Alpine Valley

Why, yes, we did head to Wisconsin with our Parrothead gang again this August for a Jimmy Buffett concert and tailgate.  Thanks for asking.

And, yes, we had a great time!  Cheers & Fins Up!

Introducing My Grandson! ...and Baby Shower Crafts

It's been over two months since I posted!  But now I'm back with BIG news: My grandson, Finn, was born!

Isn't he adorable?!

 

Jess had an absolutely wonderful baby shower in September.  Lots of creative minds made it over-the-top.  Here are a few of the ideas.  I got permission to post them and put them on Pinterest, but because I didn't make them, I have no idea if they were based on other crafters' ideas or patterns.  I'm just passing them on, and hopefully the crafting world will forgive my lack of credit to the originals.

 

Disclaimer over, here are the pics, and be warned, this is a looooooong post.  The theme was fish and water (for Finn--get it?) Every table had an incredible centerpiece.

 

This one is a "diaper bouquet" with blue Sixlet and rubber duck candies in the vase.  The diapers are rolled to look like flowers and affixed to "stems."

Here's a "candy soda."  The candies are attached to a Styrofoam ball, and the soda glass is filled with rubber duck candies.

Here's a bouquet of blue suckers.  There were balloons tied to this and many of the centerpieces.  The doilies were from the dollar store, topped with mats cut with a Cricut.

This bundle represents the bundle the stork carries the baby in.  It's full of diapers and tied up with a receiving blanket.

Blue taffy skewers -- lots and lots of taffy.

 

This great diaper wreath greeted guests as they arrived:

It's made with a wreath base, diapers, ribbon, rattle, spoons, & a brush.

 

And on to the snacks.  No one should have left hungry or empty handed.  There were wraps and dip and lots of creative food: 

All of the guests were given "fish bowls"--little jars with blue & white "rocks" (jelly beans) and a Swedish Fish.

One of Jess's favorite foods is a white cheddar popcorn.  We filled these popcorn containers for each guest.  The handmade label says "She's ready to Pop!"  There were also baby stat sheets for each guest to guess when Finn would be born and his height, weight, etc.

There was also blue punch with little sharks swimming in it. 

 

And look at the cake table:

 

The cake was so cute!

A little Finn cake, complete with fins and cake balls with fins.  (This cake appealed to me as a Parrothead too.)

 

Awesome dipped pretzels:

I found out later these were hand painted.  Yikes.

 

This cute box of "babies" decorated the table: 

The babies are diapers wrapped in baby washcloths with a baby sock for a hat and decorated with ribbon, eyes, and safety pins.  They're nestled in a receiving blanket inside a box from Michael's.

 

This diaper cake was crazy!

It should have been a gift itself!

 

F is for Finn.  :)

This was made with a frame, scrapbook paper (CTMH), and painted wood pieces.

 

And last but not least on the cake table were these characters:

Sparkles and Elmo, Neal's and Jess's favorite toys.  Elmo is well-chewed.

 

And even more decorations:

A sand pail filled with fun baby stuff, a jar of daisies representing Neal & Jess's wedding theme, and a personalized piggy bank.

 

Now a little bit about the activities.  There were letters for guests to paint for decorating Finn's room.

I like how the fonts were all different.

And patterns to iron on all sizes and colors of onesies. 

Here are some of the finished onesies.  They turned out great!

 

And there were some gifts too.

This is Jess's opening a huge basket of 40 gifts for 40 weeks while her sister-in-law Tara tries to write down everything.

 

And here are Jess and Neal when he came to help load up all their new baby stuff. 

 

All for this little guy!

(having a happy stretch here)

Margaritaville Beach Hotel Layout

We had an amazing time at the Margaritaville Beach Hotel at Pensacola Beach, so I did a layout on the hotel itself.  The colors I chose go well with the sunset, the water, and even my shirt.  :) 

 

I used papers from CTMH's "Dream Pop" special kit and CTMH's "Footloose" paper pack.

 

Left page:

 

If you click on this picture of the left page, you can see it better.  The letters in "Margaritaville Beach Hotel" are from CTMH's "Keyboard" stamp set--a new favorite.  I stamped them with Lagoon ink to match the water-like paper from the "Footloose" papers.

