oh la love!

I love Valentines Day! I love making Valentines with Larissa, baking heart shaped cookies and doing some fun little V-day photoshoots as well. I really enjoyed working with the MCS kits this month (well, really, I love it every month!) This is My Creative Scrapbook's main kit for February. Here's a peek at what my fellow DT members have been doing with the MCS February kits. I have had a lot of people asking me about how to get their hands on these

Cheek to Cheek: Most of the photos that I used for the February kit are from a fun little photo shoot with Larissa & her cousin. I barely had to bribe them at all....well, except for the big heart shaped lollipop that you will see in the mini album post. They did want to include their favourite teddy bears in some of the photos though.

Just the 2 of us: I am IN LOVE with MAYA MIST! The colours are rich and deep and it doesn't take total saturation to achieve the look you want. I used red maya mist here and some masking with the Making Memories acrylic hearts that came with the kit.


Family: This is me with my brothers, sisters and parents last summer.

And yet another altered jar for my project... a recycled pickle jar actually :)

Stay tuned for more lovey dovey projects during the coming week!

ooh... I almost forgot these...

or I guess you could say I did forget these! heehee I had this post saved but not published. This was the Limited Edition kit for My Creative Scrapbook (January). I hope you enjoy ... and it won't be too much longer before the February kits are revealed. I've been really busy lately so not too much to post here but come next week I'll have lots of new layouts to share.

I just love this photo of DH and Larissa. I called it butterfly kisses and then realized afterwards that she was actually giving him an eskimo kiss...oh well LOL.



Fly: I just love this photo of Larissa swinging at the park last spring. To get this shot I crouched on the group and aiming my camera up. I had to be really careful not to get kicked though!



Enjoy Every Second: I LOVE this photo. Larissa is running through the fields with her little friends after a church potluck. I especially love that one of the little boys has his arms stretched out wide. There is nothing cuter than children running like that.

And lastly, a little wall hanging that has made it's home in my kitchen. "The little things are usually the best things" How true.


Have a great day everyone... I promise to be back soon.

My Creative Scrapbook - January Creative Kit

I have another kit to show off!! This is My Creative Scrapbook's January Creative Kit. A beautiful bright mix with tons of embellishments (as always!). Due to some odd postal circumstances (grrrr...Canada Post) I got my kit at odd timing so I didn't have the ribbons/trims, lace cardstock, chipboard or bling but I was determined to make it work anyways! These kits are so jam packed that I hardly noticed and still had lots of leftovers after 3 layouts and an altered item.


Snow Happy: this is a photo from our first snowfall this year (well technically last year now '09) which was way late! Usually this photo would be taken in early November but it was mid December before we got a decent blanket of white stuff.



Snow girl: In most winter shots Larissa has her tongue hanging out...trying to catch some snow flakes :)


Larissa and her cousin Keaton were having so much fun sliding on a non-existent hill in our backyard last winter...even funnier, they both thought they should share one tiny saucer sled.

Yes, I'm tickled PINK!

This week has been a happy scrappy week for me! I was so excited to finally get my chane to guest design for Pink Pasilee. You can check out my guest design work here on the Pink Paislee blog. And then, EVEN BETTER, I got to see my name here. Oh someone pinch me please!! Thank you to my friends for all your congratulations and well wishes...I'm grinning like the Cheshire cat :)




Notes of Love: I dug into my stash and let Larissa and her little cousin Jaedyn make some Valentines for their little friends. (2009)

This Kiss: I was trying to get some cute Valentines photos of Larissa (2009) when she reached down and kissed her little heart necklace. I told her 'no honey, don't do that...smile for Mama'. Well, when I got the photos uploaded, this was my all time favourite of the bunch. I love it when that happens.

Sweet Eats: Nothing is better than eating the treat you just baked and decorated. This was Larissa & Jaedyn's first cupcake decorating experience...it was a yummy one.


Take out box with Pink Pasilee candies...yes, there are real candies in these Pink Paislee wrappers but you wouldn't want to nibble on them since they are covered in hot glue :)

Here are a few good ole fashioned Valentines cards in a cello bag with a topper.

My Creative Scrapbook - January Main Kit

Oh la la!! It's that time again. My Creative Scrapbook has unveiled it's January Kits. Here is the Main January kit featuring the rich tones of Lilybee (my altered jar and some layouts from my fellow DT members are featured on the Lilybee blog). Have a peek at what my fellow DT members have done with this kit as well.

