Hello Beautiful

I got excited the other day when I saw this post over on the Lily Bee blog.  I mean, punches and Lily Bee?  It couldn't get much better in my book!  Those are two of my very favorite scrappy things!  

So today, after we studied Monet and the kids made "impressionist" paintings in Classical Conversations I wanted to come home and play with color too!  

I started with my yellow cardstock and used a large paint brush to brush water over it.  Then I cut out some banners with my Silhouette to use as masks.  I used both the positive and negative space and misted with some Passion Red and Midnight Blue Glimmer Mists.  Because my paper was wet though the mists ended up bleeding  a little big and looking a bit softer than they normally do.  That's what I was going for.  ;)  

and of course I had to use punches (because that's what the challenge was...not because I'm totally addicted rather fond of them.)  I pulled out my Stampin' Up Scalloped border punch and made some random strips and layers with it.  

The Hello Sunshine line (which I'm almost out of!) was the perfect compliment to these pictures of Kessa from last summer in my first "Fall Flair" dress.  She loves this Robots dress and still wears it several times a week.   Makes me happy that she likes the clothes I make her!

ROAR!

We had a simple Dino party for my son's 3rd birthday.  Family and a few friends came over and we had homemade pizza, dinosaur cake and of course ice cream!

I used this recipe for the cake and then changed up a few things (like using plastic dinosaurs so he could keep them and play with them and using pretzels for the tree trunks.)  

Then taking a cue from Virginia I used my new Silhouette to cut out some dinosaurs from vinyl and put them on some "grab and go" sippies.  (I even added bows to the dinos for the girls!  lol)  

and then because I'm addicted to my new toy I made a little banner too.  

I just *love* when they learn to do this (please note the sarcastic tone with which that was typed!)

There!  That's better.  We kept his birthday shirt simple this year because I found this perfect dino shirt that already fit him.  I figured, why mess with a good thing?  So I just slapped a three on there and he's one happy boy!  (except when it's in the laundry!  lol)

Yup, he's got the whole "CHEEEEESSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEE" thing down!  lol

*trying* to blow out the candles...(and yes, that would be my preggo belly back there!  lol, not sure who took this picture)

   Yup, I think this picture is proof positive that I done good!  ;)  

2011 Word

Thanks to Ali Edwards I've been thinking of and focusing on a "word" each year for the past few years.  This year picking a new word for the year happen to coinside with my reading of Ann Voskamp's new book One Thousand Gifts.  (also, if you read her blog, I just want to mention that I picked my word AND made this LO before I saw this post.)

This is definitely something that's going in my book of "gifts."  Sitting down and scrapping again was something I'm so grateful for.  Something I will continue to give thanks for.  

Eucharisteo.  Thanksgiving.  That's my word for the year.  I was struck as I was reading One Thousand Gifts how ungrateful I am.  How most of my sins, my bad attitudes, my whining and even things that most people would say are "justified" all stem from not seeing everything as a gift from The Giver.  

Just cutting and pop dots...love!

Chara...Joy.  We can't know true deep chara without experiencing, living, really KNOWING eucharisteo.  So, thanks to conviction from the Holy Spirit and proding from One Thousand Gifts this year I will choose to "fight feeling with feeling."  I will choose to be thankful.   

I cut out the title with my new Silhouette (*swoon*  LOVE!!!  Thanks so much mom!!!) and then backed it with a darker paper to make it stand out more.  The ruffles are made with masking tape and all the papers are October Afternoon (minus the two that are from an old book.)  I used some of the scraps from the background paper to fussy cut some shapes and pop them up for some dimension.  The journaling type rub on behind "chara" is an OLD Fancy Pants one and the "Joy" is a Pink Paislee rub on.  So....I'm ready to scrap some more!