justem: little bits of this and that

Project {crazy busy} Life!

It's Project Life week at write.click.scrapbook, and today I have a post up talking a little bit about my Project Life process and my thoughts on the whole thing. As you know, I do not post many of my Project Life weekly spreads anywhere but my personal blog, which is private. If you'd like to see more of them, let me know and I can give you the super-secret info to access it!  But for now...check out my post at W.C.S and let me know what you think! Happy Wednesday!

No Strings Attached...

Yesterday I ditched the kids, Justin, and his parents (who were visiting for the day), loaded up on snacks, made a little nest of awesomeness at Archivers, and got my scrappy on for about eight hours.  It was very nice...I needed it!!  I honestly think the last actual layout I made was at the beginning of March (Project Life not included).  No...maybe even FEBRUARY.  That's insane.  I got six projects made.  Five good ones. One embarrassingly bad one.  Four I can't share. Two I can. And the two I can...can you believe the are layouts I made just for me???  I haven't made a layout that's not for a team in...well, I can't even remember.  I used some of my ever growing stash of Studio Calico kits and they both make me quite happy. :) So here they are...my two "no strings attached" layouts!

The first one is a layout that talks about how emotional Miri's second birthday was. It uses the SC Daydream Believer kit.  I love this combination of colors and the little sequins!

*published: Scrapbook Trends, October 2012*


The second one uses the current SC kit, City of Lights, and features the only technique I think I've ever used. I don't know who did it first (KP maybe? April?) but it's one of my favorites.  (Note the cover of my "published" album over to the right!!) I had almost forgotten about it, but Ginny (LOVE her work - and I just realized we have the same chevron banner on our blogs, too!  Thanks Pinterest!!) used it in a totally cute layout last week, and I was inspired to whip out my circle punch and some pop dots! This layout turned out perfectly. I love everything about...especially that cute little baby. How is it possible that this was a year ago?!

*published: Scrapbook Trends, January 2013*

I feel like those eight hours really got me back in the groove. I'm hoping this means many more productive nights in the scraproom and more layouts to share!  Hope you had a great weekend!

Baby Week @ W.C.S.

Just a quick note that I'm blogging over at write.click.scrapbook today with some adorable baby layouts from myself and members of our team.  It was so much fun to dig through all my layouts and find some forgotten baby layouts of my kiddos!  Stop on by and leave some love!! I am planning on being a scrapbook superstar this weekend. Can you believe it's been over a month and a half since I made a layout?!  Project Life, yes.  Layouts, no.  So hopefully I'll be back with lots to share! Have a great weekend!

Smash!

Okay, so first I must point out that whenever I think of the word "SMASH" I actually start singing this song in my head...but replacing "slam" with "smash." Don't you love how I can just casually incorporate 90's hip-hop with scrapbooking?! You can all thank me at 2 a.m. when that song is stuck in your head. ;)

Anywho...since they debuted a year ago, I've been eyeing up all the different Smash Books, but never actually bought one because I *knew* that while they look totally cool, I would most likely never actually use it. And the last thing I need is more unused scrapbooking product!! ;) However, thanks to my creative friend Katrina, I have finally overcome my fear of the Smash!  

Katrina put together a fun little project she called "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Smash."  There are eleven of us from around the U.S. and Canada, each who began a Smash Book with a topic of our choice. We will send the books around to everyone in the group and each participant will add their own set of pages to fit the chosen topic.  It's kind of like a modern day Circle Journal.  I have a love hate relationship with Circle Journals. Love because I met some of my favorite friends (Barb...Angie...that's you!) through a Circle Journal project.  Hate, because I never actually got a single Circle Journal I created back. It always got "lost" in the mix of things.  Bummer.   Let's hope my Smash book does not suffer the same fate!!

Here are the pages of my original book that I sent out to the fabulous Melanie.  I can't wait to see what all the other ladies create with it! :)

{intro page...plus my little helper's hand}

{topic pages...}

I also created two pages that I LOVE for Barb's Smash, but silly me forgot to take a photo of them!! Hopefully she can take a picture when she gets it back in like a year!! :)  Other members of the Traveling Smash include: Katrina, Barb, Stephanie, Melanie, Lain, Kelly, Kristi, Lee, Colleen, and Kelli.

Celebrating M + H

My kids are born exactly two years and one day apart! We held our very first joint birthday party last weekend! We aren't "theme" people, but instead went with a color scheme of  greens, blues, and orange! Here are some photos from the day:

The full spread!  I tried to keep the color theme going w/the food. We had carrots and celery with veggie dip, cute little fruit skewers with oranges, blueberries, and green grapes (I took a photo of these, but I must have deleted it accidentally, argh.), a selection of snacks including popcorn, cheddar bunny crackers, and pretzels that you could put in little snack cones, sandwiches for the kids (pb&j and cheese), sandwiches for the adults (caprese mini sandwiches), and matching cupcakes and jelly beans!

The bakery (who actually FORGOT to make our cupcakes!!) will not use your cupcake liners, which is why they are just sitting in the color matched liners.  

The little tissue puffs (and a bunch of other things) were from Shop Sweet Lulu and the circle garland was a family effort...I was the circle puncher, my mother-in-law was the sewing mastermind, and my husband worked hard feeding the circles to his mom!  The garland was inspired by this pin on Pinterest.

Miri's special cupcake was from Molly's Cupcakes. It looked a little nicer before I dropped the box, oops!

My talented friend made this awesome smash cake for Henry! It was so cute! I felt bad that he demolished it...!

We had blue, green, and orange Izze soda with cute straws...

The kids got goodie bags filled with some random kid stuff (stickers, bouncy ball, etc).

And here are the color coordinated Jelly Belly jelly beans served in berry baskets!

Finally, the kids had totally adorable shirts that were made by EA Applique. I had been searching for the perfect shirts for them...and came across this Etsy shop that had just opened. She didn't have any feedback when I ordered, but I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. I will definitely be a repeat customer! :)

I hope everyone had a great weekend! :)