Been playing with "Mill Street"

I got the latest (and now sold out) Noel Mignon kit last week, and I'm 100% in love. The first few times I pulled the papers out, I just stared at them. They're just so pretty! I didn't want "mess them up" by cutting them! I finally broke down and dove in to some Cosmo Cricket goodness, and now I'm thinking I need more of these papers! Who would've thought that turquoise would be a great Fall color?! But it is! And again, I'm in love. This time it's with CC's Nutmeg. Good grief! And I believe the sermon I/we heard on Sunday was about contentment. Ugh. Tough stuff when it comes to me and paper...Here's what I've done with it so far. I've got another one on my table right now.

Gift cards, free scrappy kits, and more

Want to earn free gift cards towards places like Amazon, Starbucks, Target or iTunes? How 'bout money in your PayPal account? Use Swagbucks. I know I've talked about this before here on my blog, but I thought it was worth revisiting with the Christmas season right around the corner.

You may have noticed the widget on my sidebar over there. I've posted it in hopes that you'll trust me and use Swagbucks as your search engine. It's not a hoax, it's not a gimic. By using Swagbucks do searches on the internet, you'll earn points called Swagbucks, which after you've accumulated so many you, you can cash in for gift cards, music, and other goodies in their online store.

Quite honestly, the only way that I've used Swagbucks is by using its toolbar for searches. It's that simple. I search (and now "search" for everything so I'll get more bucks), I gain Swagbucks, and then I cash in for gift cards. So far I've earned over $20 in gift cards, and I'm about to cash in again for more.

You know what a scrap addict I am, so I've chosen to put those gift cards in my PayPal account to buy kits with! :D I've also put aside an Amazon gift card to start buying Christmas toys for the girls. So in essence, I'm doing these searching in turn for free or discounted scrapbook kits and toys for my kids! I love it!

I just wanted to encourage you to use it too. There are more ways to utilize Swagbucks more than just doing searches, but since I'm on the internet all day, I just do the searches. It uses Google and Ask.com to do the actual searches. And it's a great way to start saving for Christmas.

Just thought I'd throw it out there. You can start you're own Swagbucks account here. It's free. It's easy. And hey, they're paying me just for doing searches! It doesn't get any easier than that!

Halloween costume photoshoot

Learning my lesson from last year, I decided to do a trial run on the costumes and hair the day before Halloween this time. Which turned out to be great because not only could I fix C's hair without a major time stress factor, but also because I was able to get spend more time taking their pictures. (I HIGHLY recommend going this route, because the day OF Halloween is so so stressful. And all the girls wanted to do was go get candy.) Sooo, here are just a few of my favorites:

Our Stinkerbell, who most definitely played the part during pictures. I don't think I've EVER seen her so excited (or hyper for that matter):






And our gorgeous Little Mermaid, all dolled up with RED hair just like Ariel!



I like this one because she's IN LOVE with her costume and it shows on her face.



The ones with the two of them together didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped. Again, Stinkerbell was mostly to blame.


Trick-or-treating pics are coming soon. I took so many that they need to be edited.

Taking on a new challenge

Usually when I "speak" of challenges, especially on my blog, I'm talking about ones that are related to scrapbooking. But I ran across this one from Kingdom First Mom called the 30-day Giving Challenge and decided that this is something I want to challenge MYSELF to do. (And I'm blogging about it so you guys will all keep me accountable to it, and maybe even join me.)

Here's how she describes it:
"I invite you to take a leap of faith and give in some fashion every day this month. Think beyond monetary gifts. Couponers, open up your stockpiles. Bakers, share some pumpkin bread with a neighbor. Get creative!

Most importantly, ask God to lead you each day.

Just remember to write it down. Not in a boastful, look-how-generous-I-am kind of way. But to keep yourself accountable and be transformed."

SOOO, seeing as how today is November 1st I thought I'd challenge myself, and anyone else who wants to join in, to participate and get to giving. I've already got today's planned and am giving it tonight. ;) And I'll tell ya, I'm trying to think of 30 different ways to give. I'd like to do something different every day. So if you have any ideas, leave me a comment. I'd love to add to my list...

