Fish Watching Digi Layout

Here's another layout I just completed and I couldn't be happier with it. I was really struggling with getting the alpha colors I wanted and decided to email NitWitCollections to see if they had any tips to help me. I've got to say Little General (aka LG, aka Mary Fran's husband) was gracious enough to work with me (on a Sunday no less) and he passed along a tip I was thrilled to learn. This won't make sense if you aren't into digital scrapping, but you can clip a paper to the alpha image and if you go into the layers palette, click on Color, and it will change the color of the alpha image, without changing the attributes. I knew about some of the other options and how it could change an element, but not that one. I was trying to clip a paper to the letter, but it was losing all it's dimension and becoming just a flat image. LG's tip allowed me to change the color of the letters to ones I wanted and maintain the shiny, metallic attributes of the letter. AWESOME is all I can say about that little nugget of info.

I used Mary Fran's Summer Breeze kit again, this time with the alpha that coordinates with it (from NitwitCollections) And I also played with a fish image from her kit, Summer Splash. I changed the fish by clipping a paper to it, which helped it coordinate with the layout. I chose to keep it flat because those fish in that lake were there, and you could sort of see them, but they sure weren't biting. LOL All of the other elements are from Summer Breeze. The template I used is from Cindy Schneider, over at Sweet Shoppe Designs. (I sure wish I had a way to contact her so I could let her know how much I am enjoying her templates!)

******

The girls and I headed to the pool again today. LOL What can I say, they love going. Well, the third time's the charm as we were able to stay as long as we wanted despite a few ominous looking clouds the sauntered in. No lightning was detected. Yay! At first we were the only ones there and the life guards who weren't on duty decided to play pool football. Meaning, one would jump off the diving board and the other one would throw the football to him, from either the side of or across the pool, and he'd try to catch the ball in mid-air. They included Amy and she got mighty close a few times. I think she did catch the ball one time. Then they played a sort of a game in the shallow end where they had Amy be the quarterback and throw the ball to one of them while the other one tried to tackle the one who caught the ball. I sure wish I'd had my camera because it was pretty fun to watch. I was tickled that they included Amy and she had a blast. They tried to get Jessica to join, but she didn't want to play. Once more families showed up, they quit, but it was a fun time until then. You know we are regulars when they include us as much as they do in their antics. They are really great kids (well, young adults).

All in all, it's been a great weekend! Hope yours has been too.

Thanks for stopping by. 

Have a great start to your week.

*Ü*

Summer Joy~Digi Layout

I'm still scrapping our vacation pictures. Hope you don't get too tired of them. But, while I've got the itch to scrap, I'm taking full advantage of it. This layout took me a surprising amount of time to complete given I knew right away which pictures I wanted to use. I was having trouble selecting a template that fit the mood of the photos. I really wanted to use Mary Fran's Summer Breeze kit, too, but selecting the right combination of papers was a challenge. After fiddling and futzing with it the other day, I ended up closing it up, so I could let things "percolate" for a bit. A little more futzing with alphas today and I finally finished. I ended up not using the alpha that I got with the kit as the letters were multicolored and no matter what title I chose, letters of the same color were side by side and I wasn't able to recolor them to work better. The alpha I ended up using is by Flergs and is called Buttercup (of all names) from Scrapbook Graphics. The stitching is from Libby Weifenbach's Border Basics (Sweet Shoppe Designs). The template I chose is from Cindy Schneider. Can you tell I'm in love with her style? LOL I'm so glad she moved to Sweet Shoppe Designs and I can see what she's up to each Saturday morning when I get my newsletter.

The girls and I have tried to go to the pool the past two days and haven't had much luck. Yesterday, just after we got all settled and the girls jumped in, they had to clear the pool because someone pooped in it. Yuck! It's the second time this has happened. I suspect it's a child in the Base group that was there. The only other time it's happened (just before we left to go to Sioux Falls), the same Base group was at the pool. It would have been an hour and a half wait before the kids could get back into the pool and by then, it would have been time for us to leave. They gave us a raincheck, which was nice. So, we went back today only to be called out due to lightning strikes nearby. That happened twice while we were there and require at least 15 minutes out of the pool each time. The skies were looking pretty dark, so the girls opted to head home. This time though, they got almost 2 hours of swim time in, which isn't bad. The only thing was, a family showed up that the girls like to play with, right before we decided to leave. Oh well, what can you do, right? There's still plenty of summer left. It just has felt a little frustrating this week.

