Anniversary Present - A Little Peek

I'm so excited to be registered for Scrapfest Oshawa! Scrapbooking is so much more fun when it's coupled with socializing, chatting and eating (maybe drinking too!) :-} At last year's Scrafest Oshawa, I took this class and was so thrilled with what I created.


Here's a peek at the album I made for our anniversary last year with the pages I stenciled and misted. It's one of my favourite projects ever. More to follow soon, so stay tuned!

Alberta Adventures

Back in this post about our trip to Edmonton, I mentioned that I had so many more pictures to share about our travels throughout Alberta. Here is a little look at all the fun we had.

The kids and I went to Banff with my brother Chris and visited the beautiful Banff Springs Hotel.

The lobby was stunning. The kids thought it looked spectacular and posed for this shot!

While we were there we took a trip to the hot springs. Chris had been there before, but it was a first for me and for the kids.

One of the most fun things for the kids about visiting with Grannie is telling her stories, bringing her pizza, ice tea and cookies and just having fun!  Grannie sure loves seeing the kids, as you can see in her face here!

We took a couple of trips to West Edmonton Mall, including a trip to Galaxyland for rides, games and junk food, another for waterpark fun and - of course - shopping!

We were lucky enough to spend a day with Chris' in-laws in Calgary and enjoyed some time at the beach near their home.

The next day we drove to Drumheller to spend the day at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.  Once again, it was a first for me as well as for the kids, and we absolutely loved it.

The kids each poured a fossil cast and they spent some time learning about fossils.

Here we are with the badlands in the background.  Notice something in the lower left corner of this photo?  The kids thought it was adorable that he popped into the photo with them! :-}

My brother Howard, his wife Trish and their two boys met us in Drumheller and we had dinner together at a local restaurant before heading back to Edmonton.  Here, the kids have fun together posing outside the restaurant with a dinosaur friend. It was definitely a whirlwind trip.  We packed a lot of fun into the week.  Although the sights and shopping were fun, visiting with family was definitely the highlight of the trip.

After our week in Edmonton, we almost needed a rest!  But a few weeks later we took a trip to Montreal to drop the kids off at camp and to visit with my Mom's side of the family on the South Shore.


I'll share a few photos of that visit sometime soon!

A Peek at our Summer Vacation

In early July, the kids and I traveled to Edmonton for a visit with my side of the family. My Mom is in Edmonton along with both of my brothers and their families. We were lucky enough while we were there travel to Calgary and Banff with my brother Chris and his daughter, and to then Drumheller with my brother Howard and his family. My Mom's sisters also traveled from Vancouver to be there while we were, and we visited with a number of close family friends as well.

It was an amazing experience for the kids! Seeing my Mom every day for a week is something that hasn't happened for a couple of years. Now that she cannot travel anymore, it's tough to see her if we don't go to her. I've traveled to Edmonton on my own three or four times since Mom stopped flying, but it's been on my own. The kids sure miss her when they don't see her often, and they had a lot of fun with her. Here, the kids enjoy taking their Grannie for a garden stroll.

They also really enjoyed spending time with their cousins. Below a look at our three, along with their cousin Aeden, enjoying the lake in Calgary, close to Chris' wife Lisa's parents' home. They had a fantastic time.

 I have so many more photos of this trip that I would love to share, but haven't even downloaded some of them yet! I hope to add them over the weekend, so stay tuned!

Santa Claus is a Girl!

In keeping with the recent Christmas theme I've created here, this is a page I created while at a weekend crop up at my amazing friend Leanne's beautiful home. This photo was taken last Christmas day, as the girls were helping to hand out presents to family while we awaited our scrumptious turkey dinner. They look so grown up now, I can barely believe it. I love the rectangular doily, which - believe it or not - is from Dollarama!


While we were at Leanne's it was Jen's birthday and we had fun with some last minute birthday cupcakes and balloons I picked up in town that afternoon. We didn't manage to get a photo with all of us in it, so our gracious hostess Leanne must have taken this one. Happy Birthday, Jen!

I sure got a lot done while I was at Leanne's. Here's a look at another layout I created that weekend. The photos on this one are from 2006, and Evan is still so small! I'll post more of the layouts I created on that trip sometime soon.

Fun at Scrapfest Oshawa!

It's taken me a few weeks but I've finally found a moment to post about how much fun Scrapfest Oshawa was! Even though I had to work Friday and didn't arrive until after dinner, we still made the most of the entire weekend. Here's a peek at our crop table - notice its proximity to the food! :-}

It was my first time at the Oshawa event, which is smaller than the Kitchener Scrapfest in the spring that I've been going to for years, but it wasn't small on fun! A few tables behind us and to the left was Scrapalicious gals' Mary, Clare and Suzanne's table. We managed to visit quite a bit!

