New52 - week5

I can't believe that we are already on week 5.  So this week, I tried 2 NEW recipes.  I'll only share with you one because I totally botched the other one.  I've been following the Pioneer Woman and always drool over her mad cooking skills.  All of her food look so amazing that I finally decided to try one of them.  I made her Beef Fajita Nachos, but I didn't make the nachos part just the fajita.  I thought it came out really good, a bit on the spicy side but with homemade guacamole really tones it down.  So what you see below are my sliced flank steak, guacamole, and stir fried bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms.  The second picture is my fajita all assembled.  The full recipe and stunning photo can be found here.

My sister, Jill, is in town visiting with her son.  We went shopping on Saturday and I bought NEW makeup.  Just a simple Chanel highlighting powder.  I couldn't resist after Ed put some on me and the fact that Jill kept telling me that it is only "limited edition."  It is always nice to indulge a little, especially on makeup.

Here is just a quick photo of my daughter with all of her cousins.  Grandpa and grandma must love all the extra company at their house.

From left to right, Nicholas, Luke, Josh, and Bostyn.

Now for some NEW layouts for the week.  There is nothing that a great challenge to get my creative juices flowing.  This time it is the joint designer spotlight on Paislee Press and One Little Bird at Oscraps.  I've already created 7 layouts for this spotlight.

These photos were taken the other week when we were at the Bishop Museum.  We were outside eating gummy bears and Bostyn wanted to play, "which hand" game.

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This layout is about a story Bostyn told us about the babies.  Well, she really doesn't tell "stories" yet but it was her first real attempt at recalling an event that happened at grandma's house that day.

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This photo was taken on our outing to the park.  Bostyn wanted to go down the slide over and over again.  This became her catchphrase for the day, "one more time . . . one more time . . . "  I later found that Liz of Paislee Press had "spotted" this layout on shared it on her blog.  What a wonderful surprise and such an honor because so many layouts have been submitted for this challenge.

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 This layout is using the freebie template, Conversation Piece no. 2 by Paislee Press and One Little Bird.  I wanted to use it for this layout showing Bostyn stuck in a box saying, "help me please."  You can see her hand reaching out to you wanting help out of the box.

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This layout is using another great template, Conversation Piece no. 3.  I wanted to keep the page white and use these photos of Bostyn.  I love how the blue dress and adorable white shades just pop off the page.  This page documents all of Bostyn's first words up until 24 months.  After that, I couldn't keep up.

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Ok, this layout had to be photo-less.  Why?  because it is a conversation that Bostyn had with her daddy while he was in the bathroom.

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This layout was simply saying Bostyn's new favorite word, "oh-tay."  She can't pronounce the /k/ sound so it comes out at /t/ instead.  It is so cute to hear her say, "oh-tay."  Surprise, surprise, I got a Gallery Standout for this one.  I did not expect such an honor because there are so many cool layouts in the gallery lately.  I know all of you in the digi scrapping world would appreciate a gallery standout and be totally thrilled and excited to get such an honor.  However, all my sisters did was mock me.  They just don't get it.    

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Now onto the Superbowl Inspired Challenges at Design House Digital.  I totally jumped onto this late.  I wish I had done a few more layout and blogged about it earlier.  I really wanted to win their Wacom Tablet giveaway.

This layout was inspired by the Superbowl Ads.  Remember the Snickers commercial where the guys are playing football and then one guy tells another, "You're playing like Betty White, out there."  Too funny.  I love that commercial.  So I made a layout showing Tate playing basketball with his friends.  I love these frames from Karen Funk

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Superbowl team logo inspired challenge.  I took the G from Green Bay Packers' logo to create the title on this layout.  Yes, my daughter picks out all the green candies out first.

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I love this template by Deena especially the word art that comes with it.  So this layout was inspired by the Pittsburgh Steelers' team colors.

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This layout had to incorporate the "vs."  It was perfect for the sequence of photos that I took of Bostyn and Tate going down the slide.  I love these alpha digital brushes from Karla Dudley.

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Sorry, for this incredibly long post.  I promise it will be shorted next week.  Thanks for hanging in there.

NEW 52 - Week 4

Okay so we just finished week 4 of NEW52.  This week, we kept it simple and went to a NEW park.  Well, actually the park itself is not new.  It is not new to my husband as he remembers playing baseball there when he was younger.  However, it was NEW to me and that is what matters.  It is a quiet little park with a nice playground for Bostyn to play in.  However, the whole time I was there I kept asking myself if I am letting Bostyn play in a gigantic kitty litter.  Immediately she wanted to take off her shoes to run and play in the sand.  She had fun and we made sure to wash her up as soon as we got home.  I love the bottom photo because it is very rare for me to capture such a smile on film.

This week, I spent a lot of time scrapping as I was very inspired by Fei-fei's Stuff spotlight at the O.  So to start things off, here are a few double pagers using Shaui's stuff.

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I also completed my Ostash challenge using this new kit, Dialogue, by Paislee Press and One Little Bird.  They will begin their month long spotlight tomorrow and I can't wait to see what this dynamic duo has in store for us.  I really loved using this kit to document all the funny things Bostyn is saying at 27 months.

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Now onto Mscraps 1st birthday celebration.  It all started with an awesome blog train where I collected tons of new goodies to play with.  I had a free day at home yesterday and a bunch of challenges to participate in.  I have to say that the mscraps team is very unique with their challenges and I think that is what drove my creativity in overdrive yesterday.

To start, I love a great template because it usually allows me to break away from my regular style.  This one is no exception.  I was going to do a very monochromatic color scheme but I felt that it needed some sort of pop of color, so I added the red.  To my surprise, I found that I had received a Gallery Standout for this layout.  Thank you Katie for noticing, this just made my day!

