Heartless?

Don't be heartless anymore!

Today is the final day to comment on my 150th post for a chance to win a Creative Imaginations Bare Elements Heart mini-album, just like the one pictured here, together with the supplies to alter it for a loved one.

A little while ago I decided to give away a little heart-inspired RAK. I am hoping that by sending a heart out into the world, I will send healthy heart karma to my pal Patti's husband, Ron, who is recovering from heart surgery. Patti is an awesome gal, great scrapper, and an owner of The Scrapping Nook. If you like, you can add your get well wishes for Ron to Patti's blog, here.

So comment here today, and maybe soon you will "have a little heart!"

Details about the lucky winner and a photo of the full RAK will follow in early December. Thanks so much for joining in.

As seen in Canadian Scrapbooker

I was very excited a little while ago when Canadian Scrapbooker asked for three of my layouts for their Winter 2007 issue. The holiday season is such a meaningful time, and Christmas pages are very special to me. This layout of the girls playing piano is from last Christmas and I hadn't even posted it anywhere before submitting it, so here it is for the first time. The starting point for this layout was a monthly kit from Scrapologie, with a little Pressed Petals and K & Co. chipboard and MM letters added.
This layout also has a Christmas theme, and holds special meaning for our family. I also mentioned this page in a previous post. The journaling here tells the story of our first Christmas following the loss of my husband's grandmother just over a year ago. This layout also has a Scrapologie kit at its heart. The over sized chandelier transparency from Hambly Screen Prints is one of my favourite scrapbooking products ever, and the Thickers from American Crafts really make the title stand out.
Evan's obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh! is well known amongst our family and friends, and when I shot this photo for a class assignment, I knew I had to scrap it. The patterned paper here is by Around The Block. I love the stamp from Autumn Leaves. The big chipboard letters are from Li'l Davis, and the crushed velvet are Maya Road. My dude is happy to see this one in print, however chose his "Sponge Bob Marley" t-shirt from Jamaica for Show & Tell last week over showing off his photo in a magazine. Kids!

If you haven't picked up this latest issue of Canadian Scrapbooker, grab it quickly, as they are moving fast. It makes a great stocking stuffer for that scrapper in your family, it's Canadian, and it's jam packed full of great stuff.

Beautiful Beach Wedding

I mentioned in this previous post that Stephen and I just spent a wonderful week in Jamaica. Our trip's purpose was to celebrate the marriage of Stephen's brother Justin to his beautiful new wife, Rosa. The lovely wedding was held on the most stunning day of our stay.
Their wedding package included a resort photographer who did a great shoot, but she wouldn't allow me near enough to get good shots at many points of the day. I captured a few that I like. I think that this shot of monarch butterflies being released is my one of my favourites of the day.
It was a bright, sunny day, and I used a fill flash on most of the shots. Sadly, by the time we got to sunset, my external flash battery was so low, and it's reset time was so long that I missed a few great shots before I gave up and switched to my on-board flash. Here's a favourite of the sunset photos.

I've put together a few of the better shots that tell the story of the day into the slide show below. I learned a lot from this shoot, and it sure helps me recognize how much more I have to learn! I welcome any feedback. I hope you enjoy this little peek into Rosa and Justin's special day.

For the full pictorial version of the story, see here.

A Heart, Some Karma, and a little RAK too!

This is my 150th blog post, so I'm throwing a party! Wahoo!

According to sitemeter, a few of you drop by on a regular basis for a visit here. I would love to know you a bit better, and you've been so quiet lately. I don't want to be dancing with myself at my post party! So here's the deal. Add a comment to this post before November 30th, and I'll add your name into a draw for a heart-shaped mini album, with supplies to alter it.

Be sure to tell me who you would alter this heart album for, and why. Not only will you be getting a head start on your Valentine's Day projects, but you'll brighten my day, too!

By the way, I chose a heart-shaped mini-album for this RAK for a specific reason. I have a dear scrapping friend, Patti, who many of you know through The Scrapping Nook. Patti is currently nursing her hubby Ron back to health after a quadruple heart bypass operation. I'm hoping that I will send good karma for Ron's recovery their way by sending my little heart RAK out into the world.

If you know Patti (or even if you don't), you may want to stop by her blog, and add your own prayers or thoughts and good wishes for Ron's speedy recovery.

Thanks a bunch!

Scenic Jamaica

We're home, we're tanned and we're tired! We had a great trip.

Stephen and I were lucky enough to have spent last week in Montego Bay, Jamaica for Stephen's brother's wedding. As you can imagine, I took a ton of photos, and it is taking me a while to get through them all. The weather there was a little less than perfect, and we had a fair bit of rain, but with the fun group of folks we were with, we made the best of it!
I really wanted to try my hand at some sunset photography (the sun rises a bit to early there for me to try sunrise!). Unfortunately, we lost a few sunsets to rain and heavy cloud. Of the shots that I was able to get, I still feel they are a little dark, and am open to suggestions to brighten them up a bit. This is the resort's glass bottom boat at sunset.
As a bonus, Stephen and I celebrated our wedding anniversary while we were in Montego Bay. To mark the occasion, we had a white glove dinner by candlelight at the pier, just the two of us. The service that night was awesome, and the setting so romantic. This is the gazebo that we dined under, shot a few hours before our dinner.
I loved the setting of the resort's Japanese restaurant, Tokyo Joe's, although the menu was an Asian blend and not solely Japanese. This restaurant had probably the most comfortable seating in the resort. I liked the sign at the water's edge that said Sandals, and tried to capture it here as the sun went down on our last night before heading back home.