Beautiful Bride: This is my beautiful new sister-in-law. I am making a wedding album for her and my brother as a wedding gift. I hope to wrap that project up shortly (almost done!) So, if you are Jennette & Daniel - STOP PEEKING! lol As for the rest of you - peek away :) The photo here was an artistic shot from their awesome photographer Scott Frank who so kindly let me use some of his photos for this project.


Family Memories: These photos are from our first family fishing trip last Labour Day. I was the hero of the day when I caught a 4lb rainbow trout. I thought little Larissa would be a little freaked out by the trashing fish but she was delighted and couldn't wait to get it home and eat it! I still have to add the journaling on the Tattered Angels card...it looks a little naked without any writing there.

Love: This is another one for the wedding gift. I am keeping the titles pretty plain on these since it's not for me. This is another photo by Mr. Frank :)


Here is a little jar that I made for my altered project. It was formerly a bottle of green ice tea :) I love to recycle glass items and give them a new home. The tiny little tattered angels bingo cards were cut from the packaging of the actual bingo cards. A very green project indeed :)

Happy New Year!!! {top 9 of '09}

It's just about time to leave 2009 and step into 2010. Looking back on what I scrapped in '09 and choosing 9 of my favourite layouts was a lot of fun. I tend to like my newest completed work the best so I really wanted to choose all 9 layouts from my work in the past month. I tried to refrain from doing that though. Here are a 9 of my favourites, in no particular order. I hope you have a healthy and safe New Year and here's to lots of scrapping in 2010!


2009 was the year that I finally dabbled in digital scrapbooking and making my own sketch. I am really glad that I finally took the plunge and learned to do both of these things. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment and helped me to learn photoshop just a little bit more.

My Creative Scrapbook - December's Creative Kit

WOW! That was my reaction when I received this kit!! I just loved working with My Creative Scrapbook's Creative kit. Because of time constraints (no thanks to the post office!) I only managed three layouts but I am not done yet... I fully plan on digging it back out and playing with it some more when I can squeeze in the time.

Peek: Larissa's santa hat was a wee bit too big and she thought it was just hilarious to play peek-a-boo during our little photo shoot. That is fine by me...keeps her interested and smiling :)

I fussy cut out these ornaments, trimmed them in cinnamon Stickles and used pop dots to give them some dimension.

The naughty look: Doesn't that title just say it all ;)



Merry & Bright: I used dug out my Cricut, dusted it off and used to make the snowflake on this layout :)


As of my last post it was quite green here.... well green no more! Today is the second day of a winter storm. We have plenty of the white stuff now and I'm sure we will until at least mid-April. It's time to bundle up my wee one and start snapping some snowy white pictures while we ice skate, sled and make snowmen.

Christmas greetings

I have a beautiful kit to share with you and some belated updates. Usually when I'm behind on updating it's because of a work situation. A few weeks ago I started a full time permanent job. It's quite an adjustment period since I have been home with Larissa for almost two years (except a couple short term jobs). For the past few weeks I have not felt like doing anything remotely scrappy whether online or otherwise. I'm coming around though! Last night I polished off 4 layouts and 3 altered items. I can't show you what I made last night just yet but I can show you the My Creative Scrapbook December Limited Edition kit. Oh how I LOOOOOVE this kit...it's so beautiful and ethereal...the perfect winter kit.


Wishing, dreaming, waiting: This is a photo from last Christmas. This look on her face just reminds me of how hard it is to wait patiently for Christmas when you are a child. I used a large part of a bottle of gold Stickles on this layout alone.






Dear Santa: This is Larissa's Santa letter for this year. She's not quite old enough to write one herself so I did the writing for her while she dictated. I did have her write the 'Dear Santa' and sign her name at the bottom. She also addressed the envelope herself. Before we left to the Christmas parade (where letter carriers pick up the letters) I made sure to scan them so I could keep a copy just for this purpose.

Season of White: This is one of last year's photos as well. Normally, we have a quite a pile of snow by this time but right now it sill quite green around here. This photo was taken shortly after an ice storm last March... if you look closely you can see the ice on the evergreen trees behind Larissa. I absolutely adore the soft colour palette of this kit...the ivory and gold is a beautiful combo.


I hope everyone had a peaceful Christmas surrounded by friends and family.

Christmasy Goodness with MCS - Main Kit

I am so excited to show off the My Creative Scrapbook's main kit for December... talk about Christmas cheer. This kit is AMAZING!! Check out what my fellow design team members created with this kit :) The paper in this kit is really fun to work with ... a shiny, smooth finish and the paper is really thick. I don't think I've ever worked with paper quite like it. (Little Yellow Bicycle)


Delight (2008): I love the look on Larissa's face when she was opening this present :) Too bad I didn't have my new camera in time for Christmas last year... I had to use my dad's little point and shoot so sadly a lot of my photos aren't very good quality.