It feels like ages since I've had a chance to see Virginia, and it was nice to spend a few minutes chatting while she was at the Scrapbook & Cards Today booth. Virginia also taught two classes during the weekend making her time quite limited so I'm glad we had a chance to catch up.

One of our first (and recurrent, it turned out!) stops was the make & take table at The Workshop. Their Christmas ornaments were beautiful, and will make fantastic teachers' gifts. Can't wait to give them out.

I took Christy Riopel's misting class and had a fantastic time. Christy is always a blast, and this class was so well put together. We all finished our mini-albums and each looked uniquely amazing. I can't post a pic of mine here as I plan to give it to my hubby as a gift, so photos of it will come later.

It was so fantastic to see Amanda who came all the way from Saskatoon to laugh and scrap with us for the weekend. Her brilliant take on the Trick or Treat theme for the layout contest took first prize. It was a stunning layout, with brilliant journaling a la typical Amanda fashion!

It was wonderful to finally stay at the gorgeous Chez Jen Bed and Breakfast! :-} Now I know why everyone comments on how beautiful Jen's home is! Thanks, Jen! We had a wonderful brunch the next morning, and - lucky us - Kelly Panacci dropped in to dine with us. So much fun!

I think the best part of the trip (for me anyway) was our meal at Lone Star, where our waitress Ellie May was very entertaining (ask Sue about her charming squeezable pen!), the drinks were incredible and my food (unlike some of the others) was delectable! This is a classic photo of us toasting the weekend.

There's nothing like great friends to make a scrappy weekend complete. Cheers to this awesome group, until we meet up to scrap again: Leanne, her sister Kim, my cousin Sharon, Sue, Amanda, Jen and everyone else who made the weekend so fantastic!


Oh, and ask anyone at the table about our great "Peking Lo". It's a timeless classic! :-}

9/11 Memorial

While my brother Chris and I were in New York last month, we were fortunate enough to visit the 9/11 memorial site. It was a very moving experience. I can't imagine how emotional a visit to the site would be for families who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. My thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this tragic event.

Like so many of us today, I am very conscious of and grateful for all of the wonderful things I have in my life.

I hope you are able to take a moment today to reflect on how truly fortunate we are to live in the abundant, safe and prosperous country we call home.

Layouts from our Weekend at Linda’s

I've finally uploaded more photos of layouts I created back in January when we were lucky enough to spend a weekend up at Linda's cottage. It was beautiful and inspired all of us to get creating! I printed two photos that represented Evan's eternal love for Lego. The top photo shows him with his Black Friday buys.
I enjoyed creating this masculine page using the amazing Blissful line from one of my newer favourite manufacturers, Authentique. The materials for this layout were included in the September 2011 kit bundle I bought from Up The Street Scrapbooking. For the title, I wanted to use the current V+3 symbol to represent a heart. I cut the V and the 3 from some American Crafts brown Chit Chat Thickers to create the heart in the title.

I used a sketch from the 2012 Page Maps Sketch calendar for this layout, which focuses on the wonderful friends and inspiring scrapbookers I met though the spending a year on the Just Cre8 Cre8ive Crew. Journaling talks about what a wonderful experience it was designing with this "gr8" group!


Even though the site folded in 2009, we still continue to stay in touch and I am still so inspired by the talent and energy I found in his group of amazing friends. I still try to see these ladies at least a few times a year. This photo was taken at a National Scrapbook Day crop at my house a few years back. We'll have to do that again sometime soon, won't we ladies!


I started this layout at the Crop & Create Markham back in January at a class delivered by Becky Fleck, and finished it afterwards. I really loved the vibrant colours of the papers as well as the rolled die-cut flowers, so wanted to do something special with this page.


I decided to use this layout to document my feelings about simplify - my One Little Word for 2012. The journaling here talks about my plans for using this word to guide my year.


The photo on this layout is of the title page of the Me: The Abridged Version album which I created last year based on the Big Picture Classes' workshop by Cathy Zielske.



Life is moving at the speed of sound lately, so I haven't been able to spend much time documenting memories and scrapbooking. I've been working on compiling a slide show of the Allure of the Seas Western Caribbean cruise we took in February, and it made me realize that I still hadn't finished a slideshow of our trip prior to that, the Bahamas. So I'm hoping to get some of that done soon.

I'm so excited, though, to have the opportunity to scrap at Scrapfest! I'll be cropping with Sharon, Leanne and Nancy, and am looking forward to seeing Sue, Jen, Virginia, Lancia, hopefully Lori, and so many others!

Are you going? Drop me a line and we can plan to scrap together or meet up for lunch or coffee!

