Cosmo & Mickey

As you have probably already noticed, I love doing Disney layouts. I love the bright colors and the pictures from those vacations are some of my favorites. They show Nico at his happiest and these are the memories I like to document first.

The colors in this new Cosmo Cricket Circa 1934 line inspired the theme this time. While it has an old fashioned look to it, the red, black and yellow color palette reminded me of Mickey and so I came up with this...

This page was made with the December WIP Kit.

I used corrugated paper for the base of the page to add texture and tone down the vintage look of the patterned paper. The twine was glued down in random loops using Zip Dry Paper Glue - it dries perfectly clear! This was a fun layout to make - I can't believe how little Nico looks in these pictures. I have a whole notebook full of Disney stories, so be prepared for more layouts!


And for variety, a simple card. I am so not a card maker - I think that's a whole other crafting skill. I have a hard time working on such a small canvas, so I kept it very clean using 3 strips of patterned paper and one chipboard embellishment. For texture, I folded the red paper into a ruffle and added some sewing.

My favorite part of the card is the coordinating envelope. I'm a total matchy-matchy girl so this is right up my alley. I love how the double-sided patterned paper gives me an instant envelope liner. I created both the card base and envelope using the Wild Card Cricut cartridge.

I'll have two more Cosmo Cricket Circa 1934 pages up tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by!

Thankful

Goodbye Thanksgiving and hello Christmas! Today is a "back to the routine" day and while I love my boys (the little one and the big one) it sure is nice to have the house back to myself. I'll spend a quiet day decorating , but before I do that I thought I'd pop on and do a little post-Thanksgiving review.

First up, is a shot from Nico's Thanksgiving Play. There's nothing like hearing those tiny little voices sing and put on a skit. I tear up every single time. There's my little Andrea Bocelli in the back (with the blue jeans) singing his heart out. Actually, I'm pretty sure he was screaming at that point - in direct competition with his buddy right in front of him.


And here's the little ham with his teachers, Miss Ann and Miss Emmy. Two of the best teachers he's had yet. He loves going to school and I think these two ladies have a lot to do with that. I'm very grateful for them.


Last up is the ONLY picture I took on Thanksgiving, just minutes before everyone left. Every year I say I'm going to take more pictures and every year I am so completely overwhelmed with what it takes to serve 25+ guests, that I take no pictures. One day I'm going to regret that - I know!

These little faces up here is what I'm most thankful for. They are the heart of our family and we are blessed to have each and every one of them!

Sneaking Back

It's been a while, I know! I've been busy making stuff, cooking stuff and organizing stuff. I'm getting ready for the big Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and I just took a few minutes to post some of the things I've been working on.

I've been dying to use this Alphabet Soup line by My Mind's Eye. I love the colors and the flash cards. I've had them sitting around for a while and I was so happy to finally use them. When I first went through the deck of cards, I saw this fish flashcard and that prompted this page about Nico and his first swimming lessons.

There's a little bit of everything on this layout - all of the paper is MME, the clear buttons are 7Gypsies (super old), letters are Pink Paislee and the "school" tab is Crate. Oh and I started to use some of my new twine...love it!

I'll share a few sneaks of what's been keeping me busy lately. First is a little something with the December Work in Progress kit - love the Cosmo Cricket that's in there....

and then a little sneak of a Cricut Circle project I did last month....love the Birthday Bash cartridge - it's one of my favorites right now. Notice that I'm on a serious twine and banner kick right now. The aqua of course, remains consistent. Ha!

So I hope you don't find the sneak peeks annoying. These are some of the projects I've been working on that keep me from blogging regularly, so I thought I'd share what I can.

The good news is....all of the Work in Progress pages will be up next week. The bad news is...I have to get back to making my lasagna. Yes, we have lasagna for Thanksgiving...and turkey...and Spanish rice...and 3 different types of potatoes. It's like a meeting of the United Nations around here tomorrow. I'll be back with pics!

