I love Football Season!

Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I like to see the leaves turn golden and break out the hoodies!! Us country folk love our hoodies. This year brings extra excitement because my son is playing football. Not only do I love to watch and cheer for football, I recently discovered I love to scrapbook it too!! I made this layout to celebrate my son's rookie year (uh, oh. Is that strictly a baseball term?). Anyway, I used the nice, big Rustic Alphabet stamp set for my "IMPACT" title and used second generation stamping to make a second set for a shadow effect. The mock-football field I created along the bottom of the page wow'd everyone at my most recent gathering and it was so simple to make. I used a dry embossing technique to create my lines, evenly spaced, and then lightly sanded the paper to reveal the white core of the cardstock. Then I simply stamped little numbers for the yard-lines. This was a fun project and I'm looking forward to creating more artwork for my son's football memories.

My artwork

I've turned my passion for scrapbooking into a new business venture. I recently became an Independant Close to My Heart Consultant! I've always loved CTMH products and this gives me a chance to share my love of scrapbooking with friends and make a little money too. I have several gatherings in the coming weeks and I'm planning a retreat for my connections club members in January. Connections club is a great way to earn free stuff!

I've gotten a lot of complements on this scrapbook page I made of my daughter Grace and her friend Phebe.

I've been trying to wrap up my daughter's camp scrapbook from our week at Peaceful Valley in July. This is one of the pages I made celebrating "Mr. Genius", our camp clown. The girls really loved having him at camp this year. The backwoods papers from CTMH are perfect for this album, I can stay with the same color-scheme on every page because the greens and browns go perfectly with the photo's from camp.

I also used the Field Trip Alphabet stamp set for my title and some chocolate ribbon to add texture. Although I sometimes can't stand my own handwriting, I think it's important to include some of my own writing in every scrapbook I do. For this page I just used a journaling block from the Back Country Level 2 My Stickease Assortment to add my own thoughts about Mr. Genius and how much we appreciate him.

For my "Cabin Time" page I wanted to show the time that the girls had each night in the cabins to socialize, write letters home, or just goof around with their friends. I wanted to express the "time" element in a creative way because while the girls enjoyed their cabin time each night, us cabin leaders were exhausted and ready for lights out! I used the All-Out Adventure Rub-Ons to make two clocks, one showing the start of cabin time and the other showing lights out! I also stamped my page title onto some ribbon and attached with brads to go with the rustic feel of camp.

These are some thank you cards that I made for my guests at my first gathering. I like to include a hand-made card with the guest's ordered goodies when I distribute them to let them know how much a appreciate their business.

Snow Day Memory

We finally got some snow here in the midwest. My kids thought it wasn't going to happen. So today, they're on their third snow day in a row and I predict they'll be bored by 1:30. I'm very thankful for all my mom memories, I have a treasure trove full. One of my favorites always comes back when it snows. December 20, 2004- they were cooped up in the house and getting really bored. My daughter, Shelby was 7. She was going through a "dress-up" phase. I say phase because she's into barbies now, seldom dress up. Anyway, she would twirl around the house in her clicky little plastic high heals with her pink feather boa and her teal Little Mermaid dress and then change into her cheer uniform and tennis shoes and jump around chanting and whooo-hoo-ing. I don't remember exactly what I was doing, but I was distracted. She came in and asked me, "can I dress Austin up like a girl?" Without giving it any thought, I said, "Sure."

Now, Austin was five at the time. He's a very rough and tumble, dirt collecting boy who's had numerous trips to the E.R. for critter bites and bike accidents. At the age of five he was a firm believer in the existence of cooties and that girls were the prime carriers. So, as soon as I uttered that word, "Sure", I thought "oh boy, here we go." "He's gonna get mad that she even asks to do this and they'll be fighting in a minute."

Well, a few minutes went by and I didn't hear the arguement that I was sure was coming. Instead, it was eerily silent.....

And then I hear the clicking of those plastic heals in the kitchen...... so I walk in....... to find....

My son in a pink, sparkly princess dress with a blonde wig on and those high heals!! Yep, Kodac moment. We've had the close up posted on our refrigerator for four years now! Someday, really soon, I'm sure he'll make me take it down. It gives everyone who comes into our house a chuckle.

And now, as I sit typing, my roudy nine-year-old speeds around doing donuts on his four-wheeler in the field behind our house. I'm thankful to be living in the era of photography and pink dress-up dresses and wish kids didn't grow up so fast.

The hat

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Every Christmas my family and many of my parents' friends play a gift game at our party. Everyone brings a gift worth approximately $10. We put all the gifts in a pile under the tree and everyone draws a number out of a hat. Whoever draws number 1 goes first. This is the unlucky number to have. That first person picks a gift and opens it. The second person has to choose, they can either open another gift or steal the first person's gift. If they steal, the first person has to open another gift. The third person can steal either of the opened gifts or open a new one. This keeps going until all gifts are opened. The person with the last number gets to choose from all of the gifts that have been opened or end the game by opening the last gift. We have about 25 people playing every year and it really gets fun. Weeks before Christmas my husband and I start shopping for the perfect gift for this game. Everyone wants the gift that they brought to be the "fought-over" gift, the one that gets repeatedly stolen. And, of course, if nothing else interests you then you simply steal the gift that you brought. This year's big gift was a warm hat my mom had bought. Nearly everyone had the hat at one point and my mom took a picture every time it was stolen. I think toward the end of the game we were all fighting for it just to get our picture taken in it. With many other great gifts up for grabs, including tools, Christmas decorations, even money, the hat was heavily pursued. I had the hat twice and as things came to an end, at the last minute...... it was grabbed again. My cousin, Ray ended up with it and the rest of us were forced to accept what we were left holding. So... I wonder what I should bring next year......