Texas Paper Bag Album

I am going on a road trip, heading south to Texas, with my friend Liz and I made us each a little scrapbook to document our trip. This was so much fun to make and I actually googled how to make a paper bag album and found this GREAT tutorial. 

This is the cover of the album. I crumpled up the card stockand then rubbed my ink pad over the card stock togive it the appearance of leather. I wanted it to look like this was a leather bound book.

My friend Liz had a Cricut cartridge that I used to makethe hat and the word "Texas". The piece of wood that the word Texas is on, I used a piece of card stock and stamped it with a background stamp that looks like woodgrain. I used mini brads to look like nails.

 Each page has a tab that when you pull on a page comes out so that you can add more photos or maybe some hidden journaling. The two pices of cardstock that have the flowers on them are not adhered down, these are removable so that you can add more photos or journaling behind them. I taped the side of the bottom of the bag so that I would have a pocket in which to place the card stock.

 On the left page I added a photo mat using tied corners. I attached it to the far left side so that we could journal about the photo on the right. 

The left page I used a waterfall technique that I learned many years ago from a scrapbooking kit I purchased. I thought that this would allow us more photos as well and couldn't resist using the jeans pocket from an old retired stamp set that I have had for many years. This pocket is an actual pocket and we will be able to add a photo or some journaling to it as well.

 The reason for this trip is that we are going to visit Liz's son Chris who was signed on by the Dallas Jr Stars hockey team and is staying there while playing hockey for them. The left page has the Dallas Jr Stars logo on it so we will be able to add photos of Chris's games that we will get to see while we are there. I made the logo from chip board stars and alphabets that I had purchased several years ago and never got around to using them. If you go to the Dallas Jr. Stars website the actual logo looks exactly like mine!

This is the back cover of our book

 

I am super excited to go and I know that we will have so much fun when we come back putting all of our great photos in our album!

 

Scrapbooking Weekend in Washington!

I am on my way to Washington state for a great week of sightseeing and scrapbooking! This is my third year spending a weekend somewhere with the great people from Quick Quotes! Each year this company sets up scrapbooking weekends at various places across the united states and this time my friends and I chose to go to Washington state. I have been to Novi, Michigan and St. Louis Missouri to scrapbook with these great people and am I super excited to be able to do the scrapbooking weekend and a vacation all in one this time!



Quick Quotes is a scrapbooking company that is based out of the great state of Washington and they put on a FANTASTIC weekend of scrapbooking that includes an entire 12x12 scrapbook, a 16x22 decorated canvas, a variety of other great scrapbook pages and various other great projects where the proceeds go to Coats for Kids! All we have to do is show up with a few scrapbooking tools and they provide everything else!

We have all sorts of stuff planned like a whale watching excursion, going up into the Space Needle, seeing Mt. Rainer and Mt. St. Helen, plus a ton of other things that we will see too! I will post some photos when I get back so check back you won't want to miss my pictures! :-)

Still on a Road Trip!

Well the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was disappointing to say the least! $22 per person to get in and unless you are a Jimmy Hendrix fan don't go. Dave is REALLY into music and even he was disappointed. So in the car we went and we drove down to Bloomington, Indiana and had lunch at Long Horn Steakhouse which is actually where my friend Valerie works.

Now if you know me you know my luck is never good and true to my word it wasn't that day either! Of course it was my friends day off but she was gracious enough to come in and sit with us while we had lunch! We didn't tell her we were coming because we didn't know if we would get that far or not but she sure was surprised! It was so nice to see her as it has been about 2-3 years since she left Minnesota.

Now the road trip continues and we are now in St. Louis, Missouri! Today we are going to see the Gateway Arch! I have been here several times for business but have never gotten to see the arch so that is the plan for today.

Keep checking in to see where we end up next!

Lynn

Another Vacation!

Yes it's true I am on another vacation! This time it's a road trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in Cleveland, Ohio! Our first stop is Madison, Wisconsin and a great nights rest at the Comfort Inn and Suites.

The photo is the actual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, isn't it cool? I can't wait to see it in person!

We didn't think that we were gonna get here with hurricane winds, rain and it getting so dark so fast we decided to stop. We really wanted to make it to Rockford, IL but thought it was best to get some sleep and start back out early in the morning!

Lynn

I'm Back Y'all!

I am back from my trip to San Antonio, Texas! I went there with my friend Liz to see her son graduate as a Med Tech from Sam Houston Army Base. Here is a picture of Matt, doesn't he look good in that uniform? I always did like a man in uniform!

Matt is stationed at Fort Sam Houston and will go on to be stationed in Washington State where he will continue his schooling to become a nurse.

While we were there we did A LOT of sightseeing! We saw the Alamo, Mission San Jose, Mission Conception, the Riverwalk, Japanese Tea Garden, The Mercado, Buckhorn Saloon and Museum and the Towers of the Americas. Wow can you believe that we saw all that in only three days? Needless to say I am pooped and will going to be really early tonight! Here are some of the sights that we saw:

The Tower of the AmericasLooking down from the observation deck all the way at the top! What a view huh?

