birthday cards

Hi everyone!!

Since I have 2 little girls, we are often invited to little girl's birthday parties.... :) I'm happy because it seems easier to make birthday cards for little girls than for little boys. ;)

Here is my latest;

See you soon!
Marie-Pierre :)

à table!

Hi everyone!

Another page of mine is going up on Debbie Hodge's Getitscrapped.com today.

This time I had to "work" with a theme that I love: the dinning table!! 

What comes to your mind when you think about the dining table? Do you see yourself when you were a kid with your parents and siblings? Or do you think of the long Thanksgiving table at your grandma's house? Or do you see the pic-nic table at your camping ground? Or perhaps the table at your best friend's house that you used to visit every now and then and where you could eat as much desert as you wanted?? 

Well, when I think of a table I see myself with my parents and my brother. I see our dining room, I see our plates with the food in it that we usually ate and also the food that we ate on very rare occasion, like the lobster and the hot pot in these photos I chose to scrapbook this time. 

My journaling is a list of things that I remember that are associated with our dining ritual. Here's the translation:
-At our table, there was no tv.
-At our table, we were talking about how our day went. The kids were talking and the parents would talk only when the kids had left the table.
-At our table we were 4, except on some rare occasions like on birthdays. Wen we had people over it was generally grand-pa and grand-ma.
-At our table, we were eating slowly.
-At our table, we were eating well. The meals were simple though. Sometimes, on special days, we loved to eat lobster and chinese hot pot.
I have good memories of our time sitting all together at the table and I would love that Arielle and Maya experience the same thing. <3 p="p">
Notice how I started very sentence with the same words?

Ok so that's the page I made this time around, but when I think about the table I also see us in Miami with my grand-parents and other friends that were also celebrating Christmas in Florida. I see the Easter table at my other grand-mother's house.....I see the big table next to our small kids-only-table. I see my cousin's husband who was sitting with us, year after year, even though he wasn't a kid. I used to do pickles-eating-contests with him with the pickles that my grand-mother made herself. We still talk about it every time we see each other. :)

When I think of a table I also see myself with my brother and my cousins of the same age siting around a birthday cake.....

I see my family eating some steak that my grand-father had grilled for us in the fireplace and which was served on wooden plates with white rice.

When I think of the dining table I see my dog, sitting on my father's chair, right behind my father, very anxious, ready to jump on anything that would fall next to the plate.

When I think of the dining table I see my brother doing some home work with my mom and I remember sitting on the table and telling all the answers before he did.

A broad theme, like a table, is the perfect element to bring so many memories back!
Once you get started and go back in your head and your heart, the hard part will be to choose THE idea that you will scrapbook. :)

You are stuck? Don't have any ideas? Don't know what to scrapbook today? Well, give it a try! :) And come back to tell me what happened when you started thinking...

See you soon!!
And happy creating! (AND THANKSGIVING!!) :)
Marie

6 photos...doubled up

Hi everyone!

today at Getitscrapped.com, I have a another layout being published.
I was asked to make a layout using 6 photos! When I have to work with lots of photos, I usually scale down the pictures so that I still have room for (lots of!) journaling. You know me by now. :) But this time it was all different!!! The computer was DEAD! So I had no access to photos other than that big box of old photos sitting under my tables, waiting for me to do something with them. Yuck! So I digger through. I had no other choice. And I figured that the best way to get things done for me IS when I have no other choices anymore. I work well under pressure so to speak. Can you relate??! ;)

So I dug in my not so appealing box of photos and I found pictures of the trip we made, right after our wedding, with our guests that came all the way from Switzerland. The big picture: a group of 10 young people, 3 cars, 2 weeks and a road trip through Ontario and Quebec.

The pictures were taken with a APS camera. Do you remember those?? We could choose between a small photo, a slightly longer one and a panoramic picture. I don't know the exact sizes. So here I am with those strange photos, of various sizes, pretty big.....and awkward. And I start! :) That's the best part.

And I finish....

As you can see, I cut some pictures and manage to put all those 6 very bulky pictures onto my layout. Awesome, right?! :) I was happy that I could also use a small dead spot to put some journaling. I couldn't go into the details, but it's fine. At least I did something with those pictures that were just sitting in a box under the table.

her are some details:

Ok, so now I was done for my assignment! But wait, I had other pictures that I had laid down on my table that didn't made the cut and that would still need to be in my layout to tell a more complete story. Then, I'd feel that the road trip was told correctly and I'd be happy to move on...so I got to those pictures and follow the same process of cutting them to a decent size and I filled a whole other page, that gave me a (beautiful) double page layout. :)

Here's the full layout, finished!

The second page:

And some detail shots:

I LOVE SCRAPBOOKING!

