Snow in Central California?!!!

On Monday, we were surprised by a rare snow storm! It only snows here about once every ten years, or so. It had been raining all night. As Greg left for work, he announced it had started to snow! Mixed in with the rain was the occasional snow flake, and slowly it began snowing instead of raining! The flakes were big and wet, and melted as soon as they hit the ground, but it was definitely snow. I took a few photos.

Avast Ye Mateys!!!

What's this I see?!! Can it be pirates?!! They've taken over our home and bathrooms! This past weekend, Leo and Joey were part of the pirate chorus in there school's production of "The Pirates of Penzance"! It was an such an exciting show! We are a little relieved it's over, because now we can move on to other serious issues like Valentine's Day, homework, and preparing for their piano recital this month. Here are some photos of the boys in make up:

January Sketch!

The January LPS http://www.lifepreserversclub.com/ sketch was borrowed from Becky Fleck's Page Maps http://www.pagemaps.com/:

I did a layout for the contest, although I'm technically not eligible to play. I just loved this sketch! I was able to use product from the January Project kit by Jenni Bowlin, which was absolutely yummy! Here was my take on the challenge:

Check out the February Sketch Contest!! The winner wins a guest spot on the LPS Design Team!

Here is what I've been working on this week!

One of my goals this year is to do all the challenges and classes at Life Preservers Club. I'm behind already! Luckily, I was able to complete two of the challenge layouts:

This layout was done for Danielle's challenge for January 9th. Our challenge was to scrap a photo of ourselves, and write about something we would like to change about ourselves on the inside. Going on a diet does not count!! It was difficult to think of things inside myself that need changing, although there are so, so many of them!! I tried to phrase them as positively as I could. This was the only photo I had of myself recently that was any good, and I'm not sure it really captures the feeling of the layout, but it will have to do.

I made the background page months ago using collaged dictionary pages to a piece of a priority mailer, and a technique for a peeled paint look. Then I really distressed the cardboard in places, and exposed the corrugated cardboard. I think it's really cool. After putting it all together, I realized it worked perfectly, because it reflects my busy mind and old ideas!

This layout was done for Melissa's challenge of January 16th. The challenge was to use only two colors in our embellishments. You could have multiple colors in the patterned paper, but I chose to use this black/green diamond paper by Imaginisce (too bad I used it this month on another witch layout!). The colors were perfect for scrapping these photos of a recent trip to Hollywood to see Wicked! I used the front of the Playbill, the actual tickets, and a pin the kids got for winning the ticket lottery! I layered some flowers for the center, and got to use my new alcohol inks (celery) to dye the center flower green. It all worked pretty well together!

January LPS Design Team Layouts

This month, I was fortunate enough to get to create some layouts with the LPS Featured Kit http://www.lifepreserversclub.com/ by Bo Bunny http://bobunny.com/. The soft blues and browns are perfect for winter pages, but will work well with other sorts of themes, as well. Here are the projects I made with the kit:

More Layouts from the crop

Here are a few more layouts I did for the LPS Winter Crop:

The Early Bird Challenge

We Feel Fine:
Scrap "Something":
Journal This:

LPS Winter Crop January 2 - 4, 2009!

Over the past weekend, I have been busy with the online crop at Life Preservers Club! We had a blast with tons of challenges and games. I did a challenge called "Gifts of the Season" where you would create a layout with your new scrappy gifts from the holiday! Here are the scrappy gifts I received:
This is my first example:

And my second example: