Spreading a Hint of Sunshine wherever I go :)

I love this month's Cocoa Daisy kits. As of late, scrapping has not been my favorite thing to do. Not a good thing for someone who works in the industry. But this month, for my assignments, I decided to just play.


And that was fun.

I tell my critique group they are not allowed to use the word "fun" in their journaling because it's not a strong adjective. And I still stand by that, but I needed to play and have fun again. So I can use the word in my blogging today. :)

This is the Day in the Life: April kit (sold out). I got it because of the wooden dots and the washi tape. I don't like washi tape, you won't find a nice big fancy display of it in my scrap room. But I loved the little stripe and it comes in the cutest dispenser, so I ordered the DITL kit. I had fun.

I also got Prism (sold out) and the main kit, Hint of Sunshine (see below, it's almost gone, get yours now!!! I promise you will not regret it).

Here's the mood board I made for our Cocoa Daisy Pinterest boards, that's one of the most fun things I do for my job as Social Media and Marketing person at Cocoa Daisy.

And here are my layouts. I had fun, can you tell?

Kelly and I have been doing a lot of home renovating the last year. We made a list of things we wanted to finish around the house, it turned into a list of all the dreams we had as well. The kids added dolphinarium and helipad, we're not really planning on them getting done...

With all these house projects, Kelly decided it was time to buy a new drill. His old one is pretty old. My parents bought it for him for Christmas, probably 15 years ago? He decided to upgrade and go cordless. I'll join him in saying it was the best thing ever. It's made our current house project–(this photo is from him and our bathroom remodel at the beginning of the year) remodeling the kitchen–an absolute dream. I love it almost as much as he does :)

This little fox is the basis for a blog post on the CD blog today. You should check out how I did it. :)

This is about Ethan. With Annie away at school, Ethan gets a lot of the scrapbooking spotlight... He bought a fountain pen with his birthday/Christmas money. He's a little bit excited. I love how he gets into things like this. He's definitely got some Grua in him.

See? Another Ethan layout, very fun to do. I haven't been taking many pictures lately, my big fancy camera is feeling neglected. My phone camera is not good, but if you run the photo through enough filters and turn it B&W, it looks kind of artsy. This layout is about Ethan's 16th birthday. We went to Olive Garden after I got home from CHA. I know it's a poor excuse for a celebration, but he was happy that he got a strawberry lemonade. We rarely order anything but water. 

Can you tell I had fun with this?

Did the bird on his shoulder give it away?

And finally, a last project, again for the Cocoa Daisy blog post. I learned this cool technique with embossing ink and chalks when I was doing an assignment for Scrapbook and Cards Today's CardMaps3 issue a few years ago (the newest CardMaps4 is available for pre-order right now, it will be shipping in late April!). Is it overkill to say it was a fun card to make? ;)

I'm glad I tossed the stress out the window this month. February and March were hard months for me, I wasn't feeling well, I have "something weird" as my Rheumatologist puts it. It will show up when I haven't been taking good care of myself and when I'm super stressed out. That was me the last six or eight months. So it showed up and really kind of scared me this time. Symptoms changed (My feet and calves started swelling and I had these hot spots on my ankles and legs) and it wasn't going away like it normally does. I went to the doctor, he put me on a steroid, took a lot of blood, and wanted to see me in two weeks. 

And two weeks later, I'm fine. My blood work showed high inflammation, but two weeks later it's completely normal. I'm feeling back to myself, which is good, but I've taken this as a warning from my body that I need to step back a bit and slow down. I love to scrap but I'm really bad at deadlines, so I'm removing some of them from my life. We'll see if that helps. I know having fun helps. 

Remodeling a kitchen with Kelly? Well, actually that's been fun too. I'll tell you more about that later.