We Must Eat

and having a plan helps me to make sure that we eat well without all the hassle or stress of having to figure out breakfast/lunch/dinner at the last minute.  I love to try new recipes and have hundreds of books, magazines and pins to help me stay creative in the kitchen.  My plan runs for 7 days with no specific days for any meal.  That gives me a little wiggle room in regards to eating out and having leftovers.  Because our little family will soon be 2 instead of 3, I am really working hard to make less food.  There are not many leftover fans in this house!  For the next 7 days I plan to cook....

(New Recipe)    Chimichurri Steak with Baked Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts    
(New Recipe)    Cod with Mustard Sauce, Red Rice and Asparagus
(New Recipe)     Maple Mustard Glazed Roast Chicken with Smashed Potatoes and Green Beans
(New Recipe)     Olympics Chicken with White Rice and Seasoned Broccoli
(New Recipe)     Lemon Chicken with Brown Rice and Mixed Vegetables
(Family Favorite)   Shephards Pie with Salad and Hawaiian Rolls
(New Recipe)     Greek Stuffed Pitas 

My creativity outside of the kitchen is humming along as well.  As our calendar fills up with visits, events and new travels planning down time is something new that I am trying this year.  Weekends in which I put "home" into the calendar so that we will not plan anything!  Hopefully it works and I won't end 2017 dead tired like I did 2016.  

I guess I'll start with saying that I like most of the pages that I'm sharing today.  I like them a lot.  For the first time in a while, there isn't a page that is clearly a favorite.  This one about my son eating escargot.....

is so bright and colorful and based on this sketch....

This sketch...

was the inspiration for this page.  We spend a lot of time outdoors and the kids just love it.  Bonfire's, unplanned swim trips to the lake, walks, hikes and just plain sitting and talking in the yard.  Very southern things I think:)

This one is my husband and 2 of our kids during a trip that our family took to Miami a few years ago.  Is that water beautiful or what?  The papers on this page are favorites too. There is a good mix of old (hello Sassafrass Lass music note paper from many moons ago) and the new (SS Reset Girl from one moon ago:)).....

The page design was inspired by this pagemaps sketch.  The last one for the day I promise:)...

Another page that I made for Ashley Horton's silhouette class at Scrapbook.com.  As usual I didn't completely follow the formula but in contrast to the other pages where I strayed, I love this one!  

Hip Kit Club sent me an email that my February kit will be shipping soon so I need to get on the ball.  I have barely even done a page with the January kit!  Both of the pages below are from the December 2016 HKC. 

This page makes me so happy!  I even love the plainish background:)

The shakers are made with some super old watch case covers from a company that went out of business like 6 years ago.  I had them in my hand to toss when the idea hit me to make shaker bubbles with them.  I still have a ton of sequins left from the last 2 kits so this was perfect and easy...

My last page features some watercoloring with glimmer mist.  Just a little bit even though I was super tempted to color in the whole pretty page lol.  This photo of my daughter and my sister is a fave and will get blown up for the wall....

That's it for me.  I hope you had a great weekend!

Keeping It Crafty

There is so much inspiration out there and I have so much appreciation for the crafty tribe that I wanted to just take a moment to express my thanks:)  

It is sometimes hard for me to keep the motivation to spend time on myself by crafting.  It feels indulgent, sometimes even wasteful to spend hours doing something so unnecessary to everyday life/survival.  For me, many times that translates into a loss of mojo or creative slumps.  Thanks to the generosity of spirit of so many makers, it is incredibly super easy to go online and find the jump I need to get back into the swing of things.      

Don't get me wrong, my family supports me 100% and they don't give me a side eye for the time I spend in my crafty "hole" but I am sure that I am not the only person who is her own best critic.  Am I?  Anywho, enough random rambling for one day.  The layouts.  I have been reusing photos again hehe.  My kids (27 & 23 now) when they were little.  When I started this page, I had no intention of using this photo but it was perfect for the page:)

The supplies for this page came from the very lovely Hip Kit Club December 2016 kit.  I love this kit club and am so excited to get February's kit!   The page is about my baby sister receiving her 2nd Masters degree:)  So proud of her!!!!

My sweet nieces hamming it up....

A collage style page of my daughter and her Grandmother when she graduated from college...

The kids are growing up so, so fast!  The paper that I used on this page about my niece is bright, colorful and perfect for a lot of different pages!  I thought that her smile was very sweet here so I cropped very close.  The page design was inspired by Jen Gallacher's Make it Meaningful video #24.  She does such a good job with explaining her techniques & thought process and especially with her bright clear photographs of her projects...

Last and very least favorite is this page.  Oh what a mess!  This was one of those times that I was feeling a little mixed media and everything went wrong.  Did I stop?  Nope.  Kept right on wronging until finally I just called it done.  Sharing it and it is going into the album.  Maybe...

Thanks for stopping by and guess what...  Happy Monday Folks:)

Tuesday was Mayhem!

I was on the run starting at around 6am and didn't stop till after 1pm!  More than 6 hours of hustling and driving, driving and hustling later and I was exhausted!!

Even with all of my hustling, I did still manage to get some creating done and have a few pages to share from the last couple of days:)  I've been creating more than I've been sharing which is turning out to be a very good thing for me and the blog.  I feel as if I've accomplished something other than burning an entire tank of gas and hours of time behind the wheel this week.  So here goes....

The kids had a celebrity encounter at Disney and these guys were gracious enough to stop for a quick picture with them....

