Take Twelve- April version

Can't believe that April is halfway done! Thank goodness that I'm playing along with Ella Publishing's Take Twelve challenge. At least a small snippet of my month is documented. Here's my April version...

1. Starting the day with clean dishes makes me happy.

 2. Went outside to capture some evidences of rain that happened the night before. Love the droplets of rain water against a bright "spring" green leaf.

3. My go to accessory. My outfits are pretty simple everyday but wearring my favorite pearl earrings always add that special "put together" touch.

4. Getting ready to mail some cards for publication.

5. After a trip to the dentist (never fun) I took some "me" time and walked around our local Pottery Barn store. I also window shopped through Pier 1 imports. Love getting creative ideas through browsing my favorite stores.

6. Had some chocolate-peanut butter cookies as a dessert after lunch. The cookies were leftovers from treats I brought to a church activity the night before.

7. Can't go on a day without "pinning" things in Pinterest. Today I found some great recipes including this pancake pop stick.

 8. With chips and my music in hand, I'm ready to work on some creative projects.

 9. Helped Marcus with homework.

 10. Came back from a school activity where they had a luau party for Title 1 kids (kids that get extra help in reading and math) and their families hence the lei (sp?) on my neck.

11. Read with Maddie. We read three books and she's doing really well reading most of them.

12. After the kids have gone to bed, Mitch and I watched a movie that we picked up at the Library titled "Like Crazy". We didn't have high marks for the movie but anytime together is still very much cherished.

To learn more about the Take Twelve challenge, please click here.

Till next time,

Grace

PBK new sketch + an Ella layout

Happy Monday guys! Thanks for stopping by the blog. Today's order of business is some crafty links and shares. Let's get started shall we...

So did you play along with Paper Bakery kit's April sketch #1? I hope you did because that layout sketch had so many possibilities and I hope it inspired you to create something fun. Well today's the launch of April's sketch #2 and it's a card sketch. Everyone needs a new card to welcome the Spring season so why not use this sketch to make some cards today?!

I made three cards using this sketch and one of them is this the above photo. To see of this card plus the other two I made, please head on over the Paper Bakery kit today here.

Oh and the April kits were revealed yesterday and the above photo is a look at what you will recieve if you order the April Add On kit. Looks good huh?

and finally, I was able to contribute to an article that was posted at Ella Publishing last week. The theme was Spring and I took that inspiration to create a layout about my new haircut + color which I got done late last year. I used green as my main color scheme because (a) it coordinates with the green tank top I had in the photo and (b) Green is very much a spring color. Head on over here to learn more about this layout and read the fabulous Spring themed article that Ella Friend Kelly wrote.

So that's it for me today. I hope you all have a fantastic week.

Till next time,

Grace

Spring/Easter Decor

Hi all. Happy Friday. Today I'm sharing my Easter/Spring Decoration. My big thanks to Pinterest for all the ideas that led to how I decorated my home for the season. Here's what I've done...

This fireplace is in my family room and I got the idea of the plastic egg garland here. After I've done the ends with ribbon and took a photo of it, I've decided to change it up to curling ribbons instead.

I've done the ribbon topiary a loooonnnggg time ago. I believe I got that idea from a Making Memories project sheet but it's super easy and I was able to use up a ton of ribbon scraps.

I decided to dress up some candles with paper and chipboard sticker.

This is supe easy, all you need is a bunch of ribbons (all sizes, designs and texture), pins and a foam ball. Oh and a dowel as well and a vase to use. Curl the ribbon into a circle, fold the ends on top of each other then tuck the pin through the two ends then poke it in the foam ball. Fill the ball with curled ribbons and then poke the dowel on the bottom.

With this one, I repurposed a frame that I haven't been using, cut a spring themed paper to size to fit inside the frame and then using stencil, die cut machine or your own handwriting cut out a monogram to place on top of the frame glass.

this collage is in my dining room. I bought the fake flowers and little bunny ceramic decor at the dollar store, the milk glass candle holder at an antique place and made the flower tri fold frame thing (sorry I don't really know how to call it) myself.

this went on my wall in the dining area. I used papers (I got tons of those) into triangles, I layered the cardstock with pattern papers, stickers and spelled out Happy Easter. Then I punched holed on the top ends and connected the banner with brads.

and then in the front room I had made pillows to welcome the new season. You've seen my flower rosette pillow made for Glue Arts before and then I discovered some fun bunny print fabrics in my stash which I made two more "spring themed" pillows with.

so there you have it. As you can see, it doesn't take much money to make your home Spring ready. All you need is a lot of imagination (or in my case inspiration gathered from Pinterest) and a determined pair of hands to create.

