Crop this past weekend at Church.

Once a month, we have a crop at my church. The crop for the month of Aug. was this past weekend. I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked, but I had fun, so thats whats most important. :-) Here are just a few layouts that I finished up. A couple I finished are for Practical Scrappers Challenges, and you'll be able to see those in the next couple weeks. Here are the few I can show you now. Enjoy, and thanks for looking.

This is a double layout of our Smith Family Picnic. I used the Everyday Paper Dolls Cartridge for the little BBQ grills, my MTC software for the title and I used some black brads to make the little ants. I cut the little hotdogs out for the grills by hand. :-)

A close up of page 1

Close up of page 2

This is a layout of my nephew playing with some bubble wrap that my husband brought him from work. We go to my parent's house most every Friday night for dinner. So my husband, who works for a packing supply company, brought some samples of bubble wrap over for my nephew Landon to play with. He had a lot of fun with it.

This is a layout I made using pictures from Fathers Day 2010 at our house. They are of my Papa Reg, my Dad and my nephew Landon sleeping/watching t.v. and my two uncles.

The Lucky One

Last week I finished, "The Lucky One", by Nicholas Sparks. It was such a great book. I really, really loved it. So now I've read "Dear John", "The Last Song" and "The Lucky One" and they've all been great. Though I have to say "The Last Song" has been my favorite so far, followed closely by "The Lucky One" and then "Dear John".  Now, moving along with my Nicholas Sparks book reading, I picked up two more of his books last week. The first one is "True Believer", and then "True Believer's" sequel "At First Sight". So I've started "True Believer", but have only read a few short pages. I'll let you all know what I think.

Practical Scrappers Lace Cardstock Challenge

For this weeks Lace Cardstock Challenge I used my Cricut and Storybook cartridge for the green leaf background. I used my Wedding Cartridge for the flowers and the Pagoda cartridge for the hummingbird. For the title I used the MTC software and the font is called Brody. Its one of my favorite fonts. These pictures were taken in my backyard at my hummingbird feeder. They are of the same hummingbird. He stayed there for a long time, drinking the sugar water. I was able to get pretty close and take these pictures.

Thanks for looking!!

Our House ~ Basement

So last but not least... our basement. The basement of this house was a huge selling point. Half the basement is finished and half is storage/laundry. It has a section of the finished part that was sectioned off  (perfect for a scrapbooking room!!). They used it more for a weight lifting area, but its now my wonderful scrapbooking room. The other portion of the finished part is our family room. We love this part of our house and spend a lot of time down there. The previous owners finished it, but didn't do a great job. The walls were just painted white and the trim was mismatched and stained different colors. It looked pretty bad. However it was carpeted on the one section and had hard wood on the other, which was perfect. I love this carpet because its really stain resisitant. So all we had to do was paint the walls and put up new white trim all around. The white six panel door was already there, but we took it down and repainted it. My husband is a HUGE K.C. Chiefs fan, so thats why we decided to decorate the family room the way we did. He spends countless hours on Sundays in front of the big screen watching football. :-) Thanks for looking...

The stairs before we did any work in the basement. The previous owners had carpeted the stairs, which is really nice. But the walls are still white here.

The basement stairs now after painting. I painted the walls in the basement a gray color, but it ended up being more of a bluish gray.

When you walk down the stairs (from the upper left hand corner of this picture), you walk into whats now my scrapbook room, but this is what it looked like while the previous owners lived there. They built a little half wall to separate this section of he basement from the family room, which we had to repaint and replace the trim.

And here is that space now!! My dad built the table and put the counter and cabinets in for me. He was able to get the cabinets for free when he was tearing out a basement for a client of his. The previous owners had this piece of countertop in the unfinished part, so we used it to go over the cabinets. So I got both things for free!!! He also built my cricut cartridge shelf for me and put in a couple new electrical outlets over the counter. I absolutely love this room!!!

And this is our family room side while the previous owners lived there.

And here it is now...

This is the other table that we got from Quiznos for free. The red top went with the decor down here, but I re-covered the cushions.

The mini fridge with the picture of Arrowhead stadium above it.

The fuzeball table.

My parents got new furniture the same year we moved here so they gave us their old furniture for our basement. I also had this futon, so we used it all to give plenty of seating for our super bowl parties. :-)

This is the couch my parents gave us. The colors didn't totally go, but I added in the red pillows and throw to bring more of the red in. I did the same thing with the loveseat and chair. The frames above the couch are of scrapbook pages I made involving our 3 different chiefs games we've been to.

This picture is from the wall with the t.v. on it.

The 61 inch bigscreen. Jake just had to have this t.v. and it is nice for watching football and movies. The two black shelves I had in my old room at home, so they worked out great for in here.

The door in this picture leads to the unfinished part where the storage and laundry are.

