I'm in love...

with the new Vintage Valentine line by Fancy Pants!! It is seriously gorgeous! And i'm loving Frosted, as well, but I haven't gotten to play with that one yet, so that is next on my list ;-)

There will be a reveal on the Fancy Pants blog on Thursday with some layouts using the new lines, so be sure to check it out! In the meantime, here are a couple of sneaks of the layout I did using the VV line.

Wow, what a busy weekend we had!! My fam and I had a blast seeing Springstein in concert! I will admit that I really don't know that much of his music. But wow, that was one of the best performances i've ever seen!! He is amazing - so much energy, and he truly makes the audience feel like he is performing to each and every person there! He even crowd surfed, lol. My favorite part was one he brought a girl (probably about 12) up on stage and let her sing with him - so sweet! We had amazing seats too, thanks to my brother's hook ups :-)

My parents rocking out:
My bro, me and Tony:
Self portrait:
I took these photos of Bruce with my regular lens. I kept joking that if I had brought my zoom lens, I would have been able to see the pores on his face lol. We were in the 2nd row on the side!
My SIL and me:
Bruuuuuuuuuuce:

I got my plane tickets tonight for CHA, so it is now officially official. Whoo - I can't wait!

Tomorrow begins the start of Thanksgiving preparations here at the Taylor household. We host Thanksgiving, and it's one of my very favorite holidays. Love the together time with the family, as well as the yummy food! My MIL is on her way here now, so it will be nice to have her here for several days! I hope that those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving have a wonderful holiday! I'm thankful for all my blog friends out there! :-)

Still here...

Yes, I am still good and well, but boy this week got away from me quickly! I don't know if it's the time of year or what, but things are feeling awfully busy lately! I did have time to make a layout using one of the transparencies from the Dancing Girl line. I cut out some flowers from one of the coordinating papers to layer over the flowers in the transparency. These photos of Chloe totally crack me up! Yesterday was a happy mail day as I received the two new Fancy Pants lines, Vintage Valentine and Frosted. I definitely plan to dig into these soon!!
Today was a fun day - one of my good friends came out and spent the day with me and the kids, so that was a nice treat. We have a busy weekend ahead - tomorrow night, we're going to the Bruce Springstein concert and then out to dinner to celebrate my brother's 40th birthday (and let me add that he is my older brother by almost 6 years lol!!). Saturday night, we have a going away party for good friends that are moving to England, and then Sunday, I am volunteering at a bingo fundraiser for Noah's school. Phew - I'm tired just thinking about it all!

Oh, before I forget, AMM has some great things on sale, and many of them are only $1. You can check it out here.

Hope everyone else has a wonderful rest of their week and a great weekend!

A time for giving...

I have a really cool opportunity to tell you guys about if you're a crafter who is in the giving mood, but first I want to share a new Fancy Pants layout I just completed. I so love this Rough & Tough line, and as soon as I saw the dark cloud/lightening bolt paper and glitter cut, I knew I wanted to use them for these photos of the kids jumping in puddles after a rainstorm. They were SO excited when I told them to come on out and splash around - we created such fun memories that day!
Now, onto the giving part. My friend Michelle, who also happens to be the owner of AMM, has a daughter with Leukemia. Michelle is organizing a scrapbook drive for anyone who wants to get rid of some old scrappy supplies sitting around that are not getting used. I contributed last year, and it made me feel so good to know that I was helping bring smiles to the faces of these kids. Here is what Michelle said on the thread at AMM:

When my daughter Chloe was 4 years old, she was diagnosed with Leukemia. She spent several months in the hospital when she first began chemotherapy. For several weeks during this time in the beginning, she was unable to walk, she would hardly talk and was basically a little zombie. The ONLY THING that brought her any sense of joy at this period in her life, was doing craft projects. She was sometimes unable to leave her room and the social workers and play room attendants would bring projects to her room for her to work on. It was a really dark place in her life (and ours), but doing little art projects gave her a purpose every day.

I'm telling you all of this because doing arts and crafts means a lot to children who are stuck in the hospital ~ especially during the holiday season when they cannot be home with their families. What I would like to do is do a scrapbook drive (same as last year, if you were involved in that), where what you do is basically clean out your scraproom and throw into a box the items that you know that you will not use. We are just donating this stuff to kids, so they don't mind the old Jolees and Suzy's Zoo stickers or the ancient Debbie Mumm papers that you never threw away. THEY actually appreciate them. LOL. So, if you would like to participate, please box up your stuff and send it to us.

