A Kiss on the Chic

Coming to you from CHA!!!

This has been a BLAST and today is the last day!  I wish there was more time in the day so I can see EVERYTHING and show YOU!  I've been posting some pictures over on FB so go check them out there if you haven't already.  

It's been so much fun to see so many friends and make new ones!  It's also been such a blessing to finally meet a lot of my FACEBOOK friends that I chat with all the time but now am meeting face - to - face!  That is AWESOME!!

I have a TON of pictures to share but have to be down at the show in 30 minutes so this post will just cover a little bit of what I've LOVED so far...

 

Pink Paislee!! I LOVE their new lines and plan to go back to share pictures of their House of 3 collaboration!!

 

Sassafrass Lass!  These enamel flowers are SOOOO FUN!!

  

Curio by Basic Grey!  One of my FAV lines at the show!!

O.k. gotta run... I'll post more later!!

xoxo  Laura
 
 
 

CHA Summer SNEAKS!!

So I said I was going to show you some Clear Scraps SNEAKS earlier this week and life just got busy...  Well, busy as in going to the beach 3 times in less than a week! ;)  And funny thing is I'm NOT a beach girl... don't get me wrong, I LOVE looking at the beach, walking along the beach, shopping in the cute little shops by the beach... but LAYING on the beach sand isn't one of my FAV things to do... But the girls love it, daddy loves it and I put up with all the sand because I LOVE the water!  Although I have to say, lakes are where it's at for me... no salt, no sharks or jellyfish and only little waves!  Lake Michigan here I come!!!  Can't WAIT to see you next week!

Now, back to CHA SNEAKS!!

As most of you know, I've resigned from the Clear Scraps Design Team, but I will always LOVE them and did make a few things for them for this CHA.  In fact, they are teaching my Travel album at CHA.  And since I'm going to be helping them out in their booth and the class, I thought I would share some pictures of the things I made with their new releases!!

The 1st one is one of their new "mixable" albums that's about 8x8 in size:

 

I love the size of this album because you can fit a LOT in here!  It's a "graduated" album so each page is a little longer then the next...

Here you can see the different shapes of each page!  I used Glitz Design "Vintage Love" papers that they were so generous to send me!  Thanks Glitz Girls!!!

Here you can see that I tied some seam binding in the page that had little hearts cut out at the edge of the page to give it a little more dimension...

  
 

I stamped an image on the front cover and then added some Stickles around it and the other embellishments!

The next album is a new album they've added to their "Purse" albums.  This one is the DIVA:

I LOVE this one too!  It's in the shape of a heart (with the bottom cut off) and I outlined the cover with little dots of pearl paint to give the shape some focus...  And of course I had to do something on Paris, right?!!  So these are all pictures I or Lance took last summer when we were just us two lovebirds in Paris... :)

Well, unfortunately I've been having a problem uploading my pictures for the last 20 minutes and it's just not working.  I'll try to share more pictures another time but I've got to go get ready to go see Keith Urban tonight!! Yup... my hubby called yesterday and asked if I wanted to go see him tonight!  uh....YES!!!!  

Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

Laura

Love, Tuesday...

I'm starting to feel like I'm "home" and settled back in.  In fact, I've been itching to get back to my craft room and even cleaned up SOME of it...lol...  It's such a mess from a whirlwind before our trip and Victoria's birthday presents and all the art journals I made.  Speaking of which, the girls and I didn't do very good an keeping up our journals and didn't even use the art journals once!  I know, that's so sad.... But, the art journals weren't specifically for our trip and can be used anytime.  I'm a little sad that we didn't journal the trip more, but I did record everything down what we did each day and I plan to go back into my journal and fill in the holes.  Some day I'll share my finished journal on here...

But I am working on an album for Clear Scraps for CHA on Bellagio, Italy! Obviously my FAV place from our trip and I just couldn't WAIT to get home and print out some of the pictures and start playing!  The day the girls had a paint day last week, I decided to PLAY too and had fun painting some canvas and acrylic and I'm still in the process of combining all of this into an album, but here's a SNEAK at a little of it:

 Like I said, I'm not done with it yet, but I'm having FUN combining these beautiful colors, with the pictures from Italy!  I used the new version of Clear Scraps 8x8 acrylic album, with Donna Downey's 6x6 canvas pages!  They both have ring holes that are in different places but I plan to re-punch the holes in the acrylic to match the metal grommets in the DD pages and then cleverly hiding the original holes in the acrylic.  This is easy to do and gives you many more options when making original albums!  