Happy Spring everyone.

Till next time,

Grace

Easter outfits 2012

This year's outfit all started with Maddie's skirt. It was my only fabric that had enough yardage to complete a skirt plus a color that's close enough with the season. Hence the orange theme going on with all of our attires. This was taken right after church.

Like I said, I wanted to sew Maddie a skirt and because it turned out cute enough (it only took me 5 hours to make it!) I decided that it would be my foundation to build everyone's outfits from. Luckily I had a few more scraps leftover from the skirt that I was able to sew Marcus a tie. For Mitch, I just bought him a tie with some orange on it (scored one at Ross in the clearance section) and for me, I shopped my closet. Thankfully there was something there that worked!

I love, love, love this photo of him. I can't believe how he's growing up right before my eyes.

and of course my little model.......

I bought some fake flowers at JoAnns then turned them into hair things for me and Maddie plus a flower ring for me. I took some photos during my process and I'll share that as a tutorial next week.

 Loving my blue-eyed man!

and a shot taken with the tripod and a camera remote.

If you are interested in the tie and skirts. Here are the tutorials I used for them. For the tie. For the skirt. If you want to see more of what I've planned on making in the sewing department, you can always check my pinterest sewing board here.

Hope you all had a great Easter.

Till next time,
Grace

Project 365 Week 14

Crazy busy, Easter prepartions plus celebrations and of course creating! Just some of the things that occured this past week. Read on to learn more....

Till next time,
Grace

BTW, tomorrow is the 12th of the month so if you are playing along with Ella Publishing's Take Twelve Challenge, make sure you get your camera ready for snapping tomorrow. :)

Project share Tuesday edition

Hello guys. Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday. The Easter weekend was busy, a bit tiring but a lot of fun and with that I took a bit of a break on Monday. But I'm rejuvenated now and ready to share today, so let's start with some projects...

My latest layout featuring some products from the Paper Bakery April Add on kit went live yesterday at the blog. You can check it out here. I can't believe that these photos of me and hubby where from last Easter. Wow time sure flies when you're having fun.

This second layout can be found at the CSI challenge blog. This month all of the Paper Bakery design team along with our fearless leader/owner Sarah is guest designing there and here's my first page of the month. Challenges are fun BUT they are also very hard, especially this one. I was stumped with the muted color scheme and if you know me, bold is better in my eyes but I plugged along and I liked the result. To play along, check out the CSI challenge blog here.

Last Sunday our faith had our semi annual general conference. This is the time where we listen to our prophet and leaders counsel us on things that would help us get through our challenges right now. I love this time because I can get inspiration without having to leave my home but also I can sit there and listen while my hands are working hard on creating.

I made some cards using my scrap stash and here's a couple of them....

So there you have it. I'm always creating something and it's one of my favorite times when I can finally share them with you all.

Happy Tuesday.

Till next time,

Grace

Family Camping Trip Part 2

So after surviving a miserable night, we started today with some hot breakfast which included scrambled eggs with sausage wrapped in a flour tortilla and some hot cocoa.

After the meal and a needed campfire, we headed out and explored some more. We found some more roads to take and drove our truck through some interesting terrain. It's a good thing we brought our four wheel drive truck cause our other vehicle wouldn't have survived the roads we took.

One of the roads we took had a patch of thick snow still on the road. We stopped before we got to the snowy roads and walked around the area instead. Here's Marcus slipping and sliding around the snow.

After a morning of exploring, we headed back to the campsite and had some lunch. Guess what we had? more MRE's. By this time, we were starting to get fed up with it. LOL.

After lunch, Mitch found a safe spot just over a hill and set up a shooting range. All the family got to use the 22 to target shoot.

I took this photo while sitting in my camp chair. This is how far we were from our target paper.

Even I got in the action!

