Easter morning (early!) was a bit of a blur...

I'm glad the Easter Bunny shops at Stubby Pencil Studio, because the kids got some great sketchbooks, banana paper notebooks and art supplies in their baskets.

Molly finally got the best of BoBo Doggy

I finally got around to putting together a few owls from Mibo

And this will need to get cleaned up before the Scrap For A Cure online crop this weekend. Check out their boards and join in. Lots of good fun and prizes!

I've had these painted map pages laying around for quite awhile, possibly for a future class, but since MDW has closed, I thought I'd use them. The cover is a combination of tissue and map pages, the insides are gessoed map pages with machine stitching. Simple, but perfect for a mini album. I was inspired by a post on the Scrap For A Cure forum, where they asked you to list the five things you couldn't scrap without. I had cardstock, patterned paper, paint, ink, and sewing. Okay, I cheated here a little with the sticker on the inside page, but just a little:)

(well, I guess the scheduling didn't work on this one. I'm too lazy to re-do it, so we'll just leave it here until the next post...)

This paper pendant was created from embellishments in the May Scrap For A Cure kit. I have made EIGHT projects/cards/layouts from this kit, and I still have product left for more! You can get your kit from their website. It's a great value, and a great cause!

You can use this technique with any similar supplies. you will need:
*paper wreath or circle
*paper bird (could use a punch)
*cork heart
*mini alpha stickers
*paper glaze (such as Glossy Accents)
*jump rings or wire

Step One:
Cover the wreath with paper glaze. This will give it a glassy, glossy finish and protect it from damage. Poke a hole in the top and two below to feed jump rings through later.


Step Two:
Edge the bird with ink to give it a little depth, then glaze.



Step Three:
Pierce holes in the cork heart and attach with jump rings



Step Four:
Attach bird with glue dot and letter stickers (cover any exposed sticker backs with pieces of cardstock).



You can hang your pendant from a leather string or ribbon, or you can attach it to a card with a brad to give as a gift! The card above was also made with supplies from the May kit!

I don't know about you, but summer is a busy birthday season for us, and I am running low on cards. In preparation for our busy month, July, I will be hosting a week of card tutorials in June. So gather those stamps and scraps and stay tuned for the exact dates. Let's have some fun together and get ready for those parties and BBQs!

The Farmer's market opened on Saturday, and the kids and I headed down to scoop up some local produce. Not that I didn't support eating local before, but Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has inspired me to make sure I'm buying as much local produce as possible. While we scored some fabulous food... Okay, I'll get my gripes out of the way first:
1. We live in an agricultural community, yet more than half of the booths are from out of town growers.
2. Only two booths had organic produce, and one was strawberries only (they were good, though!) and the other didn't have that much.
Yes, there are farm stands on the edges of town, and yes, I need to visit them, but I just wish they were at the market, too. You see, the library and city park are near the market, so the kids can play in the fountain, swing in the park, get new library books, and we can still go shopping.

Whew! Griping over! Of course, we found great food, and I learned that I need to bring more cash next week! Here's what I made for Saturday dinner:

Look at these amazing sugar snap peas! Grown right here in town, they are super crunchy and sweet. I served them as is for dinner, and the kids actually ate them! Yum!



The main dish - a baked asparagus pasta dish from Mollie Katzen (the recipe is not online, but she has featured asparagus recipes on her site, here). This one is just pasta, onions, asparagus, Parmesan and bread crumbs. It's super fast, and really tasty!

The finale? Organic strawberries!




And a few quick peeks of projects from the Scrap For A Cure May kit. You can snag one here.

Yah! It's May and the new, fabulous kit is ready at Scrap For A Cure! Here are a few designs I did with this month's kit:







These are just a few. Check out Scrap For A Cure to see my gallery, and the other inspiring designs from their design team. Remember, each purchase is for a good cause - this quarter it's Donate Life, a very worthy cause. I've been a registered donor since I was 18. So far, I've made 4 layouts, two cards (the pendant on the Mother's Day card is removable), and one wall hanging, and I still have tons left in the kit! If you are a card maker, or a scrapper who uses cardstock instead or patterned paper for the background, you'll get even more out of it! A great deal, for a great cause, from a great team. Check them out!

A side note - I'm joining in with simplemom.net (love that site) and the Spring Cleaning Party. Madeline's school is closed this week due to Swine flu, and Max has the regular old flu, so we'll see how far I get this week, but I'm determined!! Click the button on the side to check it out!

Edit: Here's my progress update for Day One - Clearing the Clutter:


after:




after:


I won't bore you with the rest - you get the idea;) Happy cleaning!

Guess who is the May guest designer for Scrap For A Cure? The kit won't be out until May 1, but here's a few peeks of the fabulous goodies you will find inside. Madeline's gonna love this kit!



and one more...

The kids were making cards last week, and asked me to make ones for them. Now, I have made cards for them many times before, and they were never rally impressed by them. Yes, they liked them, but they were pretty quickly tossed aside. So I made a card for each of them, honestly not putting much effort into it. Wouldn't you know it, this time, they were thrilled. They read them to each other, shared them with the stuffed animals and with Matt when he got home. As we were getting ready to read a bedtime story that night, Max Suddenly jumped out of bed and exclaimed, "Wait! I want to put the card you made me in my room, so when you go back to work on Wednesday, and I miss you, I can look at it and feel better."


(made from the November About A Boy Scrap for A Cure kit, my favorite one!)

It's been awhile since I have scrapped, and when I came upon a stash of various pictures last week, I decided that I would scrap them all this month. A few are from a specific event, but most are random shots or left overs from past pages. Yet there are so many stories left to tell, little moments that will soon be lost to the sands of time, to a memory that grows muddier every day. I adore this shot of Max at two, but what struck me were the stains on his pajamas - the same stains that still cover his clothes almost three years later. Or the puppy pictures of Molly. Just like the children, I can't believe how fast she has grown! These were fast pages, partly because I used paper and elements from Scrap For A Cure kits. I have been a subscriber for awhile, and since My Daughter's Wish closed, I have pretty much used their kits exclusively to scrap. They are fabulous kits, with fantastic papers and tons of little goodies. These kits are PACKED, and the best part is that 5% of your purchase goes to the quarterly charity of choice.



This last little book I created for Matt for Valentine's Day with the January kit and a Piggy Tales board book I won at their virtual crop. I made the entire mini-album from the kit and still had tons of supplies left over for multiple lay outs. I sound like an infomercial, I know, but during these times, it's important to find good values.