Lasting Love

Oh boy, the Lasting Love kit is just beautiful!!! Typically, I don't use a lot of reds & pinks in my pages (I'm a "cool colors" kind of girl- blues & greens are my go-tos!) but it just feels so sweet & romantic to play with these colors... and I think this kit may  have changed my mind about playing with them! I can see that I will need to incorporate them a LOT more in my layouts. 

 I really like shabby chic decor and design, so I started off with a typical shabby scheme- shades of whites and golds on each other. Then I added in a spritz of the Heidi Swapp Sweet Cherry Color Shine, and started layering from there! 

My latest obsession is "sprinkling" bits of buttons, brads, and sparklies along the page. I love all of the embellishments in this month's kit because there's a REALLY good variety of all those bits!

Some of my favorites from this month's kit are the beautiful die cut envelopes and the sparkling twine! Swoon! 

I hope you're having as much fun as I am with the Lasting Love kit! It's the perfect romantic scrappy kit for this month. 

WIWW!

Woohoo! I made it to a second week of What I Wore Wednesday!  I wanted to start this week off with my little one's special outfit this week.

My Sabby loves Spidey and my sweet friend Gina thoughtfully made her this dress. It's the best of both worlds- a twirly skirt but with tomboy flair. We both love it! Check out her facebook page, Baby Fish Designs. She makes all sorts of fun upcycled clothing, for girls, boys, and even dolls!

Dress- BabyFish Designs

Tights- Target

Shoes- Target (from a few years ago)

I look exhausted in this pic! Ha! A day running errands, playing with friends, and herding cats. 

Boots- Target

Tights- Target

Dress- Old Navy

Shirt- Old Navy

Scarf- thrifted

I usually pick my clothes based on what colors I'm feeling like wearing. These are my favorite colors and I love this outfit! 

jeans- thrifted (NY&Co.)

shirt- from a friend

cardigan- thrifted

belt- from a friend

accessories- Rue21 (I love their jewelry!)

Church outfit! 

I really liked the color combo of the peach with the jewel tone teal/green. This outfit was really comfy too! 

Dress- Dillards

Boots- Rack Room

Accessories- Rue21

Out for a girly evening:

Jeans- Rockstar jeans from Old Navy

Converse- Target

Shirt- thrifted (Gap)

Cardigan- Target (thrifted)

And lest you think I'm not a normal person, I did have a complete jammy/comfies day. :)

Work outfit- I work with twelve 3 year olds, so comfort is a must, along with not wearing anything I would be heartbroken if it got paint (or worse) on! 

Boots- Target

Jeggings- Target

Dress- thrifted

Cardigan- thrifted (I wore it a lot this week!) 

Purse- Books A Million! 

Thanks for swinging by my blog! You should come play along. It's so fun! 

I'm a Guest Detective!

If you know me at all, you will know that I was obsessed with being a detective as a little girl. OBSESSED. Like, carried around a notebook, learned to read backword, had my own secret codes, had a Secret Agent name, etc. The full deal.

So it's a little bit fun to me to get to say that I'm a guest detective this month at ColorStoriesInspiration! They are hosting the team from NoelMignon and we are having fun "solving" the cases.

The bonus, is, you can come over and play and win a free NoelMignon kit! How fun is that! So skedaddle on over... or maybe sneak on over. ;) 

Travel Notes

We've been having lots of fun and inspiration this week over at the Back to School Crop on the message board.  IF you haven't had a chance to come play with us, there's still time over the weekend to qualify for prizes! 

For my "Advanced Art" class earlier this week, I created this layout. Can you spot the technique?

If you want to know more about it, come check out this thread! 

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If you are not a subscriber, here's some big news for you! 

First- you will want to snap this awesome kit up on Tuesday! 

Secondly, there's some good news for those of you on the waiting list for subscriptions coming soon! Look for more info on October 1st! ;) 

Hair Update

I didn't even think anyone would be all that interested in my hair post the other day, but since I've had some feedback from it, I'd thought I'd share a few things I've learned in this past week:

• the coconut oil stuff is AWESOME! I got mine from the baking section in Walmart. I'm posting a video at the bottom of this post by Cute Girls Hairstyles, and she shows it in the video. I've learned that you can 1) put the coconut oil in your hair 30 minutes before washing for a treatment; 2) put it all over for a deep conditioning treatment and leave it in overnight before washing thoroughly; and 3) put a tiny amount on the bottom tips of your hair after washing as a conditioner. I've been using it the third way. My hair feels SO soft. I am constantly running my fingers through it now. The key is just using a tiny amount (I scoop it out of the container with my pinky nail!). You can learn all about it on the internet. This video has some great info about it; but there are tons of videos about it! I first learned about it from several of my friends who use it, and while I was skeptical at first, I'm a firm believer in it just from watching their useage of it. :)
• I realized the other day that something that was making my hair all dried out feeling was also my use of hairspray (duh!). I didn't even connect it at first, but of course hairspray has tons of alcohol in it, which can dry out the hair super fast. I use this great super hold Aussie hair spray, which does a wonderful job at holding styles (especially curls!), but I need to make sure to use it sparingly. 
• I only washed my hair twice last week, and use the dry shampoo on the other days that it needed it. It smelled great and my friends in real life told me it looked great. Or they were lying to me. You never know. ;) 
• Oh, and to answer Carrie's question... nah, I really don't always get to shower every day. It's hard to do that with four kiddos! You grab them when you can get them! I do take a bubble bath almost every night during the winter time though... it's my way to unwind at the end of a crazy day. 

And that's all my hair revelations. Who knew I would have so much to ramble on about? ;) 

Oh, before I forget- here's the video from Cute Girls Hairstyles that shows the coconut oil and how to use it, and the dry shampoo that I use. I love her videos! 