As I was scraping, I relieved my trip. So many great, beautiful and funny memories resurfaced and that is one awesome feeling that people that don't play with their pictures never get to experience. :) You see, you don't need much to scrapbook. Photos (they sure don't have to be perfect!!), some paper and cardstock, maybe some letter stickers, scissors, some kind of adhesive, a pen and that's it. You're ready to go! So if you always wanted to give it a try, today is the time to start!! :)

Ok, see you real soon!!

Marie-Pierre

do you love critters?

Hi everyone!
Here's another page that I made for getitscrapped.com. I had to use some critters, which is pretty easy for me since there are almost always some kind of critters on my pages, even if I'm not asked too. ;) And you, do you share my love for critters?? Which ones?

I decided to create a little scenery. :)

Here are some detail shots.

and my journaling, unfortunately in french. :)

See you soon. Thanks for coming by!

Marie-Pierre

Project Life - August

Hey everyone!
How are you?
another post only in english today....sorry! It's because I don't have much time and writing each post in 2 languages takes a lot of time so I rather write more often, but only in one language. Hope you'll forgive me. :)

Ok, so since I liked seeing the month of September of my Project Life album all together in just one place so much, I decided I'd go back and do the same for every month. :) I do it mainly for me, to look back.  You can have a peek into my album too at the same time. lol Enjoy!

Dear August,
In August we went to the pool everyday. We not only discovered Arielle's love of water and for swimming but we also made new friends.
Arielle's first swimming lesson came to an end and she got a "repeat" but she loved her teachers and she was ready to continue to learn.

In August we had my brother and his family over. It was a lot of fun.
In August we went to see movies in the Barnes and Noble parking lot. We ate popcorn. Before the movie, we would eat at Flat Bread and we would play at the playground.

In August Arielle's second swimming lesson came to an end and she passed. At that point she was swimming under water and she was impressing her first swim teacher. The best part was that we were at the pool every day, taking advantage of the sun and the summer.
In August Maya started to say some more words.

In August, going to bed wasn't easy.
In August Maya and Arielle started to play more together.
In August there were flowers growing in my garden. My first garden, my first flowers! :)
In August I went to the park with Arielle and we met friends.
In August I got a prize that I won at Two Peas. That made me happy.


In August I received some happy mail from my friend Keiko in Japan!!!!
In August we got together with our new friends at the library for some crafts.
In August the girls got an haircut.
In August we got the sad news that Arielle's teacher was not coming back to teach next year. :(

In August we did some water painting.
In August my little one was carrying her stuffed animals everywhere.
In August Maya got some blood tests and did that without tears.
In August we went to the Plainville hot air balloons festival with Mrs.Thompson and we had a lot of fun!

In August, my best friend visited me with her 3 kids: swimming pool and scrapbooking with her was great.
In August we went to the pool with our beloved new friends.
In August we also managed to go to the beach near here, It's always funny to think that we live close to a beach.

August was great!! :)
See you soon!
Marie

Swim Arielle!!

Hi everyone!!

Here's a page I made for get it Scrapped.

I had to use a mix of patterned papers.

And I used my favourite picture of the moment + cute colours and ledger paper. It could only be nice. :)

Here are some close ups of the details.

title work over patterns:

Layers of papers and a gator-paperclip.

a photo strip:

Embellishing:

Journaling:

Stamping and inking à la Heidi Swapp:

More stamping, inking and layering:

Voilà :)
Hope you enjoy!
Marie

September - Project Life review

Hi everyone!!
Yes! We're back home as a "normal" week is about to start for us tomorrow. Arielle will be back to school after 3 weeks of "forced" holidays. How sad is that, right?! ;)
I am now working on my 4 November pages for Get it Scrapped but before I can show them to you though, we'll have to wait some time, so while waiting, here are some pages from my beloved Project Life album. :)

Dear September!
September was for us the end of the summer; the end of the beloved pool season. :( So sad! But on a positive note, Arielle learned to swim and that's AWESOME!! I documented it.
Also documented our beloved and very much used BBQ. :)
And an add of a French-Canadian restaurant in our area that Patrick's boss found in the newspaper and cut out for us. Sweet. :)
September is also the beginning of school, the reunion of Arielle and her dear friend Gianna, that we didn't manage to see once during the summer.
September is the beginning of dance classes that Arielle wanted to take forever!! That means new shoes: tap dance shoes and ballet shoes. Arielle is already rocking them both!! :)

September means a cruise to Bermuda.

September means Arielle going to school and Maya and I going to Starbucks.
September means Patrick's parents visiting for 3 weeks and more visits to the playground.

September was the month were I meat this lady that died the next day.... I copied and pasted the documentation had made about it over on Facebook.

September and Patrick's parents being here also meant so free evening for me, spent with some good and some new friends. AWESOME!! :)

September was Arielle's first ballet class and me peeking through the window, watching her every moves and trying to hide some tears.
September was the invention of the song "Way up high in the caterpillar tree" that I caught on video and that Arielle's teacher thought it was so funny.

