October Essentials (and the three kinds of pages I love the most)

Posted on October 15, 2013 by hclappy

Holy cow, do I love this collection. I mean seriously. I could not stop using it! Sometimes when one of my designers puts out a kit, I’ll jot down a few ideas for pages. Just brainstorming, you know? I did that for this collection, and I came up with eleven ideas! Which I’ll probably never make eleven pages, but you really could. It’s that versatile of a collection.

Okay enough gushing…

One cool thing that I did find while working with this kit last week is that I think I make three distinct kinds of pages. Pretty pages (product driven pages), story pages, and photo pages. And the thing that I love is that there is room for all three in my books!

So here’s how these three pages came to be.

When I got this kit, this LO by Wilna was fresh in my mind. I loved that big gold frame she used and how she just kept cramming things in behind it. So as soon as I saw this fancy frame in Michelle’s new kit, I knew I wanted to make something similar. I thought it would be great for one of our Sleepy Hollow Bridge pictures. I had a creepy story to tell about me on the bridge, so I picked this picture. Well with one thing and another, I just kept adding and adding product until there was no room for the story. To be honest, I forgot I was even trying to tell a story for awhile there I was having so much fun.

Once I came out of my “pretty product haze” and remembered my story, I whipped up another page. Really simple, just papers, pictures, and words.

Journaling reads- One of my very favorite parts of our trip to New York was visiting the Sleepy Hollow Cemetary and Bridge. This isn’t “the” bridge where the Headless Horseman chased Ichabod Crane. That bridge is long gone, if it existed at all. This bridge is hidden away in the woods inside the cemetary gates. It is incredibly peaceful there, which was a wonderful relief from the hectic pace of that week.I approached the bridge with some trpidation. It looked old and rickety, and I wasn’t sure if it would hold me. I ventured out to the middle of the bridge. So far, so good. I looked down into the water and was soon lost in thought, mesmerized by the water below. Suddenly my reverie was interrupted by a noise right behind me. Something large and loud was coming across the bridge, making the bridge creak and sway.For one crazy second, I thought it was the Headless Horseman himself, and I almost jumped the rail right into the creek.Of course it was only an SUV crossing the bridge. Apparently the little rickety bridge was a lot stronger than it had first appeared! As silly as it sounds now, it was pretty scary at the time. I could have sworn the tires running over the slats in the bridge sounded just like the clip-clopping of a horse’s hooves…. 4-26-13

A little overdramatic? Probably. Do I care? Not at all!

Once I had those two pages finished, I thought about all the other pictures we took that day. They needed a page too. I took inspiration from this LO by Jennifer Kinkade. This collection has a ton of gorgeous tags, so I wanted to show them off while still having room for several photos. I also made my own flairs again, because clearly I’m obsessed. I liked that I was able to use the Sleepy Hollow font again, tying the pages together even more.

I have one more story and a few more photos to go, and then the whole story of this part of our trip will be complete. Which is huge for me because I never ever scrap an event “completely” I flit around from one thing to another, and usually that’s just fine. I’m not a chronological scrapper, and I don’t ever worry about being “caught up”. But I’ve really enjoyed the process of making these LO’s and I can’t wait to get them printed and put into my albums!

Layout Credits
Sleepy Hollow Bridge 1
October Essentials by Ohana Designs
Autumn Ellies
Autumn Tags
Basic Ellies
Halloween Ellies
Masks and Splats
Solids and Gradients

Sleepy Hollow Bridge 2
October Essentials by Ohana Designs
Basic Patterns
and Gradients/ Solids
Sleepy Hollow 3.0 and Avenir font

Sleepy Hollow Graveyard
October Essentials by Ohana Designs
Basic Ellies
Basic Patterns
Halloween Tags
Solids/ Gradients
Masks/ Splats
Flairs made by me using Clear Styles by Bekah E.

*I am a Creative Team Member. This means that I receive free products in exchange for making and advertising layouts for designers. However, the opinions expressed here are my own. The enthusiasm expressed here is definitely my own. See more of my CT layouts here.

New York Adventures- Welcome to Tarrytown!

Posted on June 3, 2013 by hclappy

Jason and I went to New York from April 22-26. We took around 2,000 photos. Yeah, that’s a lot. In order for me to tell the New York stories without completely losing my mind and being tonally overwhelmed, I’m going to break them up into small, bite-sized chunks. It might take a week, it might take a month. Probably closer to the latter. But I’m fine with that. You can see more of our New York adventures here.

The drive from NYC to Tarrytown, New York is about an hour. Tarrytown is like a totally different world from the city. It’s such a great little town. Everyone is nice. The streets are clean. It’s the kind of place you want to go to retire. (Which coming from Floridians, that means something).

We checked into our hotel. Jason had to go into work for the afternoon, so I unpacked and relaxed at the hotel. When he got home, we headed out to explore the town.

We had dinner at Main Street Pizza. Our first authentic New York pizza! It was really tasty. I’m usually not a fan of thin crust, but this one was delicious.

And that was our first day in New York! It was a loonngg day, but so much fun.

New York Adventures- Driving around NYC

Posted on June 1, 2013 by hclappy

We spent a little time riding around the city before we headed to our hotel. All of these were taken from a moving vehicle, so please excuse a bit of blurriness and weird coloring. I am car picture taking fool. Those are sometimes almost the only ones I do take, since Jason is the Vacation Photographer of the family for the most part.

