Magical

Last weekend was the Noches de Luminarias at NMSU. I don't know the history behind it but they had thousands of paper bag luminaries lining the walkways of the University. We took a stroll through that night. It seems like a whole heck of a lot of work for one night, but it was amazing. Magical even. Again taking pictures of them in the dark was quite hard. I had the night setting on my camera but no tripod so things would get blurry. If I tried to take a picture with the flash on, you couldn't tell the bags were lit. They looked like, well paper bags everywhere.
This was a layout I was going to use for a club meeting but never did. The big white area is supposed to have an 8 x 10, but none of my pictures were really all that great to go to the expense of printing that size. Later I did go back and mat the 2 pictures on a Creme Brulee mat. That softened it up a lot.

Christmas present for my sister

One of the things I forgot to bring to Las Cruces was wrapping paper, duh! Anyway, if you know me I'm too cheap to go buy more when I have a ton at home. Oh yeah, I didn't have a box either. So, I got to thinking that I had bought this big Christmas paper pack and thought I could make a box out of paper and cardstock. And if you know me, you know I LOVE two-fers! I even made the bow out of the scraps! My husband was suitably impressed.

I can't tell you what's inside because it's a gift and I don't know if my sister reads my blog. Also, after Christmas I can't show you because I was so excited about the box, I forgot to take a picture of what's inside. I also made cute little gift boxes for my brother in law and nephews but didn't even take pictures of them. Darn it!

Snow Angel

Snow is rare in Las Cruces so when we got some Leo had to go out and play. I don't know why it was so exciting for him, it snows at "home." I had this A Page 4 All Seasons layout for over a year now and finally decided to use it. I thought it was a funny sight to see snow on a palm tree. I don't think it happens all that often.

Santa!

The pictures aren't great because I don't have a tripod and night pictures are hard without one and the layout needs something, but here's our visit to see Santa. He came to the Las Cruces Railroad Museum on a diesel engine and there were crafts and the whole neighborhood was lit with paper bag luminaries. We saw Santa come and then left for other festivities around the downtown area. There were just too many people waiting to have their picture taken with Santa so we decided to come back later. The whole time we were gone Leo kept saying that Santa was going to leave and he would miss him. So we finally get back to see him and then Leo would have nothing to do with him. Argh, the frustrations of a 4 year old.

Gingerbread fun

Leo really wanted to make a Gingerbread house so I got a kit. I had thought about making it all on my own, but got lazy. Aaron had fun eating the icing and candy. Leo just had fun decorating it. The one I got was preassembled and maybe next year I will attempt to make one from scratch.
This is one of the layouts from my December A Page 4 All Seasons kit

National Papercrafting Month

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Getting in the spirit

I'm determined to get into the Christmas spirit this year. The first step was to create a few holiday decorations. This is the little entry space in our apartment (it's behind the front door when you open the door)
I went to Hobby Lobby the other day and got a big pack of Christmas paper, a 12 inch styrafoam wreath and the wood letters and trim items. (EVERYTHING was on sale 50% off so total I spent less than $25, whooee!!!!)

For the wreath, I cut out and inked 120 leaves (but I didn't use them all) and just started pinning them around the wreath in a pattern that I liked. I added some of the berries here and there and tied a bow on top.

For the NOEL, I traced the letters on the same papers I used for the leaves, cut them out and then modge podged them on. I sanded and inked the edges. I was going to embellish the letters, but when I put them on the shelf, I stuck some of the extra berries on the shelf and decided that embellishing the letters themself would be overkill.

High Desert Brewing Company

I did it! I managed one post a day for the entire month. I deserve a prize! Maybe there's some shopping in my future. :)

We're lucky enough to have a Brew Pub, with fairly decent food, right here in Las Cruces. We actually took the boys one day for lunch, but it's not the most kid friendly place we've gone, but we managed.