Recent Scrapbook pages

Here's a quick peek at some of the scrapbook pages I created during the two weekends I scrapped in January. The first one is on Bo Bunny Etcetera Watermark paper. The paper is gorgeous - it's so ethereal and dreamy. I used it for a photo from the girls' ballet mock exam.

I also used my favourite new punch on this page - Stampin' Up's Petite Pennant Builder punch for the little banner in the upper right corner.

This one of my favourite dance costumes. I loved the pretty lilac colour, the beadwork and the sweet little tutu. The girls were astronomers in this costume and carried magic wands with little stars on the ends. I decided to carry through the star theme.



Some of the supplies from this page and the one above are from the September 2011 kit bundle from Up The Street Scrapbooking. I love finding a great Canadian scrapbook kit company, and Up The Street is one! I wish I had time for a monthly kit membership, but sadly time is rare around our house the past few years, so I haven't subscribed, but if you're in the market, check them out!




I saw this layout by the ultra talented Danielle Flanders quite a while back on the Studio Calico blog and wanted to lift it immediately. I used photos of each of the members of our family punched into circles and pulled this together rather quickly. To be honest, I'm not sure that it's finished, but here it is as it stands right now.



I've been using up one of my favourite paper pads from K & Company for ages now, and only have a few sheets left. I thought the papers I used on the next two layouts were perfect for Christmas themed pages. It wasn't my original intent to create a 2-pager with these, but part way through I realizes that they worked really well side by side, so ran the strip of Graphic 45 Christmas paper and the pleated ribbon across them both.

The photos here are two of my favourites from Christmas 2010 - one of the kids enjoying a few last Christmas carols before bed on Christmas Eve, and the second is of them eyeing the empty place of cookies Santa left behind on Christmas morning.

I used another favourite new punch from Stampin' Up on these two pages. It's the Large Lace Ribbon Border punch, and it's so easy to work with, it's a dream!

I still have pages from Crop & Create to post, so I will follow up with those as soon as I can. And yes, it's true - we just arrived home last week from a Western Caribbean cruise, and it was absolutely wonderful! I'll hopefully have at least a few photos of that trip to post soon.

Thanks to all those who have e-mailed or Facebook messaged me to check on my Mom's status. She is settled into a rehabilitation hospital now, and her prognosis is quite good. Unfortunately, she won't be able to move back into her apartment, but at 86 years old, it's best that she have nurses nearby more frequently than her old building was able to do. I hope to head out to Edmonton again this spring or summer to visit with her.

Since my last post, I reached a few milestones that came and went without much fanfare - my blog turned 5 years old on March 7th, and I reached 20,000 views as well. I'll have to get some giveaways going one of these days to celebrate! DOn't worry, I'll let you know when!

Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the world despite that I haven't been updating very often. Your visits and comments mean a lot to me, and I hope to get back onto the blogging and scrapbooking bandwagon again soon! Cheers!

Adventures in Scrapbooking!

January 2012 was a fantastic month for scrapbooking and I've been meaning to post about the fantastic events I attended for a while now. Here I am with Sue, Jen and Lori at Crop & Create Markham. We spent a wonderful time cropping and laughing during the coldest weekend of the winter!
We even decided to stay and extra night and carouse a bit since we really didn't like the idea of packing up in the freezing cold - and it was well worth it! They kept the bar open for us and we laughed our heads off with Vicki, Kelly, Catherine, Leica, the event staff and so many other great ladies!
The first weekend in January my cousin Tessa was in town, so we met up with her family and my cousin Sharon's family for a shopping trip and then headed back to our house where all of the kids decided they wanted to scrapbook. A great - and very creative - time was had by all!

The weekend after Crop & Create my friend Linda had invited a group of wonderful ladies up to her cottage for the weekend. Linda is so sweet and a fantastic hostess - she included my cousin Sharon, who just moved back to Canada from Northern Ireland and who Linda had not yet met!

In the photo above, Linda and Sharon chat over the family's cottage history album. At left we have Sharon scrapping up a storm. We each created seven layouts over the weekend, which is fantastically productive, despite a little wine consumption! :-}


We wrapped up the weekend with a demo pocket album led by Leanne. It is absolutely adorable and Vera even managed to finish hers completely during the weekend - photos and all! I really need to unpack mine and get some photos into it. Thanks so much, Leanne!



Here are a few of us at breakfast on Sunday morning. It was a beautiful location for a fun filled weekend - right on Lake Huron and stunning as can be. Thanks so much, Linda for a fantastic time!



As you can see, January was an event-filled month! No wonder I've been so exhausted! :-} Up next - the layouts I created at the above events. Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned!