Play Holi Everyday

Holi is definitely a favorite holiday in our family. 

 Avinash and Nandini and I played a little yesterday with the leftover color powder outside on our patio.

Ryan said, you can just see the joy in his face whenever we play.  How could I say no to playing again two days after real Holi?

We played again as a family on Wednesday.  I tried to surprise everybody at first by telling them, Don't come out on the patio!

Can you believe they actually listened?  When does that happen?

 Nandini was not a fan of the tub bath outside afterwards.

And of course, we continued the tradition of playing Holi at Nandini's birthday part last Saturday.

These kids were unbelievably excited to play. So thankful to all the parents and friends who overlooked the mess and let them have fun together.  

Messes are temporary, but the memories are not.

Why play Holi once when you can play everyday?

Today: using Shimelle's central focus sketch

 I started with this sketch from Shimelle.  I don't usually work from sketches because I always want to feel like I am doing my own thing.  Pages made from sketches always take me longer to get done.  And sketches sorta feel like copying.  I am trying to get over that and take inspiration where I can get it. 

I knew this was a really fun sketch after I saw it, so I figured it was worth a try.

I dug through my last few Studio Calico kits and pulled a few different patterned papers.  I love all the pink in Neverland this month, but it is so easy to scrap with neutrals and light blue.  I used this chalkboard paper,  two pieces of light blue, script days of the week paper, and kraft paper with white arrows for the middle. I added a sheet of vellum to soften the layers a bit.

  I moved the circles around a bit and put one button on top of the page. I used this cute fabric pinwheel from Amy Tangerine, Yes Please.  I just grabbed the wooden title from the same sticker set.  I used pink letters to match her dress and the trees in the background.  I have a few kesi art roller stamps that I used here as well. 

Project Life: Birthday week

 This week: Nandini turned two.  We celebrated as a family with a picnic in the park (her party was the next weekend).  We also went strawberry picking and back to the rodeo one last time. Avinash started a new routine of wanting to sleep in my bed with my old baby tiger. I did this spread a couple days earlier than usual and it was much easier to remember the little details (clearly there is too much aluminum in my deodorant).

Page one: Found my groove with the vertical photos this week.  Just lots and lots of pictures.  I used many cards of the American Crafts holiday kit again this week.  I used a few die cut ephemera from Crate Paper and Lucky Charm here (why are they so hard for me to use!).  I layered wood on wood, putting the word happy over a little banner.  I also have a few SC printables circles here and there (love this, hi, today, love).  I used my new circle mask (thanks Anandi!) on a tag and I stamped&gold embossed with this Lucky Charm roller all over.

A few MME buttons and banners here and there go a long way to adding dimension to the pockets.   I used the boy crazy set and the sweetest thing set.  The teal letter stickers are Jillibean soup, my fave flat alphas for Project Life.  The yellow ones on the wooden tag are from an SC kit, they should totally sell those too!

I stamped on a little Martha Stewart tag and added some 'faux washi' stickers from Crate.   I added some wooden stars, a camera and enamel dot to finish it off.  I realized that I used to put wooden cameras everywhere last year and I really miss that.  

Page two: I moved things around quite a bit on this side.  So much that I tore the bottom seam.  Luckily a little squirrel paperclip works well to hold things in place (I hate slipping).  All of these cards are printables, mostly American Crafts Holiday Line, and one paislee press woodgrain card.  So simple and so epic. 

 The gold glitter thickers were special enough to document Nandini's birth date (pi baby!).  I chopped a journaling card in quarters and then wrote directly on the photo in white pen (sharpie poster paint pen).  I did a bit more gold embossing on the memories card.  I forgot how much I love the look of metallic embossing.

 More printables.  That font on the strawberry photo is peach sundress.

 Let me know if you have any questions. Linked up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday. The PL kits I am using are the Seafoam kit and Clementine kit, with multi-pack page protectors, and grid journaling cards.  Thank you so much to everyone in this wonderful community. I love all the feedback and looking at everything people do each week. It definitely keeps me motivated. Also, please include a link to your projects below so we can check them out too! 

Our patio garden.

Determined to take it slow today because of all the activity&excitement later in the week. 

So no outings, just straight home after school.  We did head outside to play on the patio for a while though. I love that they both help me with our plants.  I kept refilling their little watering cans, at least before they started painting themselves with chalk.  Why is is body art always so appealing?

We already have a few tomato flowers blooming.  And one tiny little green tomato that I fear may never ripen.  All of the plants are starting to wilt and I think I may need to start over.  I tried putting coffee grounds in the pot, but I think that made things worse. 

I have a huge pot, from a lemon tree that didn't make it, now full of basil, purple basil, and cilantro.  My cilantro was very weak last year, hoping to keep it alive this year and save myself $.50 a week at the grocery store.

 An errant acorn trying to become a tree. Avi and I track it's progress together.

Bougainvillea, jasmine and our lipstick flowers in the background.  I so love when the jasmine starts flowering, one of my favorite scents in the world (I wore them in my hair at our wedding).

We have a ton of seedlings all over the place too.  Just hoping I'll be able to figure out what is edible and what is not in a few weeks time.