Happy Thanksgiving,

Echo Park Halloween

We had such a great time trick-or-treating this year. The kids are finally old enough to walk around the neighborhood without being pulled in a wagon. They ran me ragged going from one house to another, the entire time reminding them not to step all over our neighbors' landscaping, don't touch the decorations, say thank you and Happy Halloween. I repeated that 100 times in the span of an hour. Ah, the joys of parenting. Ha!

I used the Halloween line by Echo Park and I love the bold colors and icons. I think it's just "kid" enough for these pictures and story.


I love the picture of me with my little Tinkerbell. She held my hand the entire time and told me I was her best friend...warms my heart that little one. She is the daughter I will never have and I adore her to bits.

I used my brand new Thickers for the title, a frame from Little Yellow Bicycle and Flair from American Crafts. And there you have it - one quick Halloween page!

Pink Paislee Boo!

My favorite parade and place to be on Halloween....Disneyworld! Just a few pictures from our first trip to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party in 2008. We had great seats right near the castle and I love how some of these pictures turned out.

Click on picture to view larger. Sorry I have no detail shots this time!

I used the Hocus Pocus line from Pink Paislee. I think it fit the theme perfectly...regal and bright and colorful all at the same time. I think that's hard to do and Pink Paislee seems to do that perfectly every time.

I have such great memories from this parade and I'm glad I finally got it into our scrapbooks. Now, if I could just tackle the 1,329 other Halloween pages I need to do...

Glorious Twine

Just thought I'd share a quick find with you. Look what I came across today in my searches. Beautiful, glorious, colorful twine. I'm in love. I see many, many twine projects in my near future.

You can find a sample pack here for $14. I think that's pretty cheap for 15 yards of each color considering I paid $4 for the tiny Martha Stewart ones.

Have a great weekend, I'll be back Monday with that Halloween page.

Breakfast & Bikes

Did you ever have a seemingly insignificant moment in the past that you remember vividly? Almost like your mind took a snapshot of it.

That's what I get when I look at these pictures from our vacation to Sanibel last year. It was an ordinary morning and we took a bike ride from the inn to this great little place for breakfast. I remember being happy...just pure happiness, for no particular reason than everything was going right in my world . I had to put it all down on paper and I came up with this...


I love you Restoration by Crate Paper, I really do. I wasn't going to buy it because I have so many lines of paper already and it's a little on the frou-frou side. But the colors, oh those bold colors finally got me. I kept picking it up on a recent shopping trip and when I saw the bicycle, I immediately thought 'Sanibel'. I had to have it and I'm glad that it came home with me.


This is a really simple layout, just some layers of paper and chipboard. The chipboard filmstrip I picked up in a store in Massachusetts recently. They were in a bin and I picked up a bunch but unfortunately I don't know who makes them.

I was very inspired by this layout made by Michelle Lanning - one of my very favorite scrappers ever. No one does layering like this girl. You can see where I got the idea to double up the stamp-edged paper from!

So there you have it - one vacation moment and a little Crate Paper. Hope you like it! Up next...Halloween & Pink Paislee....

Halloween

Hi everyone! I have a really quick Halloween roundup post. I'm in the middle of creating two pages that I'll have to share by the end of the week, so this will be brief...

First up, the boy won! He came in 2nd place in our neighborhood costume competition. He was so happy and proud. The day before he won a blue ribbon in our town's costume competition. Probably because he was the only NASA astronaut I saw all weekend. Ha!

Singing in his school Halloween parade....


Then I had my some of my favorite kids in the whole world over all day on Halloween (love that!).


And this house in our neighborhood is just...amazing. Every year they do an over the top theme and this year it was Camelot, complete with castle facade, real knights in shining armor, and themed music. There is no way a picture could do this justice. There were police cars and 200 people on the sidewalk, so it was impossible! I love that these folks do this...it's one of Nico's favorite things to do on Halloween now.

And so that's it...1 astronaut, 2 costume competitions, 3 parades, 4 cousins to spend Halloween Day with and 5 parties. How's that for Halloween by the numbers?