travel pages

 

Hi! Just popping in today to say hi and to post the photos of my travel book! It's only a 6x6 mini, so these pages are small and layered with lots of paper! I have a couple more ideas of things to add to it but will have to wait until I return home. I may end up adding some white paint to a couple of the pages, some of them don't look completely finished to me. :) 

So, here they are. I only photographed 16 of the pages but I promise to rephotograph the entire book once it's completed and filled with vacation photos! 

There are lots of inserts throughout this book, transparencies, envelopes, bingo cards, flash cards and I plan to add 4x6 photos as well as a few post cards!

I'll be back tomorrow to choose a winner from the giveaway below! 

On my Desk - Giveaway

Hello and happy Friday! Chase and I have been out running errands  all morning and we came back to the house just to get this post up! I was sorting through some supplies last week to make myself a little to-go scrapbook kit for the road and thought it would be fun to giveaway a few extras! 

 Each kit includes random bits n bobs of this and that - some handmade and some vintage. My personal favorites are the messy fabric/string embellishments, handmade paper stickers and the text book pages! You can't go wrong with vintage fabric, trims and flashcards either, you can incorporate any of these pieces into your mini scrapbooks or even on a layout.  

I have 3 travel kits to give away, just leave a comment below and I'll be back on Tuesday to post 3 lucky winners! **Feel free to tell me about your summer travel plans! I'll be talking alot about mine in the coming week! :)**

 Have a wonderful weekend!! xo ~ Tara

petals

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed. 

- Walt Whitman 

I got a little sidetracked this week! I started cleaning in my craft room and once I finished sorting through my junk box I just decided to keep clearing out stuff and organizing what was left over. It's amazing how much stuff can accumulate if you don't sort through it every so often! I've also set a goal for this week and next to go through all of the rooms and find things that can be given away. I want to be able to come home to a clean and organized home next month. I'll be sorting through my closet today and maybe even the bookcase later on but first I need to photograph some mini scrapbook pages!  

and speaking of giving things away! - I'll be doing a little giveaway here on my blog this Friday! 

on my desk

I'm currently working on a travel journal for our trip next month. I haven't yet decided how I'm going to finish it. I'm sort of on the fence about using this album because I have a few Hambly transparencies that would be lost if I go the post bound route. Decisions, decisions. I've managed to make 24 pages in about 2 afternoons, they are only 6x6 pages but I love how quickly mini's can come together! 

 I went with a very neutral collage theme for each page. Lots of small papers layered and sewn together to make a base for our photos. I used mostly repurposed paper scraps with just a little actual scrapbook paper mixed in. My goal was to keep all of the pages as flat as possible which meant only paper could be used. If you're familiar with my style of scrapbooking, you could probably guess that it was a tad bit challenging for me... I love using embellishments! 

I'll share the photos of each page later on... I think I'll photograph it before I add photos to each of the pages and then re-photograph it after our vacation. :) It's probably one of my more favorite minis that I've made! So that's what I'm working on right now - what's on your desk?

keys

Without music life would be a mistake.

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

(I'm going to try something new for Wednesdays, just a simple photo and a found quote to accompany it. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it going! Oh, and I purchased a vintage piano last week, it's beyond lovely!) 

all wrapped

I realize it's a bit late being that we're almost 2 weeks into June but better late than not 

at all! Almost as much fun as my color challenge posts for Crate Paper, my gift-wrap posts are becoming an anticipated favorite of mine. I have one more post for June and then we take off the month of July for CHA and I get to spend the month in California! 

Speaking of which, I took Chase with me today to run a few errands and I wanted to pop into a Goodwill to look for a few books to take along with me on the trip. (2 hour plane ride, each way and an 8 hr. car trip up to the Oregon house.) I didn't find any new books but Chase on the other hand found all sorts of perfectly random treasures. 

Goodwill: the only store you can go into looking for something specific (books) and walk out with a pink miniature plastic grocery cart and green maracas. 

Oh well, we had fun though and Chase is currently running through the house happily pushing along his little pink shopping cart. :) I'm going to start organizing some stuff for our trip, making lists, and starting to plan out our vacation. I'm so excited, July can't come fast enough!   

to the zoo.

'As we go walking through the zoo

This is what we'll see,

Elephants and hippos

And Monkeys in a tree

Tigers roaring loudly,

Giraffes who stand so high,

Dolphins swimming freely,

and parrots in the sky

So let's all go walking, 

Having fun the whole day through, 

As we go on our field trip, 

To the friendly city zoo.'

author - Beverly Qualheim

and the 2 cutest zoo kids! They had been begging us to take them to the zoo and we lucked out and had one weekend where it wasn't blazing hot. So, off to the zoo we went! They had a great time too. We came home with 2 new zebra hats and enough cotton candy to feed the neighborhood. :) 

pink, pink, pink

What are you doing this week... or even next week? I ask because my color challenge for June is now posted! I think it's one of my favorite posts I've done for Crate (and I've been with them for 17 months now!) - I loved the color combination, it's super easy to work with and I was excited to be able to use Crate's new baby girl line: Little Bo Peep. 

I'm calling this color palette- '50 Shades of Pink'  I created 5 quick projects for an upcoming baby shower, the details and tons of photos are of course on the Crate blog. If you get a chance this month, pop over to the blog, check out the rules for entering and then send me your projects!! I'm hoping everyone has as much fun as I did playing with this combination! 

Some songs were made for running.