Oh, and you know me, I still have to make in to something scrappy. ;) Instead of the December Daily that's been made so popular by Ali E. (cause I did one of those last year), I'm making a "30 days of Giving" journal with all my yummy Fall papers and product. ;) So stayed tuned. I'll be sharing that with ya soon. ;)

So, anybody wanna join me in this challenge? I'd love to compare notes (or notebooks)!

Oh and Halloween recap coming soon. Still editing pics!

Happy Nov. 1st!

Happy Halloween!

Hope you have a wonderful day full of fun, surprises, tricks and treats!

(And that the Rebels beat Auburn!! smile.)

Fun treat for me!

Since we're so close to Trick-or-Treating, I thought I'd share with you a fun treat that I had the honor to do this month. Carrie Harville over at Chatty Scrappers (A UK based online community) contacted me last month and asked if I would be like to be featured as their guest inspiration for their October Super Scraplift Challenge. Of course I said yes! They chose to scraplift one of my favorite LOs:

Adore


You can see all of their takes on my LO here! It's so much fun to see other people do a "lift" of one of MY projects! What an honor! Thanks Carrie!

In other news, today I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off! So much to do, so little time!

We had a little snafu with our Halloween costumes, which has had me scrambling to pull it all together. Initially Caroline wanted to be Tinkerbell. Easy enough. We just ordered online and it's been here for a couple of weeks. The PROBLEM is that it didn't run true to the size chart and is too small for her (and I waited to the last minute to try it on her). So now Sarah Kate is going to be Tinkerbell, and we've scrambled to come up with a Little Mermaid costume for C. Not many "good" mermaid costumes out there right now, but we grabbed one of the last ones at Toys R Us yesterday. I also wasn't pleased with the set of wings that came with the Tink outfit, so I'm attempting to make my own a la the Martha Stewart template. We'll see how those turn out too!

Must go work on them more! Hope you're having a wonderful day!!

More to "Leave you Breathless"

Here's more from my October Urban Anthology kit, "Leaves you Breathless". You can find it here. I did one REALLY Fall LO using a sketch from Stacy Cohen, and then I did a very non-Fall LO too. I love it when kits are so versatile, don't you?

Fall



For this one I hand cut some of Keri's tags, which this month also came in overlay form. I also hand cut the Hambly leaf paper, and popped the leaves up with 3D foam. For instructions on how to do a distressed reverse applique, check out the UA boards here.

Siblings





Part of my "Thrifty Thursday" post is that I used wire cutters to cut the Prima vine, and then used its balls and a butterfly here with more of the vine left over for future projects.

Sadly, this is my last kit from Urban Anthology. Kari has decided that creating kits is no longer her thing, and while UA will still be around, it won't be offering kits any more. You can find the November kit here. The winners of "UA's Got Talent" will be working with that kit, so be sure to check out their work on the site soon!

Fall Banner and a sweet surprise!

One of my Nikki Sivils projects this month is a Fall banner I made for our fireplace. I LOVE making banners! I love how they add a touch of the season. For this one, I used the "Sweet as Cherry Pie" chipboard mini-book trees, only I turned them upside down and made the into pumpkins. Then I covered them with some papers from "Henry's Brillance", not your typical Halloween paper but I'm a sucker for argyle. Plus, I didn't want JUST a Halloween banner, but something that'd last through all of November too. So here it is:


Other products used: cardstock-Bazzill, silk leaves-Michaels, felt accents-Little Yellow Bicycle, chipboard letters-Basic Grey, (my favorite)brown glitter-Pink Paislee, paper leaves & grapevine accents-Prima, and orange Maya Mist

Close-ups of one of the letters.


detailed shots:



*********************

And then this morning I saw some FUN fun news on the My Mind's Eye blog. I WON their Blog Challenge #4!!! I'm SO excited and still a little shocked! Totally didn't see that one coming! Wow! Thank you so much for choosing me Amber! :D

Hope everyone else's Monday has started off as good as mine!