Our House ~ The Office

This is the third bedroom in the house, but we turned it into an office. My husband is really into history, especially the civil war. His room was decorated with civil war stuff when he lived at home, so we used a lot of the same decorations for the office. This room belonged to the previous owners' daughter. They had pink plaid wallpaper on the walls, which came down pretty easily. They had also put white shelves in all around the top of the room, which we really liked because Jake has a pretty big collection of model Corvettes that we were able to put up there where no little hands could get to them. We painted 2 walls white, one wall blue and one wall red. We put in new white trim and a new white six panel door. The closet doors were already white six panel doors so we left those the same. I had the desk at my house and Jake had the two shelves, that we use for movies, in his old room, so this room came together very easily. My sister made the valance and I used the left over fabric to frame the documents on the one wall. They are replicas of old American documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburgh Address and so on. Jake had had them for a long time and had never done anything with them, so I bought frames and fixed them right up. He was very happy with them. Thanks for looking.

The room when the previous owners lived there.

The room now.

This is a picture of the framed documents and some of Jake's corvettes.

The closet.

The computer desk. The stars on the box above the window are vinyl and I cut them out with my Cricut.

Our House ~ Spare Bedroom

This is our spare bedroom. It has a Desert Theme. The previous owners had 2 kids, a boy and a girl and this was their son's room. It will someday be our nursery (hopefully thats someday very soon), but for now, its our spare bedroom. I just used the furniture from my old room at home, so we didn't spend much to fix this room up. My mom got us the comforter set and I just bought fabric and my sister made the valances and the little toss pillow. I also re-covered the stool to my make-up table. We painted the walls a terra cotta orange and added new white trim, a new white six panel door and new closet doors to match. Thanks for looking.

This is a picture of the room when the previous owners lived there.

And here is the room now. The sconces and candle holders are all from partylite. The pictures on the walls I took while we were visiting Jake's dad in Phoenix. 

The lizards on the wall here, I found at Hobby Lobby on clearence. They were under $2 each. :-)

This picture is taken standing in the door of the room. The plate on the wall is from Partylite.

Our House ~ Master Bedroom

Here are some before and after pictures of our master bedroom. The previous owners had a wall paper border around the top and bottom of the walls. Taking them down was not an easy task. My dad ended up having to skim coat all four walls once it was all said and done because when taking down the border, parts of the drywall came with it. :-( I really hope I never have to deal with wallpaper again!!

We painted this room, put in a new mirror closet door, new blinds, new trim and new six panel door. We also put in a new ceiling fan.

This room has a Chinese theme to it. My mom got us the comforter set along with the rugs, drapes and sheets. We got the bedroom furniture when we bought the living room and dining room furniture, all from American Furntiture. I got the art work on e-bay and got the frames and mats from Hobby Lobby. All of the candle holders and the two lanterns are from Partylite. Thanks for looking.

This was the master bedroom while the previous owners lived here.

And here it is now!! :-)

The vinyl on the wall above the closet was done using my Cricut, Pagoda Cricut Cartridge for the symbol and dragonflies and my Make the Cut software for the word dream.

Our House ~ Hallway and Bathroom

This house doesn't really have much of a hallway. But the changes we made, made it look a lot better. We extended the new flooring into the hallway, added new six panel white doors and new trim. We also put in a new light fixture and extended the brown bag color into the hallway. Here are some pictures...

This is a picture of the hallway, from standing in the dining room. You can see the frames on the wall, which were just $12 frames from walmart that I filled with pictures of Jackson. The family frame was a gift from my SIL, that I filled with Black and White pictures of our little family of 3 and the "S" is from Hobby Lobby that I got for 50% off, making it around $5.

This picture was taken from our bedroom. As you can see, its not much of a hallway. (I need to update this picture)

This is the frame I filled with pictures of our 2 dogs and cat and added the saying by using black vinyl, my Cricut and my Make the Cut software.

My dad putting in the flooring in the hallway.

Next is the bathroom, which had the most done to it. We only have one bathroom in this house, unfortunately. This room was in pretty bad shape so we completely gutted it. Down to the floor, walls and piping.  So EVERYTHING is new and I mean everything. Here are some before, during and after pictures...

This is a picture of the bathroom while the previous owners lived there. They had wallpaper on the walls and linolium floors. The bathtub, sink and toilet were all a beige color (which I didn't care for). The wallpaper wouldn't come off without taking the wall with it, :-(. So we had to just pull everything out, including the walls.

Heres what the bathroom looked like after it was gutted. Once again, I'm so happy we were able to get this all done before we moved in.

Heres the new tile going down.

Heres the new tub and tile.

New drywall and light fixture.

The bathroom now!!! All finished. New walls, paint, trim, tub, tile, toilet, sink and cabinet, medicine cabinet, light fixture and even new piping, since the old piping was TERRIBLE. Had we not taken the tub out, we would have never known how bad it was and we would have probably had a leak after a while. I decided to go with a beach theme for this room.

The glass block window is the only thing that was left from the old bathroom. Everything else is new. The tile for the tub is all new as well.

Jake got this poster for me and thats basically why I went with a beach theme for this room. I just loved this picture. Reminds me of our two yellow labs. :-)

These star fish were used in our wedding decorations. :-)

New toilet, cabinet and flooring.

New sink.

New medicine cabinet. The pictures on the wall here were actually in my old bedroom when i lived with my parents. I just painted the frames white and then we ruffed them up with sandpaper to give them a weathered look. These starfish were also used in our wedding decorations. The candle holders are partylite. :-)