Late on Wednesday evening...

I have had a pretty creative spurt today! I did 3 layouts (two I can't reveal because they were done for a DT call). This is in between cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry, grocery shopping and making dinner (Yummy! Fajitas!)

Anyhow, today's sketch is a fun one... A little more like my usual stuff, but I still like how it turned out :)

For the layout I did for this, I used some papers from Crate, Sassafras & RitaMarie & co. The ribbon is something I got in a swap and the chipboard is from Colorbok & Imaginisce. This is also the first time that I have used my sewing machine on a layout :)

I have also decided that for a bonus this week, I will share the layout I did for Spunky Scrappers last...unfortunately, this is the only way it will see the light of day other than the girls that were on the DT with me. I'd love to see what you do with it!

Not much chatter tonight... I'm a little sleepy, so until next time!

Fresh & Pretty

Since my blog was acting strange & looking odd, I decided to update with a fresh new look!

Is it just me...

Or is my blog showing up all discombobulated-like?

Just wondering...

The Big Reveal...

I have been working on getting the house de-cluttered and so I haven't been scrapping much in the last week and a half. My apologies to anyone who was waiting for my usual Wednesday sketch. Anyhow, it's been a chore. We finished the kitchen and laundry room today. Our plan was to take my little scrappy corner out of the laundry room & give it an area of our dining room (which seems to collect junk from activities not related to dining at all.) We had planned on moving our table out into the garage to be used as a project table out there, but, when I went to move it, one of the legs fell off. This is not a new table by any stretch of the imagination, and this leg had been, in fact, re-attached several times. This time, though,m there was no fixing it. It is now currently sitting on our back patio in the rain, awaiting the fate of being chopped to bits and used as firewood. Before you worry about fumes from the lacquer on it, keep in mind that this table used to belong to my grandma and has been used for so many things, left so many times in different weather, that any semblance of chemical on it are fair to none.

Anyhow, back to the story at hand... I have a large corner of the dining room now. We are contemplating on getting a small cafe table, but right now, I am really enjoying the wide-open space that is now our craft area :) I even took a picture :)

The desk, chair & plastic drawers were already ones I had in my little corner before. We bought the hutch today at Value Village for $30 and I think it's just perfect for what I needed it for! I originally intended to have a tall bookshelf for storage purposes, but I really couldn't find one I liked. This one just stood out to me and it holds everything I need it to and then some! The side table is just a piece of treated laminated fiber board that we had bought for Chloe to use as a desk (and which ended up sitting in her room when she decided she didn't like having a desk. I love having that extra space, though, because it means I can even have my sewing machine out and actually use it! The kids also are loving that extra space because I did tell them that if they needed any extra craft area, they could use that. So far, Charlie is the only one who has taken advantage of that... and he is also addicted to using my Helmar Craft Glue. I think I may have to make him buy his own bottle before he uses mine up!

Now that things have settled down a little more, I should have a new sketch to post on Wednesday again... as well as some fun layouts! Until then...

Late on Wednesday...

You know what they say, better late than never! Hah! Who is "They" anyways? Anyhow, I am posting now because I have been grocery shopping and scrapbooking all day :) I usually do my crafts when I am doing laundry, but our dryer is still on the fritz, so I am sooo thrown off my game. I can't wait until we can do laundry at home. The laundromat is so expensive. Can you believe we spent $40 to wash our laundry on Sunday? Granted, that was 2 weeks worth of laundry for 4 people, but still... Yikes! I promised the kids that I wouldn't spend any money on scrappy stuff until after vacation (Sooooo hard because everyone is doing their Winter CHA previews! I should only be so lucky as to win some...), but it seems that all the money I would be saving is going right into trying to fix the dryer and doing laundry. It's a vicious cycle. I want off.

I do have a couple of layouts and sketches to share, for all my effort today.

For this first one, I was actually influenced by a clock... I was playing with numbers for this layout and finally came up with this design... and an example that looks pretty close to it.

For this layout, I used paper from Die Cuts With a View and K & Co. mostly, though I'm not totally sure because I used a lot of scraps that I have had for years. There might even be some My Mind's Eye as well. The buttons are also all hodgepodge of ones from various places and articles of clothing. The only thing I do know for certain is that the journal spot is from Sassafras :)

Here's the bonus sketch of the day... I may have to try this one as well. If I have the right photos. Mine always seem too big for this sort of thing!

Happy Scrapping!

How many of these have you read?

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?



1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (on a side note, I detest Charles Dickens)
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott (I've read this 3 times do they each count?)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare- question- why is this on here if the complete works of shakespeare was earlier in the list? Why don't they just list them all separately?
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo



Well, 39 of them isn't bad... especially since I've read a lot of classics that aren't on that list like works by Poe and The Odyssey.

Wishes Come True

Serendipity Scrapbooks is having a Wishes come true contest... register for the forum & say Jill sent you :) Also, there is a Project Runway crop happening soon, so check it out!

The Good, The Bad & The Sketchy

What a difference a week can make! To start off, the good news is always the best! Our family is all a little tired today and it is due to the fact that we were all at the hospital last night where my Sister in Law gave birth to my nephew! His name is Tristan Kale. He was born a little after 11:20pm and weighed 7 lbs. 11oz.

Isn't he a cutie! I can't wait to watch him grow! Charlie is really happy to have a boy cousin now... especially after 13 years of being the only boy.

Now the bad news. We got notified today that Brianna, who runs the Spunky Scrappers site is hanging up her boots. She said she will leave the site up as inspiration, but will no longer be running any challenges. I'm bummed because I have been just loving some of the different challenges! The topics were great, not to mention the fact that it is the first DT I have ever been on & I was just starting to have a blast! I guess I will be searching out some new DT opportunities this new year.

And, finally, the Sketchy :)

I have two for you today!

For this first layout, I used papers from K & Co. and a strip of Sassafras. The journal spot is Little Yellow Bicycle and the title and butterfly were cut with my Cricut using Die Cuts With a View glitter cardstock. The flowers are Prima. To get the bunchy effect on the pink & yellow flowers, I put a dot of Helmar Craft Glue in the center of one paper flower, then held it together until it set and stayed there, then I used a dot of Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots to adhere it to the center of the second flower.

This next one is my favorite :)

This one us almost all Sassafras :) The film strip is from Creative Imaginations, the felt is from Blu Eye Dezines and the little metal clips are from Heidi Swapp.

What's inspiring you today?

One Word

1. Where is your cell phone? charging

2. Your hair? auburn

3. Your mother? Sheila

4. Your father? John

5. Your favorite food? Popsicles

6. Your dream last night? dunno

7. Your favorite drink? tea

8. Your dream/goal? fame

9. What room are you in? bedroom

10. Your hobby? scrapbooking :)

11. Your fear? stupidity

12. Where you want to be in 6 years? richer

13. Where were you last night? bed

14. Something you aren't? snotty

15. Muffins? blueberry

16. Wish list item? money

17. Where did you grow up? Lynnwood

18, Last thing you did? eat

19. What are you wearing? black

20. Your tv? off

21. Your pet? many

22. Friends? close

23. Your life? interesting

24. Your mood? tired

25. Missing someone? yes

26. Vehicle? Ruby

27. Something you're not wearing? hat

28. Your favorite store? Import

29. Your favorite color? Blue

30. The last time you laughed? yesterday

31. The last time you cried? ???

32. One place you go to over and over? work

33. Facebook? nope

34. Favorite place to eat? Zab Thai