November Photo Challenge-Part 3!

Yay!!! I did it! All 30 days are done. I'm pretty darn proud of myself and now I just need to figure out how to display/scrap these! So, here they are, the last 10 of my 30 Day Photo Challenge!

Day 21-Special

Day 22-Water

Day 23-Door

Day 24-Tradition

Day 25-Happy

Day 26-Pop Culture

Day 27-Purchased

Day 28-Shoes Day 29-Flowers

Day 30-In the Car

Whew! Now that's a lot of photos! :) I really enjoyed how this wasn't just a photo challenge for me but also a nice little snippet of our lives right now.

Thanks for stoppin' by!

My Christmas Album-The Base Pages

This year, instead of my usual December Daily, I decided to sign up for Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas class. I really want this Christmas to be recorded a little more deeply and not be so much of a play-by-play kind of album. I'm really getting excited about it. It starts on December first and goes through January 6th. The other cool thing about this class is the fact that it's a perpetual kind of class. You pay once and you're in for life. :)


I've been poking around the forums a bit and there are a lot of other gals on there who have done it before and some of them have been doing this for a few years now! It seems like a really great bunch and I'm pretty sure I'll come out of this with a few new friends. ;)


So, on to my album. I decided on an 8x8 format for it this year. Bigger than I've done in the past with my December Daily albums but, I'm hoping to have a lot more journaling. This size should give me enough room without overwhelming me. Here is the album I chose, a cloth covered D-ring album from American Crafts in Cardinal.

I'm going with a kraft, cream and red color theme this year. I've done just Christmas themed product and all one line before but this is my first color theme. It's nice because I've been able to dig through my stash and pull out some seriously ancient paper! Scenic Route, anyone?


These are the base pages I've cut so far. I've got a little trick I'll share a bit further down for how I'm saving a bit of money even with having 8x8 pages. But first, some simple base pages. I've got a little stack of kraft and cream pages here. The cream is actually a metallic cream from American Crafts and it was a screamin' good deal! I picked up a 25 pack at Tuesday morning a year ago for $2.99. Score!


The red candy cane paper is from my scrap stash and is from one of last year's My Mind's Eye Christmas lines called Holly Jolly. The other sheet is from the Amy Tangerine line that I won on the American Crafts blog earlier this year.

Now, here's how I was able to stretch my paper a bit and get two 8x8 background pages from one piece of patterned paper and the scraps from my cream and craft pages. First up, he's a little shot of the way I cut my 12x12s into 8x8s. Not terribly ground breaking but you can see that I'm left with one 12x4 piece and one 8x4 piece. All I did was take my chosen patterned paper and cut a four inch strip off of it, just like the original. But then, instead of cutting off another 4" strip, cut the 8" x 12" piece in half. This will give you two sheets of 8"x6" from your one sheet of paper. Now, grab a couple 4"x8" pieces of your solid cardstock leftover from before, border punch one 8" side of your patterned paper and then adhere them together. Here I used a sheet from The Girl's Paperie Twig & Tinsel line (my most favorite Christmas line of all time!) and my leftover cardstock scraps!.

Here I did the same thing with another sheet from Twig & Tinsel and my leftover cream scraps. This method will get you three base pages out of one sheet of cardstock and one sheet of patterned paper and you'll still have a couple scraps left over for embellishing!

Here's the rest of my pages and the lines I used. This is one of the ancients I referred to, it's from Scenic Route (RIP!) and it's from the Garland line.

Here's another sheet from that line. (I've got a bit of a snowflake theme going on!)

And, another one from Scenic Route, I think this is the Roxbury line.

This next one has the leftovers from the above pages adhered to a piece of Scenic Route's Liberty line. It's actually a 4th of July line but the colors work amazingly well together! I cut the Liberty paper like I did the previous pages but the scrap is actually the 12x4 piece cut down to 8x12 and then cut in half lengthwise so I had two pieces of 8x2. I cut a piece of cream 4x8 in half the same way and border punched the edges and then used it to adhere the two patterned pieces together. By doing this I got five pages out of three sheets of paper. :)

This last page uses another scrap from my stash (more My Mind's Eye) that just wasn't quite tall enough to make a up an 8x8 page. So, I grabbed one of the leftover Girl's Paperie pieces and adhered it to the top.

Finally, I've got quite the stash of divided page protectors and cut a few different styles to be either 8x8(the two on the left) or 8x6(the one on the right). So, with all these, I should have enough pages to get started. I've got more of the cream and kraft if I should need a few more pages. I think there are 36 or 37 journaling prompts and I've got 33 regular pages. I'm getting some embellishments and such premade as well and I'll share those later.

Are you doing a Christmas/Holiday album this year? If you are, please post a link in the comments, I'd love to see it! :)

November Photo Challenge-Part 2!

