Dads Rock!

This weekend we'll celebrate the dads we love! Christopher has one of the best there are and it'll be fun spoiling him with dinner out Saturday night and a homemade French toast breakfast on Sunday morning! What are your plans for pop's day?

I created this Father's Day card with Doodlebug Design's Boys Only collection, perfect for Dan since he loves to rock and roll and plays the guitar. Happy Father's day to all the dads out there! 

Last night's dinner was a bit of a comedy of errors and circumstances. On the menu was Sweetish Meatballs, but we had to go to Plan B since I forgot to take the ground turkey meat out of the freezer. Plan B was a frozen pizza we keep in case of such emergencies. About five minutes into baking said pizza the power went out! :) So...we waited for about a half hour before moving onto Plan C, ordering Chinese takeout. We didn't have much faith in Plan C working either since they told us our order would take a little longer than usual because their power was off too! Fortunately about five minutes after placing our order the power was restored and we enjoyed fried dumplings, won ton soup and chicken with mixed veggies! Kind of makes a routine dinner an adventure. :)

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Scrapbook Trends Giveaway

Hello!

I received some happy mail yesterday, the September 2012 issue of Scrapbook Trends with my 'A+ Teacher' card published in it. :)

I used the Doodlebug Design "Boys Only" collection and the Silhouette die cut machine to make the folder and the sentiment.

Would you like to win my second copy of this issue? Just leave a comment and I'll draw a winner and announce it on tomorrow's post. Good luck and thanks for dropping by!

Have a great day!

A Little North Pole

Hi!

There's a merry and bright new holiday collection out called North Pole from Doodlebug Design! Have you seen it? It's too cute! You may have seen the card I shared last week, you can see it here.

Pretty colors, lovely Christmas trees and tweet little birds....I love it!

I dressed up the tree on the left with a few pearls.

This sweet little bird was attached with some adhesive foam tape for dimension.

Ticket stubs are always a hit! And more pearls.

This card is a lift of a Boys Only birthday card I made for Christopher back in April. I really like the design and wondered how it would look with the North Pole collection. Why reinvent the wheel every single time you create a card right?

So which do you like better? I can't decide.

Thanks for dropping by and thank you so much for making my day yesterday with all your congrats comments. You are the best!

Cool Summertime

It's summertime! Time to head to the beach or pool. Time to dig your toes into the sand or cool grass. And time for a juicy slice of watermelon or an icy cold bottle of pop!

This week the Doodlebug design team is focusing on summertime projects and these soda pop bottles from the Boys Only collection are perfect, don't you think?

To add a bit of dimension to these pop bottles, I added a Mini Pearl and star Shaped Brad.

If you haven't heard, Doodlebug came out with some cool new alphas called Teensy Type. Oh what fun and perfect for cards!

How's that for a summertime refresher? Hope you enjoyed my card and a can keep your cool during these hot days of summer!

Thanks for stopping by!

Kathy :)

Pals for Life

Hello! Today I have a birthday card share using a Doodlebug Design Create-A-Card, a fabulous sketch posted on the Doodlebug blog today and the Boys Only Collection.

I adore this line! The colors, patterns, die cuts and buttons...they're all so fabulous! And now there's some fun new Doodlebug/Hampton Arts Stamps to add to the mix.

I used the You Said It set for my sentiments. Isn't this 'celebrate' stamp cool?

I think the file folder style Create-A-Card is my favorite! The tab is perfect for sentiments.

I hope you enjoyed my card and have a moment to hop over to the Doodlebug blog to see the cards my teammates made and the fabulous card sketch we have for you.

Staycation has been wonderful! Yesterday, our second day, started off at Durrant Park for a hike. There's nothing more beautiful and relaxing than the great outdoors!

After our hike we headed to the Museum of Natural Sciences. They have an amazing new wing that just opened. This is part of the building! It's quite impressive and looks like it goes out into the street! There's a theater housed in it.

There's so much to see and it was beyond what I've ever experienced at a science museum. Within the exhibits are real laboratories with scientists working on current projects.

I took so many pictures that I'm not sure which to show you and so much of what we saw there was pretty amazing! Since we paper crafters use butterfly images on a lot of our projects I thought I would show you this gorgeous display of butterflies.

Today we're driving out to a quaint little town about an hour away to do some antiquing.  I never get tired of browsing! I'm always on the look out for Charlotte transferware. It's really hard to find. I also look for interesting containers for storing crafty goodies. One of my most recent finds is an aluminum container with the word 'grease' on it. It was for storing bacon grease in the cupboard for use later on. Yuck! But that's how things were done. Now it holds buttons! ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by! Tomorrow I'll have my first Bella Blvd. and Core'dinations Team-Ups projects to show you! Have a super day!