 

Can you see that I've got a CS acrylic page, then a DD canvas page and just alternated that throughout the album, with a chipboard page at the end for stability!  I've also taken some acrylic paint and stamped on each acrylic page, then stamped with Tim Holtz Distress ink on the canvas pages and you can see through to it.

Here's a picture of just the canvas page.  I really had fun "distressing this page!  First, I took the plain canvas and watercolored the entire page with three different yellows, oranges and browns.  Then I took some gesso and beige paint and mixed them together and randomly added some "stucco" to the pages!  I felt like this really gave the pages an Italian feel...  Then I stamped the images on each page and inked over some of the edges with more ink!  I'm not done yet adding journaling and embellishments, but I'm having FUN in the process!!   

I might even try to finish this tonight when I have a "Scrappy Night" at my house!  Can't wait for some friends to come over and scrap!  If you're in the area and you didn't see my invite on FB, give me a call, you're welcome to come over!  We're going to have dinner, scrap all night and I'm even having a SALE on some scrappy stuff and past kits!!!  So come on by!!
 

We are able to show some SNEAKS from the new release for CHA Summer! But, because I have resigned from the Clear Scraps design team I only made a few new projects...  I'll share some pictures of those tomorrow since I have to clean my house and get ready for tonight!  I also have a GREAT album I made Victoria for her birthday that I don't think I shared with everyone on here....  

Oh, to my dear Aunts...  Yesterday was SO much fun!  It was so nice to visit at the beach and have lunch together and I really miss not being able to see you very often!  Have a safe trip home and we'll see you next summer at the family reunion!! xoxo

Have a GREAT Tuesday ladies!!

Hugs,

Laura

Love, Tuesday...

Where do I begin...

Life is good.  I feel blessed by God. My family is AWESOME.  I could keep going....  This Summer has been so AMAZING and even though we're home from an unbelievable trip to Europe, I feel so happy to be home with so much Summer still ahead!  I kind of like getting the major trip of the Summer over early on so we can be home and just enjoy HOME.  The last 2 Summers we were gone, then home for a few days, then gone again and that was the way it went ALL Summer.  To know we are home for 5 weeks in a row feels good.  We may make some small fun trips to places in So. Cal, but I like not having to pack and unpack!!

Well, I will be packing for one trip in that 5 week period...

CHA!!

Yup, I'm going and I can't WAIT!  It will be a quick trip to CHA and a few days visiting my brother and his family, but it will definately be FUN!!  A girlie time with my Scrappy buddies and some time with little Ella!!  I haven't shown a picture of her lately... Want to see my adorable niece?

 

Isn't she sooo cute!!!?  She looks so much like Rebecca did at that age, it's so amazing (and kind of weird)  how gene's run through family lines...

But I can't WAIT to play with my little Ella and spend some time with Dawn and Ty!!  I was going to take Victoria with me so she could get some community service hours but that's not going to work out (Serve Week is while I'll be there) so I get a real "Girlie" time for a week!!  woohoo!!

Oh, last weekend I was on the "Where Women Create !  It was through my friend Judith Norman and www.virtueradionetwork.com and it's just a little blurb about me, but it was still cool to see!  So stay tuned for more Online classes coming soon!!  I'm taking the Summer off but then I'll be back with a bang!!

Speaking of getting back to work... My first kit back after my Summer break will be my European kit!  I will have that available some time in September and will be sharing some pictures soon of some of the "finds" I scored in Europe!!  I have some GREAT things to show you and I'll be finding JUST the right papers to go with it!!  Getting excited to see all the new products coming out at CHA!  Has anyone been checking them out??  I'd love to hear what lines you are liking ...

So, Bellagio is still on my mind and since I didn't post very many pictures from there, I thought I'd share some more on here.  It's one amazing place and the girls could have stayed there all summer...

 

Here's Isabella walking down a little path from our apartment to the pool.  There were so many little paths, walkways, steps that take you down to the water.

 

The pool is right in front of the lake, so this little path, staircase leads you down to the lake.  We spent some time on the lake shore looking for shells and rocks.  We found some very interesting things that I'll post a picture of later...  

We weren't quite brave enough to get on this in the lake but maybe next time.  Lots of kids were on the floating dock and this diving board and it did look lots of fun!

 
This was us girls by the hotel before dinner one night.  Actually the dinner we had was the glass area behind us.  One of their restaurants is located inside that area and just has an amazing view of the lake!  The glass actually comes up only halfway, so when your sitting at the table, you have the beautiful unobstructed view of the lake, hills and villages across the lake! 
 