 

 

The "Paradise" stamp is also in Lagoon ink and is from the "Footloose" WOTG stamp set.  Both pictures of Tom and me and Jess and Neal were taken from the balcony of our rooms.  The upper left picture is of our room.  What a view!  The bottom middle pic is Neal looking out the balcony window.  The bottom right picture is Jess looking out the hotel lobby window.  Everywhere you went, the view was spectacular!  Besides the papers, I added colorful paper flowers and a little bling.  Very quick and easy, but I love the colorful, summery, tropical feel of the layout.  It makes me want to go back!

Davis Bayou Layout

Our vacation wasn't all beaches and sun.  We also explored the Gulf Island National Seashore National Park.  In Mississippi near Biloxi, part of that park is Davis Bayou.  Here's the two-page layout of our pictures of the bayou and an alligator we found.  I used black cs for the base pages and six-inch pieces of B&T paper from CTMH's "Wanderful" papers on the inner halves of both pages.  The B&T paper is quite a bit more olive green than the pictures reflect.

 

 

Here's a closer look at page 1:

 

I used CTMH's Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge for the large letters and the leafy branches on both pages.  I don't usually like the look of Cricut cartridges plain (too coloring book looking), so I added ink to the edges of the CTMH Colonial White cs letters and black embellishments to the capital letters.

 

Here's a comparison of the branch cutout with and without shading.  It makes a huge difference.  I also added some black Stickles to each leaf for more detail.

 

 

 

And here's page two:

 

The little circle photo (a bullfrog) is raised with dimensional adhesive.  The small words on both pages are stamped with CTMH's "Keyboard" alphabet stamp set.

I added black Stickles and some sparkles for eyes to the dragonfly.

 

 

Here's the final layout again:

 

Celebrate Card with No-Sew 3D Hearts

This card's fancy factor far outweighs it's difficulty factor.

 

 

I started with an off-white card base, and I stamped "Celebrate" from CTMH's "Card Chatter-Birthday" stamp set.  Then I affixed the ribbon and bow.  Then I punched out 18 hearts the same size in papers that kind of coordinated, but definitely didn't all match.  Eight of the papers should be punched twice so you have eight pairs of hearts from the same papers.

 

 

Then glue down two of the hearts under the ribbon on the left and eight of the hearts in a strip down the right side.  Then fold the matching eight hearts in half and glue on top of their matches.  It's important to only glue this second set of hearts down the middle on the fold.  Once the glue is dry, make sure the top hearts fold up.  To make it look like the hearts were sewn on, I drew a black dashed line down the center of the strip of hearts.  Here's a close-up:

 

 

That's it.  No sew, now cs, no measuring, no fancy cutting!

Lambert's Cafe Layout

Jess & Neal's last name is Lambert, so of course we take pictures at Lambert's Café.  I have very similar photos of them from a few years ago that I've scrapbooked, so I kept this layout simple

The background B&T paper and zip strips are from CTMH's "Sarita" paper pack.  I left the white borders on the photos.  The title is stamped with Outdoor Denim ink on Goldrush cs.  I used the Cocktail Alphabet stamp set.  The "Happy Day," "Awesome," and "Be Yourself" arrows were cut from a zip strip from CTMH's "Free to Be Me" paper pack.  Lambert's Café has pretty cluttered décor, so I added lots of random embellishments, including smashed bottle caps. 

 

Pensacola Beach Layout

 

I made this layout with CTMH B&T paper from the Skylark paper pack.  I printed the large beach photo 8"x10" and matted it on craft paper, leaving the bottom margin larger.  All the smaller photos are matted with CTMH White Daisy cs.  The wooden pieces are CTMH Badge Buttons I stamped with various beachy images.  I found the blue plastic flip flops in a stash of "beachy stuff" I have.  I like the classic "scrapbooky" way the smaller photos are placed on the page.  Since the upper right photo and the water tower in the lower left clearly show where we were, I didn't add a title or journaling.

More scrapbooking layouts coming soon!

We've been traveling again!  This time we drove to Pensacola Beach, Florida.  I love this classic sign and can't wait to scrapbook it.

We stayed at the Margaritaville Beach Hotel, where my toenails matched my surroundings.  CTMH's new Seaside B&T papers are going to coordinate great with these vacation pages.

Here's a few more pics:

Jess and Neal went with us and had a great time too.

 

Sunsets are always beautiful at the coast.

 

Does it look relaxing?  It was!

 

We also spent some time in the Gulf Island National Park near Biloxi, Mississippi:

Neal and Jess are on a boat ramp on some bayou waters in the park.

 

 And this shot is an alligator pond, complete with alligator floating in the middle. 

 

I hope to get my unpacking done and start scrapping these memories soon!