Happy 4th!

1. "Keep The Torch Lit", 2. American Flag, 3. day 307/365 (bokeh), 4. Nocturnal Art @ Pasadena - 4th of July, 5. Capitol Fireworks 7.4.2008, 6. 4th of July, 7. 4th of July fireworks, 8. Reflections of the Fourth, 9. Pink American/POW flags

July Galleries

It's July already, can you believe it? Wondering where the year is going. The start of a new month means new scrappy goodies and galleries though. Jenni Bowlin is our manufacturer contest this month at Scrapgal. I just love to play with Jenni Bowlin goodies. Here's my JB page:


I've had this Scenic Route Sonoma line in my stash for a while. I just love the rich colors and the mix and match patterns and prints. Unfortunately, the photo is a bit blurry, but I love how this page turned out.


This month at Scrapgal we're also hosting Christmas in July on the galblog. Starting next week you'll get a month's worth of Christmas inspiration. You'll definitely want to check it out.

The July Scrap for a Cure kit went live today after a few site glitches. I worked with Pineapple Smoothie, this month's mini kit. It's a fun kit with great papers and embellishments to play with. Here's what I created.





Happy July!

Cosmo Cricket Love

I'm pretty much obsessed with Cosmo Cricket lately. Girl Friday and Early Bird have been some of my favorite lines ever. I love the vivid colors, fabulous patterns, and fun images. I also love that they seem to be such a fun, good natured company. When I heard they were having a DT call, I knew I had to at least throw my hat in to the ring. If nothing else, it gives me a reason to devout a whole blog post to Cosmo goodness, which makes me very happy. Here are some of my favorite Cosmo creations.











Thanks for looking. Go play with your Cosmo goodness!

Back to Reality

We've just returned from a lovely trip to this gorgeous place:


Where we spent a lot of time enjoying this:


and this:


Shawn and I decided to go to San Diego to celebrate our third wedding anniversary. We originally wanted to stay at Pacific Terrace, where we enjoyed our first anniversary, but it was a bit out of our price range. While searching for other options, I found a good deal at this hotel, La Valencia in La Jolla. We were pretty happy with the pictures and the description of this 1920's Spanish Colonial built on a hill with great views of the ocean, so we booked it. It was definitely a good choice and we quite enjoyed our stay. Here's the hotel:


Our room was on the 11th floor, you can see it in this next picture. It's the room on the top right with the window partially open. I love being on the top floor, it's usually quieter and you generally get pretty nice views.


Here's the view from one of our windows:


The other window faced the village and the mountain, but we also had a nice view of the nest of baby seagulls. They were awfully cute and serenaded us in the mornings.


We spent our mornings and one afternoon here, sitting by the pool and looking out at the ocean.


La Jolla is beautiful and we spent a lot of time walking the cliffs by the water, where there's a nice mix of sand, surf, rocks, grass and flowers.


We saw quite a bit of wild life, including tons of seals and some dolphins. We got massages, enjoyed some of the best food we've ever eaten, went to the Aquarium and got lots of rest and relaxation. Shawn was so happy he even smiled in a picture:


We had a lovely time and were lucky to have such a wonderful four days together.

Thursday Thankfuls

Here's the latest round of gratitude for today,

1. Late start work day today and some time to myself this morning.
2. A gift of the most fabulous smelling lavender sachet brought home from the south of France by a client.
3. Strawberry milkshake from Freddy's.
4. A good night's sleep.
5. The words "I want to work on the house" actually came out of Shawn's mouth.
6. A few to do's crossed off my list.
7. 3 beautiful red gerberas popping up in my garden.

Ten Today

Today's 10 is kind of random. Things you'd find if you were in my head today.....

1. Got a lot of stuff done this weekend, including scrappy DT work and some paperwork, but this morning, my extra bedroom/office space looks like a giant mess with piles of paperwork everywhere. I'm working on some organizing and updating with work and house files. It's a bit scary right now. Now to finish this project......

2. I have declared this summer the "get it done" summer. I've got big plans to work on lots of in progress projects and cross some of those "someday" to do's off my list. So far I've finished my Week in the Life album and gotten started on the office organization/paperwork project. We'll see how much I actually get done.

3. Spent the morning working on this page for Scrapgal's Summer BBQ Relay Race. I used Studio Calico's Playground kit. I love how it turned out.


4. Looking forward to an upcoming San Diego vacation. Beach here I come!

5. Enjoying the 90 weather and hoping it lasts. Looking forward to a few monsoon storms soon.

6. Hoping we continue to develop a relationship with our new friends whom we BBQ'd with on Sunday. We had a lot of fun at their house.

7. Torn between wanting to read, wanting to knit and wanting to scrap. How to divide my spare time so I can do it all?

8. Working on a fun summer mini album, which I will share some time next week.

9. Contemplating a few sewing projects and hoping I can recruit my mom to help me.

10. Liking my summer schedule, which has me getting home earlier than normal two days a week.

New Do

I finally got my hair done today and it was long over do. I desperately needed highlights and my long hair was driving me crazy. I said to cut it off. Give me something easy to do and fun. Here's what I got. I love it. So fun and summery!