Happy Halloween

I just had to show you the Halloween cards I made for the kids this year. I made these Saturday night and the crop I went to. It was the perfect project to work on at the end of the day. The sketch came from a SCS challenge, and was the perfect place the start. The pattern paper is SU! from last year, and I love it. The stamps are Making Memories foam, also from last year. I cut out the large image and popped it up with pop dots. I just love how they turned out.

We aren't doing trick-or-treating this year. We never get many kids, and those that do show up are too big and don't wear costumes. And I just didn't need to end up with a big bowl of my favorite candy left over.

Morning Traditions

A couple of weekends ago was the Virtual Scrapbooking Night (VSBN) preview - four scrapping challenges were posted on SCS. The Day Out With Thomas layout I posted last week was for one of the challenges. Another of the challenges was to scrap a holiday morning tradition. Tim and I don't have a regular holiday morning tradition, but we do have a nice Sunday morning tradition - Tim makes us breakfast. The challenge was posted on Saturday, so Sunday morning I took pictures of Tim making us a very nice breakfast - bacon, gravy, eggs and biscuits. And this past Saturday I finished up the page. One of the criteria for the challenge was for it to be cozy and use texture - I hope lots of ribbon counts.

This coming weekend is the big, two-day VSBN. I'm sure I'll get lots more pages scrapped.

It's Fall!

And I can prove it. Well, if you look at the scrapbook pages I did this weekend, you'll know for sure that it's Fall. I did one page of my niece Hannah in the pumpkin patch. I'll show you that page once I do the page for my nephew, Matthew. I did a Fall page for me - a couple of weeks ago I spent a Saturday sitting on the porch enjoying to cool weather. I took a picture of my laptop, cup of Chai, and scrapbooking magazines. I used some Basic Grey pattern papers that I love, and some of the new Prima flowers my friend Judi and I bought, and some great new wide grosgrain ribbon from SU!, I put some little pearl centers in the flowers. It's a page about me using scrapbook supplies I love.

I also did a Fall page for my nieces, Sarah and Sydney. Their mom took them outside for a photo shoot and sent me a copy of the pictures. I love the Basic Grey papers and SU! ribbon that I used on their pages - not typical fall colors, but so pretty with their sweaters. The title is stamped - I used markers to color a flower stamp from Big Pieces. I then cut each flower out and stamped one letter on each flower. It's a good thing I like cutting out, because I had to cut out 8 flowers (4 for each page). And the flower stamp is an almost perfect match for the flower in the paper.

All Aboard

After my walk this morning I finished up a scrapbook page. Splitcoast Stampers had another mini Virtual Scrapbooking Weekend this Saturday. One of the challenges was to make a page without any embellishments - only paper, stamps and ink. I made a page for Sarah or Sydney's book (I'll make another page, so they'll each have one). They've been to visit Thomas the Train several times. Someone even saved one of their admission tickets for me, so I used that for the journaling on the page. I think the picture of the girls is not from the year of the admission ticket - Kirsten can let me know. It's a simple but bright page. I used the stamp set Circus Train for the square embellishment at the top of the page. The colors I used are Summer Sun, Real Red, Brilliant Blue and Basic Black. I cut "All Aboard" out of a piece of pattern paper and made a tag for the title.

Lake Norman State Park

Tim and I just got home from a great day out. The morning started with Tim making bacon, gravy, eggs and biscuits for breakfast. Then we drove up to Lake Norman State Park, a riding spot we hadn't been to before. Tim met up with a group of Dirt Divas (local women's mountain bike group) and others. They rode the trails for a couple of hours while I wandered around on some of the trails. I took my camera and got some shots. After the ride, a bunch of us went out for dinner and beer. The weather was great today - warm but not hot. LNSP is a hour and a half drive for us, so we go up there often.

I've got some photos of the day to share with you, but Blogger is having problems again. I'll try to upload later this week.

