July 27

Today we hung out at home and had Cameron for the day. Aaron and Cameron played together so well. It is just too much fun to watch them run around, scream, tickle each other, and learn how to share. Look how happy they are!

July 26

Today we were very excited to meet and visit with Jen Graham (Graham Like the Cracker) and her son Alton. I had a great time visiting, and the boys played together very well. Alton was a perfect little host and toy sharer. They boys eventually took naps (in separate rooms) and I got to hang out with Jen and scrap! Girl time!

We love this picture of the two little guys and their Buzz Lightyears.

July 25

Today my mom and dad planned a family swim and BBQ at their house so everyone could come over and visit. We all had so much fun laughing and joking together, but the most fun is watching the kids play together. Here are two generations of cousins in the pool! Me, Aaron, my cousin Malinda, and her daughter Mady.

July 24

We hung out around the house today, and that is a very nice thing to do. To tell the truth, it is one of my favorite things to do, it just isn’t high on Aaron’s list most of the time. Here is a picture of him playing with a new toy from Nana and Grampy, called Connectagons. They are little wooden painted disks with notches that can be fit together every which way, don’t they look cool? I highly recommend them for your kiddos. He played with them for about 45 minutes. (according to my records I took an average of 1 picture every minute. yikes.)

July 23

We are in California! Aaron and I made the flight out yesterday. Let’s just say that the flight was not one of Aaron’s 5 best behaved hours and leave it at that. My apologies to everyone in the 6 rows in front of us or behind us. ANYWAY. Now we are here, and I am looking forward to lots of fun times with my family and helping Aaron make great memories. The first half of the trip we have some down time, but the second half is really full of stuff to do!

Most of these vacation days I am going to have a REALLY hard time making a selection of ONE picture, but I am going to hold myself to it!

This one is a no-brainer for me. My mom took this picture of Aaron and I relaxing in the pool. I made a page with is a couple of weeks ago, scroll down a ways to find it. This kind of moment with my constantly moving three year old boy is very rare, and I treasured it. I am really glad my mom was able to capture this memory.

My Scrappy Week

Hi! Miss us and our antics? Well I am ready to catch up! We had a great time in California, and are now in Myrtle Beach, and boy do I have some P365 photos for you! That is coming up, but first, I am going to start a weekly post on Friday, Saturday or Sunday of every week where I post all the pages I have scrapped that week. I think doing it this way will help me keep up, show off this hobby I love so dearly, and show off the great products I use to make them.

My scrapbook pages are always linked to my gallery at ScrapMatters for full credits, which I will not post here because it takes more time than I want to spend. However, if a page features a new release from a designer that I am on a creative team for, I will specifically mention those here and link up the product names (in blue) to their location in their stores so you can check them out if you are feeling inspired!

So…let’s get this scrappy party started! :)

I did A LOT this week because I felt like I really needed to catch up on scrapping from my California vacation, during which I scrapped only 3 or 4 pages in 3 weeks. Well last week I made 6 pages!

Graham Like the Cracker has some cool new templates out this week called Weave Me, Weave Me that are different types of paper weaving. What a handy thing to have templates, for, right? I love how weaving looks, but it is very time consuming to do! I made two pages with these new templates.

This one, I am particularly proud of and I just love. As you may have seen, I have slowly but surely been making my way through Aaron’s baby book, which will go up to his 1st birthday. So far, I think I am up to 12 weeks. Yikes. For this page I also used another new product, Band Geek Designs It’s Only Words v. 2 Templates. Liz makes these amazing photoless layouts, and her templates are great inspiration to get your stories down on your pages. I really need prompting to do journaling, so these templates are just what I need. She has v.1 in her store, too.

Here is my second layout with Jen’s (GLTC) Weave Me Templates, and also with her new Love That Girl kit. I almost didn’t download this kit, because I really struggle with using pink, and this kit is all things pink! But then I remembered I took this pictures on our river trip of the most gorgeous girl you could hope to see, my cousin’s daughter Mady.

I also made this page, a summary itinerary of our entire CA vacation, day by day, using the It’s Only Words v.2 Templates. I changed it a bit to fit what I wanted to do, but I really love how it turned out. It will be a great opening page to that album. It already got put in the Gallery Standouts at SM today! How COOL!!!!

Okay, next up are my two pages with the AWESOME teacheriffic new releases from Stolen Moments this week, A Time to Learn and Blackboard Alpha. She also put out a new set of templates this week based on the amazing layouts of my fellow CT member, Andrea, which I used to make this page. I kept crying while I was doing the journaling…but it captures exactly how I feel.

I also made this one with the new Stolen Moments releases, and the It’s Only Words v.2 Templates. This is a page I have been meaning to make for a year, but these products gave me the perfect inspiration.

and finally, my last page of the week (phew, this is a lot of scrapping, that’s one thing I LOVE about summer!!) is of Aaron in the Casey Jr. Train line at Disneyland, just flat out being a rascal. I made this page with this kit called He’s Electric from The Design Girl as part of my application to be on her creative team, and when I saw it, I thought of Aaron’s shirt and these funny pictures of him being mad.

That’s it for last week…stay tuned for photo updates! (after I make a couple more posts in my grad school class!)

Love That Boy…a freebie!

Jen Graham (GLTC) has a new bundle out this week that she made with Bella Gypsy called “Love That Boy”. I love the blues and greens, check it out here:

I made two pages with it, because it is perfect for my little man! First, here is a page from Aaron’s first Father’s Day. I am so glad to have gotten so many great pictures, including the three generation shots of my hubby, his dad, and his son. :)

And here is a page that I just love…Mom took this picture of us on our first day of vacation here in CA lounging in the pool. My son is such a loving little man, but to get him to stop moving and snuggle is harder with each day he gets older! I am so grateful to have this memory preserved, and making this page gave me the perfect chance to journal some of the feelings I have about being the mom of a boy.

The title of this page inspired a word art that I am offering here. I made this with all three colors of the adorable alpha that comes with this kit, so if you got the kit, grab my word art by clicking on the image below! If you didn’t get the kit yet, go get it here and grab my word art too! Please leave a note here if you download, I would love to hear from you.