Blue Corn Cafe

As I said yesterday, we love Brew Pubs. We had had a very long day. We woke up in Carlsbad, went to the Caverns, checked out of our hotel, went to Roswell and then drove up to Santa Fe (all in about 10 hours). Martel wanted to go to the Santa Fe Brewing Co, but we approached from a different direction and couldn't find it. As we were wandering around trying to find it, I spotted the Blue Corn Cafe and Brewery. Being exhausted we went inside. It was wonderful. The food was great and the beers were very good.

Mudshark's Brewery

We love Brew Pubs. I mean really love Brew Pubs. One of the first things I do when we go someplace new is check and see if there's one around. Mudshark's Brewery in Lake Havasu, AZ was one we just happened upon. We actually had no plans to stop in Lake Havasu, but I committed the ultimate sin and didn't navigate correctly, so we missed the turn off to Bullhead City. We had planned on stopping in Bullhead on the way home to let the boys run around a bit. Boy and I glad we missed it! There was an awesome park (Rotary Park) right on the lake and we found Mudsharks. They had a fantastic BBQ Chicken Pizza, and even though I make a killer one, I like to try other ones to improve mine. I caramelize my onions (yum) but they added fresh cilantro. Oh, I'm soooo doing that next time.

Like the photo collage? I don't have any fancy photo editing software (someday) but as I was uploading my pictures to Walgreens, I saw a collage option. How great is that? I picked the pictures I wanted in the collage and printed it as an 8x10. You can change the size of the borders, the colors of the borders and arrange the pictures how you want them. It was $3.99 but I had a buy one get one coupon. Gotta love that!

Balloon Fiesta take 2

Here's another layout of the balloon fiesta. Nothing too special and pretty self explanitory.

bring on the sand!

The apartment complex we're living in here in Las Cruces has a sand volleyball court. Since we didn't get into the complex with the park next door (here we have to drive to one), we go to the sand court with their sand toys and play. They love it, and I love not having to get in the car!

Museum fun

Ok, so this isn't my favorite layout, but I thought I'd share anyway. This is the... Las Cruces Natural History Museum! Ha, I bet you thought I was going to say the Santa Fe Children's Museum. The Natural History Museum has an exhibit, Air Play about air movement. It's really great and is a travelling exhibit. If it comes to an area near you, you should check it out.

Last one

This is the last one, I promise! The last one of the Children's Museum that is. My goal (and so far I've actually made it) is to post every day in November.

They had this great table that had huge magnets and all sorts of nuts and washers and you could make all sorts of things.

you 2

Even though these pictures were taken at the Albuquerque Plaza, they're not going in the New Mexico album. I just loved these pictures so much that I had to make a page to go in my "Mom's favorites" album.

This is my take on the Inspired Blueprints sketch #32

Oh, did you guess Pittsburgh as the most misspelled city? People forget about the "h" at the end.

Old Town Albuquerque

We had some time to kill between the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and lunch at the restaurant that Martel's aunt owns, so we went to the plaza in old Albuquerque. It was so nice just walking around checking out all the hustle and bustle. Martel found a CRX parked on the street so I clandestinely took a picture of it with him and Leo next to it. The Navajo Code Talkers were there signing books, but I couldn't get a good photo.

Here's your trivia for today, what's the most commonly misspelled city in the US??? I'll give you a hint, it's not Albuquerque. The answer tomorrow!

This is another A Page 4 All Seasons layout that I changed up a bit.

Leisure Suit Aaron

I absolutely LOVE this picture of Aaron. This is how his jammies were when he woke up in the morning. Waaaaaay back is the 80s, my dad used to play this computer game, Leisure Suit Larry. I don't remember a lot except that Larry was a lounge lizzard and the game was entirely inappropriate for kids to know about.

Boys and their toys

Yet another of the Children's Museum layouts. It's more of a mishmash of photos that I really liked and wanted to scrap.

This is an A Page 4 All Seasons layout

Making Music

Are you tired of the Santa Fe Children's Museum layouts yet? I'm almost done. :) As I mentioned before, there was just so much to do that I had to separate into many different layouts. I think I could do an entire album of just that day!

