Eventful Spring

It's almost Mother's Day and I'm feeling all nostalgic. My mom turned 80 this year and had a fall that landed her in the hospital and now rehab facility to get her strength back. I'm so grateful that it wasn't more serious and relieved that there's hope she'll be able to return to her home with help. This is a woman who was meant to be a mom...my mom. She's a perfect fit for me. I can't say more than that. 

This spring has also marked some eventful happy passages in our family. My youngest, Ben, turned 16 and now stands 5' 10". I'm sure he still has some growing to do, but passing his older sister was a minor goal of his and he did...now his goal is to pass his dad at 6'1"...I guess we'll see about that one!

It's weird to remember that when I was 16, I started dating his dad and that, by the end of our first summer together, we'd be planning our future together. Now we're here 32 years later with a nearly grown son and a daughter graduating from college. Crazy how fast time flies, am I right? But how lucky was I to find him so soon and to be able to celebrate 25 years of marriage.

Here's the pic of her grad cap that she decorated with my craft supplies, did you spot the Stickles in silver and purple? My favorite supply, bar none, is Stickles! 

The quote is from Hamilton, the musical, that both my kids are obsessed with right now. It is catchy and they've got me and the hubby hooked too. Here's a little snippet from PBS if you want to know more. The writer and star of the show, Lin-Manuel Miranda, took all kinds of dryly-told facts from a biography and turned them into an amazing musical that keeps you glued to the story until the tragic end.

This is my newly-minted 16-year-old in his first musical, which just closed last weekend. He's in the front on the far left and is a Victorian Scrooge ghost ancestor in The Addams Family Musical. They did a great job overall and he did a fab job dancing and acting for the first time ever. Especially since he said the first day of dance rehearsal, "Turns out I can't dance."

Handsome, ain't he?! Hee, hee.

And here's one of my ridiculously grown-up daughter who stole a friend's trench coat to dress up and pretend to be Alexander Hamilton...I wasn't there but I'm betting there was singing involved during this little episode.

So there you go, all tied up in a neat little package of Hamilton and musicals and kids and rites of passages, in which I realize I'm too young to be this old :)

I'm actually enjoying watching these kids grow and become and reach and achieve and learn and just be. It's a privilege.

Happy Mother's Day to all, and if you're not technically a mother, I'm guessing you've mothered someone at sometime in their life, it's kinda what women do. We love. And that sums up mothers in my book.

And this is where I'd put a video of Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof if I didn't think it'd make me all melancholy...but feel free to sing it to yourselves. I'm laying bets the husband will be singing it at graduation, just to be ornery.

Happy Friday!

Chark

Throwback Monday

Ok, it's not Thursday, but I thought I might do a throwback post any way. Here is my first scrapbook page, in our Vacation Travel Scrapbook. I thought we needed a scrapbook because we plan to see all fifty states and my husband's idea was to see them alphabetically.

Of course, I thought he was crazy since we drove to the farthest point in Alabama from Ohio with an infant, but the baby did fine and we had a blast. We were saving Alaska and Hawaii for when the kids were old enough to remember them and now we saving them because our kids are making us broke! :) We'll get there one day, just not now.

This is our very first state and my very first page. Here in the close-up you can admire my use of decorative edge scissors and trimmed ephemera from the guidebooks, apparently we stayed at a Days Inn. 

Of course, my favorite part is the adorable kids in the photo, sitting on the edge of the minivan eating candy from Miss Colleen's Kitchen near Gulf Shores. We had to go there, since our daughter is our very own Miss Colleen. She was excited to see her name there and more excited to eat a yellow chocolate sucker.

We're on the letter M now and turns out, we have a lot of states that start with M. We've seen Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts and Michigan and now we have four more M states to go. This year is Minnesota. So if you have any suggestions on what to see there, be sure to let me know!

I still need to scrap the Michigan page in the official Travel Scrapbook and I'll probably use some beach themed items from Pretty Little Studio, since we went to the lake. They have a new collection that I'm coveting, along with some vintage die cuts. Love PLS, where I keep getting pretty things to hoard use. I promise I will use them soon! (I'm not affiliated, just like them). I bought this little die cut and lurve it, but still not sure what I'll do with it. Probably a baby page from when my old kids (15 and 21) were babies.

Happy Throwback Monday...Throwback Thursday really does sound better, doesn't it?

Chark

Two More Sleeps Til Christmas

It's December 23rd, so that means just two more nights until Santa comes. In our house, we exchange presents from each other on Dec. 24th, so technically there's just one more sleep til Christmas here! Santa does his thing on the 25th, so we'll get up for stockings and Santa presents. And we usually do Christmas cookies or gingerbread houses on the 24th. At any rate, it's an exciting time!

I thought I'd give you some presents too and link some freebie digis for you to print out and use.

One of my favorite blogs is We Love To Illustrate, with a collection of illustrators of books and stamps and other items. All adorable, of course. They also have freebies each month from these talented illustrators. Here's the December link. Free owl tags from Julissa Mora!

And it looks like Inky Antics has some of Shirley Ng-Benitez's work on their stamps...love! The one in the lower right corner is my favorite. You can go to Inky Antics to purchase.

Here are some free Project Life cards for those of you (like me) who love these cards. You can get the download here.

And this site, Coloring Pages for Adults, has (if you can believe it) a lot of free coloring pages for adults, like this angel stained glass window. Cool! 

And if the kids are driving you crazy, go here to Itsy Bitsy Fun for some free coloring pages for them.

There are a ton more links to coloring pages here at Amazing Mess for kids and adults. I plan to visit it when I have some coloring time soon!

Happy Almost-Christmas!

Chark

Bear Hugs for You

Today I'm up on the a2z Scrapbooking blog with this cute bear hug stamp from Hero Arts. It's on sale right now, as is the star stencil I used...so hop over to the shop and pick them up before they're gone. I love the stencil so much, I use it way too much, probably. 

I stenciled the stars on cardstock using silver paste and on vellum using silver Stickles. I love how the vellum turned out. On the cardstock, I used both ink and an ink dauber to color. The ink daubers are great because you apply them straight from the bottle, and that makes it so fast!

The silver line stickers are Dazzle and I got them at the Fort Wayne Stamping show. They have it every year with classes and vendors, including a lot of vendors you don't see anywhere else, with unique stamps and supplies. I highly recommend it if you're anywhere nearby. And the Friday night of classes that you pay extra for is so worth it. We made 10-11 projects and it was a lot of fun. And it doesn't cost an arm and a leg like some shows.

You can get both the star stencil and the stamp set for just $11.50 (the stamps are $8 down from $15 and the stencil is $3.50 down from $8. 

Happy Wednesday, 
Chark

p.s. remember those pinterest ideas I was planning to try? Yeah, hoping to do so by Friday!

Easter Cuteness

If you're a scrapper, you probably have older pictures that need scrapped...or maybe you don't. I had these from 2008 (don't judge) and finally got them on a page. The Doodlebug Easter Parade paper and stickers I got were just too cute to leave on the shelf. 

The series of pics are of my son completely missing an egg and it was kinda cracking me up...wait, crack, egg...I made a pun! Still, it was funny because it was like he assumed it would just appear if he kept looking in the same place. And our daughter immediately starting eating her candy before her brother even finished finding his. Kids!

I made these journaling cards out of the paper and added some washi and the little critter stickers. For the background, I started with a white page, sponged on some Distress Inks in random order (Picked Raspberry, Lemonade, Peacock Blue)  around the outer edge of the paper and added more Doodlebug patterned paper. It was actually a really quick page and that's saying something for me. I'm definitely a slow scrapper.

Happy Easter!
Chark