MANIC MONDAYS CHALLENGE #1

Welcome to my very 1st Blog Challenge. Every MANIC MONDAY I will try to post a new Blog Challenge with examples of other peoples take on the challenge (including my own take) for you to have as inspiration. This way you can get your scrapping mojo back, for all of you who are in a funk.

This 1st week's Blog Challenge is to create a masculine page with product that's traditionally used on feminine pages. Start on it NOW!!!
-Choose your masculine-themed photo(s) and then gather supplies to match the color palette of your layout.
-Don't restrict yourself-find flowers, scallops, etc.
-Use those stereotypical feminine supplies in smaller quantities and more subtly than you might on a feminine page.
-Many of these embellishments come in masculine colors and materials (like brown felt) so there's no reason not to include them on your guy pages!

Here's MY take:

Here I used a dominant color of red, some stickles, bling, glitter pp, and a stacked flower. All things that one would associate with a feminine LO. Notice the stickles spelling out my title at the top and how the title is outlined with red i kan dee eyelet brads? I tried to make the look of the Target symbol by placing the eyelets in the centers of the polka dot paper since the billboard is of Target ads. I tried to carry that Target symbol into the flower as well. Notice the white center flower with the red circles?

Journaling reads: My brother was in a Fashion Show in Hawaii recently for Tony Williams album release party. I thought it would be funny to photoshop his picture and say that I have been seeing his face all over billboards here on the East Coast. I never thought he'd actually fall for it. But he did and so did our whole family and all of his friends. He's too embarrassed now to tell everyone that I just punk'd him. 2/09

For all of you who are not familiar with Tony Williams he is Kanye West's cousin and has written and produced songs with both Kanye West and Jay-Z.

Here's a slideshow of layouts previously submitted for this challenge:

Please leave a comment with a link to you LO. Thank you for sharing!

And My Easter Blog Candy WINNER is.....

Yes! Today is the day that I announce my Easter Blog Candy Winner. I gave Eva a mini Easter Egg Hunt because the Candy Giveaway didn't go exactly the way I had hoped. But hey, it gave me a few new www friends in the process. Stick around because I plan to have more Blog Candy in the near future. The name picked from the egg was.......Silvana!!! Yay Silvana!!!! Congrats girly! Please email me your mailing info. and I will get your Candy mailed off by either this Friday or Saturday. Thank you for joining in on the fun!

I've got GOOD News & BAD News

I'm going to cut straight to the BAD News. On Friday after work when Dj got home he came straight to me and gave me a hug. I just KNEW that something was the matter. He said "I've got news". That could only mean one thing in my Army wife world.

He's getting deployed. He leaves sometime in August. This time instead of going to Iraq though, he's going to Afghanistan which really isn't much better right now. It will be a 1 year term which I'm not so pleased with. Neither I, nor the kids have ever been separated from him for THAT long.

I'm already looking forward to his mid-term leave and hoping he can be with us during Christmas. I'm planning to make the best situation I can out of it. I'm more saddened that the kids will not have him around because I think I can get through it alright. I just don't want Eva to forget him. She's so young right now and he'll miss out on a lot when it comes to her.

So, that was my BAD News. Pretty BAD huh? I'm not sure if I've ever posted a picture of Dj on my blog so here's one of him & I this past December.
Now on to the GOOD News...

We celebrated Eva's 2nd Birthday yesterday (on Saturday). We've been planning it for about a month and the day finally came when I could get all those "ideas" out of my head and into reality. I basically took most of my things from my scrapbooking room to decorate our lounge area downstairs for the party. Since my scrapbooking room and Eva's Birthday had the same exact color scheme and theme (b/w zebra stripes, many different shades of pink, and Hello Kitty). It turned out beautifully!

I think you need to have the purrrrfect invitations to set the mood for every party. In my case, my daughter's party was a Hello Kitty themed party (based off the MAC Cosmetics new line of makeup with a black Hello Kitty). Here's what her invitations looked like. Please don't blow up my phone if you figure out my phone number. LOL

Here's the little decorated party area. Perhaps it would have been a lot nicer if I had taken the rug that was originally in the room out of there before I layed the zebra print one down but too late now.

I found a really cool and EASY idea for the Hello Kitty cake and went with it even though I don't bake. Yes, it was THAT easy! Dj's grandmother was the only person who actually ate and liked the licorice though. And I'm glad to say that EVERYONE liked the taste of my cupcakes & cake. While they were being served I heard Dj warning everyone "Lynnette baked the cake and cupcakes". LOL

Here are the cupcakes I made for the party. I displayed them on a 3-tier crystal cupcake stand and topped them off with plastic Hello Kitty rings. I sent Dj to the store to buy irridescent curling ribbon to create sort of a waterfall effect from this but he ended up coming back from the store with regular irridescent ribbon. Men! So, I just spread these faux crystals in pink and clear around the table. They were decorations from my scrapbooking room.What did I do with the wrong ribbon he bought? Of course I didn't let that go to waste. I simply hung it behind the tissue pom poms I hung from the ceiling. There wasn't much of it. I placed my pink curtains from my scrapbooking room up on the wall behind the gift table to create a more girly look. It took me a couple of days to make that banner you see hanging but I plan to use that in my scrapbooking room now that the party is over. Here's a close up of some of the pennants to show the detailed work.
You can't have a party without games.

Pass the yarn (played like Hot Potato)....because kitty's play with yarn AND because I couldn't seem to find any Hello Kitty games anywhere.