Merry Christmas: Just a couple of fun Christmas layouts with using pictures from our recent photo shoot. This is Larissa and her little cousin Jaedyn.

Her First Carve....

Well, I called this layout "Her First Carve" (I added the word Her after I photographed it). Carving pumpkins is something that we had been meaning to do in previous years but when DH was potato farming that time of year was just a little too hectic. Now that he's retired from farm duties we have more fun time in the fall so this was the year. I thought Larissa would just love carving a jack-o-lantern. She was so excited to get started but...but....ewwwwww.. there was no way should would touch that" gross icky pumpkin" as she so eloquently put it. The base of the layout (die cut) is Making Memories and the orange lace carstock is by K&Company. The little strip of crossword puzzle paper is by October Afternoon.

Mistletoe & Co.

This is Larissa last December just before we took her to see the Santa at the mall. She had drew him a picture and a card (her present to him). Almost everything here is from the Pink Paislee Mistletoe & Co line with healthy dose of Kaisercraft pearls and a little strip of Little Yellow Bicycle poinsettia glitter lace cardstock.


These little stars are made with Mistletoe & Co. stamps.

I put a little pearl in each star on the die cut and then used white floss to stitch around the border.

Colours Enchanted

Here is another fall layout I did using some more Pink Paislee goodies. I also did this one at the crop a few weeks back (I was quite productive that day!) Most Pink Paislee paper is from their Amber Road Collection but the die cut along the right of the photo is a older piece.

Fall Beauty

This is a layout that I did at a crop a couple weeks back. It's a little bit of everything... background paper is Pink Paislee (Amber Road Collection), the little die cut and metal 'fall' are Making Memories, the cutouts are from Sassafras paper, shimmer leaves are Scrapworks and there are few more manufacturers tossed in there. This is a photo from a recent fall photoshoot with Missy.

This "Fall" is a metal word by Making Memories :)

More Holiday Work

I've been digging into my Pink Paislee stash this past week. They have an upcoming DT call plus my Guest Design with them is coming up very shortly. I have been waiting a year for it to arrive! Here's a little "Holiday Wish" that I created using their Tinsel Town and Pop Fashion lines. I have to add the the 'wishes' as journaling when Larissa tells me her list :)

The Christmas Countdown has begun

Only one month to go until the big day! Christmas is my favourite time of year. I have lots of layouts, especially Christmas themed that I will be posting over the next week so stay tuned. For now, here is what I created with the LCOM December kit.

Our Joy: I had a couple of pre-Christmas photoshoots lately with Larissa so I could make lots of Christmas layouts. This Little Yellow Bicyle paper is really unique. The finish on it is slightly shiny and the paper is really thick.

I used glitter gold embossing powder on these Christmas bells.



Countdown: The little tiny Prima crystals on this layouts are my new favourite scrappy embellishment!



This little mini Christmas tree is made by Maya Road and comes in the kit. There is an extra sheet of plain chipboard in the package so I used it to cut out one more layer..the back layer with the trunk. I thought the album looked more finished with this layer.

After I made this album I couldn't find it anywhere..then I caught a glimpse of it in Larissa's toy wagon that she was pulling around. She never takes anything from my scrap room or craft supplies so I asked her why she had it. "well you made it for me didn't you.....it's mine right" :) Indeed I did make it for her so I had to explain that if she put it in with her toys it would get wrecked so it's new home in the basket with the rest of the mini albums.

Whoooo loves you?

Whoooo loves you? This is a layout done with BoBunny and October Afternoon papers. I made this layout at a recent crop. This is Larissa and one her favourite babies, Belle the pink horse.
There is lots of hand stitching on this one :)

The Santa House

It's hard to believe that Christmas is a mere 37 days away! I love Christmas. I am so excited about it. I have been working furiously in my craft room making cards, layouts, mini books, tags, jars, bulbs and much more. I will share some of my projects over the coming days. I also did a Christmas photoshoot with Larissa yesterday to prepare for the FOUR Christmas related scrapbook kits that will be arriving in my mailbox this week.

For now, here is a layout that I did quite a while back but never posted. This is Larissa with the Santa Claus from the mall. Last year was the first time we took her to see him. She was always terribly afraid of Mr. Claus before that. She referred to the mall as the Santa house for months after the visit..hence the title :)

The reindeer (Basic Grey) was naked chipboard. I painted it black and used black Martha Stewart glitter.

