Larger Than Life

Morning!
Woohoo! I'm getting my hair done in 10 minutes.
Oh yes, believe it or not these golden tresses atop my head are not natural!
Fooled ya, huh? ;)

So...I believe I need an intervention with my butterfly punch, I can't seem to stop making layouts with it.
I just will have to go cold turkey...or cold butterfly as it were.
I took @ 80 pics of Erin with her butterfly net that she got from the Easter Bunny (No chocolate, but toys? Score!!!)
I enlarged the photo to 8 x 10 and cropped it to fit my page.
I love the look it gives to a layout.:



I did the enlarging 2 other times, but they are very early pages...be kind :)
This one was a song I adore by Five For Fighting called "I Just Love You" and enlarged a sweet shot of Erin and added an acrylic heart and the lyric and it was done.
Back then it literally took me 5 minutes to make a page. lol.:



And finally, another layout of Erin with "The Look" she gives me when she is about to cry.
This is an older page, but I love it so :*)



As always, thanks for stopping by...have a great Tuesday!
(Except for you Aussie girls, have a great Wednesday!)
-Jody

Only 342 More Days 'Til Easter...

...so start shopping early!
Did I mention that this Easter, I waited until the Saturday before Easter to shop for my girl's Easter candy?
Did I mention that my girls had neither a chocolate bunny or marshmallow peeps in their basket?
Bad mommy...errr Bad Easter Bunny, for waiting until the last minute to shop and then spent the entire day driving around to...no joking...10 different stores to no avail! :(
Oh well...I have 342 days to prepare for next year!

In honor of the Easter Bunny, I have 2 pages that are Easter themed.
The first one is another weekly challenge at 2Peas, this time to use pop-dots on the page, which I used on the butterflies (yes, them again!)
Erin picked out these blue Mary Janes herself to match her new navy Old Navy (lol!) dress.:



And this page was inspired by a question Erin asked me when she was 7.
For those of you not friends or family who read this blog, my now 8 1/2 year old is quite possibly the funniest kid out there.
The way her mind works is magical, I just love her sense of humor.
She asked me this question about the Easter Bunny and I knew I would make a page from it:



"Mommy, is the Easter Bunny, the Bunny God?"
Well, if he's not the Bunny God, Erin, I don't know who is!
Have a great day!
-Jody

Who's On First?

Yay! It's Friday!
Supposed to be a gorgeous weekend here, hope to get out and get some good spring photos of the family!
Today's theme has to do with "first loves" and I have a page that I made for an assignment for SS mag, but it was more like the B-side to my 45 single.
Didn't really feel it so much.
So I made another page and that one was published in this final months SS magazine.
Go out and buy one, for it is the most fabulous scrap magazine ever!
Such a damn shame, you can feel the labor of love that went into the last one :::sob:::
Anyway, the assignment was a then/now connection in photos, and right away I thought of Ryan with her first two loves in her life, her daddy and her boyfriend:



The next layout is of course of my first and only love, because I married him.
Hard to believe that photo was taken soooooooo long ago.
And I'm still "Glad":



See you next week! :)
-Jody

Food, Glorious Food!

3 blogging days in a row, it's a new record...go me! :)
That will all change when I go back to work next week after taking this last year off to get Ryan well and then these last 3 months to get myself mentally well again.
It was a tough year for us all, but looking brighter every single day!
Today's theme is: food.
My favorite subject!
I just made a page of Megan with our dog after they had recreated the famous scene in "Lady and The Tramp".
These photos totally skeeve Ryan out, but they cracked me up, hope they do you as well.:



Erin made a great model for this page eating a cupcake at a friend's birthday.
This is where she takes after me, not even looking up for a photo because she is in food heaven :)



And another early page, Megan eating a popsicle right after I got my DSLR camera, I was in awe of the photos it could take:



Well, all this talk of food has left me hungry, I'm off to eat!
Bye!
-Jody

Like A Rainbow

Hello again...
I don't know if you have realized, my pages are usually monochromatic.
They are very colorful when grouped together, but on their own...not so much.
I made this page literally 15 minutes ago for this week's Pub Ad Challenge, it's Paula G's swan song :(
I wanted to use many different patterned papers on this one, just because I normally don't.
And as you can see, they still are very subdued prints.
I need to let loose someday...lol



The only other time I remember using that much color was on one of my earliest pages (and you'll be able to tell. lol)
And all the color was in the chipboard letters!
But I loved how sweet and sad Erin looked in the photo and I paired it with a verse from the beautiful song "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper.



As always, thanks for stopping by and have a great day!
-Jody

Heart Of The Matter

Monday, Monday...so good to me <--random The Mama's and The Papa's song lyric.
It was a lovely weekend here in my neck of the woods, nice spring weather :)
Megan, my middlest, was down for the count with a stomach virus and we all are crossing our fingers it doesn't make it's way through the entire house.
So today's theme is about hearts.
I *heart* hearts.
I love them so much that I actually counted how many times I have used them on a page and it came out to every 4th layout!
This page was made after I heard a song lyric from a group called Parachute, and the title of the song, and of my page is "She Is Love", and it so perfectly described Erin:



Another page where I used a chipboard heart was a challenge Angie Lucas did on the old Simple blog.
It had to do with a "Time" theme, so I used one photo of Ryan as a baby girl and one of her at the time.
How cute was she?



And finally, an older page of myself and Andy.
It's very hard to scrap photos of us because I am always behind the camera, it's rare that I will relinquish control of my Canon Rebel to just anyone.
This time the chipboard heart was used in place of the letter "V" in love.:



So all in all, I've never met a heart I didn't like!
Have the best Monday ever :)
-Jody

Humor Me

Hello there...
Today's theme has to do with having a sense of humor.
As you have seen, I can make the saddest of pages, but I would like to think that some of pages I make may at least evoke a smile, if not a little chuckle.
A couple of weeks ago, Erin asked for 50 cents to buy a fake mustache out of a bubble gum machine.
Well she went to town posing with this cheap little mustache.
Best money I have spent in a loooooong time :)
I scrapped my 3 favorite "looks"...the Unibrow, the Amish and the 70's TV Star
So here you have "Mustache":



Another page I made that made me giggle was the appropriately titled "Big Balls"
Oh get your mind out of the gutter, they are big Christmas Balls!:



And 2 Easters ago, Erin was the lucky recipient of the much sought after $5 Easter egg.
Greed is good!



So, today's lesson is...scrap the silly, the funny, the obscure things that make you laugh.
Thanks for stopping by! :)

I've Been Framed!

Hello on this fine Tuesday :)
I hope you all had a nice Easter weekend.
We had a great time visiting with our families.
We spend most of the time laughing, my cheeks always get a workout.
This week I wanted to do the Garden Girl Challenge at 2Peas because Laura Kurz was hosting and it was right up my simple alley.
All you had to do was use one major supply.
Um...Hello? I do that on every single page I make ;)
And today's blog theme would be pages that have frames or borders around the edges.
I adore the way Ryan's hair is growing in, she looks like a little pixie to me:



Another time I used a frame on a page was this one of my husband Andy and myself.
This last year took a toll on every individual in our house and every relationship too.
I spent a good part of the year in the hospital with Ryan and Andy stayed with our 2 other daughters at home.
I wanted him to know how much I really loved him even through the tough times.:




And this framed-out page was made after a day Erin spent roller-skating for the first (and possibly last) time.
My arm never left the back of her t-shirt, I was exhausted at the day's end.:



I love making frames for my layouts because that gives it a definite clean and simple feel to the page.
Me likey clean and simple!
Once again, thanks for stopping by...I have a playdate today with one of my oldest and dearest childhood friends, have a great day!

I Don't Do Sadness*

*-Title from a song from the Broadway musical "Spring Awakening"
There are times when I will look at a photo I've taken that I want to scrap, and I think...I can't do another sad page.
But the words are like water rushing out of a dam and I need to get it on paper, no matter how bad the memories may be.
That's how I felt when making my latest page about Ryan.
Yesterday, I had just gotten about 100 photos printed out from Scrapbookpictures.com (they came out fabulous...inexpensive and arrived within a week of ordering) and was looking through the stack when I came upon this photo.
I flashed back to last May, the night we found out about Ryan's cancer diagnosis.
I was notified by Ryan's orthopedist that the cyst/stress fracture we thought she had, was instead a malignant tumor in her knee.
We were supposed to go to Ryan's choir concert at school that evening.
Andy and I agreed that Ryan should go to the concert, kind of a last night of innocence and we would tell her the news when we got home.
That night was excruciating for us both...friends kept coming up to us asking, "We heard Ryan has a cyst on her knee...what happens next?"
And Andy and I had to put on Oscar-winning performances that it was nothing serious, all the while knowing that an hour later we would be telling our then 14 yr old daughter that she had a cancerous tumor in her knee.



Throughout Ryan's battle, I became a better journaler.
Something *clicked* in me, a spark that I didn't have prior to her getting ill.
This was another page that the words just flowed out of my fingers onto the page:



And finally, a self-portrait that Ryan took of herself was inspiration enough for me to make this page soon after her diagnosis:



So there you have it, inspiration sometimes comes from hardships and hard times.
Sometimes scrapping the not-so-good moments can be very cathartic.
I know because I have come from the depths of despair and have seen the rainbow emerge from all the rain.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a Happy Easter!

Clothes Make The Page

G'Morning!
While looking through old photos, I try to find inspiration from different things.
This photo of Megan is from 2 summers ago.
I loved the colors and shapes on her t-shirt and tried to recreate it on the page with hand-cutting, some chipboard hearts and that always-in-use Martha Stewart mini butterfly punch!:



I have done this before...this time it was a photo of Erin from the same summer and again the inspiration was taken from her shirt:



So I am not too ashamed to admit, I now scout out my kids clothes with the sole purpose of, "Will it look good scrapped?" :)
Anybody else wanna come clean? LOL
Have a great Tuesday!

Never Say Never

Hello on this dreary Monday.
Cold weather just makes me...blah.
I can't wait for spring to finally get here already.
So this morning while perusing the Pub Board on 2Peas, I saw the weekly Pub Ad Challenge and it was another "simple" one and I was off!
But this time, I didn't use any paper supplies, so in actuality,
this was my first ever all digital page.
I have called digi pages "The Dark Side" for as long as I have been scrapping,
and I have always said I would never try it.
I just love making my pages with my hands.
I found this photo of Erin looking out at the snow one school morning and I could hear what was going on inside her head, so it made the perfect journaling.



I know it's hard to read, but I wanted the words to look like snowflakes, but for those of you who don't want any eyestrain, here is the journaling:

Nothing makes this little
girl happier than seeing
snow falling from the sky on a school day.
She is already thinking
of what lies ahead on this
magical day. The snow angels,
building a snowman, digging
a snow fort, having a
snowball fight, sledding and
best of all, hot cocoa with marshmallows.

Until next time...have a great day :)

All About Ryan

Another friday is upon us already...
Been a busy week here, spring cleaning.
I jokingly said in my 1st blog header that I wish my house was as clean and simple as my pages are.
If you were to walk inside my house you would say that it is neat.
Just don't look in any drawer or closet because that's where all the "stuff" is.
I call it an organized mess.
There's gotta be a better way.

Ok, on to scrap stuff.
For the month of April, I decided to change up the St. Patty's blog header to the April showers bring May flowers header.
The other day it was raining, so I grabbed the only umbrella I could find and made Ryan do a photo shoot with it.
If you have been reading this blog, you know last May she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called Osteosarcoma.
After 8 grueling months of chemo, we found out in January that she was cancer-free!
She will be closely monitored for the next 5 years but today she is happy and healthy.
While shooting her photo in the rain, I couldn't help but think of all the beautiful times ahead for my sweet girl who has endured so much ugliness in the past year.
And the analogy of "Rain" was born:




This was the 1st page I scrapped 5 days after we got the diagnosis...I was still numb.
I am so thankful to my family, friends, nurses, doctors and even strangers during that time who helped us put one foot in front of the other for those 8 months.
Here is "Hope":



Just before her treatments ended, I made this page because even I, World's Biggest Pessimist, could see the light at the end of the tunnel.:



So there you have it.
Ryan has gained all of her weight back, her hair grows by the second and most importantly, she has her life back.
For that we are grateful beyond words.
If you were one of the many people who showed me kindness through message boards, emails, phonecalls, cards and especially prayers for my girl...
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Love, Jody