Mission Conception

Mission San Jose

The Alamo

The Buckhorn Saloon and Museum

The Japanese Tea Gardens

The Alamo Dome

And here we all are together on our last day with Matt. It was a bitter sweet trip fun to see him but hard to drop him back off. The good thing about it is that he will be home on Wednesday to spend some time with the family before he starts his nursing school!

I hope you enjoyed a mini version of our trip, as you can tell we enjoyed it very much and I am so very glad that I went. Now I am off to bed as I am exhausted, good night!

China Town

As we were walking around we came across a Baptist Church with this sign that just happened to fit two of my CTMH sista's to a tee so we just had to get their pictures by it!!
This is Sheri and Tammy and they are a bunch of Holy Trouble Makers!!

Just up the street from that church was China town. What a colorful area, so vibrant and TONS of people there.
We found a restaurant where there was a man making noodles so of course we had to stop and watch and he made making noodles look as easy as tieing your shoes!!!

As we were walking away from China Town we found these great Chinese zodiac signs in the sidewalk. This is my sign, the rabbit! How cool is that?
Well if you can believe it or not, there is still more of my trip to show you so stop back again!
Lynn

Holocaust Musuem and the Old Post Office

We went to the Holocaust Museum and let me tell you I do not think there was a dry eye in that museum. It was a real eye opener to see how this all started and what really happened to those people. It was very moving. We couldn't take any photos in the museum but I got a photo of the outside.

My Friend Rachel told me to take a picture of the saying on the wall and she told me it would make a lot more sense once we go through the museum and she was right.

I hope you can read this.












Our next stop was to see the Old Post Office. It was the very first post office and it was amazing! Just look at the size of this building! I really thought it was a castle that should be out on a million acres of land!














This is a view from the front of the building.




















Here we all are waiting to go up into the tower.















Here are the views from up in the tower, it was AMAZING how far you could see!





















Are the views spectacular? I am still in awe over all of this and sure am glad that I got the opportunity to be able to see such great sites! If you ever get to go, don't think twice and go, it is really an amazing territory!!

Keep checking in there is more to come!

Lynn

Touring the monuments at night

Our first stop on the monuments at night tour was the Jefferson memorial. You are just in awe when you visit these sites as they are all made with marble and to think that way back when they were first made they didn't have stone cutting saws every thing was done by hands and mostly by slaves.
The next stop was the Washington Memorial.
Across the mall was the Lincoln Memorial. This was truly a site to behold. You can not imagine just how big the statue of Lincoln was, it was HUGE!We were off to the Koren War Memorial and this was rather disturbing. It was dark so it was a little hard to see but they have a wall erected and etched in the wall are the faces of soldiers. The memorial also has a plot of land with statues of soldiers as if they were walking on patrol. No matter where you are one of the soldiers is always looking at you! It was very moving to see this and kinda creepy at night too. It made you feel as if you were on patrol with them.Then we walked over to the Vietnam Memorial. Here are three soldiers from that war.After you look at this then you go to see the wall. The wall is about a half a block long and etched onto this was is the names of every soldier that perished in this war. It was hard to see at night but it was very moving. People come and leave trinkets, notes, flowers as memorials and we were told that all of that is saved and never thrown away.Our final stop on this tour was the White House. I don't think that our tour would have been complete unless we got to see this historic house!And of course the famous address! You know we just had to have a photo of that! I almost missed the bus taking this as it was way at the end of the block and I was running in flip flops! It sure was a site too bad they didn't take a video of that I could have won in America's Funniest Home Videos!!!
I hope you are enjoying my trip and check back for more of it!

Lynn

Mt. Vernon

Convention came early for some of our CTMH consultants and they started one day early but for Val and I it meant another day of fun in the hot sun! We took a water taxi and spent the day at Mt. Vernon. This is a picture of the water taxi that we took. The top was an open air deck and the bottom was enclosed and air conditioned and that sure did come in handy after walking around Mt. Vernon with temperatures of 106 degrees and very humid!
This is the tomb of President Washington where he and his entire family is buried. This is the new tomb according to history he specified in his will that sometime after his death they would erect this tomb for him and his family to be moved to. This Mt. Vernon and boy was it spectacular to see. George Washington was a pioneer in many things and one was farming but if you ever get to visit Mt. Vernon pay close attention to the wall of the mansion. He was ahead of his time in the fact that he made wood look like stone! The outside of the mansion is made of wood that looks like large bricks. The wood was beveled to look like brick and then painted and then they threw sand on the wet paint and then painted over the sand. You can not tell that it is not brick until you touch it, by the way, you are not allowed to touch it! Truly amazing!
This is a photo of the back of the mansion and it overlooks the Potomac River.

Watch for more of our fun trip!

Lynn