Holiday Happiness Continues

Hello friends!  I thought I would be posting a New Year's project for the New Year Linky Party at Bitten by the Bug 2.  But after lots of company, a tummy thing, and even more company, I did not get my New Year project completed.  I did, however, have a wonderful surprise visit from my older son last night!!! 

The big news at our home this Christmas season, is John and Bethany became engaged!  He took her to Asheville, NC to the Biltmore Estate on Friday, December 27th and proposed.  We knew this was coming, but I could not help but admire what a wonderfully romantic setting John chose for his proposal.  As you might guess, my life has transitioned into wedding planning as they plan to marry this summer!

Since I have no project to share with you, I thought I would share a few Christmas morning photos (in which half of us are still in our PJs - including me!).  Above - Doug models his Dr. Who hat and scarf.  Below - John is thrilled that Crissie restocked his classroom supplies!

Ian LOVED his new bass and did not want to put it down to open his other gifts.  I told him that he acted the same way over the Little Tykes car when he was two. Every other gift was opened from inside the car we named "The Flintstone-mobile".

Bethany likes sloths.... Aaron and I each got her the same sloth for Christmas.  She was thrilled with her twin sloths!

Santa, that awesome fellow, brought me cutting mats and a great die and stamp set.  I was very happy!!

Not to leave Duncan out, he too received two gifts.  He is so sweet and so happy when he opens a new toy!

Aaron and Crissie were funny.  He got a KitchenAid, and she got a tent!  Role reversal much?

And here they all are: Ian, Bethany, John, Crissie, and Aaron.... and Duncan the wonder dog, Edgar the pug and Magnus the puggle.  What a crew!

Please DO go by the BBTB2 blog and join the New Year's Linky Party.  I think it is going to be fun!!

Merry Christmas!!

Pretty Woman on a Pretty Layout

Hello everyone.  I hope you feel like another layout featuring my lovely daughter, Bethany.  There is a story behind these two pages.  Bethany came home one afternoon after teaching all day and I thought she looked fabulous - especially for a woman who had just spent 8 hours with 20 second graders!  I decided to snap a couple of photos of her.  But of course, Duncan the wonder dog felt like he needed to be in the photos with her.  After some good petting, he gave her such a loving look, then he and Bethany both looked at me and smiled!  The photos were so cute that I had to scrap them!

I actually made most of these two pages last summer at Scrap Convention in a  layout class.  And even though cutting the individual pieces, stamping the individual cuts, adding ink, glitter, etc is time consuming, I always think the end result is so worth while!

My matting color choice may seem unusual, but it actually matches the subtle blue in the background print paper.  Also it matches Bethany's skirt.

I used a lot of glue and fine glitter on this layout.  The flower centers are glitter covered glue.  Also i used fine tip on the glue and outlined the word LOVE and applied glitter to the word.

Family Time and Girlfriend Time....

Hello everyone.  I know it is Monday and that normally means it is time for my weekly Bitten By The Bug 2 post.  However this week I did not get my project finished.  It was all designed, but not cut when I left for a weekend at Lake Murray at my friend Sally's lake house.  And while I accomplished a lot this weekend, I did not get my BBTB2 project finished!  Sad, I know!  I did have a lovely time at the lake and I want to thank Sally and Beth for hosting us again.

I will be sharing some of the projects that I made this weekend later in the week.  I still need to photograph the projects and tonight I am just too tired to do that.  I actually fell asleep sitting up on the sofa checking my email.  My sweet hubby sent me off to bed for a nap, while he made dinner for us!  What a good, good man.

Remember last Monday when I told you that Ian had come home for the weekend?  I so enjoyed his visit that I set up a 20 minute photo shoot with Ian, Bethany & John, Doug & I in the back yard.  I need new photos of Ian and Bethany for our annual calendars I made each fall.  I decided that John will be added to the family calendar beginning in January so I needed photos of him as well.

I thought for a 20 minute photo shoot that we did okay.  I love the photos of Ian and many of those of Bethany & John together.  And of course these two cut solo photos of Bethany - above and John - below.

I managed to get two good photographs of Ian and Bethany together.  In this photo I think they look a great deal alike.

And as we were wrapping up, Bethany snapped a couple of photos of Doug and I together.  I especially liked the photo below.

Please do go over to the Bitten By the Bug 2 blog and check out the Design Team's cats and dogs projects, and to congratulate our new Design Team members!!

Defense Prompt Leads to Fun Layout

Hello everyone.  Today's layout is, of course, one of my LOAD 513 layouts.  The daily LOAD prompt (again they are all from the board  game Clue, or deal with mysteries) was a motive for a crime.  Last Saturday the motive was self-defense.  

I was at a loss for what to do with the self-defense prompt, but I saw several great ideas in the LOAD project gallery.  One of my favorites - someone took a photo of her facial care products and called that her self-defense against aging.  I wasn't as creative.  

I went digging through my photo stash and found this funny photo that Aaron photo-shopped of himself.  I am guess this was based on an X-man movie character. 

During his college years, and shortly there after, Aaron took a series of photos where he is impersonating different characters... JFK, James Bond, a Battlestar Galactica bridge officer, etc.  I took three of those photos and added three of my favorite "Aaron" photos - Aaron teaching, Aaron and Crissie, and Aaron, Bethany, and Ian with Chip and Dale at Disney, and created a this fun, cartoon-ish layout.

I like that even though I used a digital program to scrap this layout, I could still personalize the voice balloons.   I enjoyed coming up with the caption, "Take that, Captain Slime Pants!"

This is a close up of the Aaron photos as well as the hings I added between two of the photographs.

Thanks for stopping by today and checking out my cartoon layout - Defender of the Plant Earth!  This is not my normal style of scrapping, but it was fun to create.