In the outside area, they had all these "music instruments." They really aren't but I don't know what else to call them.
This is a Pagemaps sketch but I didn't save it to my computer.

Pumpkins!

I think this is the last layout from the Mesilla Valley Maze. I have tons more picture, but they're just going in the album in photo protectors. While we were at the maze, we took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch. We were getting ready to leave Las Cruces to go on our whirlwind tour of New Mexico, going to be back in Las Cruces for another week and then head home. I was a mean mommy and told Leo that we could go look at them but we weren't going to get one. I was not about to truck a pumpkin 2000 miles around the country. They sure were pretty though

Yet another A Page 4 All Seasons layout.

We only had the back of my car to bring our "personal" item and I wasn't able to bring a lot of scrap stuff this time, so I ordered a bunch of these kits because everything you need for the layouts are included. One must be resourceful if one wants to scrap away from "home."

Sopapillas!

One of my favorite things to do when we visit Santa Fe is to go to the old Santa Fe plaza and get sopapillas from.... Plaza Cafe. I think they actually have the best sopapillas I've ever eaten. Some times we eat them in the cafe and on days like this one, where the wait was over 30 minutes, we got them to go and walked across the street and actually ate them in the plaza. It was a beautiful day and the plaza was full of activity. There was a guy making balloon animals and had made these great flowers and attached them to the lamp posts.

Here's a little bit of trivia for you. Santa Fe is the oldest state capital in the country. In 2010, it's celebrating it's 400 years and they've already started the festivities.

This is another A Page 3 All Seasons layout.

Balloon Fiesta

One of the many things that we did on our whirlwind trips was a short detour to the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We were in Santa Fe (about an hour away) the night before and foolishly thought that 2 hours would give us enough time to get there for the 7:00 am Mass Ascension. Boy were we wrong! We hit BAD traffic on the freeway (right next to the sign saying Balloon Fiesta 1.25 miles). It took us an hour and a half to get from there the 2 miles to the parking lot. Martel's second biggest pet peeve is sitting in traffic (litter being his first) so that made him a bit grumpy. We actually got to park in the lot right next to the fiesta sight and had an incredible view of the balloons, so we decided not to actually go inside. We really had no idea about the sheer quantity of balloons there, over 500! It was amazing to see them all (or most of them) in the sky at the same time. The fiesta goes on for over a week and there are tons of things going on. Sadly, we only had a little bit of time, but someday I hope to be able to go back and see more.

Oh, and Leo took the pictures of us on the right page.
This is another A Page 4 All Seasons kit

Petrified Forest

While Leo may be a great car traveller (see yesterday's post) Aaron is not. With him, we have to stop every few hours and let him run around. We stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park, on the way from Las Cruces to Flagstaff. I had never been there before and got another National Park crossed off my list.

This is my take on Inspired Blueprint sketch, #33.

You Rock!

We have been doing A LOT of car travel lately. Leo is an awsome kid in the car. I seriously think that we could drive straight through from California to New Mexico in one shot with him. He loves to color or just look out the window.

Gorilla's in the Desert

The Museum at NMSU has a Family Craft on Saturday afternoons. The craft is based upon the current exhibits. Right now there's an exhibit from Diane Fossey, including many of her own personal photo's of the gorillas. The craft was making gorilla masks and Leo enjoyed it very much. Aaron lost interest quickly and just wanted to jump in the puddles.

This is a Pagemaps sketch but I can't find it to show you.

Ways to have fun

Martel's dad was from New Mexico and still has lots of family there. One afternoon we went to his cousin's house. Leo and Aaron played Guitar Hero with Martel's cousin's daughter. Leo thought we was doing a great job, when in reality Revee was playing.
This is another A Page 4 All Seasons layout

Aaron

One of the many places we went on our whirlwind tour was Albuquerque. We had to get up at 5:00 am to go to the Balloon Fiesta (we were in Santa Fe that morning) and afterwards we went over to the Albuquerque Plaza for a little bit. Aaron was getting pretty tired (read cranky) so I set him on a short wall and played a game of peek-a-boo with him. He was so stinkin cute that I just had to snap some pictures.

