Smashing My Love

A page about me, I used the paint sample chips my Mom got me at Walmart and smashed away.

 I just had to smash a 2 page layout of my husband and I.  I even tucked in some love letters in the pocket.

Having a Random Summer

Saw this on the front door before work' thought it was pretty.

 My summer running partner Becky, we have been training for a race this summer, a 5k/16 obstacle course mud run.

 My BFF Jen came for a visit , she gave me some awesome shoes for my birthday, we went out for dinner and drinks and then saw a movie.  Maya had never met Jen before. Needless to say Jack and Maya were jealous of each other and fighting for jen's affection. LOL. Plus Maya really wanted to eat something inside her purse.

                                                Night, night,, they are both exhausted.

 Haha, Jack wanted to drive in the little kid buggy at Kroger's when we went shopping for road trip snacks.

        He is being silly at Nana's house, he said he is a little girl and the blanket is his hair.

Smashing again

I love,love,love my new smashbook that my friend Cass got me for my birthday. I figured since I did a page about Cass, I would do a page about my other really good friend Jennifer.  We have been friends for over 10 years and she is also my travel buddy when I want to go somewhere that Jason doesn't want to, Jen will go.  She loves to travel, she will go anywhere.  Here are some pics of our cruise to Jamaica and Nassau, trip to Italy and at Turks and Caicos Islands for her wedding.

Always Busy

 We met some friends at the water park Friday.  It was a blast even though it rained and was a little chilly.

                                                                 Just me and my boy.

                                                           My swimming buddy Caroline.

 Jack's last baseball game of the season, he did great, he has improved so much this year, I am so proud of him.

                                                                        Little Slugger.

 He came home to some happy mail, his friend Noah had sent him Lego figure, candy and a letter.

                                Then Jack had a classmates birthday party to go to at stacks.

                                   What a crazy concoction of ingredients, and he ate all of it.

                                                                      some classmates.

 Then we swung by for Jack's Uncle doug's birthday. Jack just had to get a hug from Miss Shannon.

First smashbook page in my new smashbook

My friend Cass got me my very first smashbook and made me a cute kit in a travel toiletry case which I thought was very creative. I thought it was fitting since she inspires my craftiness, for my first page to be about our friendship. after I did this page I started organizing everything and where I want to put it in the book.  My major problem with scrapbooking is I never had the photos printed off, it was just time consuming to edit, crop and red eye all of them them upload them to the company and wait for them to be printed.  So, I got creative. My Mom has made me a photo calendar for the past 2 years, and I haven't wanted to throw them away, so I have just held onto them.  A light bulb went off one day as I thought to myself these pictures are already cropped, edited and printed. I just have to cut them out.  Yay, I finally have use for the pictures in the calendars.  I have been told I have horrible handwriting, but smashbooks are more like a diary , your thoughts and feelings about the event or person.  so, I journaled,I wrote about how we first met and became friends.

Then I had a dinner date with little man at Chedders, he just had to pose in front of the fountain.

Harry Potter Party

I have been playing catch up with my blog, since I did not post a lot last year, just posting the stuff from last year that have been asked about a lot.  Jack had a Harry Potter party for his 6th birthday at an inflatable place. We had a private party room, that I could decorate a table in.
I made cute Hedwig bags for the kids. I was so tired that I didn't take a picture of what was inside the bag. LOL. But the kids got rings with the crest of the 4 different groups in the movies (Ravenclaw, etc).A hard plastic drinking cup filled with candy and a black cauldron that I got from the Oriental trading company filled with jelly beans. I labeled the cauldrons "Berttie Botts any flavored beans" with a silver sharpee.  And of course everybody got to pick a home made hand crafted by me, LOL wand.  It was so funny even the parents wanted a wand.  So I did the Hedwig bags before I had a Pinterest account , but I used to browse through and get ideas, I don't remember where I found these, but I saved the pictures of my inspiration for the Hedwig bags. I liked the design of the top owl and the ruffles of the lower owl to look like feathers, but I didn't have a lot of time, so I did the top owl in Hedwig colors and just drew feather ruffles with a grey marker.

