random reflections

Happy Halloween

It's past time for trick or treaters, and we've only had about four sets appear at our door. Probably the least ever, and although the weather is dreary, it's been worse on Halloween before. We have a LOT of candy to dispense with!

But we had our own celebration. There were several of my friends who wanted to meet Caleb, so Sarah suggested we have a little open house today. I made some invitations with my Silhouette, and the Bleeding Cowboy font.

We had a lovely time, and although I took photos of two of the desserts, I never did take a photo of the whole table. Here are the cupcakes, decorations courtesy of Target. (I love that store.)

And a yummy pumpkin pie dip with gingersnaps that we found at the Amish market.

The hit of the party, of course, was the cutest pumpkin ever!

And here, with Grandma.

I made Skylar and Caleb Halloween cards. I don't really own any Halloween stamps, so I used my Silhouette and came up with this. Not really cute enough for babies, but it's really more for the parents anyway. I'll need to be more prepared next year.

The inside was really cute, but my only photo was blurry. If you celebrate Halloween, I hope it was a safe and fun one!

 

A Birthday Challenge

Last week I missed linking my card to CAS(E) This Sketch by just two hours, so I wanted to be sure to get this card done in time to post it for that challenge as well as the CAS-ual Friday Challenge to use kraft paper. Oops! Missed the CAS(E) This Sketch challenge again, by a whole day. Goes to show when you have a baby around, you can't even keep track of the days. Oh well, I enjoyed the challenge anyway. These are two of my favorite challenge blogs, and they've worked very well together. Here's the sketch:

And here's my card. This one is for my niece, Stephanie.

The kraft cardstock, sentiment (Birthday Basics), and die (Bloom Builders #3) are all Papertrey Ink. The patterned paper came from a MME's 6X6 pad, "Stella Rose." The button in the middle of the flower is from La-Di-Dah, and the pearl from Queen and Company. Both the patterned paper and the button have been in my stash for quite a while.

I'll be back later with some Halloween fun.

Family Time

Luckily, Hurricane Sandy did not interfere with either Sarah's or Matt's travel plans. And even more luckily, we escaped the effects of the heavy winds and rain. There were power outages here, and trees downed, but compared with much of the east coast, the storm was a non-event in Rochester. The damage and destruction downstate is devestating, and my thoughts are with all those who lost property and are without heat or electricity.

Sarah and Caleb arrived on Thursday night. It was a long day for them, with the typical airline delays, but they both arrived in good spirits. We took advantage of the one last nice day before the rains appeared and drove to Seneca Falls, visited a friend who is in rehab, and then came home to play in the leaves. Caleb's yard is a manicured rock garden, so this was his first experience in the grass. I think he liked it.

Matt arrived safely on Saturday, and we went to Mario's for a fabulous meal. Caleb was delightful, and
we all were able to enjoy the meal and our time together. I got this one photo of Sarah and Matt with my iPhone.

Sunday after church, the family arrived to meet Caleb. The table was all set. Tracy treated me to a wonderful flower arrangement, and carved out two little pumpkins to make candle holders.

It's always good to have an excuse to get family together.

Tracy's sister, Jill; her husband, Tom; her son, Marc, and Caleb

Tracy's mom, his cousin, Mona, and his brother, Randy

Sarah and Susan, Randy's wife

Matt, Tom, and Jill

Last night, we got together with Betsy and Skylar so the cousins could meet each other for the first time. I only took photos with my iPhone, and I wish I'd taken the better camera, but you can tell they had a good time.

Although Skylar is three months older than Caleb, Caleb is both taller and heavier than she is, but Skylar can certainly hold her own!

Matt's on his way back to Denver as I write this. There was a short delay with both flights, but he should be home by 11:00 Denver time. Today marked Caleb's 10 month "birthday" and we needed to take the monthly photos. We also set up the tripod to take a few family photos for Christmas. Neither of those sets are edited, but I did get some of Sarah, Matt, and Caleb in the process and edited one of them for this post.

It was so good to be together. Sarah is here for another nine days, and Matt will be back for Christmas, but we don't know when we'll all be together again. I love that everyone gets along so well, and enjoys just hanging out with one another.

Happy Birthday

It's a rare day that I put up two posts (my Papertrey Ink Blog hop post is below), but one of the challenges for this card ends tonight. I missed one of the challenges on Tuesday by two hours because I wasn't paying good attention. When I saw the new CASE Study challenge this morning I had an idea that I thought would work for the Embellish Paint Color Trends challenge. Here's the card to case:

And here's the Embellish challenge:

 

I have to admit I don't think I've ever used paint on a card, but when I saw Julia's card on CASE Study, I thought I could apply some paint to a piece of black corrugated cardstock and go from there. I had a new bottle of Dick Blick Brown acrylic paint so I randomly applied it to the black cardstock and then distressed it a bit more with a file. I adhered that to a card of Soft Stone which I distressed around the edges. I cut a thin piece of burlap and die cut the leaves from New Leaf Patterned paper (which just arrived this week.) I also painted the sentiment banner. I had a white one laying on the desk, and decided I could just paint it. I was a bit surprised at how easily the Vintage Cream ink stamped on the painted surface. I added a New Leaf button and was done. 

Here's a closer look at the painted corrugated cardstock:

I think paint may show up again on a card or two! I'm posting this on the Moxie Fab canvas, cork, and burlap challenge, too. 