Kathy :)

Now & Then

 Hi! With Father's Day coming up this weekend, Doodlebug Design asked its design team to create projects for this very special occasion. Doodlebug will be celebrating Father's Day by posting our creations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So if you're in need some ideas and inspiration, the Doodlebug blog is the the place to be!

 I knew right away what I wanted to do for my project! Recently while my boys and I were out running errands, I snapped the photo that's on the left hand side of my page. As soon as I downloaded it, it reminded me of a photo I had taken many years ago. I remembered how similar the images were and thought a page with them would make a great gift for Father's Day. Better than a tie, don't you think? ;)

For this page I used Doodlebug's Boys Only collection loaded with masculine printed papers, die cuts and stickers.

I always have to add in some hand stitching! I used a straight stitch through the title and some zigzag stitching around the edges.

See the dots on the upper left hand part of this photo? That's a background stamp from the new Doodlebug/Hampton Arts stamp set called Sweet Backgrounds.

The date tags were also created with stamps from a set called Journal. See the 'love you' phrase stamped on the photo to the right? That stamp is from the Flower Garden set. I think it's cool that these seemingly feminine stamps work with masculine projects too!

Hope you have a great Father's Day this Sunday!!

Kathy :)

Living with Autism

The main purpose of this blog is to share paper crafting projects with you. I also throw in a bit about me and my family because sharing scrapbook pages is a little more personal than other types of blogs. There are real people with real families and real life struggles behind every scrapbooking blog and sharing some of these struggles helps others see that they are not alone.

Many of you probably know that my son Christopher is autistic. You also may know that his birthday is coming up because I've mentioned it a couple times in previous weeks. Today is his big day. Today Christopher turns 11. On what is supposed to be a very special day for our family, Christopher woke up in a bad mood and threw one of his worst tantrums ever.

It's a reminder that we live with autism. Some days seem very 'typical' and then some days are a reminder of the difficulty and struggles that come with autism. A lot of the time we have no idea what sets off a tantrum like this so it's difficult to foresee and take steps to avoid which is the best weapon against tantrums. Christopher has a history of not liking April and his birthday. For what reason(s) we don't completely understand. This year seemed different. He's been maturing quite a bit over the past year and his tantrums have decreased significantly.

As I type this post, I'm at a loss. I don't know how to precede with the day. Christopher is too upset to go to school. Starting the day this way usually makes it too difficult for him to get through the school day. If we try to send him, we would most likely get a call from his school asking us to come get him.

His father and I hardly feel in a festive mood. Do we put on a smile anyway, bake a cake, cook a special dinner and unwrap presents as usual. Do we try again tomorrow?

We don't have the answers. We do the best we can. We make mistakes. We struggle. Living with autism is difficult! Sometimes it makes me so mad! Mad because this 'condition' took away the 'typical' little boy I thought I gave birth to 11 years ago today. We didn't sign up for this. But it is what it is.

This card was created with Doodlebug products: Create a Card, Boys Only Collection and Doodles Card Stock Stickers.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Kathy

Party Boy

Hello!

Yesterday I promised you a scrapbook page share created with a new Doodlebug line. The new collection is called Boys Only and it's so very cool!

How about these bright colors?

The patterns in this collection include soda pop bottles, guitars, gears, arrows, numbers and soooooo much more!

I started with the star paper and went a little wild!

I really like the new Doodle Twine colors and brand new mini pearls.

Doodlebug also created a set of buttons for this collection that I'm smitten over!

If you're a Fancy Frills addict like me, you will be happy to know Boys Only includes a cool new set of borders stickers like the row of stars above.

There's also star brads! Are yous seeing stars yet? ;)

Along with all these new goodies, I mixed in a few of my favorite old Doodlebug product. Can you spot them? The orange paper strips are Paper Frills. Love the fringed one on top! The date was made with my favorite tiny rub-ons called Simply Sweet. The last oldie but goody is from 2003! And you would never guess what it is! See the light gray paper I used for the circle, date tab and sub-title pennants? It's the perfect gray paper! The back side is a little darker. I bought an entire 25 sheet pack once upon a time because I love it! It goes with everything!

The star of the page is our son who is eating cake on his 7th birthday. He's going to be 11 next month! Time flies when your having fun!

Thanks for stopping in!

Kathy :)