Has anyone seen summer?

Here it is almost the fourth of July and I think we have had maybe five summer days? It's been cold and raining most days. I saw four days straight of this first hand last week when we were camping at Mitchell State Park in Cadillac. I got a lot of reading done and so did Brandon and Angel. Rick and Allan went home each day to work and then back to the campsite at night. Finally on Friday we had nice weather and our oldest son and his family came up for the weekend. Good times! (Finally!)

What to do on a rainy day at home? Well I scrap of course! I've been busy scrapping layouts to qualify for the Birthday Bash celebration drawing at Cookin' Up Creations I need to get 15 done this month, and the month's end is fast approaching! Here are a few of them that I've gotten done and uploaded to the site.

On one of the nice days Allan and the kids took the boat out fishing on Lake Cadillac. (They caught and released two large Pike!) Angel and Allan were poking their heads out of the front of the boat cover and I snapped this picture. I put the picture together using WIP's June kit. The challenge for this layout called for ONE word title, TWO buttons, THREE circles, and FOUR patterned papers. FIVE journaling spots finish off the requirements.



I liked this challenge so much that I did it twice. A few weeks ago my son Rick and his girlfriend took a road trip to Silver Lake Sand Dunes and came back with this wonderful picture! I loved it so much that I printed it off right away. Here it is scrapped with a very fun June kit from Scraptastic.



Angel recently changed her hair style, drastically! A challenge was put out to do a layout with three photo's in succession. Since I just happen to be one of those people who will take their camera's into Cost Cutters for a monumental photo op of a make over, I did have some pictures that fit this criteria! I reached way back into my stash and pulled out some 2007 Basic Grey from a kit from The Scrap Room. I don't really care for fussy cutting, but these huge flowers really needed it.


This layout used two pictures of my husband Allan and I with Angel on graduation day. The top one was at the Graduation Breakfast at the Manton United Methodist Church. I completed it for a menu challenge for Barb P. When I was doing the My Girl layout, I had asked my friend for a title. When she said "You'll Never Walk Alone", I didn't think it fit for that particular layout but I really liked the idea of using it and it didn't take me long to use it.

One last layout for this posting (although I've done a few more, but I don't want to lose you!). This is my oldest son and I love him to death and one of the reasons is his sense of humor! The night of the open house, I was dead tired, and I'm sitting at the computer, sifting thru the pictures that Brandon had taken during the open house. Imagine me nearly spewing my Coke Zero when I came across this picture of Rusty! It's so like him! Seemed like I was a "banner" roll this this month and this challenge called for a Banner. I used the May WIP to pull these goodies from. (The little Authentic UPC code was given me by my good friend BarbP a few years ago in a RAK!)

The Open House went great!

I think we had around 150 people? Judging by how many plates we went thru and how many people I think came after the food was gone. Angel did a great job greeting everyone and the weather turned out to be beautiful. (I was a bit worried that morning that it was too chilly but eh...turned out great!)
Everyone really enjoyed looking at all the picture boards that I had created for the occasion.


Angel had a bonfire later that night with friends and they burned them! (I tried not to look......LOL!)

I made her this quilt out of the Yellow Brick Road Pattern, and my friend Christine Nelson quilted it for me. Has a nice wool batting and feels so soft! You can see the "My Girl" layout in it's shadow box frame sitting in front of the quilt, (and yes she did love it!).

Since Angel graduated she got her hair cut in this shorter sassy cut, does'nt it suit her? The picture on the cake was taken the night of graduation out in our front yard and with her longer hair. Quite a contrast!



Last year Rick's Open house was all orange and black for the school colors, this year Angel's was purple for her class colors. In 3 years my youngest graduates (and my oldest will be 38) and I've already told him his colors are going to be red, white and blue. I told him for Freedom. He replied back, "Whose? Yours or Mine?". My reply back was, "Mine!"!
But I did think the purple colors really went well with Angel and after all it all matched her quilt quit nicely!


To my daughter Angel: Good Luck Hon! And many blessings! Love you from the bottom of my heart!

My Girl

The star attraction at our house these past few weeks has been my beautiful daughter Angel! First it was class night, then Graduation and now it's only two days until her open house! We have everything cleared out of the garage (and wouldn't it be a dream if we could keep it that way, but like my husband says...it's a garage...), the picture boards are ready to be put up, final decorations and the tent to be pitched right outside the garage. It's going to be a wonderful day. Oh yes...and not to be forgotten the food! We are having pulled pork, home made meatballs, baked beans, cheesy taters, chili dip and then a few other food items. It's going to be good! Here is just ONE of the picture boards I have done, in all there are 6 of these large tri fold poster boards:




I wanted to make a "special" layout for Angel to give to her from my heart and of course I thought it would be great if I could combine it with a challenge from Cookin' Up Creations birthday challenge. I looked at Thursday's challenge and thought I might possibly make it work, but wasn't sure about the use of polka dots. The challenge was to use circles and polka dots and the color red. As you can see from the layout below I got all the requirements in, I even pen stitched around the BoBunny AdLib sheet with a red gel pen. All of the papers and the embellies (minus the Red Thickers) came with the brightly colored April Kit from The Scrapping Spot. And if you are feeling summer, you should check out their June kit, those flip flops are really cute!

So I bet you would like to see this "special" layout, wouldn't you? Here it is and here is the journaling that I wrote on it using that very kewl gel pen that came with the kit (and it was RED to fit more criteria of the challenge!): Angel, Ten years ago our future was in someone else's hands. You could have been placed anywhere and I would never have known you! I can't imagine that! We both would have missed out on so much. I can never say this enough- "I'm so glad I'm your mom and that you're my girl. Love Mom 06-12-11 Do you think she will like it when she sees it on Sunday?


I also did this one earlier in the week, with pictures of the girls at the Class Night Party. I used a WIP kit and loved working with it!

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And this is how Angel feels about being "The Star Attraction" around this house!

Class Night

Hi Everybody!
The weather here in Northern (lower) Michigan has finally decided to get in tune with the calendar, we have been having beaUtiful weather!

I've been having a wonderful time doing challenges and getting to know the girls over at COOKIN' Up Creations! Last week in the What's For Dinner Section Cassy posted this link for these cute cupcakes. Right away I knew I wanted to make them since my beautiful daughter Angel is graduating. I suggested to her she have an "After Class Night Party" and she thought it would be a great idea, so she invited some of her Senior friends for a sleep over and I whipped these out.
I inherited alot of Wilton cake decorating tips and this was a good chance to use them.



Cassie also posted this link! I thought the projects on I Scrap U Scrap were so cute! Right away my mind started clicking about how I could make some of these to give out as party favors at the party and this is what I came up with for these:

If you are interested in purchasing the tubes I ordered them online @ SRM