Gratitude is the hearts Memory

Good Morning...today is beautiful and full of possibilities I am thankful for another day...I have been up doing laundry and am about to pick up Rebecca from volleyball practice, do grocery shopping this afternoon and then go to prayer meeting tonight I am full of expectancy. God is about to show up in a huge way I can feel it, I woke up singing today... I am hopeful that I will walk three miles on my treadmill today...I have gotten out of my routine since vacation and need to get back into it because it really does make me feel better...I don't know if it was a good idea to put my treadmill in my scrapbook room right next to my scrapbook table... I seem to have a conflict of interest...Oh, well, we shall see...I just opened my new book called Wishes by Close to my Heart founder Jeanette R. Lynton...it is sooo full of creative card ideas and the secret pocket is calling me out, almost daring me to stop what I'm doing and get cracking making these cards...wow, my heart is pounding just thinking of where I can sneak this pocket into my mini's and layouts...I think I have the Magic book as well, now I have to go find it...The Wishes book if full of beautiful quotes...one of my favorites "There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude. A quiet joy. By Ralph H. Blum". Be thankful in all things....

my day

It's a new season and change is coming...I can feel it...does anyone else feel it....went to church today it was awesome I could feel something different in the air...had a great time with friends and family at lunch...we went to Saltgrass Steakhouse...the best steak around....had a quick visit with MaMaw in the nursing home...they had tied a huge bow in her hair that matched her dress...and it was quite fetching on her little 86 year old gray head.  The house is quiet now because my husband and 13yr. old are at softball practice...the fall softball season has begun today...school volleyball practice started a few weeks ago...school will start in ten days the official countdown has begun.   Rebecca's first volleyball game is the second day of school.....I need to upload some of my layouts from last years vb and sb seasons they were fun to do...

I am torn between scrapbooking some layouts or working on some scrapbook mini albums today...I have the guilty pleasure of loving the feel of glue and paper in my hands, the sounds of the paper cutter and scissors is music to me I get lost in the zone...seriously... I lose all track of time until someone awakens me to reality and I have to come back to life as I know it.  I can hear my washing machine playing me a beautiful melody (it's one of those that actually plays a melody when it's done)...so I have to go take care of the laundry....I usually scrapbook to hide from the laundry...but apparently it has found me again......

Flower Baby

I have been waiting and waiting to use these pictures in a layout...these are some of my favorites they are of my little one Rebecca Faith, she's about 1yr. in these pictures and loves to look at, touch, and smell the flowers (or as my husband says weeds, I prefer to look at them as flowers too).  She is walking around in the back yard obviously spring time and saying in a very small voice "fows, fows, mell, mell", and the little foot cocked to the side is because she just realized she was stepping on a fows and said "uh oh, uh oh, fows, fows"....this memory for me is forever embedded in my mind and I'm sure it will never leave me.  Her hair is finally starting to grow, and we have no idea what her hair is about to do, but that's another story and another layout.  My daughter is now about to be thirteen...but I remember this day....Thank God for memories...precious memories how they linger, ever often on our minds....I think this is one of the reasons I love scrapbooking sooo much...it allows me to walk back thru time anytime I want to...there's such a peace in this that I have never found in anything else except in prayer and bible study.  I believe this hobby or dare I say passion will last thruout my lifetime and live on in my children when I'm gone...in a world full of chaos and stress it truly is a treasure to be able to de-stress by a little time travel every now and then. It's just plain good for the soul, like buttermilk cornbread warm from the oven smothered in butter...oh well, I digress.....back to this layout...I used a green cardstock for the background and papers from DCWV "The Four Seasons Stack" and "The Mariposa Stack".  The left side border is a piece of paper from the four seasons stack and then I cut out several individual butterfly's from the mariposa stack and pop dotted them on the border for a great visual effect it looks like they are flying between the sunflowers.  I used some daisy's that I bought at Walmart's silk flower section and took them apart at the top of the border and then added the RG they are chipboard white letters with glitter that I picked up at Target.  The center photos are double matted with brown and a cardboard color that went perfect with the pictures that I pop dotted off the mattes for effect.  The large sunflowers I hand cut from one of the pages of the four seasons stack, I cut the placard in between the photos from one of the pages of the mariposa stack I used pop dots for dimension as well.  I then added two more daisy's and placed an individual butterfly on top of the daisy's with a pop dot.  The other butterfly's came from the same paper packs.  The journaling is a BasicGrey journal block stamp, and finally to finish it I tucked the adorable chipboard butterfly tag from DCWV Street Lace series under the photo.

Wonderful You

This is a layout that I did of my daughter's 25th birthday, she spent the day wearing a tiarra, a huge blinking bling ring, glittering eye shadow and had a glitter heart painted on her face...let's just say she had herself a DAY !!! So, this had to be documented in the annals of my scrapbook pages.  Since she moved out and doesn't live at home I don't see her on a daily basis anymore.  I chose the pinks and orange colors to accent her cake and pictures that seem to have a pinkish hue.  I used the DCWV "Ciao Bella" Stack papers, they are sooo beautiful and sooo full of stuff to cut out and use as embelies on your pages. First for the background I used a charcoal grey cardstock paper and then layered the top and bottom borders with some portions of the Ciao Bella papers I choose the pink ones and the roses were on one of the papers in the stack and I hand cut them out.  The borders are layer of pink paper, layer of orange taffeta ribbon, layer of dark brown wire ribbon with a shimmer sparkle to it.  I used another page from the stack to back the top photo and then a different section from that page to back the center photo of the birthday girl in all her glory...:)...I then placed the roses with pop dots over the photo and charcoal grey paper.  For the top border I placed the smaller roses on top of ribbon with pop dots, and I made a Title placard by cutting it out of another page from this stack as well, and then coloring it in with some Tombo pens.  The journaling in the bottom right corner is a stamp from    BasicGrey its called the journal block stamp set...I finished this off with a few pink rhinestones placed on the brown ribbon and a few itty bitty rhinestones on the tierra for effect...it's quite fetching....