I was inspired by this page from the Scrapbooks & Cards Today blog.  The layout is by Nicole Nowosad and she offered a free cut file to go with her inspiration.  I had a die-cut paper from jillibean soup that was perfect already in my stash so I didn't end up using the cut file....

A couple of my nieces dressed up as some type of crazy zombie princess!  I didn't get the appeal of the horror star and was really wanting to see them as pretty brides or sparkly princess.  Thankfully, I'm crazy about these girls so it doesn't matter what I wanted and Halloween 2016 is documented & in the books:) 

Three pages were inspired by sketches.  This one

with the last few papers from my December Hip Kit...

this one...

with supplies from my stash.  This little guy was really easy to keep busy while his mom finished up her Christmas shopping...

and finally this last sketch...

Also using a ton of stuff from my stash and a brand new photo that I stole off of my sisters facebook page:)...

My final page for sharing today is completely random.  Random photo, random stash supplies and a seriously random title.  My sister is like this all of the time and I adore how full of joy she always is.  It's like everyday is her birthday!....

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are having a great week thus far!🙂

A Brand New Week!

I love the smell of Monday morning:)  Even a Monday in which husband is getting ready for a business trip.  Kid is getting ready for the first day of the new college semester and mom is just wanting to take a day off!

My January Hip Kit is here and I can't wait to dig into it!  January is already sorted and ready to go and December has been added to the stash.  

Today's layouts are all from my stash of old + new supplies.  It keeps it interesting to combine the old and the new.  Honestly, I don't remember everything that I have so putting together a stash kit is like working with new stuff most of the time.  Especially if the supplies are not too themey.  Since I don't have little ones at home with me anymore, a lot of my pages are about my nieces and nephews.  All but one page features these borrowed babies of mine.....

My absolute, hands down favorite photo of little E ever.  This has got to be the 5th time I've used it....

Gabby has the corner on cake face in the family.  We have sooo many photos of her like this.  We better enjoy them now because this little perfectionist will be done with cake face by the time she gets to high school:)

Not a perfect photo but a great shot of the boys at Busch Gardens and it looks like my nephew is spitting but it was just an accidental angle with the water fountain....

My inspiration for both pages is from Ashley Horton's class on SB.com.  I linked it in my last post.  I don't love the cake face page but I don't hate it either.  I didn't follow her sample to the letter and probably will next time because I loved her page.

My nieces getting their selfie on at one of the kids games.  Again not a favorite page but I don' hate it either.  This is inspired by Becky Flecks class at SB.com.....

Doing better at getting my photos scrapped soon after they are taken!  yay me...

This page makes me as happy as my nephew looks!  I love everything about it!!  The sequins on the side of the page.  The heart paper.  The word paper.  The color scheme.  Everything!!!!!:)

That's it for me today.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Monday 😊

AAAAAHHHH The Weekend! And A Layout Share:)

These pages honestly, pinky swear, have my emotions all over the map!  Some were so fun to make but I don't love how the pages came out.  Some were pretty basic but I am crazy about the end result.  A few just don't make me happy and I wish that I had donated the paper and never done the page:(  And others are meh but the memory was important so the page doesn't matter so much.  

I also used a lot of sketches.  A Lot.  But not on the first page of this share.  That page is all pinterest.  I was inspired by the kraft background and how the hexagons (I completely blanked and had to look up the shape for goodness sake:(.  That's what happens when you are in pre-calculus hell.) nested together around the photo...

This page was fun and the happy paper (Shimelle & Crate Paper) went well together IMO...

Sketch break....

 I love the different color scheme and the throwback Basic Grey Papers.  They work really well with the Simple Stories Posh Birds don't you think?

My sweet little niece has been having some problems at school with mean kids and I wanted to let her know that she is more than enough and that the things that people say to her (although they hurt) don't make her less:(  I know that she'll get through this and that she will be okay but it breaks my heart to see her tender heart hurt.  I loved this picture of her with her mom and decided to use it instead of one of her alone.

One of my least favorite pages but documenting the Christmas tree from year to year is making me happy....

This one was photographed way to bright but I still love the page...

If it is possible to get tired of visiting NYC please never tell me.  We've been there many times and it just never gets old.  My oldest son took these lovely shots.....

I actually followed the sketch on this one.  It is one that I would use again and again to be honest...

This page was fun to make.  I loved every minute of it.  Remember the printed vellum that American Crafts came out with a few moons ago?  I bought about 50 sheets of the stuff but never used any of it.  For this page, I cut the circles out with a 1" hole punch and stapled 2 of them layered to the page.  With just one circle, the color wasn't dark enough.  Some of them were offset just a little......

Another super fun page that I made with my December Hip Kit.  I cut the snowflake out supersized with my Cameo and that drew an outline of it in pencil (very lightly) on white cardstock.  Remember Flower Soft?  I glued it into the outline to look like fluffy snow!  Fun, fun page whose inspiration was from Ashley Horton's Silhouette Cameo Class on scrapbook.com .....

Fussy cutting at its funnest:)  All of the little tags were fussy cut than brad'd to the page....

Another page with my December Hip Kit.  The photos were really dark but I wanted to create the page anyway.  This will be the last year that my son will be able to volunteer for the event so I made do.  I use a Big Brush Marker to create the scallop around the inside of the circle...

It's fitting that my least favorite page visually is the last page of the share.  This page did not come together well or easy.  I was trying to do something creative to make the papers work together and nothing was working!  Except the card.  The card came out great:)

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a happy and safe weekend!