Pull the string Pinata instead of the vicious beating the cat with a bat idea.

And all the little kitty's went squandering for the treats within.

Eva finally got the concept down on what to do with all of those wrapped gifts. She had SO much fun openning all of her wonderful presents. She had a good year this year!
Here's Eva on the swings in our backyard during her party. The outfit was custom made to match her party and I just ironed on the Hello Kitty. She's also wearing a black and pink kitty ears headband and a tail. She was my pretty little kitty! Dj slaved over the grill.
I only got a couple pictures with me in them at the party since I was behind the camera the whole time but here's one of them. This is Dj's dad (my Father-in-law).
Yup! The party was a good one. I love party planning! It's so much fun!

Blog Party

Feeling Scrappy is having a Blog Party from April 20-26 in honor of their birthday. I joined in and ended up getting a layout done for the Sketch Challenge. I killed two birds with one stone because this was also a LO I needed to get done for a client of mine.

This was the very first time I ever added stitching to a layout and it was a pain (because I didn't even have a sewing needle) so I did a lot of licking and forcing things into small holes....oh you dirty minds!

BUT it was well worth it in the end and I got to use my scraps of patterned paper finally. I even ended up winning the prize pack for it.

So, here's Amy's sketch:
And here's my take on it:


And this is the prize pack I won. Everything looks even better IRL (in real life).

Quiz Time

I noticed that Deb from IF IT'S GROOVY took this quiz to see what cat she was. I'm a pussy cat fan (Okay, I'm just a Hello Kitty fan) but it's besides the point....I just wanted to see which kitty I was so I took the quiz. Turns out I'm a Cougar. I was hoping to be the White Tiger but the Cougar describes me pretty accurately.

You are a Cougar

You have more strength than most people. Your power gives you confidence, and you find leading others to be easy. You believe that you need to be the best, and you are very driven to excel. Most people immediately admire you, but some people feel very envious of your abilities.

What Big Cat Are You?

Scrapbooker in Training

I got these shots earlier tonight when Eva got onto my scrapbooking table and started messing with my stuff. She never gets into trouble when she flashes that smile!!! She's my little Scrapbooker in Training!

CONTEST TIME!!!

We celebrate Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22. That's 39 years of observing a great celebration. What better thing can we do for our safety and cleanliness than to take care of our beautiful planet?

CONTEST TIME!!!

Would you like to be crowned the Groovy Green Goddess? If not you, do you know someone who deserves this title? Then send them over to the If It's Groovy blog.

You have TWO, count them, TWO chances to win and be crowned the GROOVY GREEN GODDESS:

1. Send pic to groovydeb@yahoo.com of you behaving green with a story about your greenish lifestyle.

2. Send a completely GREEN (color) monochromatic layout or card (thumbs up to using repurposed green items).

A panel of judges will decide who can wear this crown and she will be crowned soon. So, show us what you've got! The winner will receive green goodness by mail and the title for one year. The winner will also be recognized on If It's Groovy http://ifitsgroovy.blogspot.com with her story, picture and project. Contest submissions will go through the month of May.

BLOG CANDY

I WON this Blog Candy from Joanie at FULL OF BOLOGNIE !!! Thanks Joanie!!!

Easter Blog Candy

This happens to be my very first time offering up some blog candy and I'm doing it in honor of my DT's Challenge this month which is all about frogs. Here's what you have to do to enter a chance to win this awesome blog candy.

1. Follow my blog.
2. Then, post a link to my blog on yours and leave me a comment with a link to your blog.

For an even better chance at winning visit http://ifitsgroovy.blogspot.com and join the challenge this month.

I like the idea of picking the winner on Easter Sunday but that would only allow a couple days for this to go on so I'm going to end it on April 20th instead. I'll be putting all of your names who have successfully completed the steps above in leftover plastic eggs from Easter and I'll have my daughter pick one randomly. If you participated in the IF IT'S GROOVY Challenge this month I will enter your name twice. Good Luck & Happy Easter!

UPDATE: I'm going to extend this Blog Candy for 1 more week. The winner will be announced next Monday on the 27th. The winner will then have 3 days to contact me with her mailing info. for me to get her package out to her.

IF IT'S GROOVY Design Team

Earlier today I was announced as a Design Team member for IF IT'S GROOVY. You can check us out here. I'm SO proud to finally be in a team filled with such fun-loving girls that have the same passion as myself! These are the 2 layouts I created for the challenges we were given. Let me know what you think!


For this first layout our challenge was to create a layout for Frog Month. I didn't even know there was such a thing. I used a picture of my husband and I and titled it: "I had to kiss a lot of FROGS to find my PRINCE".


For this 2nd layout our theme was "wet" and we had to use daimond glaze which I used over the water in the pool. We also had to follow a sketch that was given to us by the Lead Sketch Artist. I used a couple of pictures of Eva from this past Summer (2008) in the backyard in her pool and titled it: GOOD DAY SUNSHINE.

Hello Kitty Countdown

I have exactly 25 days till Eva's 2nd Birthday Party. My idea for the theme is MAC Hello Kitty. I have LOTS of ideas rolling around in my head about how I would like to decorate the party but I would love to hear all of your unique ideas as well. Beginning with invitations down to the goodie bags. If there is anyone in particular who has a cricut or sizzix and the Hello Kitty die and wouldn't mind helping me make personalized stuff for her party I would compensate. In the meantime, here's a little video of MAC HELLO KITTY for you all to enjoy.