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes...

Elizabeth Manna posted a fun vintage circus themed "Inspiration Monday" at NoelMignon  this week, and that theme has been bouncing around in my head this week. When I began working on my layout for today's post, I naturally went to our Inspiration Monday pinterest board  for a little jumpstart. 

I loved all the bright happy colors, the stars and banners, and the stripes. This particular image jumped out at me: 

(source)

So it was the jumping off point for this layout- can you see the inspo?

I cut apart the piece of Echo Park striped paper from the Boardwalk Kit and formed rays out from my picture. I worked hard at being bright & colorful and staying true to my style, without getting too busy looking. Part of the way I did that was by keeping all of the embellishing pulled in close to the picture, including my misting droplets. 

My photo was one I originally instagrammed, but I cropped & printed it at 4x6 instead of the standard instagram square. The lovely sparkles on it are actually a digitized bokeh that I made with an iPhone app filter (picfx). 

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Don't forget to snag your kit (or sign up for my class)! It's coming up soon! 

(And Noel's popping in a little surprise in one of those kit boxes!) :) 

Lisa Day's Sketches Round 2 Class @ BPC... plus a giveaway!

I love how scrapbooking brings together people that would have probably not met otherwise. :) 

I got to "meet" my friend Lisa Day when we were on the design team together at Lily Bee Designs, and then we were on the NoelMignon team together earlier this year. When she asked if I would participate in her Big Picture Class, Sketches Round 2, I jumped at the chance. 

Lisa's sketches are so inspiring to me. Probably the most difficult part of scrapbooking for me (besides coming up with non-cheesy titles!) is the actual page design. I tend to get in a rut and put the same things here and there. I love using Lisa's sketches because it breaks me out of my routine and frees me up to do the parts of scrapbooking I like the most- choosing the products to play with, embellishing, and journaling! 

Here's a couple of sneaks of my layouts... using NoelMignon kits, of course! 

They were SO fun to scrap! 

Here's the extra cool thing... the nice folks at BPC and Lisa have offered class spots to blog commenters. Leave me a comment on this post and I'll draw one random winner on July 16th!

28 Days of Sketches: Round 2 workshop taught by Lisa Day

4-week workshop for $28

http://www.bigpictureclasses.com/28sketchesround2.php

Class starts 7/19/2012

Class Description

Lisa Day is back with another round of 28 sketches! This time, in addition to receiving 28 daily sketches accompanied by layouts from Lisa, you will also receive exclusive layouts and cards from seven fabulous guest stars! This means that you will receive 28 brand new sketches and 56 exclusive projects to inspire you to create beautiful layouts and cards quickly.

Another exciting new addition is that in addition to the 12" x 12" daily sketch, you will see the sketch adapted to a double page layout and an 8 1/2" x 11" sketch. All this means MORE inspiration and MORE ideas of how to make a sketch work for you!

register and read rest of description here

New to Big Picture Classes? Learn more here

http://www.bigpictureclasses.com/howitworks.php

Want more chances to win a spot? Go check out the other fabulous contributor's blogs! 

Jaime Warren

Lynn Ghahary

Kimberly Neddo

Sasha Farina

Jenni Hufford

Michelle Wooderson

Lisa Day

Making a layout go from drab to fab

I'm blogging today at NoelMignon on how I made this layout go from just alright: 

To something a bit more special! 

I was able to know what sort of things I could add to my layout because I know what my style is.... come check out my class and I can help you to 

know what special touches to make to your projects too! 

Fluffing the Nest

So, if you are friends with me on facebook, you may have seen my rant a few days ago about living in a small house. The whole "small houses create close families" is something I believe in with all my heart, but as I said on that particular post, it was starting to feel more like small houses create insane asylums. 

For the most part, I adore my house. It's old, it has character, it has a screened in front porch, but as with all things of this world, I get to a place of discontent. I start to yearn for something else that I think will "make me happy." And truth be told, that is not going to be found in stuff or houses with lots of awesome storage space or whatnot. We all know that. Contentment is an issue that I find that I come back to time and time again in my life, and have to go back to my Creator to find true satisfaction with it. 

Practically speaking, we needed a clean out. So on the heels of stomach bugs and being stuck at home for far too long, we (and by we, I do mean we... the kids always have to help on these sorts of tasks!) went through the playroom and bedrooms and piled up stuff that we are going to sell in a yard sale and/or give away. So many things that we had just kind of collected along the way but were serving no real purpose in our lives or home. 

I mean, when your oldest, a bit OCD with organizing daughter starts to cry one day because "we have too many toys!" that should sort of be a wake up call, right? 

(Yes. She really did say that.) 

One of the places that we have had the most decorating/design/organizing challenges has been the girls' room. They all three share a room, and with the span being an almost 3 year old to a 7 year old, it creates some issues. 

Emerson has LOVED this picture we found on pinterest, so we went about making the bunks some curtains using flat sheets, curtain clip rings, and tension rods. 

She. loves. it. 

Twinkle lights make everything better, right? I want to add some curtains and or bunting on that window too. The last ones were pulled down by a certain toddler and I just haven't replaced them. 

The girls dressing corner.

Emerson, basking in her room. We want to add some little storage pieces on the walls next to their beds (probably something like this). 

I love seeing this smile. And the amount of stuff cleaned out of her closet already seems to be contributing to her sense of restfulness. 

Meanwhile, on the bottom bunk....

Yeah. They are quite the pair. Usually, Ariana sleeps on the trundle, but for the time being, she's sleeping with Sabriel so they can share her curtain (aka cool bed tent).