So Much To Do!

So I went a little crazy at AC Moore today! I went with my 40% off coupon for one item - yes, the plan was one item - but I just saw so many cute things I just had to have. Including this wonderful woodland whimsy kit from TPC Studio (I'm sorry the photos have a little glare, I was having trouble getting the lighting how I wanted it):

I have no idea what I am going to use it for, but those adorable woodland animals were just too cute to pass up. I can't wait to come up with an equally as cute idea for them.

As for what I'm working on now, I decided to do a holiday album, highlighting each holiday of the year. I chose:
Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, My Birthday, Fourth of July, the first day of school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and AJ's Birthday
So I realize birthday's aren't exactly holidays, but they feel like holidays to me, and they are definitely special days that deserve to be highlighted each year. And the teacher in me definitely thinks the first day of school is a holiday.

I'm also working on a page titled "These are a few of our favorite things". I want to highlight the things my boyfriend and I love to do right now. I want to be able to look back in a few years and see what we were doing at 23! So far, the plan is to create little pockets, and each pocket will highlight one of our favorite things to do. I am not sure exactly how I am going to set it up yet...but hey, it's a work in progress!

Aaaand, today, I sketched out an idea I love about my family's Christmas Eve traditions, but I'm waiting for the pictures to come from Shutterfly before I start laying out the page.

Wow, that was a packed day! Well, I'm off to start my holidays book. I'll be posting pictures as it comes together!

Thanks for stopping by, have a great day!

Cards for St. Jude

Winter over at Winter Wonderland is running a St. Jude Card Drive (click here for more details). I love love love this idea, I shared the idea with my high school students, who already have made 35 cards to send to the children, they were so enthusiastic about the drive!

While the football games were on this weekend, I made some cards for the drive too. (I know the Jets were playing, but in my defense, I am totally a baseball girl, I'm trying, but I just don't understand football all the way yet!) My amazing boyfriend even sat and made a card for this kids!

When I saw these cute die cut stickers at Wal-Mart, I knew I had to use them somehow! I just wasn't sure how, but I took some inspiration from Winter's monster card and created these animal themed cards:

This little monkey just screamed "Barrel of Monkeys" to me! I knew what I had to use him for...

I also made some with a basic heart theme...

These are the rest of the cards from Sunday!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

New Year, New Blog

I think New Year's is a great time to start new, but its also a great time to get back to things you should have been doing all year - like posting on my blog! Things have been so crazy with work, and Christmas, that I have not been able to get anywhere near my desk (the crafting one, not the grading/writing lesson plans one) since November. My goal is get at least one page done this week, and three cards for the WONDERFUL card drive I found here:
http://winterwonderlandcrafter.blogspot.com/2011/01/cards-for-st-jude.html

What a great plan! My high school class is also participating in the drive, I am hoping to have at least 30 cards from school to send to the children at St. Jude's,

But, what I can post today is a digital page I made while I was snowed in after Christmas. I was snowed in while visiting out of state for Christmas, and didn't have any of my paper, pens, stickers, stamps, die cutting machines (not that I'd carry those with me!) or anything! So, I decided to try making a digital page...I love how it all turned out, I was able to change the size of each picture to make the collage exactly how I wanted it. I just haven't had a chance to print it out - I'm waiting to have a few pictures ready so I only have to pay shipping once! The pages will be side by side in my scrapbook, the first page shows the main tree at Longwood Gardens (this beautiful conservatory in Pennsylvania - it used to be the DuPont estate), journaling and a title. and the pictures next to it show a collage of some of the decorated trees they have. It was so Christmas-y and festive, I really enjoyed it!

The snowflake paper is from Two Peas in a Bucket, from their holiday set. The font is Little Lord Fontleroy. The solid red paper and the white band are just backgrounds, from Adobe Photoshop, I used the color dropper to pull the colors from the snowflake paper.

Cricut Expression

The Cricut Expression and the Gypsy came just now!!! I just got them out of the box. I have to wait to play with it though - I have some planning and grading to finish up before I can play...at least I have some motivation to get my work done efficiently! Plus, I need something to do tonight, AJ is flying back from Baton Rouge and I'm waiting for him to land :)

I just wish I had some pictures to scrap! There are a ton of November birthdays in my family, I can always start the birthday cards!

Corn Maze and Pumpkin Picking

Okay - its finally done! I feel like I've been working on this page forever because I had to keep stopping and starting! I cut the "Pumpkin Picking Time" title using the Sizzix eclips seasonal cartridge, and I cut all of the pumpkins out using the Halloween cartridge. I attached a two sided adhesive sheet to the cardstock before I cut so I could use flocking to give the letters and pumpkins a fuzzy look (also because I just bought it and who doesn't want to use the new things right away!). For the corn maze page, I cut strips of paper 1/2" wide and attached cut out "leaves" to give the idea you were in the corn maze. I also used the Martha Stewart fall fence post with the different arrows to give an idea of how lost we were! The letters for the title were also cut on my eclips, but using the Sassy Serif alphabet.

I hope everyone had a great day! Thanks for stopping by!

Katie

Cricut Expression

As a teacher, election day means conference day. This year, we skipped the lunch break so our day ended early - which means that I got home early enough to catch the scrapbooking hour on HSN. Today, they were featuring the Cricuit Expression and Gypsy together crazy on sale! I couldn't turn down the price, so I turned off the tv...unfortunately for me and my credit card, I left my computer on. Long story short, it'll be here soon. I can't wait to start using it!

Anyway, I'm off to finish my Halloween pages, hopefully I will get at least one posted tonight!

Where did September go?

I have no idea what happened to September! I created this page about a month ago, for a baseball game that happened two months ago, and am just finding time to post it now! I created this page for the Mets/Phillies baseball game. My boyfriend is a huge Phillies fan, while I've been a Met fan all my life, so of course, we decided to go to a Mets/Phillies game together in New York. I wanted to highlight the rivalry between the two teams, so I took out all the colors but blue and orange and red and white. I really like the way it came out, but I also think the pictures don't do it justice!

I used PhotoShop to change the background shots and the backgrounds of all of the pictures to sepia, so that only our contrasting team shirts would show on the page.

I also created an old fashioned pennant banner to go along the top of the page, alternating between his team and mine. It was fairly easy to do, I printed out the symbols for each team onto either white or orange paper, backed them in red or blue, and popped them up with pop dots. This is definitely my favorite part of this page!

Happy crafting!!!