Scrapbook Layouts

With Halloween and Thanksgiving having just passed by, I've been sharing a lot of our family events with you but very little scrapbooking.  I thought I would give you a quick taste of a few layouts I've completed recently.

Dan and I took Tyler to Disney this past June and here are a few layouts:

This first layout includes pictures from the day before Disney.  We drove to Orlando and spent the day at the Gaylord Palms resort.  Part of the resort looked like Key West, a favorite travel destination of ours, so we snapped a few fun pictures.

We spent most of our day in the Animal Kingdom park.  Tyler had never been there and Dan and I had not been there since our Honeymoon.  The first page was made with the November 2010 kit from Scrapbook Circle.  It's the standard photo of the family in front of the park's centerpiece, the Tree of Life.



Here we are in "Asia".  Just some random shots of the attractions.

 Here we are on the major roller coaster for the park, "Expedition Everest".  I sat behind Dan and Ty and was able to snap this great pic of Dan and the broken tracks up ahead (right after this the coaster shoots backwards through the dark.  My then 5 year old LOVED it and hence we rode the coaster twice in a row.

Here I am testing out my new camera to get some detail shots of the animal carvings in the Tree of Life, pretty spectacular.  This layout and the next one were made using the November 2010 kit from Scrapbook Sussies. 

The last layout are shots of us with the Disney characters.  I was deathly afraid of them when I was 5 (heck I still am a little weirded out by them now) but Tyler acts like they've been best friends for life.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some scrapbooking again!

Trimming the Tree

Last night we trimmed our 8 foot Christmas tree.  It's fake and pre-lit....what can you do?  We live in South Florida and the real trees suck!  Plus with a dog, we would never be able to keep the tree hydrated.  Too much work!

The boys get so excited when they see Dan dragging the tree out of the garage.  I think it signal to them that Christmas is close!  We let the boys hang all the nonbreakable ornaments (most of them are) and Dan and myself hang the fragile ones up higher out of reach of the little ones' hands.  My favorite part is unwrapping all the ornaments that we have for each of the kids and our "family ornament", one for each year with our names and the year written on them.  My mom used to do this for me.  I still have most of them and they really mean something special to me.


Maybe later in the month I will share some pics of our holiday decor but for now I'm just happy that the tree is up!

Then it was time for a photo shoot!!!!!  My boys were bribed with promises of candy canes...

You can't stop it, it's futile to even try...Christmas is on its way!!!

The Feast is Over...the day after

OK, not too bad.  Was careful with the drinking yesterday so this morning wasn't so bad.  I went shopping at 6am with my SIL, but not for Xmas gifts...we have a wedding tomorrow and can always use something new to wear!!!

I just wanted to share some pictures from yesterday.  Enjoy!

 The boys and our Thanksgiving "photo shoot".  We do alot of these in our house!  I can't get the little one to get rid of his "cheese" smile.

 Little Turkeys:

Mama Turkey and the little ones:

Basting the turkey with Daddy:

Baby Jason (his little shirt under the bib said "I'm Stuffed"!

 The kids table:

Dad saying grace:

 Dan digging into the turkey:

 Chowing down:

Mom and Dad:

Dan and myself:

Carter and Poppa:

Two Stuffed Turkeys (BIL's Mike and Mark).  Yes, the matching shirts WERE planned!

Adie, my SIL:

So, you can see it was a full house yesterday AND FOR THAT I AM THANKFUL!

Hope you had a wonderful day as well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My life is full of blessings and for all those I am thankful.  I read somewhere that a woman said as she got older, Thanksgiving became a more important holiday to her, even more important the Christmas.  It was a day that she reflected on the bounty of her life.  This really resonated with me.  I have so much to be thankful for.  My family, including the 2 best little boys in the entire world, my health, a career, a roof over my head.  My life is FULL, and today I think of that as a good thing.  So when my tummy is full of turkey, I will know my life is full too.  I am blessed.

Gobble, gobble!  Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

Well, I took the day off today to get ready for the huge feast we will be hosting tomorrow.  First off the list, a shopping trip to Costco and Winn Dixie.  Not as crazy as one would expect.  For that I am thankful.  Then a trip to Party City for festive paper goods.  I will never wait until the day before again to run this errand.  Everything was picked over and I had a hard time matching all the stuff.  Then it was home to bake.  This year I made a caramel dutch apple pie and a fudgy, caramel, chocolate cheesecake.  Can you say yum-o?  I bought a pumpkin pie from Win Dixie which is against all I hold sacred, but my pie last year wasn't such a big hit with the guests!

I did a lot of decorating this year since we are hosting and this year I added some hand made decor as well.   First, I made some banners.  It is nearly impossible of a shot of the entire banner and have enough detail to see what it says.  The first banner says "GIVE THANKS".

This was super easy to make.  The leaves are foam cutouts from Michaels.  I just added the patterned paper and the letters.

The next banner says "HAPPY THANKSGIVING".  It is made from the same foam cutout leaves as the banner above.  I also hung some other leaves from various spots on the banner.

In the background you can see the chandelier decorations I made.  I wrapped the chandelier in our dining room with an autumn leaf garland and hung some autumn shapes (leaves and acorns) from ribbon.  Here's a close up.  I love how festive this looks!

I made a two-sided banner for my kitchen doorway.  One side says "TURKEY", appropriate, huh?

And the other side says "GOBBLE".

Lastly, I made some hanging decor featuring pictures of us from the pumpkin patch this year..  These are my favorite.

 Here's Carter:

 Here's Tyler:

Here's my little family:

Well, that's it for the handmade Thanksgiving decor.  Time to take my pie out of the oven!