serendipity

more CHA peeks...

Here's a few more peeks at the Little Boy Blue collection, including a couple of patriotic cards with the line.

now back to packing!! if you're going to CHA have a great time!

CHA peeks!!

take a look at the Melissa Frances blog for more peeks today and a giveaway!!! and there'll be more peeks to come throughout the week.
Melissa Frances Blog

here's a peek at the new Little Boy Blue collection that will be released this week at CHA. it's such a fun boy line with blues, reds, ivory and a bit of sagey green. it's also perfect for 4th of july/patritic pages.

more peeks tomorrow...

a sad goodbye...

so...a little crazy here. I'm realizing that's it's harder to get anything done in the summer when I actually have a lot more time. so I've neglected this poor blog again. anyway, lots of pictures to share...grace's special 7 year portraits are done and I made her an almost 9 minute slideshow movie with close to 100 shots, all set to 3 songs of her choice. I made the slides in 8 1/2 x 11 size so I can get them printed in a coffee table book for her, because really she's only going to show the movie to like 3 people. so I need to post some of our third and final session here soon.

we're back in town today from a weekend visit to my mom's, which is about a 4 hour drive. and that is our only vacation this summer. unless you'd count CHA this week, which I don't. it's fun, but really not a vacation. and when I get home next Monday night, I'll have to prep for a photo session on Tuesday morning and get school supplies and all that because grace starts school the following monday. for now, I have 2 days to get through my very long to do list before I leave for chicago. and I'm dying to share some Melissa Frances sneak peeks so I will as soon as I have the ok!

my big lesson for this summer has been that I needed to make some big changes. I have a hard time letting things go and with real life that way it's been and the way it will be the next year, I finally realized that some of my design work had to be cut back. so I've very quietly made a few changes and left some teams that have been home to me for a long time.

one of those places I want to mention....cherryArte. I was on their design team for 2 years, from the very beginning and have never been anything but thrilled to work for them. it was truly an honor and it was very very hard to say goodbye to such a wonderful company and such fun products. so in honor of CA, I created a little album to the right with all of my work for CA that I'll leave up for a while. and I wanted to share here some of my absolute favorites. (thank you Lu!! it's been a wonderful 2 years!)

dance

this is a big part of why I haven't posted...

now that dance season and the year-end recitals (and the 3 out of 4 shoes Grace was in) are over...until summer classes start next week...it's finally feeling like summer. the pic of grace and her friend abby was taken at dress rehearsal the day before recital. the tan is real and the makeup makes her look like a teenager to me!

the bigger reason I haven't been around has to do with some long ignored medical issues I've been dealing with. I've had headaches for several years and they've gotten a lot worse over the last year. I found a new doctor who is great and am trying out some new medications to start. I had a CT scan this morning and feel pretty good about finding out what's going on and hopefully feeling better soon. the dental issues are another story entirely and won't be figured out quite so soon. it's been a nice way to spend the summer.

more to come during our lazy week (and HI KRISTA!!! it's been so long! glad you found me, I have to catch up on all you've been up to!)

melissa frances giveaways!!!!

just a little post tonight to send everyone over to the melissa frances blog for a week of giveaways!!!

Melissa Frances Blog

we're getting into the swing of summer here- it feels so strange not having the same routine. and lots of good changes have been happening for me over the last week, mostly letting go of some scrapbooking commitments. so this month's poppy ink kit actually came at a perfect time and I had so much fun with it. here's a little peek at a few of my pages, head over to PI to check out the other one and the other popArtists' work this month.

and one more of grace's photo shoot pics....I think I like this one in black & white better, but she loves orange so color's her favorite. I just have to point out that it is so unfair that my daughter got these lips...no lipstick, no photoshop enhancing (although the color in this image may be slightly affected by the orange or the light)...these are really the color of her lips! I have no idea where she got it from but I'm always telling her that someday she'll love the fact that she looks like she's wearing lipstick without any.

vintage

ahhh, vintage color. my friend bridget does amazing vintage color on her images. I've tried and my attempts have been scary. I kept wondering if it just wasn't my thing, if I wasn't seeing the potential in the color and was too stuck in the bright color images that I love or the classic black and white images. but...I think I may have done it. I'm giving complete credit to bridget for the inspiration, and I think the images played a part too. there were several from grace's shoot that were crying out for something different and I found it with vintage. it's kind of a cross between vintage and my color style. so here's one for now. this was taken on the side of a patio furniture store that sits next to a gas station- the lot of the gas station is literally right there with just a small "street" which is really more of an alley between the lot and the building. it's a spot that's always seemd funny to me. the front of the building on the first corner of the main street downtown doesn't look all that old, but the side has always looked pretty sad. until I took a closer look at the green shutters with some major peeling paint. I only did a few shots there of grace in her favorite orange dress (and only dress!) I wasn't thrilled when I pulled it up on the computer- that plant is slightly bugging me, but this one I am still in love with...

post a comment and let me know what you think of my first real attempt at vintage color! I'd love to hear it. as for my inspiration check out Kisses of Sunshine Photography and see the super sweet bridget's vintage work.

