A little bit of scrappy stuff!

I've been busy doing swaps. My new found addiction is LOTWs. These Letter Of The Words are quick and easy and cheap to mail! Here are a few that I have done in the past week or two.



The 'n' is for Nana.... I love this and will be perfect for my boys' Nana.. she loves pink roses. I cut the rose from the "Indie Art" Cricut cartridge and the 'n' is from Plantin Schoolbook Cartridge. I Stickled the rose and added a sequin sticker on the 'n'.

The "O" is for Mom. The orange base layer and shadow of the 'O' is a Coordination paper - it is black on the other side. The pink layer and 'O' was a scrap that I think came from a stack of paper from Walmart. The patterned paper is from DCWV The Glitter Stack - which I LOVE!!. I added the orange flower eyelet and Stickled both the center of the eyelet and the O. Took the basic idea from a card I made a couple weeks ago (see post below).



The "O" is for Son. All of this paper came from an 'American Traditional Designs" stack I got last summer - and I'd totally forgotten about it! The bottom layer is orange not pink as it looks in this photo. The orange ribbon is from Dollarama. I Stickled the polka dots on the blue layer with Lime Green Stickle. This is one of my favourites - I love the bright, fun colours.

The 'a' is for Dad. White base layer is Coordinations, the black layer is Coordinations as well (I think - I've sent them away already so I can't double check.) The striped layer is Heidi Grace Designs - Midnight Kisses| Pinstripe. The 'a' is Prisma paper - I can't remember the name - but it is one of my favourite colours. The black ribbon is from Walmart and I Stickled the black layer with Black Diamond stickles.



These two pages were for a "What a Mess?!" swap on Splitcoast. The "It wasn't me." Paper I left pretty much to its own.. I added a photo mat that I matted with the red that matches the second page. I cut out the 'footprint' journal box and tacked that over one of the footprints already printed on the paper. As an embellishment I added the red brad in the period. The "Sometimes I can resist temptation.. but never mischief page" is printed on the paper. I cut out the filmstrip from the Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridge and the stars are from my new favourite cartridge the Indie Art Cricut cartridge.



Last one for this post. This was for a Cricut swap. We had to use the cricut for our main element on the page. I used it for every element - with the exception of the white and blue on the journal box. I cut the title out of Plantin Schoolbook, the film strip from Mickey and Friends and the stars are from Indie Art. The black base of the journal box is one of the cut outs from the filmstrip.

I actually did two layouts for this swap but I forgot to take a picture of my "Fall" layouts (Melanie - if you are reading this - can you please take a picture for me!! ;-) Thanks!!)

Wow.. I actually scrapped my own pictures!

Last night Megan and I went to our new Wednesday night activity. Our LSS "She Runs With Scissors" has a late night crop n' shop every Wednesday night. We have a lot of fun and seem to get a lot done. It is also a nice night away from the husband and kids.

I've been so bogged down with swaps, that I usually work on those while I'm there. Last night I got a swap done plus I actually scrapped a page for me.. well for the boys. When we came home I stayed up until 3am finishing a similar page so that each boy could have one in their books.

I feel so accomplished. I have realized that I need to slow down on doing the swapping and start getting some of my pictures on the pages that I have swapped as well as do some of my own pages!

I am still having so much fun learning and playing and I'm so glad that I finally gave in to the scrapbooking craze!

Here are the pages I did last night. The camping themed paper came from a Secret Sister Swap that I participated in on SplitCoastStampers. The kits were designed to make 8x8 pages, but I decided to stretch it out and make 12x12 pages instead. Since the papers were designed to only make pages for one album - I had to improvise for the title - and on the second one I cut "Camping" out on the Cricut using the Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge.

I'm really happy with how they turned out - and I still have lots of paper to use from the SS kit.

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Wow...... I can't believe I haven't been here since November.... but... a lot has happened since then.

The biggest excitement for me was getting a full time teaching contract for 2 months. I spent 8 weeks teaching Socials 10 and 11 at Timberline. I was terrified of the "big kids" as I hadn't even TOC'd at the Secondary level. However, it was better than I expected and absolutely loved my time there. The kids were fantastic, the staff were wonderful helping out the "newbie" and it was an all around great experience. I'd go back there in a heart beat.

However, with me working and planning full time, it was hard on the kids. We had a few regressions and lots of behaviour troubles -mostly near the end when I was starting to transition back home. But, our kids are amazing and have bounced right back.. we are once again sailing on smooth waters!

Christmas was a blast.... although we really wanted to give the kids a trip to Disneyland for Christmas - the drop in the dollar - along with the uncertainty of how long my contract would last - we decided to change our plans. This also meant I had to do some fast shopping. We didn't go to "Black Friday" this year so I was no where near ready!

We decided and bought the kids Rock Band for the Wii... but soon found out that it really a shell of the game that you get on the X-Box. So we returned the Wii Rock Band and went all out and bought the family and X-Box 360 AND Rock Band. And because we needed a second guitar we also got Guitar Hero World Tour.

A few of there other "big" gifts were digital cameras - tickets to see the Canucks SuperSkills Comptetion and tickets to see WWE (wrestling) in Victoria. Yes...... they were totally spoiled!!

Butch spoiled me as well.. I got a Cricut Expression and a whole lot of goodies to go with it. My mom bought me a CuttleBug ... and a bunch of other scrapbook related items. I told everyone that I had a Provocraft Christmas!

The boys and I bought Butch a Nintendo DS - so that he had something to do on his nightshifts. He loved it!

January had the kids back at school and back at sports .. and me still teaching.

February started with a bang - and we had/have only one 'free' weekend.

February 1st was the Canucks SuperSkills so we went to Vancouver with Meg and her family for the day.

February 6th my niece Devyn and I went to Victoria to watch a Storm game and do some shopping - it was a fun weekend and something we will definitely do again.

February 7th - Butch and the boys headed to Victoria for the WWE wrestling - Carsyn had the thrill of his life when his favourite wrestler touched him.

February 13-15 we travelled to Port Hardy for a hockey tournament for Brayden. We took a trip into Port Alice to show the boys where I grew up. Of course we had to stop for lunch at our favourite restaurant "The Victorian Steak House". The food was awesome as always. It was fun to take the kids and show them the church we got married in and the park where we had our wedding pictures done. It was a little sad to see that they had replaced all of the park playground equipment that my dad had built. But understandable that it was old and probably unsafe.

We took pictures of the Friggen Islands and then headed on our way to Port Hardy.
The team had a lousy first game - but then played some amazing hockey. In the playoffs (for 5th place) the lost in a shoot out.

Brayden got sick on the last day and didn't play much. Both boys ended up missing a day of school.

This past weekend was our weekend off... Butch went to play in Matt's monthly poker game... and Brayden had a couple of hockey games - but otherwise it was just a nice, relaxing weekend at home......... other than the trip to emerg with Brayden on Sunday morning... poor guy has a nasty throat infection and is home in bed.

Well.......... I'm going to try and update this a little more often......... and I will also add some more pictures to this post as soon as I download them from the camera!