now we are six

When I was one,
I had just begun.

When I was two,
I was nearly new.

When I was three,
I was hardly me.

When I was four,
I was not much more.

When I was five,
I was just alive.

But now I am six,
I'm as clever as clever.

So I think I'll be six
now and forever.

Happy Birthday Brandon!

project life 1/27 – 2/5

Kindergarten Rocks at Brandon’s school. He’s the one SLEEPING on the right (2nd row, head down, hard to miss). Yes, my son fell asleep in the middle of the concert he was in…at 6:30pm!

Girls’ Night Out! Two of our good friends had birthdays at the end of January, so a bunch of us went out for drinks & appetizers…we had so much fun we decided to make it a monthly thing!

Abbie wasted no time finding a cupcake at Addy’s birthday party!

Right now I’m working on some heritage layouts as part of a challenge at Green Tangerines, so this afternoon I was interviewing my mom & going thru some old photos.

This photo here is of her when she was about 2 1/2 & living in the Marina District in San Francisco. See the building behind her? That was the one all over the news in 1989, when it collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake.

My scrapbook table…finally cleaned up! I’ve been struggling for awhile to figure out where to keep my thickers…and then I was going through my of my Green Tangerines’ kits & realized I could use one of my kit boxes! I cut the top off so it’s just an open box, put the thickers up front and a few things behind them to hold them in place. Yay!

Brandon’s girlfriend Kylie drew this picture of the two of them getting married.

Evidence that the dog has been sneaking onto our couch: dog hair & pillows kicked off onto the floor.

Brandon’s 100th day of Kindergarten!

I caught Abbie playing with the dolls & dollhouse.

ouch!

 

Last Monday, my 4 1/2 year old smashed her finger in our sliding glass door. We knew it was bad, but didn’t know how bad until the bruise showed up on Tuesday:

Wednesday it looked much worse, so we took her to the doctor’s & he “drilled” three holes in it. Ick!

Seemed to be getting better until Friday when her friend stepped on it during circle time. According to her teacher, it was spurting….how gross is that?! Fortunately it relieved ALL of the pressure.

No new pics yet, but her finger looks semi-normal now. The skin has peeled a little (but it’s been under a band-aid for over a week), but the color is mostly normal.

We’re not looking forward to when the nail falls off.

heritage challenge, week 4

A love story.
Okay, really it should probably be a layout of my parents or grandparents, but I couldn’t find any pictures (that aren’t professionally framed & hanging up on a wall). And I didn’t have a whole lot of information about their weddings either. So I scrapped a photo from my wedding (so thankful for proofs!).

The journaling reads: We were married on a rainy afternoon in late October…I remember being absolutely thrilled that I was rained on because it was a sign of good luck…Ten years and three kids later, I’d have to agree! (2/14/11)

We were asked to use this lace paper from Basic Grey on our layout. I cut out two rosettes & added them on the side of the photo. I used a bunch of paper scraps from My Mind’s Eye that I had purchased a couple of years ago (the back of the page is all piece together!). I love how the colors on the paper (especially the stripes) match the stained glass in the church.

I used another half of rosette on the side of the photo here.

heritage challenge, week 3

Community.

This week we were asked to document something about the community that our topic person grew up in. My mom grew up in an apartment building in San Francisco, in an area known as Park Merced. My grandparents are no longer alive, so I had to use information from my mom. I asked her, “What are some fun things you did with people in your community?”

I based my layout on a sketch I found on the Page Maps website here. I swapped out the flowers for the buttons from Graphic 45 (a requirement for the challenge was to include the buttons) and also moved them a little bit. My journaling also takes up a bit more space since I had a story to tell. I hand-drew the lines again…fun!

Tip: measure out the width of the area you can journal in (here just over 3 1/2”) onto binder paper. You can figure out how many lines you will need before drawing them. To draw my journaling lines, I set a ruler on the left hand side & started each line 3/8” apart. I drew the first one to end just before it hit the “good times” sticker (see below) and drew the others similarly long.

