and we hadn't made reservations yet so he told me we could go to the beach as long as we could afford it because he knows that I love the beach more than any other place on this Earth. Everything about it makes me insanely happy! You know that he feels that way about the mountains??? I confess that after this challenge I really have had my eyes opened and I am much much more grateful than I was before. I honestly am very blessed no matter what our problems and issues are. We definitely have more good than bad around here and I am so very thankful for that!

I hope that while doing this challenge you dig a little deeper and really really open yourself up to being thankful for every little thing and just don't even think about the bad. Once I start dwelling on the things that bother me I get totally trapped in a deep dark negative hole. It's not a fun place! Hopefully your eyes will get as opened as mine did with today's prompt! I know I am behind on leaving love on your beautiful beautiful pages and I am so very sorry for that! I will be playing catch up this weekend once Garret is home finally! Remember to head to Sara's blog tomorrow for Day 9!!

{grow with love} day six

2010-07-19T10:52:00.001-04:00

Hello Everyone! I so hope you had a lovely weekend! I am here with day six of the grow with love project (which you can snag HERE or HERE). If you haven't started yet or are just finding us you can read through my past posts with details of the projects and you can start at Sara's blog with Day One and then hop back and forth from there to here following along with us Mon- Friday's. :)

Today I am here with the prompt for Day 6. Let's take a peek at it shall we?

I really like this prompt because I feel like it really speaks to me. A few months ago Sara and were doing these types of things with our spouses together and we stayed up really late making up some mix CD's for them. We spent hours looking for songs that we felt like really spoke of how we felt about our hubby's. The next day I gave mine to Garret and he was incredibly shocked and surprised just over a little thing like that. It meant the world to him that I spent some of my time that I am usually scrapbooking or editing photos or something of that nature and instead made something special for him. It was a nice way to show him that I love him and I was willing to do something sweet for him just because. This was something that was inexpensive to do as well because a lot of the songs I already had in my iTunes library so it really worked out if you are budget conscious as well.

That is just one example of something sweet and fun you can do for your spouse. Try to do something that you know will mean something to him. Show him that you listen and know him and do something for him that he is interested in or is one of his hobbies. I cannot count all the times that I have said to Garret "I wish you would just listen to me!" Or on bdays or holiday's just waiting to see if he paid attention and got me something I was really wanting. Well, I am sure that our men feel the same way, so try to do something that you know he will like or that is about him...even if it's just making a CD or writing a nice little note (both of which Garret would adore!). Just let them know you love them so much you are willing to physically show it with a gift or keepsake of some kind. If you are willing to put your time, money and energy into other things you should let your spouse/partner know that are equally important enough that you will do the same for them.

I am not 100% satisified with the page I have done for this prompt yet, so I will be back in just a bit and see if I can get something else done while my kiddos are napping. I will edit it in as soon as I am done! And be sure to head over to Sara's blog tomorrow for Day 7!

ETA: Here is my page! I found a kit that I thought would work much better than the original one I had! I can't wait to see what you guys all do!!

{grow with love} day four

2010-07-15T16:37:00.001-04:00

Hi Everyone!! I so hope you have been following along with us and enjoying our little posts! If you are just getting here, no worries! Head over to Sara's blog to read her first post with lots of info and the start of the project. Then you will just hop back forth Monday-Friday between our blogs for your posts and our bit of info and hopefully guidance for scrapping the prompts.

Up until now you have been reminded of how your love story began. You thought a lot about both you and your spouse/partner and today we are going to go into ourselves a bit. Let's take a look at our day 4 prompt:

I think most young girls, or me at least, dreams of a perfect Prince Charming-ish type love. Everything is perfect if you are in love. Bird sing around you and eat from your hand and the whole world is just perfect in every way. It doesn't matter what happens if you are in love right? Nothing can go wrong now. For me, on some levels, I knew that love wasn't a perfect storybook tale, but I confess that in my dreamers heart I always hoped it really was. I thought that maybe I would be different. Other people might struggle in love, but I was not going to be one of them! I was too much of a romantic and I *knew* that once I found "the one" things were going to be different for me than they are for other people.

Well as I found out this is definitely not the case! Sometimes it's hard to be in love. Sometime the person you love does something hurtful or you do something hurtful to them and then things spiral out of control. No matter your intentions going into a relationship, there are going to be ups and downs. Sometimes the choice of loving comes really really easy, and other times it's going to be a struggle. I think once you recognize this fact of life then you can make a conscious effort to do the right things in times of struggles.

I will say though that I still do believe a little bit in the magic of love. I do think you can heal with love and it can do amazing things for people. For me, it has been about being able to find a grasp on the reality of love and also still holding onto the hope of love at the same time.

Here is the page I came up with. I did not use a template on this page. :) I hope that this page represents my naive beliefs and also how full of hope I have always been about love.

For this prompt I really took a more AAM type of view. I wanted to really delve into how I used to be so naive but how I think with naivety comes a bit of hope.

I so hope that today's prompt really inspires you to reflect on how you used to think and maybe give you some of that beginning hope that most young people have.