This is an old A Page 4 All Seasons layout that I hadn't had the right pictures for. These were perfect!

Santa Fe Children's Museum

Here's another layout from the Santa Fe Children's Museum although, it's really more about my husband and our boys. As I was flipping through the 300+ pictures I took while we were there, I noticed that Martel was in 2/3rds of them. I got to thinking that I really love how he loves to do things like this with the boys. He's at his happiest when hanging out and playing with them (or when working on his cars, but that's another post). We spent hours at the museum and he just patiently followed them around and let them do whatever and play wherever. I had to drag them all out of there because I was hungry and it was past lunch time.

This is another take on a layout posted in a magazine.

Bubbles!!!!!!

Here's another A Page 4 All Seasons layout. The title, "Explore your world" is perfect for some of the pictures from the Santa Fe Children's Museum. It was truly amazing. If you have small children, and are in Santa Fe, I highly recommend going. Plan on getting there when they open and staying a while.

They have this huge table and all sorts of tools to make giant bubbles. They also have a cut out tractor tire with the bubble solution so you can make a bubble around you. Leo and I tried but our bubbles popped before we could get them over our heads.

Who needs snow?

Another thing we did on our trip to New Mexico was go to White Sands National Monument. I had been wanting to go there for years and finally got the opportunity. We bought sleds at the Visitor Center and headed out to the Heart of the Dunes, where the best dunes are. It was amazing! They can get pretty high, around 30 feet. That makes for some great sledding! We got there early, and it was a weekday, so we had the place to ourselves. The best thing about sledding on the sand is that it's not cold. The downside is that that the sand gets into everything!

This layout was based on one I saw in a magazine. Sorry I don't have a picture of it to post.

White Sands National Monument

Here's another layout of our trip to White Sands Monument. I got so many great pictures that again, I needed something that would fit a lot. This is another Becky Higgins sketch and more blocking. I love her style. So simple but beautiful. This layout is really about the story and pictures and only has 2 little strips of paper to tie it together.

Just some little things about New Mexico

I decided to do a special album of our month long trip to New Mexico. The boys and I (and Martel occasionally) did so much stuff that I have enough to fill one! After spending way too much time trying to figure out the first page of the album, I came across some of the pictures of the "funny" things in New Mexico. Then I remembered a layout by Jennifer McGuire and for the life of me I cannot find the link to share her layout with you.

One of the places we went was this GINORMOUS scrapbook store in Roswell. (see the picture of the alien street light?) I gave Martel the whole "I bet they have specific New Mexico things that I won't be able to find anywhere else" speech and he fell for it. Actually, he's really supportive of my scrapbooking. He saw this very bright paper with the colors and symbol of New Mexico and wanted me to buy it. I have to say, that it's perfect for this page.

Let the Good Times Roll

The Stallion Springs Community Church had a carnival the day that Martel left (originally) for Las Cruces. The boys and I decided to go check it out. They had a great time playing all the games and running around like the crazy boys they are. I had a great time just being a spectator. :)

This is another one of my Page 4 All Seasons monthly kit that I hadn't gotten around to using. The colors and the circles of the layout fit perfectly with my pictures.

So Happy...together

The Turtles are running rampant through my head right now. Everybody with me.... I can't see me loving nobody but you. It's no secret that I adore my husband, but that's how it should be, right?

Anyway, I actually took this picture of me and my husband at the Mesilla Valley Maze in Las Cruces. We spent the morning there with the boys doing all the "pumpkin patch" things.

This one actually wasn't a sketch but inspired by the colors and my scraps.
One more tip. I love the Prima crystals and pearls but they can get a bit pricey so what I do is cut them up and only use a little bit of the swirl on each layout. That way my one swirl can last for at least 2 layouts. That and I stock up when they're on sale.

