My Baby is Turning 10 in a Few Days!!! Check out the Special Book I Made Her

I can't believe that my baby is turning 10 years old on May 30th! My two girls are now both in double digits and officially in their tween years. We're ready to ride that rollercoaster together!!!
I made this mini book for Samantha for her birthday. I included pictures of all the many things that she is to us and to everyone around her. I can't wait to show her on Wednesday! I'm going to give you all a sneak peek now:


















Thank you for looking! :)

Road Trip to CKC Manchester!!! -- We are truly NUTS!!!

Wow...I'm pretty tired!!! It all started yesterday when Jenn Henry and I went to a six hour crop after working all day long! We had a wonderful time and had the opportunity to see a great little LSS called Lasting Memories in Mahopec, NY. Boy, are they stocked with the most current products around!!! Can you say, "kid in a candy store?!!!" We left there at midnight and didn't get home until close to one.

Somehow I managed to appeal to Jenn's crazy impulsive side and got her to agree to go to CKC Manchester with me early this morning! We were on the road before 6:30 am! We then set out to pick up my dear friend, Doris, who had agreed last week to go on my little pilgrimage to CKC. I was so exhausted that she had to drive the second leg of our 4 hour trip!

To say that Jenn and I perked up when we got to CKC is an understatement! We were dazzled everywhere we went by beautiful, BEAUTIFUL product! "Hello, our names are Jenn and Amy and we are scrapaholics!"

Here are some scenes from our adventure:
These girls are the best!!! They endured fatigue, a 4-hour car ride, and rain to travel with me to CKC!

Judging from their smiles, I'm thinking that they had a great time!

What a treat!!! I got to meet a fellow Pink Lady, Jenny Lilac! She's super nice and it was so exciting to meet her! We live close enough that I have no doubt that we'll meet again. :)

I also got to meet a scrapping superstar, Karen Burniston! I have always enjoyed and admired her style. What a wonderful delight it was to meet her!

Doris admiring the beautiful ribbons!

Jenn with a look of love in her eye as she shops at one of her favorite online stores. <333

Anyone know of a good 12 Step program? My beautiful array of great scrapping finds...

My cute bag from ScrapDaddy.com and my new scrapping t-shirt. Jenn has a matching t-shirt. Won't we just be the cutest croppers?!!

So that was our adventure at CKC Manchester. I have no doubt that we will want to return again next year. I think we'll plan to get some extra sleep, though, before making the trip!!!

So much to do; so little time!

I have so many projects that I want to work on, but so little time! I have four calls that I want to submit to, but they're all due the end of May/beginning of June...YIKES! That means I have to come up with some creative ideas FAST!

What inspires you? How do you groom yourself to come up with ideas fast? I'd LOVE to know! :)

Happy Mother's Day/ More DT Pretties...These ones feature Samantha

Happy Mother's Day! I hope that everyone had a lovely day. I did. Got to sleep a little later; enjoyed two soccer games in beautiful weather. Alex's team won a very good game. I watched Samantha's team as well...they won, but Samantha is still benched with her dislocated elbow. Everyone is itching to get her back into the game!

I made two more design team projects for Scraptalk.com.

This one is made from the beautiful Crate Papers they sent me:

This is another layout made from the gorgeous Anna Griffin line...I'm so loving the pink and blank combination:

Thank you for looking! Enjoy the rest of your Mother's Day. :)

Gift album for my grandmother: DT project for Scraptalk.com

I had fun making this gift album for my grandmother as a Mother's Day present. This also served as a design team project for Scraptalk.com, because I used the beautiful papers from the Creative Imaginations Art Warehouse Fresh Collection.

The idea of using the 8" chipboard flowers (Making Memories) as an album was inspired by Wendy Malichio...such a cute idea! This is what I came up with:







Thank you for looking! :)

My first Design Team projects ever for Scraptalk.com

I'm having so much fun designing for Scraptalk.com. It's just the coolest to receive products from the newest lines...to be asked to create pages, cards, or altered items from them...Just so cool! I find that it really exercises my creativity. It's also so much fun to see what my fellow Pink Ladies are designing using the same products. We all come up with so many different looks!

Here are my first two projects ever.
From the beautiful Anna Griffin collection:

From Creative Imaginations Art Warehouse Fresh Collection...so much fun to play with:

It's hard to see in this picture, but I printed out two photos and cut out Alex and the tree from one of them, overlaid it on top of the remaining photo, and popped it up with dimensional dots.
Thank you for looking! :)

Tagged to post Trash pictures!!!

Rhi tagged me (or I tagged myself, since she tagged anyone who responded to her posting...) to post trash photos. Have I got the PERFECT photos for you, Rhi!!!

Drumroll, please:





What were you expecting? Naughty, naughty!!!

I'm back from my Scrapbooking Retreat!!!

What a wonderful time we had at the Memory Muses retreat at the Dolce Norwalk!!! I went with Jenn Henry and Anne Densk...we represented our favorite LSS, Express Yourself...Pat, you would have been proud of us!!! We got a lot done! Here are a couple pictures of the fun we had:
Pajama night on Friday!
Relaxing at the bar on Cinco de Mayo.

The weekend was not without drama, however. I got a phone call from a parent telling my that Samantha had been over their house for a playdate on Saturday and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance for a dislocated elbow. Apparently, the parents had stepped out to go to the store and Samantha and her friend (both only 10) decided it would be fun to jump off of a 6ft high sloped portion of a roof onto a trampoline! I was terrified to hear this!!! Samantha was VERY lucky that all she got was a dislocated elbow. It could have been so much worse...don't even want to think about it. The pain that she is feeling is punishment enough for her. No soccer or cheer for her for at least three weeks. And no more going over to that friend's house!!!

Despite the ordeal, I managed to be super productive and completed 12 projects!!! Here are the 11 projects I can share with you:











Thank you so much, Jenn and Anne, for going with me! We had such a wonderful time and are so looking forward to our next retreat together. Lasting Memories in July...here we come!!!