Here's the second set of 10 images from my 30 Day photo challenge. So far, I've only had to take one picture on a different day and that was by choice, not because I forgot. So, I'm doing really well with this!


Day 11-Many
Day 12-The Weather

Day 13-Someone I Love (The shot I took on the following day, as I was away from him on the 13th and he was the someone I wanted to take a picture of the most!)

Day 14-Favorite Something

Day 15-Close-Up

Day 16-Animal

Day 17-A Stranger

Day 18-Food

Day 19-Where I Slept

Day 20-Old

So, that's set two! I can't wait to get started on set three!

(Finger's crossed that I remember to take a picture on Thanksgiving!)

((And, on Black Friday!!!))

Maya Road-AWDML Featured Manufacturer!

Hey guys! I just wanted to share with you the projects I created for A Walk Down Memory Lane using the other Featured Manufacturer for November, Maya Road!

I created three projects, two layouts and a card, using Maya Road and the awesome Farmhouse line from Crate Paper. Oh, baby! I love this line! It's so gorgeous!

First up, one of my new favorite layouts. It's Miss Thing doing an arts and crafts project at a camp out we attended this summer. The flower on the right, over the ruler sticker, is featured in a step by step I made for the AWDML newsletter!

I also made this cute little card. I just adore the colors of this line! I used a Maya Road chipboard piece and one of my favorite Maya Road products, their trinket pins. I love them!!!
I also wrote up a product review for these cool epoxy stickers from Ephiphany Crafts. I don't have the punch/machine that goes with it so I had to use scissors and my craft knife. Not as quick but still fairly effective! I've got a bunch left so you'll be seeing these again...love making my own matching embellies!

The last project I made is a layout with a thankful theme. Right now, having Little Man is what I am most thankful for. Even six months after the fact, not a day goes by that I don't think about his accident and how it could have ended so horribly and how thankful I am for his miraculous recovery. Each Maya Road frame on this layout features one of the things that helped us have that good outcome. Prayer, Lifeflight, the Canby FD, CPR and Doernbechers. We wouldn't have him without all of them. <3

I love that picture of him, it was just sooooooo good to see him crawling around on the floor playing happily with his cars.

Anyway, there are my Maya Road projects and if you've got a hankering for some Maya Road (or BoBunny!) you can get some at AWDML for 25% off this month.

November Photo Challenge!

I'm taking part in a photo challenge this month and here are my first ten photos!

Day 1-Self Portrait
Day 2-Orange

Day 3-Bad Habit

Day 4-What I Wore

Day 5-Clouds

Day 6-Looking Down

Down 7-Everyday

Day 8-Morning

Day 9-In the Kitchen

Day 10-Black & White

I'm having a lot of fun with this challenge and I'm pretty excited that I've been able to keep up! I'm heading to CKC-Seattle tomorrow so hopefully I remember to take my pics in all the excitement!

Have a great weekend!

Our Halloween!

This year, Little Man was Lightning McQueen (Kachow!!) and Audrey was a flower. She did try to talk me into Spiderman but it was after I'd gotten a lot of the stuff for the flower costume so...next year, Miss Thing.

I'd seen the Lightning McQueen cardboard box costume on Pinterest (so so addicting!) and found his outfit for $11 at K-mart so it was fairly cheap to make. His straps were leftover fabric from his party and the paper plates were from Dollar Tree. The most expensive thing was the two and a half cans of red spray paint. (Word of advice...primer!!!)

Aud's costume was fairly simple, too. For her skirt of petals, I just cut apart fairy wings from Dollar Tree and folded each set in half over a piece of elastic that I'd dyed lavender and then stitched the ends together to create a sort of belt of flowers that she just steps into. I only dyed the belt because I had to dye her tights green. I just could not find any green tights or leggings anywhere. I picked up the shirt at K-mart (she needed more shirts anyway) and the boots at a consignment shop for like $5! Her headband was left over from the two I bought at Dollar Tree for her birthday and the tulle was also left over from her birthday.

Since Halloween was on a Monday this year, we hit the family on Sunday afternoon. We saw Papa Maow, Auntie Kathy and Uncle John, the Gran, Uncle Toad and Auntie Theresa and then Bah-Bon.

I was really glad we'd done that because Monday just wasn't a good day for me. I'd had a horrible night's sleep and just didn't have any energy until about four. When Andrew got home (bringing with him a take-n-bake pizza, bless his heart!) we dolled up the kids and went to see the neighbors. I love our neighbors!!! Then, it was back home to eat pizza and warm up. :) After that, the kids and I headed into town to trick-or-treat my step-brother's neighborhood and then we stopped by my Mom's again so Grandpa Larry could see the kiddos. Aud fell asleep so we joked that he saw a wilted flower.

All in all, the kids had a great Halloween!