P. Kelly Smith
Welcome to Freebie Friday! I want to thank everyone for all of their sweet comments to our departing Paper Crafts Pros. They are a talented bunch of ladies and they will be sorely missed! It’s a good thing we’ll still see their creativity from time to time – both in future issues and at Creating Keepsakes Conventions. If you haven’t ever taken a CKC class from one of these crafty gals, you’re definitely missing out! Click HERE to see if one is coming to a city near you!
I hope everyone is looking forward to our upcoming Labor Day weekend. Labor Day is always a bittersweet holiday for me. While I love all the sights and smells of fall, when Labor Day arrives, I know summer is officially over. The kids all go back to school, the nights gets increasingly darker and the autumn chill starts to creep in. I guess that’s why I try to make the most of June, July and August… I know these warm, magical months will fade just as quickly as they arrived.
I just returned from glorious week up in the mountains of McCall, Idaho. I sort of hinted to my grandma that a girls week would be a lot fun (and a great way to use up my vacation days). Never the subtle one, my grandma then took the reins and approached my aunt (who actually owns the beautiful condo on the picturesque lake). Lucky for us the condo was available, so my grandma, aunt, mom, sister and dog (she’s a girl, too!) all made the trek up to our little piece of heaven on earth.
By day: we swam, kayaked, water-skied and soaked up the sun.
- By night: we took moonlit boat rides!
And since it was a girls retreat, we even found time to paper craft! My aunt found these metal advertising signs at a dollar store and then spray-painted them with black chalkboard paint. We cut out circles from patterned paper and adhered them to glass pebbles to create magnets. Since I LOVE to fussy cut, I cut out some pretty flowers and adhered them to the bottom of the board. Add some pretty ribbon, Thickers to spell “Memo” and you’ve got an adorable magnet board ready to hang!
These magnet boards are so easy to make! Can you guess what fun activity we'll be doing at our card group this month?
I’d love to hear how you spent your summer! Did you travel? Pick up a new hobby? Leave me a comment and I’ll pick two winners to receive this summer-infused prize package from Cosmo Cricket. All comments must be received by midnight (MST) on Labor Day (Monday, Sept. 7).
Two lucky winners will each take home this fun prize package!
Here’s to the last days of summer!
Kelly
P.S. It’s time to announce the winner from Brandy’s Are You Funny? post and the three winners from Alisa’s A BIG Thank You post!
Brandy’s winner:
Megan (September 1, 8:29 a.m.)
Alisa’s winners:
1. Kathy W. (September 3, 9:24 a.m.)
2. Stephanie Smith (September 3, 7:30 a.m.)
3. Char-D (September 3, 11:05 a.m.)
Congrats, winners! I’ll be e-mailing you shortly to get your mailing addresses and discuss your prizes. Thanks to all who left comments!
Love the magnet board. Great project! Kudos to your Mom!
As for my summer, it was bittersweet. I am going through a divorce and had my first summer vacation without my husband and his 2 boys. Never knew how much I missed the endless questions and their rough and tumble ways as I did on my lonely vacation. So I guess this is my new life, to be filled with new things.
I mostly worked and did a lot of house projects including setting up the craft room at our new house!
I had a fabulous summer capped off by three weeks in Laguna Beach with our kids! We had family, cool weather and the beach! What more could a girl want???? Cosmo Cricket to be exact
Love your photos! The moonlit boat ride – I can feel myself being there! Great photo!. I spent the summer letting things go. Cleared out some clutter around the house and within myself. So cleansing! Did a little travelling too
I spent this Summer working, unfortunately, but it is all to save up time to go to Australia for Christmas, which means another summer!!
Busy at home with day-to-day running around. My 5-yr old had various classes and science camp. Ended the summer with a 2-week vacation to New Mexico to visit my family.
Thanks for a chance to win!
We didn’t have a great summer this year because we were fighting with my nephew because he was detected with leukemia and he just passed away last month
Anyways, congrats to the ladies..better enjoy your goodies
I spent my summer in the garden, traveling to see family, and stamping!
We had a wonderful, relaxing summer this year. Kids went to morning day camp and then we spent each afternoon playing in the town pool. It was very low stress and lots of fun!!
Since I am retired and everyday seems like a vacation, lol, I took it easy and crafted my little heart out.
My husband returned home from deployment, so my entire family is back together again! We have gone on mini trips to the beach, jet skied, snorkled. Just spending time together is all I wanted….