Then, this happened.  I blame Jill Sprott.  I used a brick of cream cheese and made at least a dozen peppers.  I made them vegetarian and used a bit of panko to get a crispy top.  They were deemed to spicy by the rest of my family and I may have eaten almost the entire tray.  And that is the story of why I will have  a double chin in every picture taken this weekend.

Linking up with littlegreenshed for the Centipede Challenge at JBS too!

Imagine.

I have been having a lot of fun with Studio Calico's Neverland kit this month.  I have made three pages so far and have not even cut into my favorite papers yet.  This month I swear I am finally going to use Kesi art paper on a real layout, I swear! 

I made this page last week, and I love it.  I used the b-side of an echo park paper.  The front is full of PL style journaling cards, but none of them really spoke to me as much as this cool maze pattern.  Blue is also a fave background color for me. 
I used gesso on the bubbles stencil.  Avinash punched these hearts for me the other day (much to my initial horror!), but turns out I really like them and the bokeh effect they create on the page. 
I added a few wood chevrons, puffy foam stickers and die cut shapes I made.
I misted some fabric thickers in red and added a few different ones for contrast, blue foam, silver glitter and grey chipboard. 
Totally channeling Soaphouse Mama Ashli and tried out some pen doodling here and there.  I continued the doodling and bits and pieces across the page as well as the photos for continuity.  Linking this up for Simon Says Stamp Water challenge. 

 Another Neverland page.  I made a big die cut background for this one.  I cut apart the new Maggie Holmes quote paper and stitched on some favorite lines.  I added layered a few more papers under my photo, anchors and red starburst.  Anchors are a bit weird I admit, but I think they can be used non-thematically.  Like butterflies or birds.  Or with birds?  I think it worked.
This MME pinwheel paper was a lot of fun to cut up and use as embellishments.  The colors in the paper are a bit muted, but it still looked nice.  I just scattered some candy dots and drops of mist around to finish it up.

And last but not least.  My first page for the new One Story Down!  I was so happy when they re-opened their virtual doors.  One of my favorite designers over there is Two More Days.  I used her Welcome to the Weekend kit for this page. 

ProjectLife: photobomb

This week: We went to the Rodeo. We went to the museum as usual. We hung around the house a lot, playing games and being silly. I actually recorded a few funny things the kids said and did. Nothing special or out of the ordinary really, but a good week.

Page One: I used a few more Studio Calico kit cards here. I added quite a bit of text to photos too.  So much fun, but it can be time consuming.  I just love looking at fonts and take way too long to decide.  

Here is what I used: bemio (photo bomb), haymaker (zebras), ribbon (favorite), and pacifico (pony rides).  These are all free fonts too.

I punched out this card last week and wanted to leave it open so the 'window' would show through.  I added the text to this instagram in Picasa. I love those SC wood veneer words too.  The pack is totally 50% off right now and I stocked up (even though I don't care for the typewriters-if you want some message me)!

 Another SC PL kit card to record Avi's game winning joke.  I misted the wood arrow and dropped a little black mist on the card as well.  I created the polaroid frame next to it with my silhouette.  Yes, it is based on a stamp, but the text was quite easy to reproduce myself.  I layered blue star, and teal dot washi under it.

I have loved this Geralyn ampersand card for a long time.  I felt like my spread needed a lot of extra color this week so I finally found a home for it.  I added the title with some Snap stickers, a very good match.  And, yeah, my picky eater/underweight baby totally ate a bug. Gross.

I pasted a little chevron ribbon under the photo of Avinash for a little added color contrast.  Honestly, I have trouble using my ribbon and want to find more places to use it.  Next to it, the banner under spring is cut from SC patterned paper, I stamped on hello and added a few candy dots to it.

Page Two: I used a design D page.  I had quite a few vertical photos so I figured it was worth the extra struggle that always comes with this type.  And yes, this side was a struggle, can you tell?  It still feels so flat to me. Nandini looks so grumpy in that cookie me photo, but she really was loving it!  Sigh.  So serious.

This picture of Nandini is kinda funky, her face is hidden in a sun flare.  I added a new Amy Tangerine sticker to it, love the watercolor effect it has.

I stamped hello evening (stamp by Ali Edwards) onto cardstock and glued it to this photo.  It still feels so incredible when they play together.  I love how AliE uses her stamps, I surrounded mine with stars like she did on a layout for CHA.  I like the bold design of the stamp, but they are very patchy when used with dye ink.  I ditched that circle and tried again with chalk ink, much better results. 

 Let me know if you have any questions. Linked up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday. The PL kits I am using are the Seafoam kit and Clementine kit, with multi-pack page protectors, and grid journaling cards.  I haven't used them yet, but I just downloaded and printed out the Holiday Collection too.  I love the textures on the cards and there are a lot of designs that can be used non-seasonally as well.  (No affiliate, I just like them!)

Thank you so much to everyone in this wonderful community. I love all the feedback and looking at everything people do each week. It definitely keeps me motivated. Also, please include a link to your projects below so we can check them out too!  

PS. Check out this washi tape poll I created and let me know what you think! This is a new app, still being beta tested. Personally I think the photos need to be bigger.