Ice Cream for Breakfast

I created this layout to showcase just some of the ice cream the boys (& Mommy!) ate for breakfast at Give Kids the World Village. What I found funny was that out of all the flavors and toppings they offered, both boys got the exact same thing every visit - a chocolate cone for Caleb and a vanilla cone for Zach. Not much has changed . . . except now Caleb will ask for lots of chocolate syrup and Zach will have a little vanilla ice cream with his whip cream!

Scrapbooking Tip:

I loved the pattern paper I found with ice cream and popsicles, but it was a busier print than I typically use. The only embellishments I used were ice cream cone stickers and then I left well enough alone!  

Splash Pad

  

While staying at Give Kids the World Village in Florida, the boys loved the Splash Pad! It was so much fun watching Zach run and play in the water. He was having a blast! Caleb wanted to experience it too, and thankfully he was still little enough I could pick him up and carry him. Dave would do anything in his power to let Caleb experience everything Zach was doing, so not caring what I might have looked like or what people thought, I just picked him up and got wet right along with him!

Scrapbooking Tip:

This is a quick and easy layout that went together in just a few minutes. I followed a Scrapbook Generation sketch that I have used multiple times. I love being able to include six 4x6 photos and it saves time because you don't have any photos to crop!

Even though I love to include journaling, there are some pages that just don't need it, and this was one of those layouts. It is in a vacation album, so that alone tells me when and where these pictures were taken, and the pictures are pretty self explanatory. Scrapping a vacation album can sometimes feel like an endless project and if I can get away without journaling on a couple pages it saves so much time! Also, I find when I'm working on a specific album, the more I can get done in a shorter amount of time, the more my creative juices flow!

Never Forget

I put together a layout of pictures to remember the time we went to the NY State Fair memorial honoring all state law enforcement officers and firefighters who have died in the line of duty. The boys and I were there for the dedication ceremony in August of 2014, but it was the first time we had been back. Jim was visiting a gun show being held at the State Fair in April of 2017. The fairgrounds were empty and we walked over to show Alyssia. 

I am still blown away when I see all the names of men and women who have died in public service - and these memorials don't even count military losses. For every name there are families who loved and grieved. Children who grew up without their father or mother, spouses who kissed their loved one goodbye not knowing it was their last moment together, and parents who had to do the unthinkable and bury a child. 

In the past, when I would see these memorials, I would walk right past. It wasn't that I didn't recognize that people have died for my freedom, and to keep me safe, but it wasn't until Dave died that I understood the cost. Now when I pass memorials of any kind, I'll linger for a minute, read the names, and think about the family left behind. In the act of stopping and consciously reading some of the names inscribed, it is a way of honoring and never forgetting the sacrifices made.

Scrapbooking Tips:

This is a layout I made using paper scraps from my Stamps of Life card kits. I also followed an Allison Davis sketch from her SixbySix2 scrapbooking class. In that sketch's notes she described how to create the piece work which involved cutting paper into 1x2 rectangles then cutting the ends on diagonal lines. 

When I showed some fellow scrapbookers this layout, a recurring comment was, "This must have taken so long!" It did take longer than most layouts I do, but it didn't seem it because I broke the work down in chunks. I cut my rectangles and then stuck them in a bag. During my lunch break at work I traced and cut the slanted edges. While watching TV, I inked the edges of each piece. By breaking the layout down into smaller tasks, it didn't feel like it took that much extra time. I also felt like I was scrapbooking a little every time I pulled out my paper rectangles!

I also have been asked why I chose a purple and grey color scheme. Those are NYSP colors, and Dave was a very proud NYSP Trooper. 

In the photo below, if you look at the stone under 2013, Dave's name is the last one listed.   

Catch a Wave

All around the pool at Give Kids the World Village there are photo opps set up. That's where we took these fun photos. Zach was really getting into posing but he kept climbing up on the wave and wouldn't stay on surfboard! 

Scrapbooking Tips:

Because I used so many full size photos, I kept my design as simple as a 1/2 inch border running above and below the photo block. I placed my title directly on top of the photos to draw your eye right to the pictures.

