1st Apartment with My Creative Scrapbooks June kit

Another has flown the nest! It's an exciting time for him, but we were apprehensive when he said his apartment was in the city. Gulp. And then we helped him move some furniture and saw that it was a carriage house of sorts, nestled in the back yard of a nice family home in a fine neighborhood. Thank goodness!

I LOVE old houses, and this apartment is so cute. I had to take a picture of him standing on the front porch. 

The papers and embellishments in My Creative Scrapbooks' June Main kit couldn't be more perfect.

Houses, hearts, tabs and things compliment my theme, while a modified grid design makes assembling the page super easy. Two photos and two patterned papers were cut into squares. A third paper, cut rectangular, takes the place of what would be two of the bottom squares. There is where I begin my title... 

I finish my title with a colorful assortment of chipboard letters stretched across the page. Almost everything you see is from Fancy Pants' Family and Co. collection, all a part of My Creative Scrapbooks' main kit for June. 

This Is Gonna Be Fun Y'All

I have a book of his work. I have a mug. I have a flock of magnets on my fridge that are modeled off his signs. And now I have an original of my own. Actually...two!

Back in December, after Tommy had paged through Simon's colorful coffee table book, we decided to take a "field trip" to his workshop/studio in uptown New Orleans. We weren't sure what we would find! After perusing the small number of finished pieces on display (it was Christmas time and stock was low), we met Simon (French pronunciation) and decided to have him paint a sign with Famille Fox and the year we were married. We had seen similar works, ordered by other families, waiting to be picked up, and couldn't wait to have an original for our home. 

So we ordered and went off to lunch at Joey K's, an uptown eatery that displays many of Simon's overflow pieces. You can just guess what happened next: we fell in love with another of his signs and bought it right off the wall. Here it is...still on the wall. ;)

This is gonna be fun y'all!

I just got the call that our other (ordered) sign was ready. Yeah!

Farmhouse Style

I don't know about you, but I am obsessed with the HGTV show, Fixer Upper! I love the style highlighted by the show, and have tried to channel my inner Joanna Gaines when decorating various areas of my home. When I poured out the pack of Pebbles' Jen Hadfield Simple Life ephemera, from My Creative Scrapbooks' Main kit for March, my mind went straight to that farmhouse style that I try to emulate, and a page idea was born.

Choosing some of my favorite die-cuts from the pack, I arranged them here and there on the top half of a plain piece of cardstock. I did not adhere anything yet, as I was still playing with the design.

Next, I sorted through the kit's patterned papers (also from Pebbles' Jen Hadfield Simple Life collection) for a contrasting bottom piece. I was a bit indecisive at first, so I snapped a photo of my favorite two choices, toggled back and forth, and ultimately chose the leafy woodgrain (B-side of the Music paper), pictured in the upper left hand photo. Feeling the need for a top border, I tried out both prints again, and opted for the chicken wire print (B-side of Growing Floral), pictured on the bottom right.

Finally, I got out my adhesive and committed to the design, adding the 1/2-inch (chicken wire) strip to the top of my cardstock, the 5-inch (woodgrain floral) strip to the bottom, and the tear strip (stars) from the Music paper along the middle.

Now it was time to attach those die-cuts. I inked edges, arranged and overlapped the many pieces, and popped up several more with foam dots.

On to the bottom part of the page! With the idea of adding my photo on the left, I decided to make a unique embellishment for the right, a dimensional heart. Materials needed were few: A snippet of patterned paper, a paintbrush, white acrylic paint, and a small piece of the priority box in which my kit was delivered.

When the paper was torn off of one side of the piece of box, a layer of corrugated cardboard is revealed. White paint brushed onto this layer gave it a cool, rustic look:

Once dry, I cut out a heart shape from the painted corrugated cardboard, then adhered fussy cut flowers from the Poppies patterned paper:

Before attaching my corrugated heart, I dabbed ink on the paper underneath. This contrast helped to set off my handmade embellishment against the woodgrain floral. The word "home" from the kit's foil phrase stickers fits my theme perfectly.

Finally, I added my photo and title lettering, Pink Paislee white and black letter stickers, layered as shown below, and outlined the white letters with a fine point black pen. 

The result: a little "Fixer Upper" style page that would make Joanna Gaines proud! ;)

Home

I didn't feel like my house was ready for its portrait. There's ALWAYS something else to be done! Trees need trimming, siding needs to be pressure washed, grass needs cutting, garden needs weeding...it's just never ending. So I hadn't taken a picture of our home in quite a while. But when a location scout called us about showing our home to some movie moguls and possibly using it in a film, friends and acquaintances that have never been to my house suddenly wanted a peek! ;)

I went outside and snapped its picture, weedy garden, dead December grass, and all! It's not a McMansion or anything, but it has some cute features, it's our home, and we love it.

The Main kit from My Creative Scrapbook had the prettiest floral papers, stickers, and die-cuts, perfect for adding that touch of spring to my dead of winter photo! 