We didn’t get to travel as a family this summer, but we did enjoy the time off and were able to relax together. We visited family around here and made sweet memories with cousins. We made the best of a tight summer financially and thoroughly enjoyed it~
This was probably our most uneventful summer yet, but somehow it still flew by. We spent lots of time at home, running errands to Target, eating sushi, and swimming at the pool. Lazy days of summer, are you really over?!?
Well, this summer brought all the kids home from college with one graduated! That leaves four more in college. They are all gone back to school now and Paul and I will be spending one final week at camp to enjoy the quiet and pack-up for the winter. I too love fall, the weather is wonderful and nature puts on a beauty pageant!
My summer was pretty amazing! I was blessed to go to the CHA trade show and then teach classes in the CHA Consumer show! But the best part was the (6 day total) roadtrip with the owner of the Arts and Craft store from NY to Florida…with an outhouse on the roof (No we are not in desparate need of a portapotty! It’s because her store is called Ye olde outhouse! LOL!)
Then I and my church stamping ladies had a Stamping Outreach Day to bless the women in our church…four of us taught techniques and made cards with 13 precious sisters in the Lord. What fun!
Finally, this summer I also took my baby to college…sad for the Mom (me), but exciting for the girl (her)! What a whirlwind!
God is good!
Kim Marie
My fun this summer was going to baseball games with my family. Thanks for the great blog and the give away!
I love summer (probably because I’m a teacher) so we did tons of stuff-a family trip to Denver, many trips to the beach, mini golfing, movies, baseball games, zoos, had a great time spending the days and nights with my 8 year old twins
Spent the summer in the pool or in the house with the HC on. Too hot in AZ to spend much time outside. We did have a wonderful visit from an old friend we hadn’t seen in a few years. That was nice.
Yummy goodies! I spent the summer teaching summer school and then visiting family in Missouri…it went by way tooooooo fast!
I love the cosmocricket giveaway,
it would look perfectly for my new foto’s of te summer witch we spent on a holliday in corsica…. i stayed there for 2 weeks with husband, child ,dog,car, tent and lots of sun and nature
and we also spend one week in the ardeche (france) before we went to corsica
I spent a large part of the summer in my garden. Fresh vegetables are so good! The rest of the time I was helping my granddaughter make a scrapbook for her FFA Class at school.
We make our yearly trip back to Singapore every summer since my kids started schooling. Only time we can be out for 4 weeks without interrupting school. Also the only time my kids get to play with grandpa, grandma, uncles, aunts and cousins on my side of the family (other times are just phone call and webcam). We always have so much fun and yest the food is there is yum yum. And before the trip to Singapore we always have one or two camping trips. And lots of lots of backyard BBQ all summer long.
We went to Portugal for 2 weeks. Just came back last Thursday. We had 2 glorious sunny weeks, the kids look so healthy and even I got a bit of a tan. We went on a dolphin seafari (on the Atlantic Ocean) and saw so many dolphins. We took some great pictures.
Eveline.
The highlight of my very busy and work-filled summer was taking a break and heading up to the Bay Area to walk the Renegade Craft Fair’s inspiring aisles. So fun!
For two weeks of the summer, I spent cruising Alaska and checking out their sights. The rest of the summer, I was a lazy bum – lol. I work for a school so I have to rest up and sleep late so I can be ready for those little darlins’.
Well for the Summer, we took a long weekend vacation, to Sea World. We do Winter break vacations in Febuary, because we own a Heating & A/C company, so the Summer time is very busy for us! We did do lots of swimming and jet sking and tubing!
This summer has been insanely busy! It seems like everyone chose 2009 as the year to get married, and as a wedding photographer, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work. I’m looking forward to the end of wedding season for this year so I can get back to having some time for myself to cook, craft, sew, and spend time with my family and friends.
We are so lucky to live in FL, so we hung out at the pools and beaches here locally. It was a lazy Summer!
My summer was spent with summer school teaching. It was half days until the 2nd week. The rest of my summer before school started back up was all about finding time to just CREATE and read Paper Crafts for inpsiration!
Alas, summer is gone for back…back to school. I spent my summer gardening, picking and processing (repeat process ad nauseum) with a little crafting thrown in! We did get away twice for a week to Pearrygin Lake in Eastern Washington and a weekend to a cousins house where all the kids could play in the in-ground pool (unheard of in Washington!)
The highlight of our summer was our trip to Branson, MO with the grandparents. The kids swam all day and we went to shows by night. It was a great way to end the summer. Mostly, we just hung out and I tried to find time to create at least a little every day.