If you look at the layout, you'll notice that it looks like I did not leave enough space between "a" and "wave," but that was deliberate. When I carry a title across two pages I make a mental note to adjust for the space that will naturally occur when I put my layout in an album. If I had left a space between those two words it wouldn't have looked right once they were in the page protectors.

Once in the album, the title spacing looks normal.

After trying many styles and brands of albums, I decided to use  We R Memory Makers three ring albums for a couple of reasons. The biggest and best reason is the ease of putting layouts into your album - you can add pages without taking apart the whole album. Another reason I chose to use these particular albums is the wide variety of colors they come in. I choose a different color for each year's layouts and my shelves look like a rainbow of color! They are also durable, high quality albums - and the price is right if you wait for JoAnn's to run a 30% off sale and use a free shipping coupon! 

You can check out my favorite albums here.

Castle of Miracles

If you read the previous post, I talked a little about Give Kids the World Village, where we stayed when Baking Memories 4 Kids sent us to Florida. Here is another layout showcasing some of the magic of this experience. 

At Give Kids the World Village, they have a Castle of Miracles where every "wish kid" can sign a star and it is placed somewhere on the castle's ceiling. After signing your star, you leave it with a volunteer after they give you your star passport. The next day you go back and scan your passport and a fairy shows you where your star has been hung. 

Both boys also received special wish pillows from a magical tree. They were still little enough to believe there really was magic in that castle. 

Scrapbooking Tips:

I created a border with gold glitter star stickers. When I had just the stars it didn't look "quite right" so I added red sparkly jewels. The round red embellishments helped tie in the polka dotted paper. 

Give Kids the World Village

This layout shows some photos from our Baking Memories 4 Kids trip to Florida. We stayed at an amazing place called Give Kids the World Village. You can only stay here if you have a terminally ill/disabled child. It was an absolutely amazing experience. 

You stay in villas with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, accessible bathroom and a washer and dryer instead of a hotel room. You can go to the Gingerbread House for meals, or have it delivered to your villa. There's even an Ice Cream Palace where you can have Ice Cream for Breakfast! Give Kids the World is staffed by volunteers who do whatever they can to give families a break from our day to day reality. 

Scrapbooking Tips:

This was an easy layout to "throw" together that uses 4 full size photos! I used a sketch from Scrapbook Generation to showcase some of our favorite photos that I didn't really want to trim down. 

To keep continuity in this vacation album, I tried to use a lot of bright primary colors - especially red when I scrapped layouts of Give Kids the World Village.

Journaling Close Up

Face Painting

This was a fun layout to put together! The boys loved having their faces painted so elaborately - Zach was Iron Man and Caleb had Angry Birds painted. They waited in a long line and then sat still for a long time. As soon as they were done they asked me to take a picture of them so they could see their faces. I love the big smiles!

Scrapbooking Tips:

I have challenged myself to use my card making supplies to create 50 layouts before the end of the year! I'm calling it "Scrapping My Stash". What prompted me to do this was the abundance of The Stamps of Life supplies piling up in my craft room. I love the bright colors and cute patterns that Stephanie Barnard designs and I wanted to incorporate it into my scrapbooks. The only issue was that my scrapbooks were 12x12 and the card making pattern paper was 6x6. So when I found a class by Allison Davis from Scrapbook Generation that focused on using 6x6 paper pads I knew what to do!

I created this layout using only 6x6 sheets of paper. I cut strips to create banners following one of  

the sketches. I cut photo mats out of The Stamps of Life cardstock that coordinate beautifully with the pattern paper left over from a card kit. I had left over embellishments from another card kit and the layout all came together! Creating this layout opened my eyes to all the awesome possibilities I had in my "stash" of card making supplies.

Click the link to check out one of Allison Davis' scrapbooking classes!

My Boys

This is one of my favorite pictures of the boys! Dave and I had gone away for the night and the boys spent the night at Grampy and Grammy's. The next morning Grampy posted this picture on Facebook and my heart melted. 

