November SFYTT Reminder

Just a reminder that there are only a few days left to play along with the November Sketch For You To Try! And don't forget about our fabulous sponsor this month, Sweet Stamp Shop!  Here's a final look at this month's sketch:

And a look back at my November SFYTT creations with links to my original blog posts for product details. First up is this Thanksgiving card that amazingly actually got mailed!!

And next is this Joy to the World card using a beautiful Verve Plain Jane stamp:

All details and upload information can be found on Jen's blog. I hope you find time to play along this month!

November SFYTT Post #2

It's the 3rd Saturday of November and that means it's time for some more Sketch For You To Try Inspiration from a few of the SFYTT Sisters! Have you had a chance to play along with this month's sketch yet? You've got until November 30th at midnight, so there's still plenty of time to create something and it's a SUPER fun sketch this month! And don't forget we have another amazing sponsor this month - Sweet Stamp Shop!

First, let's take another look at this month's sketch:

I decided to pull out one of my favorite Verve holiday stamps and create a simple Christmas Card:

I used papers from Lawn Fawn's Fa La La Collection and some pom pom trim,but I forgot to put my half circle thing down before I glued on the trim, so unfortunately you can see a little gap in there where I couldn't smoosh the circle in under the trim. Oh well! The card's most likely just going to family, and I know they won't mind, so I decided to just leave it. Sometimes little mistakes like that are just OK and this one was definitely not worth redoing the whole card over! So anyway, how about that awesome stamp, huh? That is the super cute Joy Plain Jane from Verve. I love it and do not use it nearly enough.

Be sure to stop by these other SFYTT Sisters' blogs to see what they're sharing today with this month's sketch!

Jen del Muro
Carole Burrage 
Jodi Collins
Susan Liles
Tracy Schultz

OK, that's it from me. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Project Life 2012 Week 35

How about another Project Life share? This week's layout just happens to be one of a handful of my favorites so far this year. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the simplicity of it, or the neutral colors. But I love the way it looks in my album.

This was the week of Aug 26 to Sept 1. An exciting week around here - The True Blood Season Finale, Dean's lady friend was here visiting from Canada, I was working hard on a volunteer project at Dean's school, and it was the football season opener for mine and Joel's alma mater - the University of Oklahoma (Boomer Sooner!). Here's a better look at the left side of the layout:

I hate photos of myself. I think I might be the most unphotogenic person who ever lived and I'd like to think I actually look better than this in real life. But someday Dean (and possibly even me) will be glad I'm in these photos. So there I am. I absolutely LOVE the series of four 3x4 cards on this side of the page...

On the right side of the page are a few more photos and a bit more journaling:

I specifically journaled about Dean's love of making up gymnastics floor routines and performing them for us while my Mom provides commentary. It's HILARIOUS.

And that's it for Week 35. I'll try to share a few more weeks with you this weekend if I can. I'm currently finishing up Weeks 44 and getting started on Week 45 - I told you I've stayed caught up! I still haven't figured out how I'm going to tackle both PL AND December Daily, but I'm determined to do both. My December Daily album from last year has remained put away with the Holiday decorations and I plan to only pull out DD albums around the holidays, but I want to have December represented in my Project Life albums as well - maybe more of the everyday, but less of the Holiday theme?? Still not sure...

Verve Diva Inspirations November 2012 Blog Hop

It's November 5th and that means it's time for another Verve Divas Inspirations Blog Hop! On the 5th of each month, the Verve Divas Inspirations Team along with some of the Release Team will be sharing creations using some of our favorite Verve sets from both past and present, and as always, there are PRIZES!!

You can start the hop at the beginning on the Verve Blog and continue on through each fabulous blog - be sure to leave a little comment love along the way and you just might win some Verve goodies of your own! If you arrived here from the talented Jen d's blog, then you're on the right track! Just in case, here's a look at the Master Hop List:

	1. Betty	7. Susan
	2. Jen d.	8. Andrea
	3. Jen T.	9. Charmaine
	4. Julee	10. Janelle
	5. Sankari	11. Maureen
	6. Sony	12. Teresa

My Grandmother's birthday is next week and I need to get her gift in the mail, so I whipped up a fun birthday card that I know she'll love (She's my grandma. Honestly, I could have probably smeared mud on a piece of cardstock and she'd tell me it was beautiful, but still...I decided to go ahead and try to make it cute anyway! LOL). 

I used pulled out some of my favorite neglected Verve sets to play with this time around. That fun birthday sentiment is from the Making a Statement set, which has sentiments for so many different occasions! I also used my Loopy Blooms die to cut out a cute little felt flower because it felt like it needed a little something on the left side of that circle when I was finished. Isn't that a fun sketch? I played along with this week's Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge and just LOVE this one! All of the patterned papers are from the Seen & Noted Collection by Pebbles (one of my new faves - can't wait to use these in Project Life!).

