Father's Day

In recent years, Father's Day has been a painful day for the boys and I as it tends to highlight Dave's absence. There's nothing I can do take away the boys' pain, except maybe a few extra hugs and a shoulder to cry on. However, since God brought Jim into our lives, we have a reason to really celebrate again. These photos are from our first Father's Day with Jim. The first of many celebrations as a blended family. 

One thing that I am learning as part of a blended family, is that holidays can trigger or exaggerate emotions that lurk right under the surface. Not only for the boys and girls, but even for Jim and me. While we are happy that we all have each other, there is pain because this is not how any of us originally pictured our life.

While we do not have this whole blended family thing perfected, one thing that amazes me is how God's grace is so evident in how our kids respond to each other on these special holidays. For example, today, Father's Day 2019, Alyssia used her own money to buy flowers for the boys to place on Dave's grave. On holidays where the girls have to split there time between mom and dad, the boys are genuinely willing to wait to celebrate until the girls have arrived. 

So today, we celebrated. The girls celebrated their father and the boys celebrated the memory of their dad and the awesome step-dad they have. We laughed and cried (a little!) but most of all, recognize the blessings of a heavenly father who made us a family and is faithful to continue to knit us all together with every new memory we make!

Scrapbooking Tips:
I wanted a masculine looking layout and didn't have any other photos than the ones of Jim opening up his presents. My solution was to create a grid layout. I loosely took this idea from a Scrapbook Generation sketch, but had to adjust it because I did not have a lot of photo options to work with.

I used 6x6 pattern paper from The Stamps of Life to create the background and banner detail in the upper right corner. I was happy to have this Father's Day documented and the bright, cheerful look to the layout!

Reptiles

I need to start this post with a disclaimer - I absolutely, positively HATE reptiles, especially snakes. I've told my boys that I will never allow them to own a pet snake, and most likely nothing from the lizard family either! However, my boys don't seem to mind snakes or any other reptiles, and they were totally enthralled with the reptile tent at a carnival type event we attended in 2015.

They wanted me to take their pictures as they handled the snake and touched various other animals. So despite the fact I cringed as I look at these pictures, I couldn't leave them out of the scrapbook.

Scrapbooking Tips:
With the exception of the letter stickers I used in the title, I used all The Stamps of Life supplies to create this layout. I created the border by die cutting various size circles, overlapping them, and adhering some with adhesive foam.

I did die cut some circles using the Dotted Circle Dies and used the holes to stitch around the circles to give some dimension to the border. All in all, I really like this page - even if there are snakes on it!

Watering the Flowers

This is one of those moments with a toddler that can't help but make you smile. For some reason, Zach had shed his shorts, put on a swim diaper, but got sidetracked when he saw a watering can on the porch. I had to keep from laughing as I saw him come out in a polo shirt, his sneakers, and a swim diaper! This kid probably made ten trips in and out of the bathroom, filling up the watering can, and watering the tiger lillies out front. Too cute!

Scrapbooking Techniques:

This was a fun layout to put together and it features one of my favorite techniques - using strips of brightly colored paper to create a background! 

One way I stretch my stash of letter stickers is to mix and match when it comes to creating titles. Many times, I will use tiny letter stickers to spell out the smaller words in my titles, such as: the, and, of, a, in, etc, like I did in this title. It also can be more aesthetically pleasing because you can scrunch a title to fit in a smaller place, or more easily center it because you don't have to fit in the full size letter stickers.  

Zach in the Bushes

I love to create layouts of the everyday, normal things that happen. The way I think is if something was cute enough to take a picture and laugh about it, it is "scrapbook worthy".

Dave was outside working and the boys were playing in the yard. For no apparent reason, Zach started climbing into the bushes! He was extremely determined to get into them and would not give up. Then, as soon as he seemed to reach his goal, he climbed back out. At the time I found it very funny. Zach didn't typically stick to something for longer periods of time and to see him be so persistent for something that didn't make a lot of sense was cute and quirky! So . . . it ended up in the scrapbook.

Scrapbooking tips:

Because of all the green in the pictures, I used green/earth tones for these pages. I thought the rusty orange color was a nice contrast so I carried the orange strips across both pages.

I did not want to take a long time on this layout, so I chose a sketch from Scrapbook Generation that featured all 4x6 and 6x4 photos to save time on cropping. The thick strips of paper were easy to cut and ink, and I used stickers that coordinated with this paper collection to embellish the layout. The stickers had phrases on them to take the place of the title, and thereby saving time on spelling with letter stickers. Altogether, this layout took only 20-25 minutes!

I even kept my journaling short and sweet!