These two made me a mommy. They are the ones who came to me to have their boo boos kissed, to dry their tears and make them feel safe when they were scared. I don't always do right by them. I know how imperfect I am, and the mistakes I've made as their mom. But, just when I think I couldn't love them anymore, they do something to make me fall in love with them all over again!

Scrapbooking Tips:

Because I wanted to do this layout just for me, I didn't want to use any typical "boy" colors. I loved my mother-in-law's flower boxes in the background and the bright purple petunia's and that inspired the lavender / pastel color palette.

I Love Zach Hugs

What is better than hugs from your child? We were at Hershey's Chocolate World in Hershey, PA, and poor Zach was getting tired. He wanted me to hold him and when I picked him up he curled right up and hugged me.

This is such a special memory. This was a little less than two years after Dave died. I decided to take the boys to Lancaster, PA to Sight and Sound Theater to see a show, and then to Chocolate World - something Dave and I had planned to do together. We had made this same trip in 2001, and I was having such a hard time, remembering being there with Dave and feeling guilty that I was the one getting to see the boys experience everything.

When Zach cuddled up for a hug, my heart melted. It was just what I needed.

Scrapbooking Tips:

I used two of my favorite techniques on this layout. I made my own embellishments and added some hand stitching.

Once again, I used pattern paper from The Stamps of Life and created hexagon embellishments to mimic the pattern paper I used for one banner. This technique is not hard, just a little more time consuming than adding a sticker. Although I love using stickers, sometimes I feel like doing a little extra on the pages that bring back really special memories.

I also took the time to hand stitch the heart in the title. I love the look of stitching on my pages and wish I had the time I could do it on every page, but I know that is just not practical. This was a quick simple heart that took less than 10 minutes from start to finish! I used a stencil and paper piercer to poke the holes in my page.

I chose to stitch the heart to mimic the design in the hexagons to tie everything together. I really try to give my pages a cohesive look and I thought the stitched heart would help pull everything together!

Facial Time

I am blessed in the fact that my husband loves taking photos just as much as I do! When I saw the selfie he took with Alyssia, I immediately began imagining the scrapbook layout I would make. I love that Jim joined in and wasn't afraid of looking silly and even took the selfie.

Although I love to scrapbook the big life events like birthdays, Christmas, school events, it's the everyday moments that fill my scrapbooks. Moments like this would be lost without the time and attention to take the photos, and then my obsession to scrapbook them.

Scrapbooking Tips:

I used a sketch from Scrapbook Generation as my inspiration, and then went through my scrap pile from cards I had recently made. I cut my scraps into strips and inked the edges in black ink. I followed the sketch pretty closely and lined the top of the page, and then created the design behind the photo.

My favorite element on the page is the hexagon embellishments I created using dies from The Stamps of Life. I took the inspiration from the pattern paper I used. I thought the flower design in the hexagons gave the page a more feminine look, and picked green, pink and blue to be the accent colors. I used these same colors in the banners at the top of the page to help keep cohesive look.

The overall page is bright and cheerful and I was really pleased with the final results!

Zach & Mom

I typically do not like pictures of myself - I am my own worst critic, but this is one of my absolute favorite photos! I was laying on Caleb's bed talking to him and Zach came and jumped on my back. My mom was there and grabbed my phone and took this picture. I love that she was able to capture this cuddly moment.

I've learned that there is a last time for everything, and as the boys get bigger I know the day is quickly approaching where there will be no more cuddling. I love having pictures like this in my scrapbooks!

Scrapbooking Tips:

I challenged myself to use some of my card making supplies from The Stamps of Life to create scrapbook layouts. I used my favorite go to source for inspiration - a sketch from Scrapbook Generation - and then I gave it my own twist.

I loved the color pattern from the Friend pattern paper pad and picked the chevron paper as my starting point. The Stamps of Life only sells 6x6 pattern paper and 8.5x11 cardstock, so I had to get creative creating the larger banners. Once I had the widths I wanted, I cut my strips in half widthwise and then used the 6x4 photo to fill in the gap.

