Well, this little boy...

finally knows the secret about Santa.

He was only a few months old in this photo. Six and a half months actually and now he is nine years old. :) I can't say it comes as any great surprise. And I am pretty sure he has suspected for at least a year or two, but didn't want to admit it. I will say, talking with him about it was a little sad and hard for me. But I had found this, The truth about Santa, on Pinterest and it gave me a little more to add to what I wanted to say to him.

So as of now, he is pretty excited about being on "team Santa" for his little sister Erin and all the friends and cousins who still don't know the secret. And he has promised not to spill the beans for them!
Hopefully it won't be to hard for him to keep the secret :)

Scrapping For Fun!

Many scrapbookers will tell you that they have enough product in their personal inventory to scrap for a long time without ever making another purchase. Well, except for your basics like adhesive maybe.
And we talk about using up our "stash". The older product that sits and sits waiting to finally be pulled out and used to make the perfect layout :)
But lately I have been setting myself a goal. And that is to use my newer product! Instead of buying something and letting it become stash, I am challenging myself to use it and not "hoard" it! I loved the Rocket Age line by October Afternoon because of it's retro feel and cute design.

So when I came across this photo that was going in my already scrapped photos box, I was inspired to create something for my "All About Me" album. The layouts that tell my stories and feelings I want to remember! And Borders is one of those places that I will remember, but my grandchildren will never know!
This layout also expresses a little of the sadness I feel at how many places that have ceased to exist in my lifetime already. And what might possibly be next. And I wonder about the places I may never see, but my children and grandchildren will one day frequent.
It's interesting how quickly things can change :)

Going to be taking a little bit of a blog break until after Thanksgiving here. Mike is taking the week off and won't be traveling. It will be great to have him home and I know we will want to spend as much time with him as possible! See you after the holiday! :)

Basic Grey Cards

I don't make cards to often. For the occasional birthday or Christmas for the teachers. I also did a card swap with a group of scrap friends a few years ago that was a lot of fun. Otherwise, I just haven't been creating cards, even though few years ago, I read Stacey Julian's book Big Picture Scrapbooking . And one of the things she recommended doing after creating a layout, was to use the scraps and make a card.. Which I think is a brilliant idea!

So I decided to do just that with my the leftovers from my November design team product. I had some great scraps left and created not one but two cards :) I have already used the "hi" card to send to my sister-in-law. The "you are so sweet!" card is going to be a thank you for a friend.
I miss the process of snail mail in this age of electronic communication and am happy to be sending some out.
Do you still send cards or letters through the mail? 

Laundry Room Sign

Each of the little houses we decorated for the blog hop came with a different shaped chipboard mini-album. Mine reminded me a little of a picket fence. And with the Maya Road laundry chipboard I had received, I pictured a clothesline hanging in a backyard. :) So I began assembling a sign to hang in my laundry room.

The first step was to attach each piece to a piece of leftover chipboard backing that had come in my package to keep my patterned paper from bending. I actually didn't end up using every piece from the mini-album. It comes with six but that felt to long to me. Five seemed just right!

I then cut around the sign to remove the excess chipboard.

I covered it in Basic Grey Nook and Pantry Beaters paper because I like the blue sky color.

Here is a better look at the blue color in the paper, because it didn't look right in the other photo.

After covering each piece of chipboard in a different piece of patterned paper from the Basic Grey Nook and Pantry line, I began assembling my sign. Lots of fun to put together and it became a family project!

My four year old daughter wanted to play along :) Here is her version of a sign "just like mommy's"!
If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section. :)

* Blog Hop Winner!"

According to Random.org, the winner is #16!

Christa said...

What cute projects!

November 4, 2011 10:50 AM

Please email me at maryjo1997@gmail.com so I can send you your prize! Thanks for joining in, everyone :)

Recipe Book

Each of the ScrapGal Design Team members were asked to create something for our "Home For the Holidays" crop this past weekend. The line I had chosen to work with from the store was Basic Grey's Nook and Pantry line which is basically a food theme. This led me to thinking about how my friends and I are always wanting to exchange recipes. Which then led me to thinking about recipe books as Christmas gifts!