grace

just one to share....I'm loving this one so much, trying to decide how big to get it printed.

where have I been??

ok, I don't really have an answer or an excuse. it's just been the usual. crazy, busy life. and my blog has been on my to do list for much too long so I am forcing myself to sit down and share a little. wyatt is out of school for the summer (he has been for over a week now) and grace has 3 days left. it's one of those good and bad kind of things. I'm looking forward to lazy mornings and not as much of a schedule, but a few weeks from now I'll wish they were both back in school. and that's one of the big advantages of a 6 week summer break that we have here. so, what's been going on here...

my baby turned 7....last week. it's so hard to believe. and I can remember 7 myself, so somehow that makes it seem even older to me. she had attitude before, but it's like someone flipped a switch on her birthday, yep, 7 looks like it'll be just tons of fun. grace has been dancing like crazy, getting ready for her year-end recital in a couple of weeks. and while I'm getting ready for it too, I'm also getting ready for next year when she'll compete. and next year starts the end of july. girl scouts is winding down for the year, but our end of the year bbq is coming up fast here and I have so much to prep- including mini scrapbooks for all 10 girls!

not too much is new with wyatt. he turned 4 in february but I finally got around to his 4 year old checkup today. after 4 shots and a tb test, he's had a rough day (and he's unaware of the blood work he'll need done in a month.) but he's 95th percentile in height!!! he's got to get that from my family. he'll pass up grace pretty soon, but she's tiny so that's not all that surprising.

as for us, we finished painting grace's room- a year and a half after we started and did only one wall! we went to ikea the day before her birthday and got her a desk and bookcase, then set it all up with new bedding and she came home to the big surprise. her room is a serious girl room now and she loves it. it's not completely finished yet, but here's a peek so far.

what else...we went to disneyland and finally bought our annual passes. now I can't wait to go back again. we had a backyard campout with our girl scout troop which was surprisingly great. grace was the only girl who hadn't been camping ever and she was terrified. and I haven't camped since I was a kid. now we both want to do it for real. we even taught the girls how to safely use knives and matches and it was very cool to see their sense of accomplishment.

believe it or not I've hardly scrapbooked. I'm in a rut and have too much else on my mind. but I have some work to do this week, so I'll slowly share the little that I've done. for now, here's two recent cherryArte layouts of grace and her missing teeth and our cute little neighbor.

I am very slowly trying to do a 7 year old photo shoot for grace. I have an excessive amount of locations so we're taking our time. but two sessions so far (and over 150 pictures that I saved)...and I'm really excited about some of the photos! so here's just a few for now (I'll save my absolute favorites)...

more tomorrow....

april poppy ink

whew! it's been a crazy couple of weeks. i'm looking forward to a slow day tomorrow....cleaning up my new work area. it's one of those projects I decided to tackle on a whim and haven't done much else since. I had a new desk at my mother-in-law's house waiting for me, and even though I have some painting plans for it, things are all set up. now my armoire and bookcases are all for storage but I told grace she could use my armoire desktop. now she won't stay out of my cardstock on "her" desk. poor girl is now used to "stay away from my bazzill" (in addition to the already well-known "you can't use my melissa frances" and "don't ever touch my basic grey"). at least she can't identify them by manufacturer yet. now I've been working on projects the last couple of days and my desk is a slight mess. not the usual pile of stuff it used to be, just a little mess. so tomorrow i'll get it all cleaned up and take a picture.

in the meantime, april's poppy ink projects went up today. this one was really a fun kit. pictures of the layouts aren't great, but the scanner wasn't cooperating with me. i've got a new cherryArte layout to share too but I'll save that one for the weekend to force me to blog again.

blink!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!
after lots of work and some tweaking, my new photography website is finally up!!! check it out if you get a chance and let me know what you think!

Blink Portraits

and on to scrapbooking now, this month's design team layouts went up at CreativeXpress today, so I'll share mine here, too.

this one was a 3 product, 20 ways assignment...so we all had to use the cuttlebug embossing die set (I used the dandelion), the yellow doodlebug glitter and the k&co paper ribbon. super fun.

and this one was a community scraplift. I lifted an adorable layout by Shanna Vineyard. her layout's in my tutorial at cx, but it's not up there yet. I'll link it here when it is, because her layout is so fun. it's a surfer boy looking layout called "dude" so I kinda went from there and did the opposite- the girly thing. hee's my super cool girl who's suddenly turned from 6 1/2 to something that looks like 12. yeah that's a tough one to accept.

(and just imagine that there's actually edges to this page!! obviously it's white cardstock, shoulda thought of that before posting!)

and since I can now share the cherryArte layout I did last night, here's the new Girl Power line. I completely love these polka dots!

now I'm back to rearranging my living room, furniture and all, after reading about natural light photography today and deciding to try a new spot and set-up in the house.  yep, will was a little surprised to walk in the door from work and have to climb over things to get in the house. so I think finishing it up now that everyone's asleep would be a good thing. more to share this weekend...a funny/scary story about grace (depends on how you look at it) and pictures of my adorable 4 month old nieces from last weekend...