I die cut the hearts and created a visual triangle across the page. The page looked good, but I felt it was missing something. I dug through my stash of card kits and found these mirrored hearts and used them to add a little sparkle to the page.

I'm pleased with my results and love the memory this page brings back!

Star Wars Jedi Training

There is not much to say about this layout, but I wanted to share it in honor of May 4th. Sometimes my creative juices have run dry and I feel overwhelmed by the stack of photos waiting to be scrapped, and when this happens I turn to page kits. 

I had bought this page kit at a Creating Keepsakes Convention long before the boys even knew about Jedi Training at Disney. It was in my stash and thought it would be a good way to showcase my 5x7 photos of the boys taking on Darth Vader. I didn't add anything to it other than my photos. 

Sometimes a premade kit is all you need to add a little variety to your scrapbook! 

Darth Vader

This page does not have cute or poignant memories of my little guys, but I wanted to capture the feeling of when Darth Vader first appeared during Jedi Training. It was ominous because the theatrics were awesome! The actors leading the kids, starting to act nervous and announce they felt a "disturbance in the force" and then the fog started as the Imperial March (aka Darth Vader's theme) began to blare over the sound system. The doors opened to reveal the Sith Lord there in the flesh. 

The actor was phenomenal. He circled the stage, glaring at the kids and then the audience, while flipping his cape out the way over her shoulder. All the while you heard the amplified breathing noises synonymous with this character.

I was actually pleasantly surprised that Zach stuck it out. I was afraid he'd be too intimidated to continue, but he was an incredibly brave Jedi.

Scrapbooking Tip:

I absolutely LOVE this page and the story behind it is pretty cool. I had purchased this paper and die cut from Scrap Your Trip, and I originally planned to put only one 5x7 photo of Darth Vader on the layout. The problem was that no matter how I positioned it, I was blocking a major design on the paper, and in all honesty, it just looked stupid! 

I was working on this layout at ta scrapbooking retreat, and I remember one of my friends teaching a class on using pattern paper. I asked Annette what I should do with this paper. Immediately she told me I should cut a square out of the paper around the buttons, mat that square on a piece of black cardstock and then mount it with dimensional adhesive back in place.  The result was amazing. Her technique gave the paper a life of its own!

I tossed the original 5x7 photo and found my three favorite pictures of Darth Vader that could be cropped down to 3x4. I adhered them in a row at the top of the paper and then adhered the die cut title with adhesive foam. 

Without a doubt, this is one of my favorite Star Wars layouts. I left my comfort zone and was totally open to suggestions and it really paid off!

The Dark Side

I know I may be biased, but I thought my little Jedi's were adorable. Between the photos from the professional Disney photographers, and the pictures I took, I had over a hundred of them battling Darth Vader. I had a hard time narrowing them down to just eight prints for each boy!

I'll be honest. I love my boys, but I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. While I want to preserve these awesome memories, I'm running dry on Star Wars Inspiration when it comes to creating scrapbook layouts. So my solution to speed up the scrapbooking process but not sacrifice creativity was to  "scraplift" myself. I took one design and made two layouts.

I used a sketch from Scrapbook Generation that would allow me to use full size 4X6 and 6x4 photos. I normally follow these sketches completely, but in this case, I only referred to it for photo placement. I had a paper pad of Star Wars paper that had three sheets of each design. And this is where the creativity came in!

I cut the 12x12 sheet of paper in half. I adhered the now 6x12 pieces to the bottom of Caleb's layout. For the vertical photos, I trimmed them only slightly and put them on red photo mats (not to match Zach's clothes, but to match Darth Vader's lightsaber). I then adhered my photos as shown.

To create embellishments for these pages, I cut the various "dark side" phrases out of another piece of pattern paper from the same pad. I adhered those strips for the titles. Each boys' layout got different phrases. 

On Zach's layout, I created a mirror image, placing the pattern paper and vertical pictures on the top of the page. Even those these pages are basically identical, there are a few subtle differences. 

The photos are the most important element of these pages, so even though I took shortcuts, I'm completely satisfied with the finished product. They capture my boys living out the ultimate lightsaber battle, which I am sure they will never forget!