After cutting large letters from a piece of white cardstock, I backed the openings with four of the kit's patterned papers, adding a birdhouse sticker to the center of the "O" in HOME. Pen-stitching defines the title letters:

All of the adorable die-cuts and stickers in the kit made it easy to assemble a little homey scene at the bottom of the page:

Did you catch how the lace ribbon stretches perfectly into the dips of the chicken wire patterned paper? So sweet! And the teapot is pretty with its floral design, compliments of a clear sticker.

Ultimately our house was not chosen and it will not be making its film debut. But it was fun and exciting to have it as a possibility, if only for a little while! Home sweet home.

Home At Last

Whew! We have been lucky this year. It's almost the end of hurricane season, and I'm so thankful that we have not had to evacuate for a scary storm. A few years ago, however, a storm named Gustav had me and my family heading north to Jackson, MS. 

This layout is about what we found when we returned home from our evacuation. There was no great damage or flooding in our area, but there had evidently been quite a lot of wind. The streets were so littered with leaves they were green!

Three fabulous cut files help to tell the story, two from The Cut Shoppe store:

and a freebie from the The Cut Shoppe newsletter:

Here are closeups of my page:

Yep, we couldn't wait to get home. As soon as they opened up the interstate going south, we were on it...along with all the Entergy bucket trucks that were heading down to help.

Home at Last!

The Rains Came

It had been raining off and on for days, so the ground was thoroughly saturated when the rains came on Saturday afternoon and the water had no where to go. I always wanted lakefront property! :)



We parked the cars wherever we could. Laura's was backed up onto the lawn. Unfortunately, she didn't get it up in time. The carpets were a little damp already.

Craigslist

I sold my first item on the New Orleans Craigslist a few weeks ago. Since then, these items are no longer in my house and yard:





The really fun part was getting rid of the wooden gym set. One guy called and asked, "Let me get this right. I am going to come and haul off your old gym set and you want ME to pay YOU $75 to do it?!" "Yep."

It DID come with a brand new never-used plastic wave slide! Anyway, I graciously reduced the price to $60, as the fellow who came to take it off had to completely disassemble it to get it out of the yard through the gate. He was a pro and had it done in mere minutes. (And all I could think about was how many weekends it took for us to put the thing together!)

Hmmm...if you sit still too long at my house, I might snap a photo and list your butt. That's a warning!

Meant to be mine?

We're badly in need of new furniture in the family room. We've been shopping...but I can't ever find anything that I like or else I'm intimidated by the choices! Last memorial Day we went out to several furniture stores. I even took home sample fabrics. But I wasn't sure what I wanted. Nothing jumped out at me. Until this past weekend. Shuffling through the ads and pricing TVs, I came across this sofa and wow...I fell in love with it! The perfect style. Neutral fabric with nicely patterned pillows. It fit me well.





















And then I read the ad!







Is it fate? Should I go and purchase it NOW...and cover it in plastic until the boys move out...like on that hysterically funny Everybody Loves Raymond episode!? Tee-hee! Well, at least I know what I like now. And maybe when I go shopping again, I can bring this photo along to show the salespersons.

Spook House

Oooooo...the ghouls were peeking from the windows of our creepy haunted house. Made from black plastic sheeting, these are my favorite Halloween decorations. Next year we'll cut and hang additional faces from the dormer windows as well. AND I'll be sure to look for a pumpkin in advance. There were none to be found on October 31st! Ooops!

Off We Go!

We are heading out tomorrow for Atlanta. It will be easier to find housing there, and I can get the kids back in school and into some kind of routine. We're going to take it day by day.

Went to our house. Not bad at all! Our chimney top is in a neighbor's driveway, and the largest oak in our yard split and came crashing down, partly on the house...but miraculously did not appear to do any serious damage! The fence and our patio cover is history, and we'll need a new roof, but that's it! Everything just looks so weird! My mil didn't even recognize our street. then there's all those army guys with their AK47s! And choppers flying overhead every minute or two. Very eerie!

Of course, the city proper is a mess. Since Brendan and Christopher went to school in New Orleans I'm sure some of their friends and schoolmates lost their homes. It just gets worse from there, and I can't even think about what lies ahead for the city.

So off we go to Atlanta, praying to be back soon to a place that will be forever changed, but hopefully better and stronger than ever.

Clean Rooms

The "cable guy" was coming to switch our phones to cable this morning. I was told that they would be working outside but then may need to check the inside jacks if there were problems. Well, since there are jacks in every room in the house...including all the kids bedrooms, I've been threatening them all week long. Their rooms had to be cleaned up (no clothes under the bed, vacuumed floors, relatively neat and clean) for this morning. You should have seen the dust flying last night! LOL! (I don't even go into their rooms unless it's an emergency usually!) So today the kids' rooms are sparkling clean, all the mess picked up, the cable telephone is installed...

and they didn't even have to come inside! ROFL!

What can I have installed next?