I am still sorting photos of the trip, including shots of the group we travelled with, and pictures of the wedding itself, and will post a bit more once I get through them all. I think I'm in denial - do you think if I take my time posting all of these tropical photos, I can keep winter from coming?

Wishful thinking, I guess!

Just About a Year Ago

Last year around this time, I was very excited to receive my copy of the Winter 2006 Canadian Scrapbooker magazine. In that magazine was my first ever published scrapbook page, All is Calm, All is Bright. I was thrilled to have this page be my first publication, since I really love the photo of our three kids around the tree on Christmas Eve. Since I wasn't blogging yet back then, I thought I would post about it now.

You see - I am equally excited for the Winter 2007 edition of Canadian Scrapbooker to come out in the next few weeks! Why? Check back soon and find out!

I Sure Felt the Love...

...when I picked up my next DT kit from Scrapalicious.

Actually, I think anyone who gets their hands on the awesome new 12" x 12" felt shapes from Fancy Pants will fall in love with them instantly. Add these to the fantastic, fall-inspired papers from the American Crafts Metropolitan collection, and you can probably feel the love from here. I really can't wait to get creating with this great kit.


Stay tuned for some designs with these fantastic products, coming soon!

Evan's School Days Box Album

I have completely and thoroughly enjoyed putting together this Fancy Pants School Days Album In A Box Kit for Scrapalicious this month. While it's certainly not something that you can take out of the box and complete in one evening of cropping, it is a lot of fun to put together and well worth the time and effort. All told, there are 21 photos in this project, which is a huge number of photos for me! Other than the album kit itself, I used primarily Basic Grey materials to produce this album - the patterned paper, letter stickers, many of the die cut shapes and die cut letters are from the awesome Recess, Mellow and Figgy Pudding collections.
This project also features great new Autumn Leaves stamps, Heidi Swapp chipboard letters, mini letter stickers from Making Memories and EK Success Bookworks, Bazzill and DCWV cardstock, American Crafts Thickers, as well as some ribbon from Scrapalicious.
I used the box to store the album in, but the box could also be used to store artwork from a child's school year instead. I documented my son's progress in one album, but the kit could be used for a favourite subject, or even for this years school pictures of all the kids as a grandparents' gift.

There are other album themes too, including boy, girl and baby, and I would love to have a stack of them on my coffee table. It took too many photos to display the entire mini-album, so I have included a few more photos in the slide show below. Have a peek and enjoy!

Aedan's 1st Birthday Party

We had the pleasure of being at the 1st birthday party for the adorable Aedan last weekend. Is he sweet or what?

It's so hard to believe that a year has passed already and he is one year old - exactly when did that happen? Aedan's Mommy, my cousin Tara, just went back to work after her maternity leave, yet still has the time and energy to throw great parties and to look as fantastic as she does here!
This family is one of the few we know that - like ours - consists of 3 kids. They moved to a new home about six months ago, and already they've done more work to give their home their own touches than we have in the five years we've been in ours. Truly, I don't know how she does it!

I managed to capture each of the kids, but of the adults, somehow Anthony and David managed to get away without being photographed! I don't know how that happened! :-) I also didn't get any pictures of my own kids, who were at the party, but you wouldn't know it from the photos.

That's what happens when you drop my kids into someone else's toy room environment - they go in and don't emerge for hours, not even for pizza and pop!

Take a peek at the slide show and enjoy this sweet little boy's party!

Pals and Gals Together

Outside of the photo shoot in the park, I only managed a few candid shots during Patricia and Cameron's visit. With four excited kids, and one who thinks "look at the camera" means "search for bugs on the ground", it was hard to get a shot of all four tots! Here are a few. The first one was taken after a raucous round of Hungry, Hungry Hippo!
If play is the work of childhood, then these kids worked really hard during Cameron's visit. Between a board game or two, some Chicken Limbo, a few video watching attempts, dress-up and lots of colouring, there was barely time for sleep. Cameron loves to swing from the monkey bars, so when we stopped for an outdoor photo, guess where she wanted to be? Here's one with no one moving!
The morning after our trek to see Jay Leno and the Barenaked Ladies, I logged into the event's official photographer's site and checked out the photos taken of the two of us. I'm glad this one was respectable, as it turned out that the photos we "forced" Stephen to take of us in a rush on our way out the door to the airport turned out less than stellar. Our weekend, on the other hand was awesome!

Here's to getting together with friends on a more regular basis. Cheers!

Halloween Antics

The kids had a spook-tacular Halloween!

The girls were absolutely intent on keeping up with their big brother this year, and they managed to stay out just as long as he did. They wore iridescent blue dresses with striped tights, and were "pretty witches". Notice Alicia's hat, which kept falling off - so I tied it on using scrapbooking ribbon!
Evan started out wanting to be a "robot knight". We got our hands on some robot gear from friends, but once I bought the knight part of the costume, he ditched the original idea and became simply a knight - but with silver robot gloves! He has been ready and wearing his costume for weeks!
Evan's school had a Halloween parade, and he had a great time battling a few of the other knights he paraded with. Vanessa didn't like her witch hat, so decided to wear a tiara instead. She proclaimed that she was not a witch, but a queen. I think we are going to get a lot of dress-up mileage out of their costumes!

I hope that everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween!