Commitment is a Challenge

I have never been a big person into the Christianity religion. But I saw today that Lent is tomorrow. I do not understand the this practice, but I do know you are suppose to commit to giving up something. So I decided that I will try it out this year and give up my guilty pleasure for Lent. The idea of not spend any money is actually near impossible. Instead, I selected two general groups that I spend way too much on: clothes and scrapbook supplies. So from now and until April 23rd, I am giving up spending money on clothes and craft supplies for Lent. I will commit myself the next 46 days to complete this challenge. Wish me luck!

On to my layout....

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. ~Barbara Bush

I received news from my Mom recently that my Cousin Carmen is pregnant. The family is growing so quickly. Like I mentioned, all my cousins are getting married. Some even have children already. I can recall days that my Cousin Carmen was in high school and we would just talk about boys. Now she is a lawyer, married and going to have a baby. 

This is a very very very old layout. So old that the picture is also about 5 years old. In the picture is Baby Justin, who is definitely no longer a baby. He was one or so when we took that picture  back in 2006. My family and I went to California to visit family. But I remember around when I made it. The biggest hint is the amount of punch outs I used in the layout. I went to Michaels and Amazing Savings around the similar time and went crazy buying punch outs. I love the little-foot punch out to give an image of the baby's little feet . The stars are from patterned paper; I was able to find a star punch out and used the punch on the pattern sheet to punch out the stars the paper already had on it. As for the flowers, I found an idea to make flowers from a heart punch out. I was able to group the hearts together to create a multi-petal flower. The layout is so old that I do not know what I used in it. Hope ya'll forgive me. 

{Travel} Trails

Crop Chocolate's next assignment was to do something on {travel}. It is just my luck, because I took so many pictures this past winter, of course I took advantage of the opportunity to start my album for it. My page one to the start of the winter vacation album is shown above. When I was on the plane, it had the option to select flight status on my screen. I occasionally checked to see how many miles I had flown and how much longer I would be in the air. That is how I got the shot of the plane over the Atlantic Ocean. My nervousness also took place when I had to catch my connection flight at London Heathrow. The second picture is the boarding signing for my flight to Frankfurt. If you cannot tell already, I like having a trail of anything. The buttons are like a path that I took to get from one place to another. I cut the pictures  into circle shape to match the circular buttons. Majority of the kits were stickers of stamps or cut out of stamps. So I tried the clutter method, and overloaded on the layout with all the stamps in the kit. I guess  Making Memories like the 'stamps' theme to its kits. I am scared of the pins because I anticipate poking myself with them. But the kits has these cute little flags. They were a great addition to the layout to add dimension.

Materials:

Making Memories Passport Kit

Making Memories Panorama Box

Good Old Days

Layers...Layers... then Clutter! Sometimes I compare my layouts to ones I see on other blogger's sites. Not only do they or may they have a higher disposable income, they add a layer, after layer, after layer to things on the page. Sometimes, it may look cluttered. But for some reason, they always look great! I do not know why I am so stingy with my materials. It may be because I definitely do not have a disposable income to spend and purchase loads of materials. But I think I just need to be more daring and experiment more with my materials. I save every scrap so I just do not like building up a pile of materials that I have a really hard time using and incorporating into new layouts.

For the my senior year in undergrad, I had joined the Engineering Ambassadors. We were tour guides for prospective students every Friday afternoon. Students from various engineering majors would represent each departments. It would only make sense for me to represent Civil Engineering. I miss doing it every Friday with the bunch. The picture was taken at one of the last tours we did for my last semester of my senior year. I recently visited the Deans and Kendra at the school. I even tried to stop by on a Friday to see if any of the old tour guides were still tour guides. I only saw Sean and Musie, but that was enough. I was able to see Dean Rankin and Dean Bernath and I was able to update them on my schooling. I cannot believe another half of a semester has come and gone. It is already March.

I love polka dots. You can see the reoccurring theme with the circle cut outs that I used to bring out the Title and the quote "A true friend fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty". I was going through  tough time the last semester of undergrad. When I had something to do everyday with friends and knowing that I have Friday tours with great people, it kept me busy. I had also used the clear "Best of times" and used the same technique in attaching it with brad as I did in the Missing You entry.

As some may have noticed, at times there will be a list at the end of my entry naming all the products I used for the layout. Sometimes I do not. At the start of my blog entries I did not list them, eventually I realized I would want to know what some people use. So I started, but sometimes I forget to write down after I complete a layout. This time, I do not have a list because I lost or accidentally threw away the stack of note cards I wrote on listing what is in this layout and many layouts to come. Woops, sorry folks!