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A scraplift challenge using a photo of my cousin's daughter celebrating her 1st birthday.

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Non-photo challenge, a very sad piece for me to write and scrap about.

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Topsy-turvie template challenge, this was my favorite challenge this week as they gave you pieces of a template and you had to use only those pieces to create your layout.

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I love a good white space challenge, especially when paired with Nini's wonderful word art.

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I'll leave here as this was a very long post.  Have a good week!

New 52 - Week 3 or 4

Is it week 3 or 4?  Whose counting anyway?  I'm having way too much fun doing New52.  Since most of my time doing NEW things are on the weekends, this seems to be turning into more of a year of weekends.  So what was NEW this weekend?  First of all, we went to a NEW beach on Saturday.  Tate has been here before but it was a first for Bostyn and I.  We went to Kaiona Beach Park in Waimanalo.  It was perfect, calm, clear, blue waters that make you wish you could daydream your day away there.  The only thing that made us head home early was the weather.  It was a bit on the chilly side for swimming in the waters.  Here are a few photos.

Don't you love a great baby butt shot?  If you haven't noticed, I do.

And a layout from this day for Oscraps Creative Techniques Challenge.

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On Sunday, we went to Bishop Museum.  We only spent time in the NEWly renovated Hawaiian Hall.  Tate and I haven't been there since we were in grade school.  We thought it would be great place to explore for the day.  There is so much that I could share with you about Hawaiian history, art, and culture, but that would be a really long post.  For now, here is a view of the interior of the Hawaiian Hall and a beautiful shell lei that was once wore by Queen Kapiolani.

Now for some NEW layouts:

Oscraps Color Challenge, credits

Oscraps Web Inspiration Challenge, credits

Oscraps Camera Corner Challenge, credits

Oscraps Copycat Challenge, credits

Fei-fei's Stuff is in the spotlight!  For one, you have to use patterned paper as your background and create a double pager.  Those are both challenges to me.  As you can see, I almost always use a solid paper as a background and it is always one sided.  However, I loved how this came out.

Oscraps Designer Spotlight, credits

Off to create more layouts since Bostyn is napping the afternoon away.

NEW 52

I've been trying hard to keep up with New 52 (check out Peppermint and Christine's blog for more info) and so far I've been loving the idea.  I keep talking about having to try new things with my husband and now he is getting into it.  I'll show you what I mean in a minute.  The only thing I haven't been good about is keeping up with the photos or layouts.  So this weekend, I played a little catch-up.

NEW Calvin Klein bed sheets (old sheets got ripped by my husband's toenails), with Bostyn jumping on it.

Bostyn broke my old glasses so I had to get NEW ones.  I had my last pair for 8 years so I thought I was allowed to splurge on this Ralph Lauren lovely.  Not the most flattering photo of me.

I got my NEW photobook from shutterfly in the mail this week.  I loved the way it turned out.  I love the heavy stock paper that they used.  This was my first in ordering a 12x12 from shutterfly.  You can see this book, 2010 Captured: Week by Week,  in last week's post.

Since it is already Monday, I got a head start on this week's NEW.  Yesterday, we went to a new restaurant, Maguro ya, a Japanese restaurant.  I had zaru soba and tempura.  Tate had their bento lunch box with so many side dishes that his head was spinning.  Here you can see what it looked like,

So I mentioned that Tate is getting into this NEW 52 and today he wanted to try another NEW dining experience.  We took a very long drive to Punaluu which is clearly on the other side of the island and ended up in this little country store across the street from the beach.  This store was home to a little kitchen called Kaya's.  They had one of the best red beef stews I've had in a long time.  However, they still cannot compare to my grandma's.  Oh, how I miss her beef stew!  I had their hamburger steak which was ono as well.  We didn't bring the camera along so no foodie photos.

Tate loves to buy t-shirts from small restaurants or stores so here he is modeling it for all of you.

Here are some NEW layouts for the week.  Each layout is linked to my gallery for description and credits.  Enjoy and see you next week.

Recap of 2010 in 52 Weeks

I just completed my photobook of 2010 in 52 weeks.  Here is my link to my shutterfly album.

 Click here to view this photo book larger

I managed to get 2 layouts done this week, both were challenge pages.  This first page is a blueprint challenge at Design House Digital.  This time Gen rocked it by providing this awesome template.  I love the pieces of tape that she included + drop shadows included.  All I did was clip my paper to it and it gave the look of the very hip Japanese paper tape.

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This layout is for Oscraps Biograffiti designer spotlight challenge.  In this layout I wanted to remind myself of the wonderful breastfeeding days.  Okay, so Bostyn still wants the chi-chi, I guess I just want to remember why I even started to begin with.

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So everyone has been doing the New52 or the one little word for the new year.  I sort of in my head picked out the one word "color."  I thought I could find more ways of adding more color to my life this year.  So don't be surprised if I finally buy a pair of cute little red flats, or rock out a purple shirt.  This could also apply to the food I eat, maybe incorporating more colorful fruits and vegetables to my diet.  To my scrapbooking, maybe less white and kraft?  Hmmm . . . maybe not, but I'll try to add more color.  Don't you think my Santa layout has lots of color?!  It's a start.  My new for the week is new sheets for the bed.  Pretty exciting huh.  I also bought a new sweater today so maybe I'll count that as my new for next week.  I know it doesn't have to be a new purchase, but I love to shop!

Welcome 2011

Just wanted to say Happy New Year and welcome 2011.  Here is a photo of Bostyn and daddy playing with sparklers on New Year's eve.  Will it be her last time playing with sparklers?  Oahu has a new fireworks ban now in effect, so this may be the first and last time for sparkler fun.