The papers, stickers, and ribbon were all from my new February Green Tangerines Kit Club. The kit came with some beautiful script black letters; however, I wasn’t sure if they’d fit and I didn’t want to use up the “e”s just yet!

I love this “bingo” paper from Sassafras, and the October Afternoon “Thrift Shoppe” file sticker was perfect to add to this photo. I barely adhered it to the edge, and just like my last heritage layout, I lightly tacked down the photo in case we want to remove it later.

project life 1/16–1/26

I am so behind! Time to get caught up!

Today we took a day-trip up to the snow in Nyack with the Hutchison’s & Momtazes. We couldn’t have asked for a better day!

All of Abbie’s treasures, safe in my laundry basket.

"You go Mama house? Yeah, uh-huh.

I go Mama house too. Okay. Bye-bye”

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Brandon made fun shapes with marshmallows & toothpicks for “snow day” at school…and yes, they trucked in snow to school!

Eating snacks (aka, sampling) at Costco while making our Margarita Friday pizza run.

Winkie...the Hutchisons’ dog makes himself right at home whenever we watch him.

The girls had fun scrapbooking with all of my paper scraps after a sleepover.

Abbie never leaves home without her pink blanket…and a goofy cowboy hat!

Counting out 100 marshmallows to bring to school.

One of the awesome families I work with breeds for Canine Companions…thank God! I have to go to their house each week, so if these puppies were for sale…well, we’d be getting a new dog. In this picture the puppies are 2 weeks old. *sigh*

snowy cards

 

After using all that cute My Mind’s Eye paper for my “snow day” layout, I decided to update my card stash. I knew I wouldn’t necessarily be using those papers on another layout, so I thought I might as well make some cards…and even after all that I still was able to give my daughter a nice little stack of scraps to play with!

 

heritage challenge, week 2

Growing up.

We were given a list of 10 questions and had to answer at least one on our layout. We also were given these playing cards from October Afternoon & had to integrate them onto the layout in some way.
I based my layout on a sketch from Allison Davis, volume 6. I adapted it from the layout I used here.

Supplies: Cardstock (Bazzill), Patterned Paper (October Afternoon & Crate Paper), Flowers (Basic Grey Curio), Playing Cards (October Afternoon), Letter Stickers (American Crafts)

The playing cards are 2 1/2” x 3 1/2”, the same size as the photos I got from my mom. I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to work them into the layout, so I flipped thru my sketch books & my “sketch idea” file on my computer to see what might work. The sketch I chose stood out to me because it had a bunch of square photos lined up, with a nice spot for journaling. Other than the size of the photos, etc., my right-hand page is pretty similar to the original sketch.

Because the photos are keepsakes in & of themselves, I didn’t want to be cropping them to fit my layout. So I chose to carry the design over to the left-hand page.

I chose two of the playing cards for this layout (well, three, but I ended up only using two). They are both camera-related (one is an old green-stamps page! I remember getting those with my mom at PW’s when I was little!).

The circles are 2”. I think the sketch calls for 1 1/2”, which is a punch I don’t have. Last time I used a different size, but I wasn’t making the scallops stretch across the entire page so my math was different.

You may also notice that my photos don’t appear to be adhered too well, and that’s because they aren’t. They’re the originals & I wanted them to be removable if need be, so I used just enough adhesive for them to stay. The page protector will help hold them in place.

The flowers here are leftover from my recent “from nana” layout. They were still out on my desk when I came home with my new goodies & I noticed that they matched. I was bummed to only have two, because, yes, I’m anal about the whole “everything in threes” thing. But putting them together worked for me.
You can kind of see my journaling here too (above I mean). It kind of served as a third “card” when you look at the layout as a whole, which is why I ended up only using two playing cards. The first paragraph is my mom’s answer to the question “what is your earliest memory?” The second “paragraph” is the info from the photos that I just took from the back. Not only am I related to some major photo-aholics, but good historians too! Each photo has the necessary who, what, & where, and sometimes even a bit more! Score!

Well, I hope you enjoyed my layout! Next week, challenge three!