*little tip: use Ranger Glossy Accents to adhere your glitter. When it is dry, apply another light coat over the top to seal in your glitter so it doesn't get all over your pages.

little bits and pieces

Good Monday morning everyone. I have a few little things to share with you today. I would have scrapbook layouts to post except it's dark and deary here...not good photographing light at all.

Here is a card that I made for my SIL.



And a card I made for my new niece Anna. She is two weeks old today.



And here are some vintage-y jars that I made and sold at an auction for charity. The supplies for these jars are from the October limited edition kit from My Creative Scrapbook.

Now it's my turn to go plum crazy

Do not adjust your monitors! Yes, I have created yet another purple layout. I have to give 100% of the credit for this layout to the very talented Tracey Taylor!

This is what Tracey had to say about this sheet of Glitz Design Plum Crazy paper: "What a perfect name for a paper line, don't you think?? I was instantly drawn to this piece of paper the moment I saw it."

I have to say that was pretty much my exact OPPOSITE reaction when I saw this piece of paper. I do believe that I may have mumbled something to the effect of 'looks like something that was in a 10 cent clearance bin and I still would have left it there' LOL..all in good fun of course. Well, after some banter I marched up to the LCOM store (we were at a crop) and bought this piece of paper! And yes, I paid regular price..didn't even wait for it to go on in the clearance bin ;)

The next part of the story goes like this:

well well well... we all know about my purple issue... Tracey twisted my arm and made me buy that paper Ok, so maybe it wasn't quite like that.... but I totally felt I needed to do a plum crazy layout as a challenge to myself. I bought the paper at the crop. Today, posed Larissa in the kitchen and took her photo ... edited and printed in several sizes, went looking for the paper... CAN'T FIND IT ANYWHERE! It's very rare that I lose something scrappy. I have searched and searched and searched and it's nowhere to be found!!

So I figure only two possible things could have happened 1) I slept-walk during the night and burned paper out of fear from the plum craziness of it all or 2) Cindy totally swiped it.... she was sitting right next to me and and I swear that she was eyeing it up for herself.

I hope I solve the mystery soon!! I have this very large photo of Larissa that took forever and I wanna put it on a chair!!

After posting of the disappearance of my plum crazy paper, I had a flood of messages assuring me that I would not go without and threatening to send me more paper.

Well yesterday the story progressed: I was looking at scrappy stuff upstairs with one of my sisters. I have a dresser on the landing that has scrappy D-rings and other scrappy stuff kinda piled up. I accidentally knocked it over and *BOOM * CRASH * SMASH* Albums and pages went flying down my stairs! We gasped and went running. Sitting there all pretty on the stairs amongst the wreckage was MY PURPLE PAPER!!!! It once was lost but now it's found so I gotta run...got me some purple scrapping to do!!

Last night I sat down and here is the layout that I made. I have to say that I am extremely pleased with how this layout turned out. It's refreshing and different...of course, that is because I have completely scraplifted Tracey on this. It amazes me that she is could look at this paper and come up with such a creative and amazing layout. Thank you Tracey!


Journaling reads: Once upon a time there was a beautiful little princess and one of her favourite things was having a...tea party.

If you are wondering who makes that amazing pearl bracket, that is a Zva Creative product. Here's a link to the Plum Crazy paper if you want to pick up a sheet for yourself!

November kit work

Here are my creations from the LCOM November Kit. We are opening some membership spots for December so if you want to get in on the kits, now is the time to sign up.

Everyday Princess: This is my little everyday princess. You have probably noticed that I have done a lot of princess layouts and that would be because there is a princess in my house everyday. If I want to take photos of Larissa I have to accept the princess attire. I don't mind at all ... it's so stinkin cute.


Junk Mail: Does your child love junk mail? Mine does! She thinks that everything that Mommy & Daddy discard is for her. She takes it very personal and can get quite upset when there is a lack of junk mail. Her favourites have little maps or coupons on it. She'll read her junk mail from her car seat and direct us what way to go to get to our destination LOL.



Happy Birthday Daddy (38): DH's birthday was recently. He was leaving for a work trip on his birthday so we made cupcakes instead of cake. We didn't want to have a whole cake kicking around when he was going to be gone for a week (shocker but I really don't like chocolate cake...GASP) . I printed a photo of just the cupcake and cut it out to use as an embellishment. I used pop dots to give it a bit of dimension and put the '38' stickers on the flame of the candle. I used a crafter's Workshop template to get the die cut shape of this layout. It was an add-on to the November kit.

Tip: The letter stickers that I used for this layout were green. I wanted black so I used a sharpie marker to colour them while they were still on the backing and then voila - black letters stickers.