Gabriel Turns 3!

 So things have been really busy here, but I wanted to share pictures from Gabe's birthday on 12/27/11 and from his party on 01/01/12. Once again the immediate family got to enjoy a day off on his actual birthday and celebrated all day at Easton. Here is a photo recap:

We woke Gabe up early and he opened Grandma Mary and PaPa Rick's card first.

Grandma Nancy and PaPa Dan stopped by early on their way out of town to visit with my Aunt Betty in Virginia. Love Gabe's grumpy face, he wasn't quite awake yet. They gave him a gift card to Half Price books, which purchased 2 movies and 8 new books!

His first Birthday gift from Mommy and Daddy was a brand new mow-mow just like Daddy's.

Our first stop at Easton was to get a new stuffie at Build-a-Bear, this year his choice was this super cute fox.

So we waited in a very long line...

Then finally it was Gabe's turn to bring his fox, Finney, to life. Here he is picking out his heart, he also chose a beating heart for him.

Here Gabe is with his new friend Finney the fox, special thanks to Grandma Mary and Papa Rick- this was his choice with his birthday money.

Then we headed to eat at the Cheesecake Factory, thanks to two saved up gift cards from my boss.

Me and Aspen at our late lunch.

Daddy tells Gabe a surprise is coming after we ate...

Then surprise they brought Gabe a Birthday piece of cheesecake and sang to him!

Yummy, here is Gabe and his oreo birthday cheesecake.

One of the reasons we love to visit Easton this time of the year, it is beautiful.

Another shot from the sidewalk.

After such a big day Gabe was asleep before we left the parking garage. What a great day!

Then we celebrated his birthday with my Mom's birthday on New Years Day and here are the photos from that event:

Gabe's Birthday pumpkin pie, yummy.

Here is Gabe using his new Doctor kit on Daddy.

Dr. Gabriel gives Daddy a shot in the chest, Ouch!

Well that's it for now, I will share some projects soon!

Road Trip Niagara Falls & TCR#72

So I got some time to play this weekend with some new Jillibean Soup, Apple Cheddar line for an upcoming Scrapjazz.com article and The Color Room's color palette. Here is this weeks tidbit of inspiration from The Color Room:

 

So I had to dig a little deeper in my stash than usual to come up with the colors but Joy Ride by Cosmo Cricket paired up nicely with bling cardstock and a little Jillibean Soup. I also turned the sketch a 1/4 turn to the left and added extra photos too. Here is the result:

I think it turned out perfect for Gabe's album, a sweet layout for my little cutie. 

Let me know what you think!

Sketch Challenges Birthday Bash Blog Hop

So my friend Pamela has a great blog hop going on at Scrapbook Challenges this weekend to celebrate their Birthday! Go to Pamela's blog to begin the blog hop and then go here to find the hop on opportunity to join in the fun. I just could not resist this adorable sketch:

Here is my Halloween take on the sketch, Gabe was so cute in his costume as a turtle.
Love the color combo, some of my favorites and these Bo Bunny papers are just too much fun!

Hope you and yours had a fabulous Halloween too!

Gabriel's Imagination & Paper Piecing

So over at Scrap & Stamp this week the challenge is paper piecing and a stamped image. The sponsor this week is  Wags n Whiskers.

If you are familiar with my work you know that I love paper piecing- it's so much fun and the possibilities are endless. So next time you can't locate a design or embellishment you want, then make your own! The layout below is my all time favorite little boy layout, the rocket and sub are of my own design (inspired by cosmo). I used all Cosmo Cricket in this one, loving that I could use five different lines of theirs all together. I really love how they turned out, and those photos are some of my favs.

This boy gets ornery by the hour, so much fun- pure joy.

Ink Tutorial Challenge

This week at Scrap and Stamp there is a tutorial on using a paint resist technique, check it out here. This is a layout that I used ink three different ways stamping, misting and masking, the layout itself was from a class I took with Studio Calico at CKC this year. It was lots of fun and I loved this photo of Aspen and Gabriel.

So that's it for now, I have tons of great photos from my recent trip Girls Getaway to Michigan and Gabe's First Amusement Park Adventure so hopefully I will get some scrapping time soon! Take care and become a follower for automatic emails of any new posts.

Celebrate

Here is this weeks Scrap and Stamp Challenge layout, the challenge was to scrap a Birthday. The sponsor this week is MelJens Designs, their website is here.  I chose Gabe's first birthday and used four photos and just for fun I made three out of four black and white so that my favorite one would stand out. I really love this Pink Paislee paper line/Starlite very patriotic on one side and pastel on the other, so versatile. This will also be my second class in June layout at B&B, along with a card and a pocket calendar.

I love how the pinwheels turned out, there is a great tutorial on how to make them at the Jillibean Soup website here.
Well gotta run have a great weekend!

And When You Pray...

So I know I promised Easter photos next, but technically the photos in this layout are from Easter Sunday. I did this layout today for this sketch challenge at My Minds Eye (http://mymindseye.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/challenge-10-dream-big.html) blog and wanted to share it. This was the sketch:

It also had to use a line from a song called: Dream Big by Ryan Shupe & The RubberBand. So I chose the line that begins "And when you pray." Of course I instantly thought of the photos I recently caught of Gabriel's first attempts at praying. So here is my version of the above sketch:

 There it is another first for Gabe, praying. I also sent out a phone video message today of him praying and playing the piano. Quite the combo act he's got. At the moment he and Daddy are playing carnival ride with a plastic toy bin that happens to have wheels. Never a dull moment around here. Happy Friday!

Gabriels Imagination Layout

So I am super excited about my latest layout it is pictured here and I believe is my favorite little boy layout to date. First off how can you go wrong with fabulous photos like this of Gabe? I love these photos, he is so full of personality right now, it is literally bursting out of him and I think these photos capture that. I used all Cosmo Cricket papers including chipboard and I love how it turned out. I knew I wanted to create a rocket ship and then I saw their take on a sub and I had to recreate that as well. So the rocket and sub are my own paper pieced creations. These papers are so colorful and playful so I just had fun with it. Scott and Aspen were struggling with the two different background papers so I made the sub green and added blue accents on the rocket side to tie them together a little more.

 I have entered this into three online galleries and have gotten the most positive comments I have ever gotten, so people seem to like it as well. I have entered it into the April Cosmo Cricket Challenge on Scrapbook.com at: http://www.scrapbook.com/forums/showpost.php?post/12550441/ and the Moxie Fab World Project Challenge as well at: http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2010/03/picking-up-pieces-challenge.html  So who knows maybe this is the one that will get published?

Hope you all had a great week, we have been crazy busy here. But all is well. I taught my class yesterday and it was fun and will be preparing for the next one. I will be working on an Alice in Wonderland layout soon of Aspens birthday so I will share it next. Happy Friday!!

My First Blog Post!

So how cool is this. My very own blog. This is all very new to me but I'm learning. So the main reason I created a blog was to further my accessibility in the scrapbooking industry. It seems that all the designers have their own blogs to showcase their layouts and list their resumes. So I thought I would give it a try. I have online scrapbook galleries at scrapjazz.com and scrapbook.com but this is more personal and allows me much more flexibility. Anyhow I wanted to share one of my latest favorites of my son Gabriel. It is titled "14 months of Blessings" and was created for the Jillibean Soup Sketch contest. 

Well I guess that is all for now, I need to see if I did this correctly. :) Technology these days has me on quite the learning curve, Thank God for my 15 year old daughter Aspen.