Well, I'm off to decide which pictures to scrap next! Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope your weekend is going great.

Never Too Old To Be Kidlike...

This will be the last water park layout. Whew, huh? I think I've just about had my fill of them, to be honest, but since I was on a roll I decided to get this one done. Hope you like. Same kit, same template designer.

I couldn't believe Sandy convinced Steve to do this. And he only did it the one time. 

Boy am I glad I caught it!

Gotta love sisters that will cajole brothers into doing stuff they wouldn't otherwise do.

LOL

*Ü*

I'm done for today.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Couple More Digi Layouts from the Water Park

Hope you aren't tired of seeing them yet! LOL I may have one more up my sleeve, but thought I'd share these with you. We are laying low at home today as my cold just keeps lingering and making me cough my lungs out. Darn. Well, the girls are having a blast playing with a train set they've not used for a long time. A neighbor boy is over and he and his brother come up with some terrific track designs. Since they are occupied with that and not on the computer, and I don't have much energy to do much else, I'm taking advantage of the urge to digi scrap.

Thanks so much for the compliments on my layouts. I'm not a super creative genius, I promise you. I just adore using templates, which gives you the basic design of the layout and I "clip" the papers and elements on the pre-designed layout. Sure I take a little creative license here and there, adding or taking away an element, but I don't change the basic design all that much. If I had to come up with layouts from scratch, I wouldn't get near as many layouts done, believe me! Still, I'm glad you like what I do with the templates and kits I use.

I didn't have as many lazy river photos that were usable as I thought, but I still am pretty happy with how this one came out. I'm currently in love with Cindy Schneider's templates (from Sweet Shoppe Designs) and I used Traci Reed's Splash Down kit(also from Sweet Shoppe Designs). 

Steve didn't pack his swimsuit either, but he was able to borrow a pair from his nephew and they fit! With his fair skin, he burns pretty easily, but he had fun floating along the lazy river shirtless this one time. The other times, he put his shirt back on, I noticed.

Funny thing, with as many summery/watery pictures as I take, I don't have many kits that I feel work well with those types of pictures. Hence, I keep using the same few I have. Sometimes the colors don't work well on the kits I do have and I don't always feel like playing around with changing the colors of an element or paper, or when I do try to change the colors, I don't like the results. Still, I do like what I've been able to create with the kits I've been using.

I absolutely love this photo I took of Amy. I know it is totally over exposed, but I adore the look on her face and I couldn't wait to scrap it. I tried to offset the over exposure just a bit with the water elements from the Splash Down kit, but the rest of the layout uses Mary Fran's Summer Splash kit from Nitwit Collections. Again, I used a Cindy Schneider template for the base of the layout. 

You can enlarge either picture to get a better look and/or read the journaling.

Thanks so much for stopping by and for your sweet and encouraging comments. They put a big old grin on my face!

Wonderfully Wet Playground~digi layout

Here's another layout, this time featuring the area that Jessica really liked. (click to enlarge if you like) She was 2 inches too short to go down the big slide in a tube and to jump off those high diving boards (not sure what height has to do with an ability to swim, but rules are rules). She didn't mope too long, this side of the water park was chock full of fun things to do to get and stay wet. She also enjoyed the lazy river feature, which will probably become the layout I create next. LOL 

It's been raining off and on all day. I don't think it has gotten much past 60 degrees, but as I finished the layout, I noticed the sun was trying to peek out, so maybe the storm is moving on.

Thanks for stopping by! I sure appreciate your visits.

Fearless Jump! Digi Layout

When we drove home on Sunday, it was wet and super muggy in Sioux Falls. It was cool and rainy (and muggy) in Iowa where we stopped for a bit of breakfast. Got to Nebraska and it was overcast in some places and it downright poured (while I was white knuckle driving at some points) just about the whole way. It wasn't quite as muggy, though. Get to Colorado...more clouds, rain and even a little hail. Unload the van and then Mother Nature decides to put on her own personal fireworks show. I'm shocked that the parks even got their firework shows in, but they did. 