That's it from me today. Julee is next up on the hop, so head on over to see what kind of fabulousness she's created and then keep on hopping along! Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to stop by the Verve Blog as well to check out the new specials going on this month as well as the amazing New Release stamps that were added last week!! Believe me, you won't want to miss them!!

November 2012 SFYTT

Well, here we are again already - first Saturday of the month and time for another fabulous Sketch For You to Try!! I hope you all had a chance to play along with us last month - Lots of exciting things in store for participants of the monthly SFYTT this year, including a chance to win another fabulous huge prize package at the end of the year!! All of the details can be found on today's post over on Jen's blog, with some of the details outlined in the "In a Nutshell" graphic at the end of this post. We have another amazing sponsor this month - Sweet Stamp Shop!

First, here's a look at this month's fun sketch:

I actually stuck to the sketch pretty closely this month. I needed a couple more fall-ish cards, so decided to use the sketch to create one more...

I kept things super simple and this card came together really quickly. I used the new (to me) Harvest Lane collection from Simple Stories for all of the patterned paper on this card - love the soft fall colors of this collection! I also pulled out some neglected PTI stamps and dies (I think it's called Gobble Gobble?). Seriously, done in like 20 minutes - my kind of card!

Be sure to stop by the rest of the SFYTT Sisters' blogs to see what they've done with this month's sketch! And a very warm welcome to our Designer of the Month, Nicole Sison. Don't forget to stop by her blog to see what she's created as well.

Jen del Muro
Amber Hight
Amy Sheffer
Becky Carafa
Carole Burrage
Jodi Collins
Kerry Johnson
Megan Lock
Susan Liles
Tracy Schultz

 

Project Life 2012 Week 34

It's been awhile since I posted a Project Life update, so I thought I'd try to post a few layouts the next few weeks. I'm still staying caught up and hoping to stay caught up at least through the end of November as we head into the Holiday Season. I'm planning to do another December Daily this year, so I'm trying to figure out how to tackle both DD and Project Life. I do want to do both, but I imagine Project Life wil be much more simple - I don't do a Photo-a-Day with PL now, so I may just continue to hit the weekly highlights in PL and focus more on the daily things in DD. I don't know. Any tips for tackling both projects? This is my 2nd year doing December Daily and my first year doing Project Life, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

Anyway, here's a look at Week 34, which covered August 19-August 25.

 A lot of fun stuff going on around here that week. Here's a closer look at the left side of the page. Dean got a new Kiwi Crate in the mail - we LOVE these things by the way. Dean gets SO EXCITED when he sees that green box each month! I included a few photos of him working on his robot project from the August Kiwi Crate. I also started reading my Book Club pick for August that week and snapped a photo of my Kindle and favorite salad at lunch one day - a very "everyday" picture that I like to include every now and then.

I took a few close-up shots of some of my favorite things from this week. I think this quote from Dean is so funny! As far as I know he has no idea what Facebook is, but he obviously has overheard me use the words "Facebook friends" in conversation, and I must have been doing a lot of talking about True Blood that week! ha!

One of the things I love most about Project Life is that it's helping me save little snippets of Dean's writing and drawings. I cut out this little poem he wrote on a random piece of paper and attached it to a 4x6 card and slipped it into a pocket! LOVE THAT.

 
And here's a closer look at the right side of the page. I think the big highlight of the week was Thursday night when Joel surprised me with (FREE) entrance into a benefit concert at the opening of Mick Fleetwood's new restaurant on Front Street in Lahaina. I am a HUGE Aerosmith fan and Steven Tyler was teaming up with Mick Fleetwood, Johnny Lang, local favorite Willie K., and others to perform for a very very small crowd. But tickets were $500 per person, which was a little out of our price range(!). But on a small island like Maui, sometimes it pays to know the right people and Joel just happened to know someone who was able to hook us up! It was AMAZING. The tickets included dinner and drinks and an amazing concert - we were SO CLOSE to the stage (even closer than the time a few years ago when I had front row seats to Aerosmith when Kiss opened for them!). Steven Tyler even touched me when he walked through the crowd at one point, squeezing between me and another person (it was a tight squeeze, so it was a full-body brush-up - I was LOVING it!!). Joel was behind me just pushing me further into him, giving me a big thumbs up! He's such a supportive husband - gotta love him! ;-) Anyway, so that experience takes up a big part of Project Life Week 34 as you can imagine!

But I did save some room for more Dean cuteness. Here's a close-up of Dean and his lady friend Shalin after school one day and Dean being super giggly on the couch. Love that kid.

Any other Project Lifers out there?