Chloe is scheduled for her next hospital procedure in early - mid December (probably about 12/7). When we go in, I would like for her to be able to take the donations with her.

Thanks so much! If you do this, believe that you are doing something special for a sick child that will truly appreciate it!!!

If you are interested in donating, please click on the link for more info or you can e-mail me at stacimtaylor at gmail dot com, and I can give you the address info. where the donations can be sent.

Thanks for reading through all that, and I hope everyone is having a great week! I'm anxious for the rain to go away on my end!!

I'm a hoarder, yes I am

I am a keeper of all things. I always have been. But when it comes to scrapping and gorgeous patterned papers, my hording-ness (nice word, right?) comes out full force. I've had that red flowered Pink Paislee paper for awhile now, and I just couldn't bring myself to touch it, much less cut it. But alas, those flowers were really calling for me the other day, so I finally broke free and pulled the paper out ;-) And i'm so glad I did! I combined several different lines here, and this is what I got:
I love these photos of my then-very young Chloe (16 months!) making dandelion wishes. I think these papers definitely did those photos justice. Journaling says: Never stop believing in wishes, Chloe. One day they will all come true!

Hubby has been working a ton lately, and I think we're all exhausted in this house. It's definitely going to be an early night for us. Hope everyone out there in blog land had a great weekend! Happy Monday!!

What we've been up to...

Some scrapping and some playing... it doesn't get any better than that! ;-)

This is my last layout using hte Earth Love line from Cosmo Cricket. I did this one for the member lift that we did at AMM - some of our design team lifted the fabulous Amy Tara Koeppel (you can see her layout and the other lifts on the AMM blog here ).
I had fun combining some bubble wrap and glimmer mist on the background - that worked so much better for me than paint! Journaling reads: Every child has their security blanket, and Gabs and Kirbs are Noah's. We got Kirby when I was pregnant with Noah, and Gabby came along the following year. They are Noah's favorite sleepy time pals!

We had my 3 year old nephew here from early yesterday morning through early this morning. I learned what it is like to have twins since my nephew and Chloe are so close in age :-) We had a great time! Yesterday, we spent some time outside at the park, and these are a few of my favorite shots of my kiddos:
Whoo hoo, I can't believe it's Friday already! Hope your weeks are winding down nicely, and that you all have a fabulous weekend!!

Some Earth Love...

I feel so lucky that Cosmo Cricket sponsored our DT at A Million Memories this month, and I got to work with the awesome Earth love line! A big thank you to Cosmo Cricket and AMM!

I always loved this photo of Tony and me, and these papers had exactly the carefree, fun feel to them that I was looking for to match this photo.
On Noah's 2nd birthday, we had an awesome day enjoying a long walk and playtime outside, just the two of us. I wrote him a letter at that time, and I enclosed it in the Maya Road envelope that I added to this layout. It only took me 3 years to do this layout, lol!
Journaling for "Yes I am" reads: Even on my most stressed out, hair pulling kind of mommy days, there is not a day that goes by that I don't think of how incredibly lucky I am to be their mother. They are my world!
I've done one more layout with this line, but I can't share that one just yet. Soon, though!

I hope everyone is having a good week and that you all have recovered from your candy highs ;-) It's off to bed for me - I'm watching my nephew tomorrow, and he's getting dropped off bright and early at 6am. Can't wait to have him over for an overnight!

Only 363 days...

until next Halloween! ;-)

The kids had a blast. The adults had a blast. And we all needed some major recuperation time yesterday, lol. Saturday night was a veeery late night for all of us. The party went off without a hitch. Well, one minor hitch. I did sort of forget to pull out the mummy cake pops that took me about 3 hours to make. Yeah, I wasn't too happy when I realized that Sunday morning, lol.

But, at least I remembered to put my spider cupcakes on the table
along with my witch's hat calzones
and the shrimp brain.

Don't you just love this shot of my two angels (insert eye rolling here). Yeah, this is pretty much the best that I got when I tried to get a photo of them together, smiling. Better luck next year.
My transformer:
My fairy princess:
I have a ton of pics from the party, but because I don't want to lose any friends, I think i'll refrain from posting embarrassing party shots for the whole world to see, lol.

Before I go, I wanted to share the gorgeous November kit from AMM with you guys. Isn't it SO pretty?? The design team is starting to post their creations, so be sure to check out what they've done. And if you're interested in the kit, you can go here to check it out.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!