If I'm not scrapbooking I'm thinking about scrapbooking!
On this beautiful Friday in May, Matt and I decided to cut out of work early and grab a late lunch at our favorite taco joint. While we waited for our order to be brought to us at our sunny spot on their patio, we snapped a photo of each other taking a photo of each other. Who said we don’t know how to party?
I used older product from My Mind’s Eye and Jillibean Soup and cut the title with my Silhouette.
Today Stuck?! Sketches launches our second challenge of July! Grab the sketch and play along for prizes from DCWV and Creative Embellishments.
I was home visiting my mom and brother in North Carolina in the summer of 2014. One day we decided we needed to get outside and see something new. So we did a little online research and found what looked like a good fit for our needs: It was a park with multiple hiking trails and a picnic area, and it was within an hour of Mom’s house.
We packed the essentials, donned walking shoes and sun hats, grabbed our cameras, and hopped in the car. Our moods and hopes were high as we sped toward an afternoon of adventure and oneness with nature.
And it wasn’t all bad. I wouldn’t have you picture it that way. But it wasn’t exactly rich with adventure and oneness, either.
As a family unit, we don’t usually get an early start to anything. So, by the time we got to the park it was already pretty late in the afternoon. It seemed nearly deserted, and that was really no surprise considering it was late-August-in-the-south hot and humid. We set up and ate our picnic lunch, and that was nice.
Now full on sandwiches, salad, and ranch-flavored Doritos, it was time for us to take a hike. We loaded up on mosquito spray, grabbed our water bottles, and headed into the woods.
That lasted for all of 10 minutes—and seven of those were excruciating. It was just too much. Mom’s bad knees weren’t faring well on the rocky, root-riddled path. The mosquitoes were epic. And did I mention that it was like visiting Satan’s vacation home in the southern part of hell (Chapel Hill, where my mom lives, has been called the Southern Part of Heaven since a book of that name was published in 1950 by William Meade Prince.)?
Were we wimps? Oh, yes. Did we achieve the health and wellness benefits of a strenuous hike surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation? Not exactly. Did we rescue the disappointing experience with a well-deserved stop for ice cream on the drive home? What do you think? 😉
The Echo Park Happy Camper collection was perfect for these photos, so everything but the title came from it. I hand stitched the circle.
Today Stuck?! Sketches launches our first challenge of July! Grab the sketch and play along for prizes from Wycinanka and DCWV.
Our July 4th tradition has evolved over the years into: relaxing, going out for lunch served al fresco, and then enjoying the competing fireworks displays that our neighbors put on all around us. We get quite a good show in our own front yard!
I used patterned papers from the Pebbles Americana 6×6 paper pad. The flair is from Studio Calico. And I created the title with my Silhouette (the word “tradition” was a freebie I found on Jana Eubank’s site). I also played outside my comfort zone by spattering my background with Heidi Swapp gold color shine and red paint to echo the fireworks. (The gold looks much better IRL than in this photo.)
Today Stuck?! Sketches launches our second challenge of June! Grab the sketch and play along for a $20 gift certificate from Evalicious or two large pieces of chipboard from ScrapMatts.
We did it! Matt and I took over the planning of the security BSides conference, and we made it bigger and better than ever. We had about 400 attendees, standing room only for the keynote speech, and a Dual Core show to round out the two days. I’m not gonna lie—it was hard work. But I’m proud of how we worked together to make it great. Now we have to decide whether to organize it again next year. Ugh!
Photos, L-R:
I used patterned papers from Echo Park’s All About a Boy collection. The two pieces of flair are from different BasicGrey collections (Aurora and Fact & Fiction). And I traced the logo for the conference and cut it with my Silhouette for the title.
I love rain, and I just didn’t know when we moved to a drought-prone state like Texas how much I would crave it. So our particularly rainy season this year has been fabulous.
And if you’re really lucky, at the end of a storm you get to see a rainbow (or two).
The patterned papers are from a 2010 Making Memories collection called Spring, and I combined them with die cuts and transparencies from the Pink Paislee’s Hello Sunshine collection.