In complete contrast, Monday was a picture perfect, sunshiny, hot, summer day. Go figure huh? The girls and I headed over to the pool while Steve stayed home and did the laundry. Worked for me. LOL And I'm sure he enjoyed the "quiet time" for a few hours.

Yesterday was an at home kind of day. Since we left so early and right after Amy's party, I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of time to clean up the house. I don't know about you, but when I get back from a trip, one of the first things I want to do is clean. It's a weird quirk, I guess, and maybe I want to give the house a good dose of TLC after leaving it for a week, but whatever, I had a strong nesting urge yesterday. This was after I went to my dentist to have a permanent crown put on a molar. I don't remember if I even mentioned it, but I cracked a good sized chunk off a molar one Friday night a few weeks ago. Turns out there was a lot of decay under a filling and the tooth was cracking all over. The popcorn I was eating just nudged it along. LOL Thankfully, it didn't hurt a bit. So, I needed to get the permanent crown put on and now I can get used to eating on both sides of the mouth again. Guess what I had last night...after three weeks without munching on it...yep, popcorn! And it was delicious! The weather yesterday was lovely. No humidity, which is wonderful.

Today, though...not so much. Another system has come and dropped our temps a good 20 degrees or better. We aren't even supposed to hit 70 and it's raining. The last I checked it was July...what's up with this? LOL I don't think we'll even bother going to swim class today. Ah well, it shouldn't last too long. Maybe I can squeeze in another layout today...we'll see.

Here's a layout I worked on yesterday afternoon (after I got all my cleaning urges satisfied). I started out with a different template and almost completed the layout, but in the end, decided I didn't like it all that well with the pictures. So I started over (one of the things I love about digital scrapping...no wasted paper if you decide it's not working for you) This one worked much better, I think. I picked up a new Traci Reed kit from Sweet Shoppe Designs, called Splashdown. I like the bright colors in the kit, but some of the pattern paper seemed too much for this layout, so I kept them to a minimum. You can click on the image to make it larger if you want to read the journaling. One of the neat elements in this kit are the water splashes. They are definitely subtle but they are there.

It's hard to believe it's been a week already since we were at that water park. I didn't swim as I didn't pack my swimsuit, plus being sick didn't help. So, I wandered around taking photos. I was able to get my feet wet, which really helps to cool you down.

Hope you have a great day. I've made it through about half of my Reader full of unread posts. Yay!

Thanks ever so much for stopping by!

Hey! Did You Miss Me??

LOL You might have noticed (or maybe not) me being more quiet than usual on the blog. You probably DID notice I haven't been commenting lately.  We took a road trip to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to visit Steve's family. We left last Sunday(at o'darkthirty) and got home late afternoon yesterday. All in all, it was a great trip. Well, except for the fact that I caught a nasty cold (I've not had one in about a year and this one is a doozy!). Most of the week the humidity was "low" by Sioux Falls standards, and it was windy, so it made the weather a little more bearable, if you know what I mean. Although Friday and most definitely Saturday were quite sticky! All the way to SD, it was bright and sunny and just about all the way home it was cool and rainy. Even here at home. I was sure any fireworks would be postponed as it poured here, but I was wrong. There was just enough of a break in the storm for the shows to be held, even if we needed coats and umbrellas. LOL

I took a bunch of pictures on our trip, but will spare you a "what I did on my vacation" post loaded with pictures (for the moment anyway, LOL) and share just a few highlights...

We went to a local swimming pool...Amy jumped off the HIGH diving board.

We went to play miniature golf and they had go-karts....Jessica REALLY wanted to ride one, my little daredevil.

Of course, we went fishing...Amy caught a "lobster!"

And to the Butterfly House   *Ü*

And to Steve's sister's house out in the country.

Jessica wanted to ride in the big red tractor,

but not Amy.

Amy on the other hand, did learn how to set off fireworks. Oh my, we might have a mini pyro on our hands.

On the way to this sister's house, we stopped by a fireworks retailer and picked up a few to set off after dinner. Wasn't sure that they'd be able to set them off as it was rather windy, but it all worked out.

So, we're back and I must work on the mountain of laundry that needs to be done and re-stock the fridge.

Oh and work my way through reading a lot of blog posts. LOL

Ahhhh, it's good to have a vacation...

but...

it's also good to be home.