No big stories here. We don’t know what any of these buildings are. It was just interesting seeing them all. Many, many brown buildings. We drove underneath a couple too, which was neat. We were watching Elementary, which is set in NYC, when we got back and they drove under one of these buildings. A hospital maybe? We got all excited because we recognized it. “Hey! We drove under that building too!”.

New York Adventures- Staten Island Ferry Part 2.

Posted on May 16, 2013 by hclappy

I posted about the Staten Island Ferry before I remembered that we actually rode two ferries, one each way. Duh! So here are some photos of our second ferry voyage.

Leaving the port.

Another of the Freedom Tower. You can see the construction at the very top.

Ellis Island.

And Liberty photos from a different angle.

And we made it to land!

Next, I’ll post some pictures of our drive around NYC.

New York adventures- Staten Island Ferry and the Statue of Liberty

Posted on May 15, 2013 by hclappy

Okay so here’s the thing. I get seasick. Even on big ole ferries, which move at a snail’s pace. Did anyone see that episode of the Mindy Project where the guy gets sick on the Staten Island Ferry? Yeah that’s me. So the best thing for me to do on any boat is to grab hold of the nearest immovable object and pray.

Jason, on the other hand, super loves boats. Any shape or size, he wants to be on them. So he ran around snapping pictures, which is wonderful because I spent most of the ride with my eyes closed.

We didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the ferry terminal building. It had little shops and kiosks. We stopped to get drinks and I was excited to see they had Jamaican patties! Although, apparently up north, they’re called “meat patties”.

We got food and were herded into a huge lobby to wait for the next boat. It was kind of like when you’re at Disney and you mistakenly go in for a ride, but the “ride” just turns out to be you walking from room to room in a huge crowd of people and watching things on screens. Only this was less lame, and there was a point to it all. And people weren’t as rude. So actually not like that at all.

We boarded, and you could tell who were the tourists and who had to ride the ferry regularly, to get to work and whatnot. We tourists rushed outside to jostle for the best view. I found a seat and closed my eyes and pretended to be somewhere else.

Jason did a fantastic job taking pictures! He took about a bajillion of them, so here are a few highlights.

Look at her! With the sun shining down through the clouds! Pretty freakin awesome!

When we made our lists of things we wanted to do in New York, my main one was to see the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, due to damage from Hurricane Sandy, she’s closed until the 4th of July for repairs.

Though I wasn’t feeling too hot during the ferry ride, it was amazing to see something in person that’s so iconic, and that has so much significance to millions of people. Even seeing her from far away, it was still pretty fantastic. One of those “Yay America!” moments. And I’m so very grateful I got to experience that with my favorite person.

CT LO: Never Forget using Remembering by Ohana Designs

Posted on May 14, 2013 by hclappy

I made this page to show the view we had from the Staten Island 9-11 Memorial. I’m starting to love pages with big photos again! Not that I ever stopped loving them, but our New York trip is giving me a lot of opportunities to scrap single larger scale photos, like the one I did of the Statue of Liberty. I did this one for the Number In Bytes challenge at Scrapbook Bytes this month.

Credits:
Remembering kit, quotes, and brads by Ohana Designs

Thanks for looking 🙂

New York adventures- Statten Island 9-11 Memorial

Posted on May 14, 2013 by hclappy

We came upon Staten Island’s 9/11 Memorial unexpectedly on our way to the ferry. We knew we wouldn’t be able to make it to the one in NYC, so I’m glad we got to see this one. I spent a few quiet minutes reading names. It was a rare bit of calm in a very hectic day.

It was really windy and too cold for these thin blooded Floridians!

Jason ran around taking pictures like a crazy person. The view of the city from this spot is amazing.

You can barely see the Statue of Liberty on the left. (More of her in the next post!)

The tall building is the new Freedom Tower. As of May 10th, with the addition of the spire, it became the tallest building in the U.S.

I’ll share a layout I made with this pic later today.

New York adventures: Getting there

Posted on May 9, 2013 by hclappy

Jason and I went to New York from April 22-26. We took around 2,000 photos. Yeah, that’s a lot. In order for me to tell the New York stories without completely losing my mind and being totally overwhelmed, I’m going to break them up into small, bite-sized chunks. It might take a week, it might take a month. Probably closer to the latter. But I’m fine with that.

So here goes…

I guess I should start out by explaining how we got to go to New York in the first place. Jason had to go for a work trip, and I was lucky enough to get to come along. Jason lived in New York as a very small child, but hasn’t been back since. I’ve never been that far north, so we jumped at the chance to explore a new place!

We knew Jason would be doing a lot of work during the trip and we wouldn’t have a lot of free time but we wanted to make the most of it. So we did what we always do when planning a trip, we started making lists of things we wanted to do. We had to do things on the cheap (a surprise trip to New York was not in our budget this year!) But I think we did a pretty great job fitting in a ton of fun things.

We woke up at 3 am on Monday and headed to the airport for our 6 am flight.

Nerd humor- Blue Screen of Death at the Best Buy kiosk.

Security was surprisingly hassle free. I almost always get pulled aside for extra screenings at PBI.

I found a super cool app that let me grab a bunch of videos from YouTube to load on my iPad to watch on the plane. I watched a lot of Shimelle and Glitter Girl that week! (The logo in the top left came with the free version. It didn’t bother me at all though some might find it distracting).

Jason mostly worked during the flight, but found a little time to read.

He takes great in the air pics. I can’t sit in the window seat because I get airsick and looking out the window makes me want to puke. (Things that make Jen want to puke are a running theme throughout this trip).