I think that's it for now! I hope I made some sense and didn't ramble on a bit too much or anything! Make sure you check out Sara's blog tomorrow for day 5's post!! I will be back to add in Sara's fabulous page in a bit or in the morning!!! Hugs and lots of love!!

{grow with love} day 2

2010-07-13T17:24:00.001-04:00

Hey Everyone! I hope you are all going along with our project but if you haven't started yet, it's definitely not too late! You can jump in whenever you would like! All that matters is that you are growing and changing the way you think about your relationships! In case you missed it, Miss Sara posted Day 1 yesterday on her blog. I will openly admit right here and now that I am not as good with words as she is. I ramble, I repeat myself, and sometimes I just don't make sense. I hope you will bear with me though and maybe this will be another area of my life that I can learn and grow in. There's always something isn't there?! ;) Here's a wee bit of info for those who have missed it!

"Whether you'll be using the templates (you can snag them here and here) or not, we hope that you'll be inspired to share your heart and stories and delve in to new creative territory along side us!

We will be posting each weekday for four weeks --covering all 20 prompts in our Grow with Love project.

Week One: Monday 12 July - Friday 16 July

Week Two: Monday 19 July - Friday 23 July

Week Three: Monday 26 July - Friday 30 July

Week Four: Monday 3 August - Friday 6 August

Each day we will post a prompt and delve into it a bit more, sharing our own inspirations and pages and hopefully giving you a bit of a creative push for your own pages. You can follow along at your own pace, or if you'd like to participate for the prizes, post your pages by the project deadline, Friday 13 August, 2010, which is one full week after the project closes.

Either way, we encourage you to share your pages with us and hope you'll have fun and feel inspired and challenged.

The prizes include one 20 page photo book for one lucky participant (who uses both the templates and the prompts) and gift certificates to zinnias and swallowtails and Designs by Crystal Livesay!!"

So! Lets get on with Day 2!

This page is a pretty easy one, but I definitely think it's nice to relive those moments sometimes. To remember where it all started. When I reminisce I always get to feeling incredibly grateful for where I am now and a little sad about the bumps in the road. This is one story that hopefully will have a happy ending and I really do think it's important to share these sorts of things not only for ourselves, but for our kids if we have any.

I want to start off by saying that I in general do not share my journaling. Sometimes it's readable, but I don't usually cut and paste it somewhere to share with others. For me, it's the process of writing it down and maybe one day showing my hubby or children. Just in doing that I feel like I have taken a big step. So, I will not be posting what my journaling says in these posts, but do not fret or worry! I am not a witty person, or even that funny, so you really are just missing out on nothing! LOL!

Here is the page I came up with recounting the way we met.

I used a more current picture for this page and I just took a more storytelling approach to my journaling. It is pretty basic but it got the story down and that's what matters!

Here's Sara's beautiful page. She never ceases to amaze me!

I adore the He/She/They aspect of this! Really amazing and creative!!

There is no right or wrong way for you to scrap this prompt or really any of these for that matter. We just want to see you diving into yourself and telling your stories. Even these stories that seem a bit trivial or maybe hard to remember cause it's been awhile. It's always good to be able to look back and remind yourself of how you got where you are today.

Don't get thrown off by feeling like you have to force the story out on prompts like this one. Maybe you don't have tons and tons to say and that is totally cool! Just approach today's prompt in a way that you feel comfortable, whether its by telling loads of info or a few short sentences. This is just for you and no one is grading you. :) The past two days at least one of us has made a non photo page if you haven't noticed. Sometimes you have the words but not the pictures. Don't feel like you HAVE to use the photo placements on the templates. Just put some fab paper in there instead! Really get creative and try to do this is in a way that suits you and your style or you and your resources (I am really really lacking on pictures because my scanner doesn't work...so you will more than likely see loads of recent pics or no photos at all.)

"Remember to be eligible for the prizes, please be sure to share your own pages in the comments section of each day at any time before Friday 13 August, 2010. For example, link us to your Day Two page in the comments of this Day Two post. Day Three, for Day Three, etc. You can use both our templates and prompts, or just the prompts, or neither and just follow along in the spirit of the project (and we hope you do!) but in order to be eligible for the shutterfly album we ask that you use both the templates and prompts. Everyone is eligible for the gift certificates. "

We both are super excited to see your pages!! Remember to head back to Sara's blog tomorrow for a bit of chit chat on day 3 and how we decided to scrap it!

If you haven't snagged the templates yet they are still 20% off for a just a few more hours at my shop!

Grow With Love Winner

2010-07-10T07:24:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone! Thank you so much for playing in my little giveaway. I really really enjoyed reading your responses. You are sooo sweet and so very blessed it sounds like! Thanks to my handy dandy friend the random generator I do have a winner of our templates!

Congratulations Marie!!!! I will be emailing you your gift shortly after OScraps is back up!!!

Which brings me to my next little bit of info. The Oscraps server is having issues and the shop is going to be down for what we hope is only 24 hours. :( I will keep my store on sale for at least 24 hours once it is back up. So please just be patient while they try to get everything working properly!

thank you so much for everyone who played! Be sure to start checking back on Monday as we start posting our own GWL pages and expounding a bit on the prompts!! I will talk to you soon!! oh! And if you just can't wait to snag these templates you can still purchase them from Sara's store HERE.