 I was also going to make butter beer, but since I didn't have it at my house I couldn't get as creative as I would have liked to.  So I took these butter beer and pumpkin juice labels and wrapped them around a hot cocoa packet and put in their goody bags. I also attempted to make chocolate frogs, but that was a disaster. There were only 2 good frogs out of the 24 I made and I just let Jack eat them.

Here is a picture of the bags and wands that I made.  The wands were fun. I had done all this research on wandmaking and to be honest it all looked complicated. I already had a lot of crafts, since I am a crafter and scrapbooker too.  I just raided my supplies.  I bought 2 cheap packages of 12" dowel rods at Hobby Lobby and went to work.

As you can see some are way better than others. I took my scrapbook ink and cover the rod with one color, let it dry then sprayed them with my gold walnut glimmer mist spray, let that dry, then I used a hot glue gun to create a handle. Some of the wands, I used electrical tape for handles, some just did designs with the glue gun, but then I remembered my fun flock, I covered the handle with glue then rolled it in the fun flock to make fuzzy handles.  Those turned out the best. I printed cute Olivanders wand shop labels, with which character the wand belonged to in the movie and what it was made out of.  Like one side of the tag would say unicorn hair and dragons blood or whatever and the other side said the characters name. Then I attached them to the wands with twine.  The other end of the wand looked bare and sad so I used stickles glitter glue on the very ends to make it sparkly and make it look like the magic is coming out of the wand.

I also made edible wands, which were pretzels dipped in white chocolate then dipped in colored sugar.  I made treacle fudge and golden snitch truffels, which were just Ferrero Rocher chocolates, and then I hot glue gunned white feathers on either side.

Not the cake I wanted but the Hogwarts cake kit was apparently discontinued.

The kids had a blast.  Jack felt so grown-up finally being old enough to have a school party and not just a family party.

My bestie and I being super silly.  I almost wore Jack's Harry Potter Halloween costume as party hostess. LOL It was a blast.

A Smashing good time

For those who don't know what smash booking is. it is what the old 80's scrapbooks used to be, before they went and got all fancy. You know a concert ticket stub, a funny quote, a picture from a amagazine smashed into a notebook.  That is actually how my first 2 scrapbooks were, invitations, cards, newspaper articles, marriage advice from the bridal shower all smashed in, but when I showed my scrapbooks to people they were just kind of like, you can do better than that. I have also been told that my handwriting sucks and to type everything and not to journal or hand write anything anymore.  Well, I will turn 35 this month and have come to the conclusion that these are my special memories of mine and my families lives and will do it however I want to do it and just not care what people think. LOL  Which is how I should live my life anyway, not care what people think, but they sneak in somehow.  Well these first 2 smash pages I did last fall and I didn't have a proper smash book.  We have to print and mail recall cards to the patients at work and the cards are backed with cardboard that just gets thrown away. So I started collecting the cardboard, thinking I'll use these someday.  Well that is how my first smash book came about.  They are not as cute as the already prepared scrapbooks, but those 2 pages basically summed up my fall last year. 

      I had some sticker printer paper left of from a baby shower, so I printed pics of our favorite video games to play together and stuck them on and yes those are Angry Birds bandaids. Don't judge me, LOL.

 The next one, now keep in mind these were my 2 very first onesmade from a makeshift cardboard insert book, was of course The Hunger Games. I read the books and became obsessed for a short time then I got to book number three and it was so slow, I barely got through that one. As you can see I clipped magazine clippings, movie tickets and artwork.

Then I visited my sweet friend Cass in Tennessee and saw all her smashbooks and got motivated. Our birthdays are in the same month so we always get together and celebrate. She got me my first smashbook. So of course I started getting organized. I can't wait to use my new book.