Simple, easy to put together recipe books that is :) Because if you know me, the easier and quicker these days, the better! And this recipe book was nice and simple by scrapbook standards. Using two pieces of thin chipboard, I created covers for my book. The most time consuming part of this project was hand cutting the cupcakes from the BG patterned paper :) You could always use chipboard or rub-on's or stickers!

Here is a shot of the front and back cover. More patterned paper covering the page.

That fun polka dot paper is covering the inside of the front cover and the back cover!

And the recipe cards I used are from a line called Kitschy Kitchen by Melissa Frances. There are a lot of cards in the pack in different colors and patterns as you can see. I split the package in half to make two albums.
Today I see now that the recipe cards are no longer in the store. The chipboard set I used for the Queen of the Kitchen circle on the cover is, but not the recipe card pack.
I have seen tons of recipe card packs for $1 at places like Michael's and Target in the dollar section. Or it would be super easy to design a cute little set your self on the computer or use a site like free printable recipe cards
That way you could make as many cards as you wanted.
As for me, I plan on sharing my albums with friends this Christmas using a few of our family's favorite recipes :)

*And I will announce a blog hop winner tomorrow :)*

ScrapGal Blog Hop and "Home for the Holidays" Crop!

Welcome to Scrap Gal's Home for the Holidays blog hop! You have until midnight Sunday, November 6th to complete the hop! We also have an online crop going on in the forum, so please join us at ScrapGal for lots of fun and inspiring challenges! We are giving away lots of prizes and would love to see you there!
By visiting all of the design team members blogs and leaving a comment, you are also entered to win prizes :)

Each design team member was given a Maya Road chipboard house to decorate. There are three different types and I received the town home!

I used the Basic Grey Nook and Pantry line to decorate mine since I will be keeping it in the kitchen. I am going to store matches in it away from prying little eyes and hands up on a windowsill. I am forever searching for matches and it will be nice to have them in one place.

Here is the back of the house. I used the teapot paper with a touch of pink to mix in with all the green I used. And some Heidi Swapp tape on the edges of the roof. Also as you can see in the top photo, each house comes with a chipboard mini album. I put mine to use making a sign for our soon to be finished newly remodeled laundry room.

The album kind of reminded me of the wooden boards in a picket fence. So I attached them together (a tutorial will be in a future blog post soon.) and sanded the edges. The patterned paper and alphabet stickers are Basic Grey Nook and Pantry. I also used buttons and bird stickers by October Afternoon, twine by Doodlebug, and a scallop punch by Fiskars :)
This project is actually my monthly challenge for November. You can see all those challenges as well as the crop challenges on the boards. Monthly challenges can be found on the Monthly Contest board.

And now on to the Blog Hop!
Please visit the following blogs on your way. The other members did some really cute things with their houses :)
ScrapGal
Guest Designer Nicolle
Michelle
Myself
Marcie
Heather
Rita

For leaving a comment today, I will enter you to win a small prize pack including two of my favorite brands - October Afternoon and Cosmo Cricket.

Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you at the crop!! :)

I have a post today on the ScrapGal blog talking about this layout I created for the month of November. You can see it here! :)

A Trunk or Treat Win by a Landslide :)

Mike went really big this year and decided to recreate a little bit of Hogwarts castle :) Erin was Hermione, Mike was Dumbledore, I was Professor McGonagall and my friend Elise was Bellatrix.

Mike made the sign, too. Do you recognize the October Afternoon letter stickers from the Campfire line :)
So I did contribute a little besides dressing up. Oh and the stained glass window made using scraps of cardstock.

It was so much fun passing out candy to the kids!

 And receiving our trophy for receiving the most votes :)

 Later that night, after a potluck dinner with neighbors that we hosted, Strawberry Shortcake a.k.a Erin went trick or treating with me, cousin Ethan, Aunt Janel and several neighbors and friends!

Evan opted to stay home with dad and pass out candy. He wanted to help scare the trick or treaters :) Really a fun Halloween!