September was our first time apple picking with our girls and it was so much fun. We even managed to get a family picture!!
September was also some time alone with Arielle. I brought her to TCBY after school and it felt so good for both of us!
September was Madison's birthday party and getting Patrick to meat my new friend, Melissa.
September was Unionville's fair. As we walked in the street, we met people we knew one after the other and it felt like we really belong here. It was AWESOME!

I'm so happy that I can look back at those pages and see what happened during the month of September. Isn't that awesome?? Of course, I have all my pictures on my computer and I can look at them and see thousands of pictures that would summarize september, but really, seeing it all in just 4 pages is much more! When I do my album, I don't just take the best pictures: I take the pictures that are talking. The ones that tell a story. For the other stories, the ones without picture, I write. Isn't that simple??!
Still on the fence, wondering why you should do Project Life, well, January is coming and I think that that would be the perfect time to jump in an join me (and all the other Project Lifers) in the fun. You'll never regret it!! :)

Take care!!
Marie-Pierre :)

Happy Halloween!

Salut tout le monde!!
Avez vous eu un bel Halloween?
Moi oui. :)
La journée a commencé avec un rendez-vous avec mon amie Geneviève et sa petite puce Alexandra qui portait fièrement la toute dernière création de sa man: un chapeau hibou. Il était si beau que même moi j'avais le goût de le porter. Ceci dit, Gen, ceci n'est pas une suggestion pour que tu m'en fasses un!! lol On a fini notre rendez-vous chez Jacinthe, ma coiffeuse préférée. :) Pendant que je me faisais couper les cheveux (câline que ça a fait du bien!!!!), Geneviève a gardé mes petites et elle a même maquillé Maya. C'est une bonne amie hein?! :) Elle a fait un beau papillon sur la joue de Maya qui se déguisait en fleur pour l'Halloween.

Hi everyone!
Did you have a nice Halloween?
I did. :)
The day started with a date with my very dear friend Genevieve and her little munchkin Alex who showed us mommy's last creation, an owl hat and so pretty colours that it made even me want to wear it. :) Well, Gen, DON'T take that as an invitation to make me one!! And we finished our date at my favourite hair dresser of all time, Jacinthe. :) While I was on the chair, getting a very refreshing hair cut (thank goodness, it was about time that I do something with my untamed hair!!) Gen took care of my little ones. How would you like to have a friend like that, right??! And while "babysitting", Gen also prepared little Maya for Halloween, painting her a gorgeous butterfly on the cheek as my daughter was dressing up as a flower at night.

Pendant ce temps, Arielle s'est transformée en princesse. :)

Arielle got a princess haircut. :) She was very pretty. :)

Voici mes puces avec leurs costumes. Malheureusement, je n'ai pas pris de photos d'elles avant qu'on sorte dehors et la lumière était déjà pas mal faible alors les photos ne sont pas super bonnes. 

Here a look at how they look once their costumes on. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures before they were outside the house so the light make it very difficult to get nice photos.

Arielle a pris son rôle de princesse très au sérieux. C'est dure de prendre des photos d'elle puisqu'elle n'arrête jamais de danser, mais c'est correct. C'est elle. :)

Arielle takes her role as a princess very seriously. It's hard to get a picture of her since she's dancing around and she can't help and stay still. ;) It's ok, it's her. 

Voici une photo de quelques cousins et amis avec qui nous avons passé l'Halloween.

Here's a shot of some of the cousins and friends trick or treating with us.

Et voici mon frère en Avrel Dalton.

Meet my brother as Avrel Dalton.

Les belles citrouilles de mes neveux et nièce. J'adore les moustaches de chat!!

My nieces and nephews cute pumpkins. I love the moustache!!

Ma gentille belle-soeur qui amène Arielle aux portes pendant que je reste dans la rue avec Maya.
My lovely sister in law trick or treating with Arielle as I am staying with Maya in the street.

Ma petite princesse qui va chercher ses bonbons.
My little princess getting some candies.

Et l'après-Halloween. Le souliers de verre, la baguette magique et du partage de bonbons.
And the after party. The glass slipper, the magic wand and nice candy sharing. 

Grâce à Sandy, on a encore eu la chance de célébrer l'Halloween avec mon frère et sa famille. Peut-être que Sandy est venu juste pour moi finalement. ;)

Et vous, comment s'est passé votre Halloween?? J'adorerais voir des photos de vos petits bouts de choux déguisés si vous voulez me laisser le lien à votre blog/Facebook. :)

Thanks to Sandy, we got to celebrate another Halloween with my brother and his family. It seems like Sandy came just for me. ;) 

How was your Halloween?? I'd love to get some links to the photos of YOUR little munchkins all dressed up.  :)

Marie