Our summer was spent mostly on Lake Erie on our boat or IN Lake Erie off the boat or in the pool. If we spend as much time wet next summer as we did this summer, I’m not shopping for clothes….just bathing suits. =)
This summer I have finally set aside scrap time for me, I play between the hours of 9pm-10pm. It has made a bid difference by setting that time for me. Also I have learned how to use photo editing software and my uploaded photos are so so so much clearer and crisper! I am so proud of that, I could shot it from the mountain-tops!
We stayed home and took the time to relax!
Spent the summer working but we did spend a week at the beach was lots of fun. Next year we are going to spend more time at the river swimming and fishing and camping.
We moved, so we spent the summer trying to get connected to our new town and church family. We did manage to sneak in a trip to the beach!
I had such mixed emotions about summer being over.. I am happy that school had started and that I will have a few more moments to myself, but also a BIG part of me is sad.. I loved summer and didn’t really want it to end.. I loved spending time with the kids and doing the little things like, roasting marshmallows on the grill in the back yard, setting up the tent and telling “scary stories” to each other.. acting like we are on vacation.. or going to the water park and watching Liberty (my 1 yr old) try to get a drink out of the shooting fountains as it squirts up her nose.. Or watching my dad bond with the kids wondering if it will be the last summer that he remembers them. (he is in the early stages of alzheimers) but really isn’t that what summer is all about.. the little things.. the smells, the sounds of the kids laughing, and the memories.. I loved every minuet of this summer and felt like it went buy way to fast..
I had a very nice summer- my husband and I started in May (a bit before summer) with ideas of adding on to our house….signed the contract…signed another contract for a different house….started the addition on the old house the day we moved into our new house….and worked on both houses (just a few things to fix)….and to end our summer….I decided to resign from teaching. It was nice- interesting- and we had lots of memories:)
I can’t believe it will be fall soon- new adventures:)
Our summer was a bit shorter than usual, but we managed to pack in some fun. We watched our oldest get out of the Navy and onto his own. A few camping trips were taken, especially to cheer up the youngest–he misses his brother. Trips all around the state to see family and some wonderful friends. My husband and I even managed to get away for a long weekend all by ourselves. It was wonderful.
My husband daughter and I spent our summer on the road. First we went to Santa Cruz, CA my husband had a convention he needed to attend; my duaghter and I simply splashed on the beach and collected sand dollars
Then we went to Phoenix, AZ. Boy it was hot but we had lots of fun exploring. Then we went to San Diego and there we spent some time with friends and also had the opportunity to take my daughter to The San Diego Zoo and to Sea World. She loved it so much and so did I. That’s my summer adventure in a tiny nutshell.
Busy, busy summer for us! T-ball, swim lessons, house projects, Birthdays… I also tried to make some progress on digital photo organization, scrapbooking, and learning a little Photoshop… Thanks for the chance to win that awesome bundle of goodies!
Oh I cant believe summer is over.. here in WA. we got some summer heat in May (High 80s-90s which is warm for us that time of year) ending it this weekend with RAIN… sigh… that is ok! Our summer was FABULOUS filled with lots of little things, trips to the park, picnics, friends, BBQs… our yearly things, boat trips, beach trip… some new some old… ALL of it FUN!!!
But looking forward to the fall… and holidays too!! Til next summer… Cheers! LOL!!
have a WONDERFUL weekend!
We were here all summer. My little boy is 20 months now and we had a blast going to the park, library and the pool, during the week. He loved playing in the back yard in his splash pool and water/sand box. He enjoyed eating popsicles in the evenings and going to bed late on some nihgts. We had a blast and I have so many photos to cherrish these wonderful moments.
Spent my summer working at a day camp for kids ages 6-12. It was a blast, and really tested my patience!
Unfortunately I spent most of the summer this year working!!! Fortunately, I have a job!!!! I am learning Photoshop now and will continue to work on that this fall!
This summer was filled with watching my little guy explore and learn new and different things – swimming, how to make sandcastles in the sandbox, petting zoos, etc. I don’t have a tan from this summer, but I got to do the very best thing – be a mom! Thanks for the chance!
I spent the summer enjoying SUNSHINE, visiting our home in Santa Barbara, and going to work (Blech)….could live without that last one for sure!
I am sure everybody is going to miss because you gals made this magazine what it is today. Good luck to everybody and hope everything goes good for you.
It’s been pretty wet here in N.Ireland all summer but we went camping anyway it was fun!
Unfortunately I spent my summer working toooooo much and not playing enough!