Grow With Love and a Giveaway!

2010-07-08T07:48:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone! I am super excited to say that the Grow With Love Album: The Marriage Edition is now in the shop!! We are so so excited about it and I really really hope you like it!! I know you have heard lots and lots of ramblings about it already so I will spare you a bit . Here is the intro info for you though and then the previews!

Starting Monday Sara and I will be doing these prompts with you and expounding on them with other ideas and ways that you can apply them to your life. We really hope that they are helpful in your real everyday life and really can help change things for the better!! Like usual this is 20% off for a limited time! There also *might* be an extra discount up shortly at the AMAZING site of Simple Scrapper. If you haven't been over there before you are really missing out!! I will come back later this weekend to share some pages that our amazing CT's have done with this collection! Also, don't forget that my shop is still 30% off for my birthday (minus the new release)!!!

GIVEAWAY

We really want to share the love so we both wanted to give away one of these sets. Sara did hers on her blog earlier this week and now it's my turn! Simply leave a comment below and tell me about something you love right now before Saturday 10 July at 10am (EST). You can increase your chances at winning by posting about the giveaway on Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to come back here with a link in the comments. Good Luck!!

Grow With Love: The Marriage Edition

2010-07-05T22:47:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone! I am soooo excited to finally be able to tell you what I have been up to! My dear friend Sara, of zinnias and swallowtails, and I have been concocting this really (hopefully!) inspiring project and we are finally at the tail end of the design process! This is not only a scrap project. This is about changing yourself and your relationships for the better. Now the real journey begins where we will all be able to learn and grow together. We are sooo excited about this and really hope you guys will be too. Sara and I seem to come from the same mind and heart almost 100% of the time so I feel like this all just flowed together really easily. We both so hope that you all will feel as moved and compelled to do and act on this project as we do! More info will come later!! Here's a look see at the preview and a little teaser.

We seriously cannot wait to show you the whole thing! The big reveal will be Thursday, July 8 so stay tuned!!

Because we are all about spreading the love at the moment you can head over to Sara's bloggity blog and enter for your chance to win this really fab collection before it is released. On Thursday I will be giving out another set so don't go too far!

Also, my birthday is this week and I thought I would celebrate with you guys as well. From Now until Thursday get 30% off my whole shop!! I will see you guys later this week!! xoxo!!!!

CatScrap Blog Hunt!

2010-06-25T08:22:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone! I hope you are having tons and tons of fun with this months Catwalk and on our blog hunt!

I know that you have already snagged some fantabulous quick pages!!! Here is mine! I so hope you like it!!

http://www.box.net/shared/ahzjkvla2f

And here's what you are getting! :)

Now, head over to Leora Sanford's blog to snag the next freebie!!!!

ETA: My link is fixed! So sorry about that guys!!!

New Jumpers!

2010-06-14T09:19:00.000-04:00

New Jumpers!

Hey Peeps!!! I have a new net of Jumpers in my shop today!! My team was working so hard and came up with a lot of fun and fabulous pages! I hope you like these as much as they seemed to!! Here are Jumpers 57-60 :)

And here are the pages that my team whipped up for me!!

by Raji:

by Pam:

by Mi:

by Mary:

by Lex:

by Katrina:

by Diane:

by Dana:

by Anja:

by Aly:

by Aja:

Don't forget about my Story Starters collab with Aja that is still 20% off at the time being!! It was a lot of fun and full of all kinds of handy dandy info and goodies for you to get your scrap on and your creative juices flowing!

Here are a couple pages with this from my girlies!

by Becky:

by Diane:

by Lilja:

by Mary:

by Melissa:

They are always so amazing and never cease to amaze me! I think that's it for now though!!! I will see you soon as I have a super fun new collab coming Friday and another collab coming shortly after!!!

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Story Starter Collab

2010-06-10T21:11:00.000-04:00

Hey Peeps! I am really excited to show you today's new goodies! Have you ever felt totally creatively stumped? Just no mojo? I have so felt like that..tons and tons. Well Aja Abney and I teamed up to bring you a super fun little collab to help you jump start your mojo and get your creative juices flowing again!

Our Story Starters collab is full of everything you need to get you going! I really hope you like them and can find this super handy!!

I am gonna keep this short for now because I will be back early next week with another release for you!!!

Use this code: 10off_STORIES to get an extra 10% off this super fun collab! That's it for now! See you later and I so hope you have an awesome weekend!!

I Heart Faces Play Challenge

2010-06-07T16:45:00.003-04:00

I have never ever entered any of the I Heart Faces challenges but I always like to read their blog and learn tips and tricks and what not. Well, I saw that this weeks challenge was about play and we spent so much time at the park yesterday I figured I would go ahead and submit a photo along with the 300-400 other people. lol!

There is my littlest man having tons of fun (he won't smile for the camera like ever!) at the park! And yes..his pants are backwards..and yes..his shirt doesn't match. This is what happens when you let the 4 year old dress himself! He's still cute as a button though...but I am totally not biased right?! ;)