Chocolate milk without the milk

Yep! That's what I found them drinking the other day. They'd gone inside to get a drink, which I thought was just a drink of water. A few minutes past and so I went in to investigate. And this is what I found. It kinda went like this:

me: Girls, what are you doing???
C: We're drinking chocolate milk, mama. Want some? (as she wipes her lips on her sleeve then gives them a good smack.)
me: uh...but where's the MILK???
C: Oh. It's in the frig-a-freighter. We couldn't reach it.

Just as matter of fact as she could be! Hee! And did you notice the Hershey's syrup with top off behind her? What about the open chips? Apparently they were planning on eating something salty too. (sigh)

A little MME!

While we've totally been enjoying the Fall weather around here, and more on that to come, I was totally inspired to use pastels for the new My Mind's Eye blog challenge. the challenge was to use an ad to inspire a layout.


Here's the ad:


And here's my take on it:

I really liked the ad because it used a lot of little pieces, and that seems to be all that I have of my MME collection, so it was perfect for me!

Sorry to be so quick, but I'll have more FALL coming quickly! Promise.

Growing up too fast

Both the girls seem to be hitting a growth spurt right now, but I think it's also got something to do with the change in the weather. Their legs just look sooo long in blue jeans! This has been on my mind for a while now, so I decided to do a LO about it, atleast with Sarah Kate. I'm also excited to report that SK's album size is closing in on Caroline's. I've been determined to scrap her more lately.

Growing up too fast

I used Urban Anthology's October kit. Obviously it's meant to be a Fall-ish type kit, but you can use it for the every day too.

And continuing with the growing/flower theme, I was shooting Tab's kids the other day and Miss Caroline snagged one of their sunflowers as her own. Stinker. At first she was being silly and pretended it was a shower. We all got a good laugh out of that as she pretended to bathe herself right there in the middle of the park!



Then she couldn't keep her nose out of it! Apparently she thinks that all flowers are supposed to smell really good. And then I got this.


An instant favorite, and definitely a keeper.

More with the UA kit coming up shortly. In the meantime, I thought I'd let you know that Simply Obsessed is having a Think Pink crop this weekend in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Maybe I'll see ya over there! ;)

Lots of scrappiness going on around here!

Seems like I've been going back and forth with posting a LOT of layouts and projects, and then a lot of photos. You know I've been busy creating even though I've been taking photos too. So here's a sample of what I've been up to. I've been working with some yummy Collage Press "Knave of Hearts". I bought it earlier this summer and am so bummed that I didn't get their "Sweet Shoppe" too. But here's what I've done so far.

So Lovable

Josh and SK at her birthday breakfast this past Spring.





Top of the World

The 2 of us at Amy's reception, which overlooked Birmingham.




I had fun dismantling my Prima swirls and the recreating this pattern with them. I think I like deconstruction. That's what happened to the circular die-cut too. I cut it into arcs and then staggered them across the bottom.

Lucky

An older picture of the 2 of us, but still my all-time favorite. I threw in a few scraps of "Jackson Lodge" and "Camden" in to this one too. And apparently I have a "thing" for using the title "lucky". I think the count's up to 4 LOs with that name now? But who's counting?! What can I say, I AM lucky (and blessed) to have him in our lives!




Btw, I cut out the 18 and put it next to Nov. because that's our anniversary.

Lucky

See what I mean? hehehe! I did this one a while back as a part of a DT challenge on CP's blog.



And then I've made a couple of cards lately.




I did this one for another CP blog challenge.




And here I deconstructed again. LOVE doing that to die-cuts!



Alrighty, that's about it for now. I actually have a LOT more photos from this past weekend, and then LOs with the gorgeous Urban Anthology October kit to share too you'll be seeing me again soon! ;)

Oh, one last thing. The other day I had the wonderful opportunity to do a photo shoot of my friend Tab's kiddos. I'm totally excited with how they turned out!!! Check them out here.

Have a great Friday! :D