Hanging Out on the Deck

We started a bad thing this weekend - we let Riley and Tarzan out on the back deck. They are both very interested in the new kitty, Fred. They've all met each other in the doorway when we are going in and out, and they watch each other through the bedroom windows. They all seem to get along just fine. So we let Riley and Tarzan out. They are both really good about staying on the deck and not wandering off or fighting with Fred - because they've discovered the grass growing up between the deck boards. Now every time we open the back door they try to rush out so they can nibble grass. Riley sits at the back door and cries to go out. I think what I need to do is grow a pot of grass for them to eat in the house.

The top pictures are Riley and Tarzan wandering out of the house and saying HI to Fred. The bottom picture is Riley eating the grass (oaky, I'm sure it's a weed) coming up through the deck boards.

Burn

Friday night my friend Judi and I went cropping. It had been awhile since we'd gotten together to scrap, so it felt great. I got 2 pages done and another one started. I had to leave early since I had to work on Saturday. I can't show you the page I made of Hannah playing in the snow because it's my sample page for the upcoming Virtual Scrapbooking weekend on SCS. But I love this page that I did of one of the races that Tim did this year. This is from the The Burn 24 Hour Race that was held at Dark Mountain at North Wilksboro, NC. This was the first time Tim has done a 24-hour race. He likes to do 12-hour races by himself, but for this big one, he was on a five man team. They were set to come in 9th place, but knew that there was a special prize for 10th place, so they worked very hard to come in 10th. They won a case of Burn energy drink and a tube of butt cream each (yes, that's what it's called - it's to prevent chaffing). For the page, I used Wild Wasabi as the base and accented with Softy Sky and Pumpkin Pie and a little black. There is a touch of pattern paper on the chipboard"(". The only stamping is the title and the bike tracks across the page. The journaling is hidden behind the blue paper and pulls out with the orange tab.

It was a Good Weekend

I had a very nice weekend. Tim was off in the mountains riding with a bunch of other guys, so I had lots of time to myself. Saturday was National Card Making Day, so I made a few cards. I also spent time reading, walking, scrapbooking and napping.

Lately I've been making several of this style of card. My friend Melissa made a great card with this design, and I've been CASEing her. It's a great design because I can use up some of the scraps of pretty pattern paper I have laying around. Melissa used a torn edge at the bottom of her card, and I've changed it to a scalloped edge. I used a hole punch along my scallop to give it a lace look. it's a great basic design and I"m sure I'll make lots more of these.





This next set of cards I actually did the stamping this summer when I was at my friend Donna's in Myrtle Beach. I don't own this stamp set. I think it belonged to Darcy and both Donna and I stamped some images of it. I didn't do a nice of job coloring the flowers with markers as Donna did, but I think they turned out lovely.



I also got a little scrapbooking done this weekend. Several weeks ago, my SIL, Nikki, e-mailed some pictures of the kids and I had a bunch printed. I started with a couple pictures of my nephew Matthew in the snow. Now I'm working on the same page with pictures of my niece Hannah. I can't show it to you when I'm done because it's going to be my sample page for the upcoming VSBN on splitcoaststampers.com. I used Bordering Blue as the base of the page with the large photo mat in Sage Shadow and accents of More Mustard and Not Quite Navy. For stamps I used Big Piece and Little Pieces and Be Happy. My accessories are brads and eyelets - no ribbon because it's a boy page. The sketch came from my friend Sally.

It was a good weekend.

Baby Shower

On Saturday afternoon I went into Charlotte for a baby shower for one of our bike friends. I was so nice to be invited since I'm not a rider myself. It was a very nice shower and we on;y had to play too games and they weren't too bad - well the melted candy bars in the diaper was a little disgusting.

Several years ago my friend and I took a class on how to make a wedding scrapbook from envelopes. I never completed the project so it's been sitting in my craft space waiting to be used. The color scheme was pink and creams so it was perfect for a baby girl album. I bought some baby accents and added a little more pink ribbon. It turned out beautifully, and the mother-to-be seemed to like it.