saturday...

My hubby and I spent it with our families. His family likes to have dinner early so we went there first. We had a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner there-long table, turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn and family gathered together. At 8PM, we went to my cousin's house, where the Thanksgiving party was being hosted this year for my side of the family. When we got there, dinner wasn't ready yet. In fact, they didn't have dinner until almost 10 PM! They had a more Hispanic and laid back dinner where both friends and family were invited. They had rice and beans, deer, pork and turkey (cooked in a Hispanic style). there was no table (there were over 50 people there) and it was more like a buffet. There was music playing and people dancing. However different these two Thanksgiving dinners were everyone gathered together to give thanks for another year and another opportunity to be together. My hubby and I are thankful for this year even though we had some rough moments but these moments are the ones that makes us grown as people and get a little closer to each other when we rely on each other.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Wishing you had a great Thanksgiving Day!

wednesday...

Hi everyone. I took a little vacation away from the computer this past week (or so). Sometimes I need to do that. :)

Well, today I want to share with you something that is dear and special to me and my family. Every year we participate in the program Operation Christmas Child by Samaritan's Purse. They are a christian organization bringing joy to little kids all over the place.

Here's the basic idea:
-get a regular size shoe box and wrap it (the wrapping is not necessary but I figured the kids would like it a little bit more if it was!)
-fill it with toys age and gender appropriate. They have three categories:
GIRL/BOY
2-4
5-9
10-14
-include a $7 donation to help transport it
-drop it off!
It's that simple!

Here's a picture of two of my three empty boxes for this year:


and after I filled it with toys:


I pray to God that these boxes make it to the right child and that those children open up their hearts to Jesus Christ this Christmas.

monday...

Happy Birthday to me!


I can't believe that I'm turning 26 today! This past weekend was a very fun weekend. My husband's birthday, as well as my cousin's birthday, was yesterday, Nov. 7th so we had a big birthday celebration!


On Friday, my husband and I went to Texas de Brazil, our favorite Brazilian restaurant. There are 3 here in Miami so we went to the third one in the beach so that we can say that we have been to all of them before we move to Seattle. We had a wonderful time! After dinner, we walked on South Beach and eventually on the beach at night. The sea looked gorgeous at night and there was a nice breeze outside. We got back home late that night.


On Saturday, Luis and I went to the Everglades. Again, it's one of those things that we have here in Miami but being locals we have never done or been to so we decided to go and enjoy it! We did enjoy it and we are planning on going back soon because we couldn't finish it! We also want to go kayaking there (yes, I'm aware that there are gators there!).

Sunday was a big day. We celebrated all of our 3 birthdays together. My dad treated my family and my cousin's family to a brunch at the Rusty Pelicans, which happens to be the same restaurant that we celebrated my Quinces (15th). We were there until pretty late also and enjoyed every minute of it. At night, Luis and I went to his parent's house to have dinner and spend some time with them too.

Today, well today I turn 26, like I said before and to celebrate it, I have a brand new sketch for you all!

Here it is:


and in case you need some inspiration, below are some digi layouts that I made using this sketch.

Take #1

For this layout I used the sketch as is and barely changed anything. This is one of our engagement pictures and one of my favorite. I used nature colors with a pop of aqua to make give it a hint of color.

Take #2

For this layout I rotated the sketch clockwise twice, to get the doily on the bottom right side of the layout and broke up the big picture to include one larger picture and 2 smaller ones. See how different the pages can be even though you are using the same sketch? This little boy is my youngest cousin. Can you believe that he is only 1 month old in these pictures? He's wearing size 6M already!

Take #3

For this last one, I rotated the sketch counter clockwise once and used cheery colors to make my 26th birthday layout. I used Photoshop to enhance my picture and give it a soft dreamy appearance.

Thank you so much for stopping over my blog today! Enjoy the sketch!

tuesday...

Good morning blogging world! It has been a few days that I haven't posted but I was sick for a week and my grandma is also here visiting for the holidays so I've been busy. I did get a double layout and a single page finished in the past week and with these two layouts my 2006 scrapbook is complete! Yay!

Here's the single layout:

The color palette is inspired by Color Combo Galore #164:


and the layout is my take on the left side of Let's Scrap (10-27-10) sketch:


The pink and raspberry color along with the green was a perfect combo for a newborn baby girl layout plus the raspberry color makes my husband's shirt pop out! I used a small doily to mat the round picture and added a handmade blue/brown flower to make the pictures pop since the baby was dressed in neutral blue/green clothes. I handmade the banner by punching out 1" circles and folding them in half. There is hidden journaling behind the main picture on the tag. I colored the green leaves in the olive green to make the contrast between pink and green and I love how it looks!

Here are a few close ups of the handmade items:


The second layout is a double pager inspired by Allison Davis's Sketch for the month of October.
Here's the sketch:


and here's my take:


I found out about Allison Davis and her blog through my scrappy friend Sabrina. I love her clean and simple look and wanted to give it a try. I know that she references Allison Davis a lot so I figured that I'd check out her blog. I love the clean and simple look and since I was working on my 2006 album, back when I didn't have a scrapping style, and most of my layouts were simple anyway, I figured that I would try out one of Allison's sketches for my Thanksgiving layout.

I know that I used a bit of chunky embellies (my handmade fabric flowers) but these were the only flowers that matched a Thanksgiving layout so I had to use them. I tried to keep the layout simple so I just included two embellie clusters and 'filled in' the rest of the page with handstitching, which took forever to finish but I love how it connects the two pages together. Instead of the vertical picture that she asks for in her sketch, I used two horizontal pictures which didn't leave me with enough space in the top for my title so I made this smaller tag-looking title and placed it next to the embellies on the right page. I printed the journaling on vellum to maintain the airy feel of the layout. White cardstock looked to bright and would have crowded that corner. The greenery I cut with my Pazzles. I loved working with this ksetch and the style!

Here are a few close ups of the title and handmade flowers:


Thanks for stopping by! My birthday is coming up (on the 8th of this month!) and I'll be doing something special here on the blog so don't forget to stop by later on the week! Have a wonderful day!