Relay For Life

Last night we participated in Relay For Life for the second year in a row.  It's such a beautiful event.  It's a chance to remember those who have lost their battle with cancer and to celebrate the survivors.  As those who are close to us know, our family has been hit hard in the last 15 years.  I've lost an uncle and three great uncles.  My brother was diagnosed at 24 and is a survivor.  My cousin was diagnosed a couple years ago and is living with Leukemia.  We've also had a number of people in our family who have had skin cancer remover.  As you might imagine, Cancer organizations get our full support.

I love being a part of Rely because you get to interact with the survivors and hear the stories of those who have battled this horrendous disease.  Even though there are always tears shed, it is an evening of celebration and heartwarming to see so many people come together for a good cause.  Plus, we always get my brother up here for a visit :)

Here are a few of my photos from the event.

My favorite!  My brother, Andy, with the boys.

My mom and Austin

Kait and Bren

 Backs of our team shirts

 Survivor Lap

 Inside the tent.  The boys stayed all night with buy mom and Andy.

Luminary bags--a couple of them.  I realized too late that we should have used thicker, darker markers  because they didn't show up very well in the dark.

 The memory lap lit only by candlelight (and a few stage and booth lights).

Idaho Travel Album Using Cruisin'

You'd think with summer off, I'd get around to blogging more.  That hasn't happened so far.  I did want to share this little 6x6 album I made yesterday.  My grandparents came for a visit and I wanted to put something together to document their trip and share the photos I took.

I used Cruisin' papers from CTMH, along with the coordinating foil stickers and bottle caps.  I also used a few miscellaneous stamps and rub-ons.  The pages are fairly simple because I wanted the photos to stand out and my grandparents don't really care for fancy, heavily embellished items.  I was so happy to get this out in the mail for them today.  I hope they love it :)

June Club Pages--Victory

This month we are using Victory papers and Stickease for our pages.  The first two layouts are from the Victory Workshop on the Go.  I haven't added titles or journaling to some, but hey, the first two use photos from our Alaska trip, and we just got back Sunday :)  I will post more photos of the trip later this week.  I only took 450 pictures!  

This layout will have a 7x 9 1/2 photo of the beach across the top.  I haven't been back to Costco to pick it up.  These are from our Oregon Coast last year. I'll re-post it later.

Lucy Cards

 I'm not sure why these cards never got posted.  They were from Card Club back in March.  I used Lucy papers, Lucy Rub-ons, the Lucy Workshop on the Go stamps, Happy Birthday, and THank You stamp sets.  I also used lots and lots of Bitty Sparkles.

This one was based on a card I saw on Pinterest.  Click here to see the original on Split Coast Stampers.

This last one was an Easter set using My Peeps stamp set.  

School's Out For Summer!!

I made it through another school year.  While I love my students and feel truly blessed to work where I do, I am ready for summer break!  I love not having a schedule and spending time with my boys!  Extra time to scrapbook and craft doesn't hurt either :)

I have lots of projects to share, and I'm going to try to find some time to share them, but our first three weeks of summer are going to be extremely busy.  Next week, we are headed to Alaska on a cruise.  I am beyond excited, as this is my first time ever going on a cruise.  It's taken me 13 years to convince Mike.  After six years in the Navy, he swore he'd never set foot on a ship again.  This trip was just too fun to pass up.  I'm looking forward to taking LOTS of photos to scrapbook when we get home!  Two days after we get back,  my grandparents arrive.  While I'm very excited for their visit, it means I need to spend this week getting the house cleaned and reorganized.

For now, I wanted to share these Dotty cards I made as gifts for my secret pal and Bren's teachers.  I love the bright colors of the papers, but soon realized I don't have very much card stock in those colors.  I guess I need to stock up :)  They aren't the greatest photos because I took them on my phone at midnight, when I finally finished them.  Most of them are ones I created after looking at hundreds of ideas.  The only one I totally scrap lifted was the first one.  I got the idea from this card by Tiffany Jackson.

Studio J Layout--Limo Ride with Jingle Papers

Over Christmas break, we took a limousine Christmas light tour.  We had won the trip at our school's dinner auction.  I thought the bright colors of the Jingle papers worked nicely with the photos.  I pretty much used the layout as is.  the only things I changed were adding a mat to the title and adding the stitching around the journaling on the second page.

Larger view of left page

Larger view of right page

Studio J Layout using Superhero papers

The other night I sat and created a few Studio J layouts because I hadn't taken advantage of my membership the last couple months.  This first layout was from our Ice Skating outing over Christmas break.  I thought about using more wintery papers, but the colors of this went so well with the boys' hats and jackets.  

Bigger versions, if you want to see details.  

I figured at some point I would buy these papers, since I have a house full of boys, but this showed me just how versatile they are!  I love the coordinating Stickease!  Another advantage of Studio J--playing with papers and embellishments before I buy them :)