New Sketch class starts Monday!

I'm so excited. I signed up for Feeling Scrappy's Sketchapalooza 4 class. I have taken 2 of them in the past (misssed the third one and hated every minute of it!), so I just couldn't pass this one up. They have great sketches and give tips on how to do them and how to change them to match your style/pictures. If you have never taken one of their classes, this is a great place to start.



Anyway, I may not be able to be as active in the class as I want, but I don't want to miss any of it. I can always finish what I don't complete in the class later, but I'm going to strive to complete it during the class. I need to make sure I don't have the girls on graduation weekend!

Night Out Kit

There is a new kit that is being offered at One Single Seed called Night Out. It's a great kit with colors that can be used for quite a few different LOs. The alphabets and the stitching is great. I just love this kit. You can get it here. Here is the preview.

Template with Tumblebus

I completed my first template challenge yesterday. It took me a while to figure out how to do it, but once I did, I really enjoyed it. The challenge was on Stuff to Scrap blog I'm still trying to figure out how to post it on that site, but I'll get there.


Anyway, I used Big Bounce Fun Zone kit by Tracy's Design. The layout is of Jesse on her last day of Tumblebus. She went every Thursday during the school year, and loved it. This was my first time going and watching her. They we having Surfer Day. They were doing all kinds of tumbling stunts with a surfing beach theme. Anyway here is the LO:

Many Firsts

Here is a layout I started at the Black Mountain retreat. I just finished it up today. So it has taken me a month to get it the way I wanted it, but it is now finished! I am taking a "Get Inked" class on Feeling Scrappy.com and it gave me some ideas to finish it.

I also tried a few things for the first time on this layout. My first time using my Cricut on a layout, my first time using eyelets, my first time using fiber, and my first time hidding the journaling behind the pictures.

I thought I wanted to go all digital, but I really enjoy the traditional scrapping now. I guess now that I'm trying more, I really like the way it turns out.

What I am looking forward to!

Well, tomorrow is Easter, and I'm looking forward to spending the day with my family. I love spending time with the kids, my sister, my parents, and my daughter. We are all bringing our part of dinner with us tomorrow after church. I think Becky is going to save the girls Easter basket until then, so we can share in the moment.

Next week, Kelly and I leave for Black Mountain to a scrapbook retreat. This will be my second one for this year, and I have at least 2 more planned before the year is up. I love going to these retreats and meeting new people and also getting re-acquainted with others. Kelly and I went to the first Black Mountain retreat quite a few years ago, but this is the first time we have been able to go back. I hope to share some of my layouts with you when I come back.

The only problem is that a friend is getting married the weekend I'm away. I would love to make the wedding, but we had already paid for this retreat. Becky and Jesse will be in the wedding, and I think Crista is taking the pictures, so I'm sure I will have some pics to scrap!

Skyline Scrapbook Retreat

I have just spend a fabulous weekend in Mentone, Alabama with a great group of ladies. I have learned so much and had a great time. I didn't get many pages done, but it was great meeting new faces and see some familiar faces again. It is so worth the trip to go each year.


Here are the few pages I did. The first one is of Xandra and Oscar. They were just sitting there looking out the window, and I just had to take the pictures. I used paper and elements from a couple of kits. Color Your World from Raspberry Road Design, and True Colors from Kim's Scrappin'.





This one is of JD, he was playing with Dominos at Mom and Dad's. He found a new way of playing! I took the kit from my external hard drive and when I went back to find out the name, it was gone and replaced with my new stuff! Argggg. Why did it do that? Anyway, I didn't do any of this kit on my own, and wish I could find out who actually created it. I really like it and hoped to use it again. Found it. It is a kit called Playful Boy by Wendy Whitney with Gottapixel.com. I'm so glad I found it! This also uses a sketch from Pagemaps.com from July 2008.

Windy Winds

We had quite a bit of wind here lately. Wednesday night after church, I was taking Jesse home, when Philip called me. It seems that a tree had fallen over at Mom and Dad's house. I rushed home to pick up Philip so we could ride together.

What a mess we found. We turned down their road, and was meet with a firetruck. There were also quite a few cars/truck lined up on the road from the volunteers also. Mom & Dad's house was blocked, so we parked in their neighbor's drive way (behind Will's car.) We had to climb through the tree limbs to get to the front door.

The tree missed the house completely, but the branches did some damage to Daddy's van and broke the tail light out of Mom's car. But both vehicles were trapped in by the tree. Daddy was worried about his van. It's paid for, had 250,000 miles and still runs. He takes it back and forth to work and it still goes on some short trips (within a few hundred miles.) At night, it looked like the van was a gonner.

The tree (when it was standing) was not on their property, but landed from one end of their front yard almost to the other. On the way down, it brought down the electrical wires (thus the firetruck.) It pulled the meter off the house, and they were without electricity.

Since the weather was nice, Mom and Dad decided to stay at home that night. We weren't real happy about it, but didn't argue too much. We all left since there wasn't anything we could do (Jay and Miah had stopped by also.) We all left them waiting on the electric company.

The firetrucks were out there until the electric company showed up. Once they showed up (around 11:00 that evening) they shut down the electricity to the wires and re-did the wiring. At least on the outside of the house. Since the meter was taken down by the tree, they would have to get a hold of an electrician to repair that.

I took the next day off from work, so I could go down there with them. They couldn't go anywhere, and if they needed to, I wanted to be there to help them. When I got there, I had my camera. It looked completely different during the day. I could actually see the tree and the van.

This picture was taken beside where the tree stood.

These two were taken from the front porch. One looking left and the other looking right.

Daddy's boss sent over a crew from the country club to take care of the tree. They cut it into managable pieces for us to handle. The electrician came by and was able to repair the meter, but then they had to call the inspector (who stayed in town long enough to check this out before heading on vacation!) Finally at 8pm that evening, they had electricity again.

The next day a couple of guys came by an offered to clean up the rest of the yard (for a reasonable fee) so Daddy said yes. It saved us from having to do any of the work.

We were all thankful that the tree missed the house. The insurance company did total Dad's van, but everything was fine.