Can It Really Be November Already?

Wow, this fall is flying by at record speed. The last few weeks have been especially busy around here with Halloween, my friend Bek's birthday, and my birthday all bunched right together.  And between those events, working, and creative time the past few weeks have whooshed past me. 

My birthday was a great time and I really enjoyed hanging out with my family and friends.  My parents even got me a new Vera Bradley purse to add to my collection.  It's the Bowler bag, which I have decided is my perfect purse....just enough room for everything I need and a place for everything and everything in it's place. It's one of those things in my life that make me happy! :)

Sorry for the huge margins...I have no idea how to get rid of them. Anyways, this is the new Carnaby pattern...it is gorgeous! Love the pinks, oranges, and browns in here. :)

I also have been busily working on a mini book for my friend Rebekeh's birthday that was a few weeks ago.  I normally don't make a lot of mini books but after we took all those beautiful pictures a few weeks ago and I found the perfect patterned paper from SEI to match, I knew that this would be one birthday present that would knock her socks off...and it did! :)

I used one of the BoBunny cascading albums to complete this project.  It was a great canvas to work on and just the right amount of space to add my photos and accents.  The patterned papers are all from SEI's "Windsor" line and the combo of yellows, browns, purples, and gold perfectly coordinated with my photos. I also found a ton of great leaf embellishments and used a gold leafing pen on the edges of each page...love the elegant touch it added!

This is a layout I created a few weeks ago about my mom and her love of gardening. I am always taking pictures of her beautiful blooms and I wanted to have a layout in my albums that showed who the true gardener was behind the gorgeous flower photos. It is titled "A Gardener Lives Here" and the journaling reads,

"No it's not me. I have one of those black thumbs when it comes to plants. The true gardener in our family is my mom. Her flowers are always gorgeous and she always has some exotic plant or another around the house. She can take a plant that is dying and nurse it back to health. There was this one plnat that was just a nub of a stem and by the end of the summer Mom had transformed it into a gorgeous blooming plant full of big pink flowers. So please don't give me the credit. I only take the pictures of these gorgeous blooms. It is Mom who truly has the green thumb in our house."

I had a blast creating this little garden at the top of my page with various Prima flowers and some green paper frills from Doodlebug. 

These are pictures of my friends and I hanging out on a tank at a local park. I especially like the up close picture of the gears....the colors and contrast of the photo is just really cool!  I haven't decided if I am going to add journaling or not. The chipboard stars and "&" sign I made by heat embossing them first and then going around them with a silver leafing pen. :) I also didn't have a silver letter tag of an "R" so I transformed an "F" into an "R" with my Slickwriter.

Also hooray for using up old Making Memories metal embellishments. :)

This is one of my favorite photos of my dog Rusty. It was one of the last photos we took of him before we got our second dog. The journaling isn't written yet, but it is going to talk about how he pretty much ran the house and how much a part of our lives he was. The title piece is a Jolee's sticker and I found these great papers from Crate Paper to coordinate with it.

I absolutely love this layout for so many reasons.  The colors are so bright and bold and they compliment my mom so beautifully for her birthday. :) The papers and embellishments are all from My Mind's Eye and they are so whimsical and fun. It was a super simple page to make and it turned out perfectly!