 
Here you can see some of the view from our table.  It's really just too pretty for words.  I could sit here forever and just enjoy life...

The sun starting to set...

 
One of our waiters... The funny thing is at this hotel,  the staff is EVERYWHERE.. you see them at breakfast, then lunch, then dinner.  And the girls has such a kick out of finding out their names!  This guy was their FAV.... His name is Luigi!  Luigi was quite the source of some fun laughs during our time in Bellagio!   

 

Then it was our nightly ritual to go into the music room.  This room is just inside where we ate that night and this trio played EVERY night!  They were so amazing and sweet and we really got to be friends with them.  The 1st night Isabella made quite the impression b/c she was pretending to play the violin with her hands.  They got such a kick out of it and were beaming every night when we would come in the room.  it was such a GREAt part of our trip and we got to meet some other familes and couples in the music room....  

 

The girls went up and requested a song and had some fun dancing.  The trio were so sweet that they would play whatever we requested and even played a montage of "Sound of Music" that went through about 10 of the songs!  It's my ALL TIME FAV MOVIE and when they played that and saw me almost in tears, they would play it every night for me!  The last night was sooo sad... they wanted to make it the BEST for us and were going to learn a song we asked for the next night, until we told them that was our last night.  They went on their break and tried to find it online real quick and even practised it a little and did their best!  (the theme song from Somewhere in Time) Sasha, you will be missed!!

I could go on for weeks posting pictures from Bellagio.  This is really just the tip of the iceberg... lol... Maybe next week I'll add some more of our time in Milan and our day touring the lake...

Have a GREAT Tuesday everyone!! 

Hugs,

Laura

 
 

We're home!

We're SO glad to be home... tired, but home.

Today is one of those weird days of "in-between"....  glad to be home, feels weird to be home, like sleeping in my own bed home, still have Euro's in my purse and not American dollars home,  have to say "Thank You"  instead of "gratzie".... home.

We had breakfast this morning at Original Pancake House, the best breakfast in a month!  They just don't know how to do breakfast in Europe, especially eggs!  Then went to Costco and bought just about every fruit possible and stocked the fridge back up.  I can't tell you how good we have it here in the U.S., or maybe in So. Cal??  but the fresh fruit choices we have are endless and I'm going to make myself sick eatting too many cherries and peaches... and I don't CARE! lol...  Then just cleaned out the suitcases and started the wash cycle going....  Love getting the house back in order and feeling like we still have so much Summer ahead of us!

I need a few days to recoup, but then I will post some pictures from our trip and share some details on the upcoming "European Kit"!!

Hugs,

Laura

Caio!

It's been a while since I last posted so I thought I would come on here today.

It's seems like we've been gone so long and it's sad to think our trip is almost over.  We've seen so much beauty and experienced so much with the whole family being here!

I'm actually just getting better after being terribly sick for the last 2 days here in Bellagio.  We don't know what it was from but have had to change our plans twice!  We are now staying here until the end of our trip and then flying straight to London before we fly home from there.  Which means we will miss dinner in the Eiffel Tower and Paris, but we were there for 4 nights after London and the girls are so in love with Bellagio, they don't even care.  We really have found a place that is magical for all of us and we are so happy to be in this lovely place!

So here's an update of pictures from the time Lance met up with us in London until now:

We enjoyed a quick day in London with everyone before heading off to Paris.  I wanted to have tea here at Fortune & Mason, but the girls were hungry for more, so we had an interesting lunch there instead...

 

The idea of this was so much better...  We rented a paddle boat on the Serpentine Lake in Hyde park and was not rewarded with a joyful experience...  Have you paddle boated lately??  ;)-

  

But we had to get a photo op out of it at least...  

 
 Then we did some shopping on Oxford Street and went to the 5pm service at Westminster Abbey.  It was such a neat experience to be in such an amazing church that has been there for 1000 years and  experience it in a true church service instead of a tour.  After the service, we asked were Edmund Crouchback was buried, a very distant relative, and they brought us right to it and told us about him!  He was in the VERY front of the alter and the story behind it is something I'm saving for a complete post some day...

The next day we flew to Paris and went to see the Arch de Triumph.  It took us 3 trips to Paris to finally make it to the top, but the views were so worth it! (even though the 500 stairs were not) 

The views were truly amazing!  You could see forever and even though I'm sooo scared of heights, it was worth doing.

I'm being told to get ready, so we can go into town.  I've been sick for the last 36 hours and am finally feeling up to going into town to get some food and get some laundry done.  

Happy 4th of July!!