 Back in highschool one of my track coaches explained that we would focus on running better if we all chose a theme song to run to. The idea made sense to me and throughout my days on the track team, I had only one epic classical song that I loved (and still do!). When I moved away to Hawaii, the new scenery deserved a new running song and so I chose this loud rock song that was surprisingly effective in motivating me to run up and down the hills in Kaimuki & Kahala. 

While I was out there, in Honolulu, my room-mate Tina re-introduced me to some of the older bands that my parents has listened to. After-all it isn't cool to like the same groups that your parents liked, but somehow being a teenager and discovering the bands on my own, with a little help from Tina, made it more acceptable. 

So this weeks running song is brought to you by Simon & Garfunkel. I found their record last week at a Goodwill and I remembered how much I had enjoyed their music. Especially this song! 

Thank you Tina, where ever you are, I owe my motivating theme song of the week to you! For you runners/walkers out there, what 1 song do you find yourself putting on replay while you're out?

I'll pass on May,

I've decided something this week. From now on, I will be issuing myself a free pass from blogging for the entire month of May... starting next year. This month was impossibly hectic. To be point of just being silly ridiculous. I honestly don't remember feeling this way about previous May's but who knows, maybe I have experienced that overwhelming sense of mental and physical overload each evening and I'm just not remembering it accurately. Don't let me fool you though, I've been having a great time keeping up with a full schedule however with little time to spare in the day it doesn't leave room for any other daunting tasks: like blogging.

This month I've:
- taken a road trip up to Sedona
- gone to the zoo
- went to 3 birthday parties
- had Grandma & Grandpa visit
- watched Chase graduate from his 1st year of preschool
- had a Mother's Day tea party at Chase's school
- went to Mother's Day brunch with my fav. neighbor
- attended a wedding
- went to Alaina's school play
- attended Alaina's end of school party
- watched Alaina graduate from the 2nd grade
- hosted a # of play dates (too many to keep up with) 
- hosted a snow-cone party
- spent endless hours on the phone helping a friend
- started my running routine again
- stocked up on summer reading books
- spent one afternoon shopping for old records ( and I found some really awesome ones!) 
- made a couple of new projects for Crate Paper

and if it weren't for our homes air-conditioner deciding it was done working yesterday morning, I probably  wouldn't be sitting here typing this post right now. Here I sit, somewhat patiently (only because my kids are right beside me analyzing my every facial expression) waiting for the repair man to show and offer some relief from the stale air that surrounds us on the 1st floor of this house and blogging is the one thing that doesn't require any physical exertion. No air-conditioning has forced me to slow my schedule.... maybe a blessing in some uncomfortably hot disguise? possibly. 

I've also started writing letters to my sister who is finishing her 1st month in boot camp at Fort Jackson, SC. I have to say, it's incredibly surreal to be writing to someone I actually know again. For years now, I think Alaina was 2 when we started, I've been sending letters over-seas to deployed troops. I love the website Any Soldier and if you have any time this summer or at all throughout the year, please look into writing letters or postcards for deployed soldiers as I know it helps in aiding morale. When I was in highschool, it seemed like the months following the release of school I added one more person to my list of those to write to. We lived in a small town next to another small military town where military was a way of life. I was use to writing long letters in those days, filling my newly departed friends in on life outside the compounds of a military boot camp. But now, it's my little sister and my protective big-sister instincts kick in and want to help when I know she's struggling to cope with the immediate circumstances that come with such a life changing career path. (She holds multiple statistics and various other math degrees and has only ever wanted to be a teacher.) My sister is strong and incredibly intelligent, she'll make it through no doubt, as countless others have before her, but I know a letter goes along way in lifting someones spirit that is temporarily threatened. Surreal indeed.

I don't know if this post requires photos, Lord knows I have taken hundreds this month but I'll leave you with one from our hike up in Sedona. I know I say it all the time but seriously add this location to your bucket list. It never disappoints no matter what season I go up for, it's natural beauty is unlike any other place I've visited. 

I have a couple of projects for Crate that I should update and my 'It's a Wrap' post is right around the corner, this Friday infact! Lot's to do and it's only the 1st week official week of summer vacation! 

xo - Tara

1 Birthday, 5 gift tags

As I get older, I've become much more aware of how fast time goes by and that each day should deserve to be celebrated. I think birthdays (no matter how old or young you are turning) are cause for a grand celebration of whimsical proportions. My very good friend Erica is turning 30 this weekend and I wanted to create something pretty for her birthday gift. Actually, the gift itself isn't overwhelmingly spectacular but add a little color and texture and I think we are ready for the party on Saturday! 

I also used Erica's b-day as an opportunity to walk through my thought process on Birthday Gift wrap for my  'It's a Wrap' post over at Crate. Erica is my crafting buddy and during the holidays we listen to nothing but my record player and my awesome collection of vintage vinyl records. It was time Erica had her own record player, so I tied in some little music details (music flashcard, and tag) to compliment her gift and carry the music theme throughout. 

The box itself is rather large and when wrapped up in simple white paper was a tad bit ordinary. I created a pom-pom for the top, which started off much larger and then I snipped and trimmed it down to size, in a really pretty coral color. - It's the centerpiece of the entire gift! Plus, I just love coral and light grey together! 

I also created a messy little bungle of tags. Originally, I has planned on making a lacy card but the idea of multiple tags won out. 

Paired with a frayed tassel and a little envelope full of colorful confetti, Erica's stack of Crate tags was complete! 

I think making fabric tassels could be my next favorite thing and you can't just make one! I'm also doing a Pretty Party prize pack giveaway on the Crate Paper blog ~ because honestly what would a post on birthdays be without a giveaway? If you get a chance before Thursday night pop in and leave a comment!  xo ~T