Layout: Wild & Crazy

One of the most memorable moments from my Bachlorette weekend was trying to fix six grown women into a photo booth. We went to the mall to do a little shopping and pampering before our night on the town and I saw the photo booth and wanted to capture all of the beautiful women who shared that special weekend with me. It was hilarious trying to move around so that each person could be seen. While we didn’t accomplish that, we had some fun pictures to share!



Last weekend, I participated in a crop at My Scrapbook Nook, one best scrappy hangouts online. Leah puts together the best kits and I love them each and every month. This layout was created during a scraplift challenge and I scraplifted the talented Pam Brown’s layout A Boy and His Box. I love her linear style and how she uses color!

Layout: Wedding Cake Fail

One of the funniest things to happen at our wedding was when we dropped our first slice of cake on the floor. By that point in the evening I was feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and when the cake started falling over, I missed it completely and in landed on my foot. Needless to day we had to cut another piece to feed to each other! I was so glad there was no cake smashing (This is not a judgement on cake smashers, I just loathe being sticky) rather a slight tap of the cake on my nose before I insisted Ryan go ahead and give me a bite!



If you are married, was your wedding day perfect? What happened on your wedding day you will never forget?

Layout: Starting Point Challenge

Another layout inspired by Shimelle!





These pictures were taken in the summer of 2008 when I traveled to France and Germany. On our trip we saw many beautiful sights and places, but this was my favorite part of the trip. Moving from the hustle and bustle of the big city of Paris, into a smaller city of Strasbourg, then into the Black Forest. Getting back to nature- more like home and less like a concrete, foreign land. I love traveling and experiencing other cultures, but Paris was overwhelming for me. After a long layover and overnight flight, we had just enough time to set our luggage down and hit the ground running. I don’t think I was able to process being abroad, let alone in a land where I didn’t know the language . Outside of my ballet knowledge, I could say hello, please, cheese, and thank you. Yep. I was ill prepared for the trip but I fared better once we arrived in Germany!

Layout: Sweet Cousin

Today Ryan assembled a new paper storage unit for me and I sorted my paper by color. I have been skeptical about doing so, but taking Shimelle’s Explore class allowed me to see the benefit of organizing by color rather than keeping all of my kits and collections together. I am able to see new combinations and mix things up a bit!

This weekend Shimelle has been offering lots of challenges on her site- one of them was to scrap a page only using half of the paper. I love using white space so this challenge was meant for me!



Happy Sunday!

Explore: Creating with Color and Adventure

I am still loving the prompts of this class and they have opened my eyes to new ways of scrapbooking, documenting, and thinking about life as an adventure.

I have started several new adventures lately. One of the more challenging is my job. I love working with youth and their families and find it challenging and rewarding. Part of counseling is being creative and seeing different ways to address challenges. One of my youth lives for nature, fishing, and wading in the creek. I find being by by creeks, rivers, and waterfalls relaxing and refreshing. As a reward for when the youth participates, I reward them with time by the creek. Even when nothing is said, I feel that it is a therapeutic time for them as well as for me. I am able to relax and be fully present while I prepare to close one session and move onto another. It is very grounding for me.



It was fun to create this layout using new techniques and ways of thinking. I picked the color combination based on the pictures, then built the embellishments, layered the main part of the layout, added the title, then picked the background paper. I usually build from the background up, but this was very freeing and resulted in a shift in my style. I will surely try this again!

What grounds you? What can you do to relax and renew your spirit?

Explore: Explore with Color

Anyone who knows me knows that I love blue. I have always wanted to dye my hair bright blue, but have never had the courage. When Ryan and I were discussing becoming engaged I mentioned that I would prefer a blue stone over a diamond. We debated between blue topaz and sapphire and I was so thrilled to receive a blue topaz as my engagement stone. (Ryan mentions replacing it with a diamond every couple of months, but I love my ring!)



I loved what Paper Source had to say about my favorite shade of blue, or what my friends call Rachel Blue. I paraphrased what they said in my journaling here:


I've been hanging onto those letters for about a year because I used them to mask the title for this layout and knew that I would use them someday. So glad my hoarding tendencies paid off!


What is your favorite color and what do you think it says about you?