Here's Marcus testing his aiming. For the record...Mitch gave the kids a quick gun safety lesson before we started the target shooting activity and we were always mindful when the kids had the guns.

I love this photo of Maddie so intense in her aiming. She really didn't aim very well but I love how this shot made it seem like she did.

At about 4pm, Mitch came up to me and suggested that we go home early because he thought that it's not good for the kids to go through another cold night. He didn't have to twist my arm so we packed up and went home earlier than planned (our original plan was to stay another night and leave the following day). The kids found this rope tied on tree branch that can be used as a swing and they got so sad that we had to leave early. But the thought of having to sleep another night in the cold and hard ground just didn't seem appealing to us.

Once we got out of the 'forest' area, we spotted a big herd of Elks in the side of the road. So cool to see this much wildlife, just on the side of the road. I haven't seen this much wildlife since we went on our Yellowstone trip.

On our way home,we stopped by Subway for dinner. No more MRE's for us for a while. Once we got home, we all took a much needed hot shower and slept in our comfortable, warm beds.

So that's our trip. It was fun, exciting and there's definitely a few lessons learned, i.e. do not forget the Chili you slaved all day to make to take to the camping trip in the refrigerator. *wink*

Thank you for stopping by.

Till next time,

Grace

Family Camping Trip Part 1 *Picture heavy*

Like I've mentioned in my Project 365 post last Tuesday, the kids were off school last week for Spring Break and we had decided to go camping. Since moving to Colorado, we haven't gone camping. With trying to sell the house in California, our move here and navigating our way around the area, we are just not feeling confident to do the "camping" activity.

Prior to this trip, we took a day trip to search for places to camp. We were initially looking into camping at paid site but once we found the camping locations in the Pike's National Forest, we decided that that's the place for us. It's free to camp and had some great views. The only draw back was that it didn't have any restrooms so we were roughing it!!!

Here are some of the highlights of our first day. We took a lot of pictures so I'm dividing our trip share into two days of posts. Make sure you check out tomorrow's post for more from this trip.

One of the beauty of living in Colorado is being so close to the mountains. Before, it would take us four hours to drive to our favorite camping place in the Mojave desert but now, it only took us about one hour to get to our campsite location.

While exploring through the forest, Maddie spotted a couple of deers. I rushed to take a photo of the wildlife but the deer were still so far that even with my 200mm lens, he was still very far. This is the best we got.

After driving around to explore, we stopped by a creek to have lunch. What's on the menu? MRE's (meals ready to eat). Everyone got to choose which one they wanted and I got stuck with the vegetarian meal. It wasn't that bad!

Here's our view while eating our lunch by the creek. Marcus even found a fish floating in the water. It's really a neat place.

When we finally settled into our campsite, we pitched our tents and walked around to gather some wood for our fire tonight. The family were competing who got the most and best woods. Where we were located was a great spot because the area around our campsite were littered with sticks and branches all around the ground.

After our wood gathering activity, we got our hiking sticks, dressed up warm (it was a bit chilly with the wind blowing on us) and hiked around our area.

We didn't know where we were going, we were just following the trail and at the end of the trail, we found this really neat rock formation.

we hiked down a bit further towards the road and it's interesting how there's still snow on the ground even when it's already late March.

here's the kiddos enjoying our hike. :)

While going up back on the trail, I mentioned how cute those little pine trees are and Maddie said...why don't you take a picture of it? So I took the photo with her. :)

On the way up, I found this broken branch to hang up my camera and set it for a 10 second timer and posed to get a family pic.

Once we got back, our family scout master taught our cubscout how to start a fire.

Here are the family roasting some marshmallows. Who can resist some smores?!

Here are the kids excited to "sleep on the ground". It was very cold tonight, hence Maddie wearing her thick jacket. I had forgotten that each sleeping bag has a different temperature they can go down to and the kids' bags can only go down to 42 degrees so Mitch brought two old fashioned bags that we sandwiched their sleeping bag in between.

After settling inside our tent, we played a round of the card game Pictureka. I won the round. :)

We will learn that tonight would be a tough one with the cold and hard ground. It was a bit miserable but we are "tough" and we survived the night!

Check back tomorrow for more. :)

Till next time,

Grace