S'mores N Snores

Here's a super easy layout that's cute as can be. For times when you have tons of pictures that you want to include (but don't want to do 15 layouts) trim them all to a uniform size and "block" the page. I also had a lot to say so this Becky Higgin's sketch out of a Creating Keepsakes magazine was perfect!

Note: my band new pack of Thickers only had 3 s's so I'll be needing to get another pack to finish my title which should be S'mores N Snores.

Summer fun at the water park.

I admit it, I'm a bad mom. I'm really not into holidays and things like that. My husband and I don't like to make a big deal about them (read teach our kids that it's all about the presents etc). Since Leo's birthday is in August, my girlfriends and I take the kids to the water park and I call that his birthday party. I'm an August baby too and when I was a kid, my mom did the same thing, took 3 of my friends to the water park. I thought it was great and I'm sure she did too. No party to prep for.

This is my version of Prima's Build-A-Page-November. In my last post I mentioned that I use sketches for my layouts. To go a bit more into my process, I see a sketch I like (like this one) and then print my pictures to fit the sketch, or my adaptation of said sketch. Once I get the pictures and the sketch worked out, I go through my paper and see what papers and embellishments I want to use. (paper/embellishment collections I keep together in a bag) Then I toss the pictures and the sketch into the bag with the paper and I'm ready to go. I usually do this in the evening while chatting with my husband or watching TV. Then, when I feel like scrapping (or go to a crop) I just grab a bag and it comes together in a jiffy. This layout here only took about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles

No trip to Los Angeles would be complete without a stop at Roscoe's. Jen wasn't too sure about fried chicken and waffles on the same plate, but I think she enjoyed it. I know I always do. This is my take on Creative Scrappers sketch #75. Many people ask me how I manage to get so much scrapping done and all I have one word for you..... sketches! I'm getting so bad now, that it's really hard for me to scrap without them.

Exciting times!

I'm finally getting around to scrapping the last few things from my girl's weekend at CKC Pasadena. Since 3 of us (Mary didn't have a camera at the time) were taking all weekend, we decided that we should burn CDs with all the pictures. Of course, blank CDs aren't something any of us packed so that meant a trip to Target. Yeah, what an exciting Saturday night in Pasadena, a trip to Target.

This is based on an Inspired Blueprints layout, #34

Batting Cages

Martel had such a great time taking the boys to the batting cages. Sadly, this was the second time he took them as the pictures from the first time got lost.

Meerscheidt Park

Just a simple layout of the kids playing at the "big park" in Las Cruces. This is based on a Pagemaps sketch.

Space Museum and Hall of Fame

We went to the Space Museum and Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, NM. It was pretty cool seeing such familiar things and faces on the wall. I took my picture with Hugh L. Dryden, where it all started. I met my husband while working at Dryden Flight Research Center. And Charles Bolden is the new NASA Administrator, the head honcho.

"Scrapping" at Kim's

We had one last scrap night at Kim's house. Sue mentioned margaritas and all thoughts of scrapping moved over for the blender! We had a great time and I'll miss these ladies when we move.


This is a Pagemaps sketch and supplies are My Mind's Eye and CTMH

Carlsbad Caverns

Even though our trip to Las Cruces was a business trip, Martel managed to take a few days off work so we could explore the state. I had never been to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. (one of my personal goals is to visit every National Park in the system) The Park Ranger told us to be quiet in the caverns because of the echo. Leo made sure to remind us to be quiet.

We went in via the Natural Entrance which wound down 750 feet in a little over a mile. Leo was amazing and walked the whole time, and then half the Big Room. One of the things that I HAD to do while we were there was eat lunch at the snack bar, 750 feet below the surface of the Earth. I mean, really! How many times can the average person do that? And my lovely husband played along with my request and bought a $7 pre-packaged salad and a $5 container of fruit, so I could eat down there.