A Family Reunion, of sorts

Whenever my brother and his family come to visit, we always try to get the family together. Since it's been over two years since we all were in a photo together, I mentioned in passing how I would like to get a new family photo. Lo and behold, I was committed to the new family photo project last weekend. I was stressed about it for a while but all in all, every one is used to my process by now and even the kids were very cooperative! Although I wish I had a better background to work with, I am happy with the outcome... and you really should have seen it before I Photoshoped it! But here it is... my family...minus Deanna and Devin...















And the I got a couple shots of my brother and his family who always look great!







































We had some fun times in the pool and hanging out together. And I couldn't quite tell whether Shawn or the kids were having more fun with his throwing them around in the pool! But it made for some really good photos!





















































































And my favorite of the day!


























































































































Jonathan calls this photo her "Papa look" cause she looks just like my dad when he looks at people crooked.
































































Mae Mae caught Papa squirting her with the squirt gun. He tried to deny it, of course and it progressed to this - so telling of their personalities...

Year in Review

Back in May, I went to a scrapbooking event hosted by Green Tangerines. As one of their prizes, they gave everyone their January kit including the supplies to make their new Month-in-Review page. This is something I had thought about doing previously and had a template fairly similar to their calendar style layout. But I never really got into the idea until I saw their sample layout in the store. After putting together the January one they gave to us, I was hooked. I have been wanting to do some sort of favorite photos album and this will allow me to do that, while at the same time recording events that happened during that year. I plan to use every day stuff too so when we look back on these albums, we not only see what we looked like, but what the things around us looked like too. This is definitely not taking the place of my regular layouts, but it's somewhere to have a little taste of events and allow me to focus more on the Library of Memories approach to scrapping of not feeling like I am "behind."

Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately since it saves me a lot of money) they only allow kit club members to purchase their Month-in-review layouts, so I had to improvise. But I am totally loving my version so much more. And there is an added plus to finally using some of these papers and scraps that have sat in my stash for years! So here is the one that was provided to us from Green Tangerines with a little of my own spin since I didn't use their embellishments or hand write my journaling...













All the supplies (except the black #'s and the labels) are from Green Tangerines Kit Club
You can see their sample that it's based off of here.
Papers are: October Afternoon, Scenic Route, & Cosmo Cricket
Letters and Red #'s are American Crafts Thickers
Black #'s are American Crafts Remarks
Labels: Lynn Grieveson for Designer Digitals
Font is Ashley

And here are the ones I made on my own...












All Papers are Stampin' Up
Pink Letters and Numbers are American Crafts Thickers
Glitter Numbers are Making Memories
Journaling Blocks are Ellie Lash for Scrapbookgraphics.com
Font is CK Anecdote













All Papers are Stampin' Up
Orange and Green Letters and Numbers are American Crafts Thickers
Black Numbers are American Crafts Remarks
Labels are made by me
I can't seem to find the journaling file so I am not sure what fonts I used. Ooops!













Papers are Chatterbox and My Mind's Eye
Yellow letters and numbers are American Crafts Thickers
Butterfly Punch is Martha Stewart
The little circle ebellies with the dates in them are made by me
And I have no idea what I did with the April file to find out those fonts either. That's what I get for cleaning up my desktop!

These were all layouts I started at a crop night a couple weeks back. Hopefully I can finish another four months at our next one!