Aaaaah....a small taste of summer!

My husband and I always joke that when we retire we want to move to an island.  I think Chankanaab would be a great alternative.  If you're planning on visiting Cozumel, Mexico and love to be pampered, enjoy swimming with exotic fish and love the feel of warm sand between your toes, then this is the place to be.  It is a Mexican National Park and it is absolutely wonderful.

This layout features the Paradise Collection from Bo Bunny.  The collection features six double-sided papers with several coordinating embellishments including flowers, chipboard, stickers, bling and Double-Dot papers.

Who doesn't love a BBQ?

Yum....the smell of barbeque and the taste of sweet corn makes my mouth water.  I love summer; mostly because of the food, but also because it's a time to get together with friends and family. 

This year a bunch of us girls have signed up to walk a 5k, so I decided that what better way to celebrate our "healthy lifestyle choices" than with a big, fat juicy burger and some beer after our walk!  Yup, It's BBQ season and I am excited!  And yes, I see the irony in all of this and, frankly, think it is hilarious!

So my goal this week was to come up with some invitations.  I wanted them to be special because who wants to get a boring BBQ invitation (is there such a thing)?  Here's what I came up with:

I used a variety of collections from Reminisce, Karen Foster Design and Creative Imaginations.  Most of the products I used are available in our Picnic themed section.  I hope this gives you some inspiration to have your own BBQ.  Happy Grilling!

Bath Time Remembered

I always loved bath time with the kids when they were younger.  There was always so much laughter and fun that it was easy for me to capture that in this layout using the Karen Foster Design Bath Time Collection.  The collection features three papers, cardstock stickers and fabric brads.  I just love the greens and yellows mixed with the blues in this collection, and the stickers are just adorable!

Magic Wands are fun!

Last year SRM Press came out with these wonderful wands and I finally had a chance to play with them.  Here I created what I hope will be a nice alternative to a "sparkler" for the little ones this Independence Day.  I filled the wand with red, white & blue chocolate candies I found at the local grocery store.  I cut the stars using my Cricut machine and then glued the stars to the wand cap.  I put a few stitches through three ribbons and a button and adhered it on top of the wand with an adhesive dot.  I then curled the ribbon with a curling iron.  It was a quick, fun and inexpensive project!  The tubes are available here for only $1. 

New Faith Collection from Moxxie!

It's hard to find collections that are based on faith, so I was pretty excited when Moxxie introduced this collection last year.  It features several papers focusing on faith and religion and is perfect for those religious holidays or life events.  This layout features two of the papers in the collection, along with the Baptism rub-on and a couple stickers.  You can see the entire collection here.

Has it really been 20 years?

As I may have mentioned before, Bob and I will be married 20 years on April 20th.  I never originally intended to redo my wedding album, but when I was asked by my niece if she could do some website work for me, I agreed that I would do a wedding layout for the website.  As I've always said, I love to scrapbook because it takes me back to that point in time in my life, and boy, did this layout do that for me.  As I was working on it I can remember the weather that day (raining), how chilly it was outside, my little nephew mispronouncing my brother-in-law's name, the missing unity candle and all the fun and wonderful people we were able to share out new lives with.  The evening ended with my cousin wearing my wedding hat!

This layout uses the Rouge de Garance Wedding Collection from Sandylion.  I chose this collection because of its elegance and colors.  We had a traditional black and white wedding so this collection complimented our photos perfectly.

St. Patrick's Day Beer Glasses

While I was preparing for our St. Patrick's Day party, I decided I wanted to have a small gift for each our friends who attended.  I decided to go practical...everyone will need a beer glass, right? 

I created these glassess by cutting out shamrocks and guest names using green self-adhesive vinyl.  I then cut and embossed a small, paper shamrock charm and tied it to the bottom of the glass and embellished a few of the shamrocks with green rhinestones.  After just a few hours of crafting, I was able to get 8 glasses done.  The best part, though, was that the entire project cost less than $10!