Some almost fall family pictures

This is my wonderful friend, Darlene...



And this is what we enjoy doing together! LOL!



We've been friends now for nine years, having met shortly after they moved to our town in 2000. Austin was one at the time and her daughter, Lauren, was only 7 months old. Wow, how time flies.

Anyway, she is such a wonderful friend that when I called her on Friday to see if she could take some family pictures of us, she said yes. (You see, I hadn't been thinking family pictures for Christmas cards yet (I'm not that on the ball!) but when I got an email from Walmart advertising a one day sale on 4x6 photos on Sept. 9th, I thought that I really should get our pictures taken and ordered, in order to save some $$$.)

So, I debated locations. The beach is always fun. But Cameron is happiest on the farm. Plus they have this great old barn to use as a background, and a nice lane, etc. So we drove to my MIL's farm.

Now, Darlene isn't a photographer, so I set up the camera for a few shots-- and I got these gems:





Then Darlene took over....

I was so happy with the photos she took of our family...

...in front of the barn....



...Walking down the lane....





And again, in front of the barn....



Cameron took this one of Jonah & me:



I also asked Dar to take some photos of just Cameron and I....





Hope you're enjoying your long weekend. We've spent most of it, relaxing and hanging out together at home. It's been fabulous!

Thanks for looking!

The Inspired Scrapper...

is back.

After a break for the summer, The Inspired Scrapper is back with some great challenges, ready to inspire. And remember, at the end of each month, they draw from the people who leave comments to win a prize!

Click on the link and check out Challenge #27.

Have a great long weekend!

I can't believe...

... that it is September 1st!

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!

We've had such a great summer, despite the cooler weather, and I'm just not ready for fall yet.

Sigh.

I've actually really been struggling with this lately. I generally try to enjoy the present and look for the good in each day. But I don't want the kids to go back to school next week. And I don't want the weather to cool down, or the evenings to get shorter, or the snow to fly (okay, that shouldn't be happening in the next month or so, but, well, in Canada, you never know....)

Okay. I'm going to look at the positive things for September.

1. Sage is starting kindergarten next week and is very excited! That's a good thing.
2. Jonah is looking forward to grade two and his new teacher.
3. I think Austin is looking forward to grade 5. He'll be at a new school, which is making him a little nervous, but with his friends/classmates, I'm sure he'll be fine.
4. I had an interview for subbing and got my name on the list.
5. When the kids go back to school, I'll have a little more "me" time when I can do some creating.
6. Sage's birthday on the 19th.
7. The September kit will go on sale at My Scrap Shoppe.

This has seriously been one of my favourite kits ever!

I must be using more patterned paper on my layouts now, though, because in the past, I could create 8 or 9 layouts from a kit and this time, I got five. And I seriously have hardly any pp left!

Here's what I made:








(Here, the letter stickers and paper frill aren't in the kit. The kit came with an envelope, so I covered the flap with pp and used it to store my summer reading list.)






For this layout, I was inspired by Sketch #43 at Got Sketch?

Thanks for looking!

Some C&A pictures and a sneak

I wanted to share some of my favourite pictures from last weekend's Corn & Apple festival...













Sage was so cute in the petting zoo tent. She climbed onto these bales to feed the pony some hay!



The kids loved the area in the petting zoo where they could hold the bunnies and guinea pigs.






More rides:









The kids went on a few rides each day of the weekend. So fun to see them get a little bigger (& braver!)

And here's a sneak peek of the super pretty September kit at My Scrap Shoppe:



Thanks for looking!

Saturday something

Well, we've been busy at our town's annual Corn & Apple Festival today.

Austin and I walked with our tae kwon do club in the parade this morning.



After the parade, Austin got to meet Olympic medalist Cindy Klassen and get her autograph.



Then we enjoyed some rides on the Midway. (I'll post pictures of those tomorrow.)

I tried something new, scrapbooking-wise, this week: misting. Here's the layout I made:







And I posted a tutorial on what I did here, if you'd like more details.

Thanks for looking!

Recent cards & layouts

Lots of scrappy stuff happening this week.

The first thing being that Lisa at Create My Keepsake announced that she was closing her online store at the end of August. I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of this online community for the past 15 months and especially being a part of the DT there since January. I will miss CMK.

Thankfully though, members there have been posting about other online sites that they will sign up at, so I know that I will still be able to stay in contact with the online friends I've made at CMK.

I noticed that I had some cards that I made this summer saved on my computer that I never posted, so I thought I'd do that now.

I made this card for my wonderful friend, Val, for her birthday in July.



And this one for my twin brother's birthday last Friday. It's a little different from my usual style, but I was pretty happy with it.



And this one I made for my mom. I stamped on Bazzill cardstock with a Basic Grey stamp and Versamark ink and then heat embossed it.



The August DT challenge at MSS is a theme challenge: summer. Here's the layout I created for that:



Danielle at Scrap for a Cure posted a challenge to use Ali Edward's template to create a layout. Here's my version:



The layout I made of my kids documenting our incredible feat of delivering 473 phonebooks in one morning with great attitudes:



And a layout I made for a contest at A Million Memories where the challenge was to use a vintage photo and some lace trim. Normally, I don't have any vintage photos, but last week, I was cleaning up some photos on my computer and came across this one of my parents that I had used for a mini-book and layout I made for my mom three years ago. When I first saw this photo in my mom's wedding album, I thought it was such a gem! It's my mom and my dad dancing at their wedding. Here's the layout I made with it this week (which also doubled for Marcy's Wednesday Blog Challenge at MSS to cut out the pattern from a piece of patterned paper):





It's Morden's Corn & Apple Festival this weekend, so I don't anticipate scrapping very much this weekend, but I'm sure I'll be taking lots of photos!

Thanks for looking!

August photos of the day

Three years ago, we were challenged on My Scrap Shoppe to take a photo each day for a month and make a layout with the photos (I think we were inspired by a layout in CK at the time.) Here's the layout I made from 2006:



It was a great idea and I thought I'd revisit it this summer as well.

With the Project 365 last year and only missing one day out of 366, I thought this would be a breeze. However, once you're out of the habit of taking photos EVERYDAY, it's a little tricky. So here are the photos I've taken so far, but I am missing a few days.

And, that's okay.


8.01: Biking to the library (notice that Jonah forgot to take off his bike helmet.)


8.03: Strawberry picking with my MIL.


8.04: Hanging out at the beach with friends.


8.05: My older brother and his beautiful girlfriend came for a visit from Montreal.


8.06: I took this picture at the park during our scavenger hunt for Jonah's birthday party. I thought it was so sweet!


8.07: Our tae kwon do promotion test in Treherne (Cameron took the picture-- that's me on the right sitting down, waiting for my turn.)


8.09: Me, reading the newest Sophie Kinsella book on my front steps.


8.10: Soccer practice. Look at my girl!


8.12: Delivering 473 phonebooks on a hot summer morning in Winkler. Notice how red everyone's faces are!


8.13: At the library reading program wind-up. Austin won the grand prize (a 2-3 person tent). Ronald McDonald was the special guest who picked his name from the draw.

After the wind-up, we went to the wading pool and I got a couple more good shots.






8.15: Austing took a water balloon and put it in the freezer. When he took it out and removed the balloon, this is what he got. Isn't it cool?


8.16: Jonah lost his first tooth at the beach... literally. He'd taken a bite of puffed wheat cake and it fell out and he spit it out on the sand. They never found it. But, with this picture as proof, the tooth fairy still brought him a loonie. ;)

Thanks for looking!