Papertrey October Blog Hop Challenge

This month's blog hop challenge was to use nontraditional colors to create a holiday card. I started off with a totally different color combination and made six cards with slight variations. Then I realized I'd substituted Select White for the Soft Stone since I got a sharper image on the white. You won't see those here because some of you are sure to receive one of them in the mail. When I started over, I chose a totally different color scheme, one I definitely wouldn't have chosen for a Christmas card, but I rather like the results. Here's the color palette:

 

 

Although the color's not listed, there's clearly some cream in the inspiration post, and I added a Vintage Cream tag. Everything on the card is Papertrey:  Sweet Blush, Scarlet Jewel, Dark Chocolate, and Avocado Green cardstocks, and  Sweet Blush ribbon. I used the Herringbone Impression plate, the chevron dies, Block Alpha, and Tag Sale #3. For some reason the Scarlet Jewel isn't showing up particularly well in either photo.

It was fun to break out of the Christmas red and green box for awhile. 

Scrapbook a Sign

The challenge this month at Simple Scrapper is to scrapbook a sign. When I put together the collage of welcome signs from our road trip this summer for Rinda's scavenger hunt, I printed a copy of it. When I saw the challenge, I knew it was time to put it together. This may be the busiest page in my album, but I did want to use the road map patterned paper.

We never saw a sign for Kansas and somehow I didn't find the photos of a couple other states, so I decided to take the set of Studio Calico stamps and stamp the names of ALL the states we traveled through during those three weeks onto two Paper Source tags. The little car that connects them was cut from a piece of Imaginesce paper as was the border across the bottom. Both came out of a travel folder I keep and I've had them for ages.

I trimmed around a Technique Tuesday journaling card; the little Drive medallion came from a set of Little Yellow Bicycle stickers. The alpha is still my all-time favorite from SEI. I bought multiple sets of it in both red and blue before it was discontinued.

Once I finished the page, I realized I haven't scrapped many photos from the trip at all. Guess I should get on that!

Birthday Wishes--A Two Challenge Card

I'm trying to get all the birthday and anniversary cards that I need for the rest of October and November done before Sarah and Caleb arrive later this week. I wanted to participate in the CAS(E) this Sketch challenge again as well as the CAS-ual Friday challenge. CAS-ual Friday is about to release their first sets of stamps later this month. They've had lots of great sneak peeks this week. You can check it out here.

Here's the sketch:

And the CAS-ual Friday challenge is to have an element hang off the edge of your card. Once again these challenges worked well together, and CAS is definitely my preferred style.

Here's what I came up with. I'm trying to use some stamps I haven't used in a while, so pulled the Modern Wood Mats set off the shelf and stamped it onto a Mat Stack 1 die. Then I die cut Bloom Builders #3 in two different colors and used the smaller dies to create this flower. The center is an old Making Memories brad, and the leaves are Tender Leaves by Memory Box. The sentiment (stamped on a Double Ended Banner die) is from Round and Round. Everything except the leaves and brad are by Papertrey Ink.

I'm thinking this will be heading to one of my nieces for their November birthday. Thanks for your nice comments on the new profile photo. My son-in-law took this when we were in Hilton Head. He was looking for some new head shots and I surely needed one, so it was a great trade. Just took me two months to get it changed!

Take Twelve: October

I finally got a couple of layouts photographed and thought it was about time to get the Take Twelve layout for October published. This was really such a typical day, so no photo was shouting to be taken.

The woman in the bottom left photo works at a local photography gallery & printing shop. I've worked with Beth a couple of times on personal projects, but on this day I picked up a photograph of Tracy's step-father that had been seriously damaged during the fire. It was my mother-in-law's favorite photo of Bill, and Beth did an amazing job of restoring it. Here's what it looked like before:

And here's the restored photo:

Here's a close-up of the journaling:

I determined before I began this layout that I would use products exclusively from this month's kit from Studio Calico, and I did with the exception of the tag from my stash and some woodgrain Washi tape. Washi's becoming a staple here. I loved the patterned papers; one is from American Craft's Ready, Set, Go line and the other is a Studio Calico paper. The photo template was cropped from one by Shimelle.

Early Morning Walk

A friend and I took an early morning walk along the Erie Canal this morning. I decided that I would take all my photos for Capture Your 365 with my iPhone this month. I didn't do anything except crop and sharpen them a bit in PSE. I think our foliage is just about at peak now. It's beginning to cloud over, and we're expecting rain later so it was a good thing we got our walk done early. 

We just came home from a two hour work session at the Community Garden. A lot of great work was accomplished, but I think I am likely to be very sore later. Have a great weekend!

 

The Farmer's Market: Hybrid Scrapping

We've always loved farmer's markets and have enjoyed ones in Oakland, CA, Princeton, NJ, and Ithaca, NY. The last three years, we've had a very nice one right here in Brighton at the high school. We rarely miss a Sunday from late May to the end of October. Two weeks ago I took a group of photos and popped them into a template by Paislee Press. I added a digital paper by Alexa and then printed it out and adhered it to a piece of patterned paper by My Mind's Eye.

I printed the journaling on an Avery tag and added (once again) a Flair button. If every layout I made came together so quickly, I'd have a lot more pages in my albums!