Warm Summer Sun

My first try at using an extracted photo in a scene. It was a lot of fun to create and I'll definitely be trying my hand at it again!

Small & Sweet

Another layout for a Sunshine Studios challenge. The pictures are of John when he was three weeks old. I can hardly believe that he'll be eighteen months old in another week. Where has the time gone?

Memorial Day Picnic

The church we attend usually has a picnic every Labor Day, but since for the past two years it's been over 100 degrees at that time in September, they moved it to Memorial Day this year. The high was around 68, so sweatshirts were in order. What a nice change! Here are a couple of the pictures I managed to take. The boys had a wonderful time (in fact, there are no good pictures of James because I couldn't get him to stay still long enough!)

John trying to keep up with James. This is actually pretty representative of how life usually is for Johnny!



Like I said, hard to get this kid to stay still! Here he is with his snow cone, off to find his cousins to play with.



John and the football. He had so much fun playing with this and could always find someone willing to run around with him!



Last, but not least, here's Peter, bundled up in his blanket with dad because I put him in shorts and a short-sleeve shirt so he could match his brothers, never mind that it was pretty chilly for someone without a lot of body fat! He spent most of the day being passed from one person to another, and of course he greatly enjoyed that. I think he looks a lot like his daddy in this picture!

Fun Challenge

I just discovered another fun challenge at another forum, the Scrap Shanty. The goal is to copy a paper layout as closely as possible with digital supplies. Here's the layout I did for this week (and here's the original.

Happy Girl

I made this layout as a "Show-off" for Brittney of Britt-ish Designs. (She kindly gives each person who uses her designs on a page a little gift.) The little girl is the daughter of a friend. Isn't she too cute?

Friendship Bread?

Two weeks before my sister left on vacation, someone gave her a bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter. She really enjoys things like that, so she follows the direction, bakes the bread, and then off she goes on vacation, leaving me a starter so that when she gets back, she can have a starter back from me. (After all, the directions say, and I quote: "Only the Amish know how to create a "starter" so if you give them all away, you will have to wait until someone gives you one back to make more bread!" Now, personally, I highly doubt the veracity of this statement. Surely, some Amish woman somewhere spilled the secret.) Anyway, I have been faithfully following the directions (I did make one mistake, but apparently the dough is very forgiving!) so that I can fulfill my one and only duty while she's away~keeping this starter thing going.

I've discovered why they call it Friendship bread though; not because giving it away is a sign of friendship; no, it's because after trying to pawn off the starters on everyone you know, you'll have no friends left. And here's where I've run into a bit of a problem. Each starter makes two loaves of bread, and four more starters. Out of the original batch I was given, I managed to give away ONE starter. So, now I have three starters sitting on my kitchen counter, doing their thing. Each one of those will make four more starters, and assuming I'm able to get rid of even four of them, I'll have eight starters sitting on my counter next week, each of which will make four more... I think you can probably see where this is going. (It kills me to throw them away, but I'm going to have to, either that or buy a bigger house to put them all in!) So, if anyone would like to have an Amish Friendship Bread starter, just let me know!

Dinnertime Drama

Is it just my kids, or has anyone else noticed that you can serve something for dinner one night and the kids devour it and ask for seconds, but try to serve it leftover the next night and you get major drama? It doesn't matter how many times you try to explain that just last night they thought it was delicious; they won't go for it! Frustrating! :)

On a cheerier note, I picked up this adorable kit when it was on sale for $1 at Little Dreamer Designs and I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it (it is mostly pink after all, and I do have three boys) but I couldn't pass up such a good deal! :)

Fortunately it did have a couple of blue papers, and it was the perfect color to go with the shirts the boys were wearing this day. (The layout is linked to a bigger version if you want to read the journaling.)