Are you ready for some football?

Morning everyone!
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We are gearing up for the Super Bowl. Looking forward to watching the big game reminded me of some photos that I have had for some time. I have been wanting to scrap this focal photo especially. Several years back, Blue, the Colts' mascot made a visit to my girls' school. They were so very excited. (They also love to tell the story of how we met Coach Dungy on the bike trail and talked to him for quite some time. What a great guy, seriously, everything they say about him is true). Anyway, I wanted to do a layout about how much the girls love the Colts. Here is the layout I created.
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This is also my first REAL hybrid page (I have printed a small piece or two before but not like this.) I had a hard time finding paper that was Colt's Blue so I turned to digit papers. I found a great kit at 2 Peas that had a wide selection of blue papers. I simply recolored them a bit to match and voila!
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I am by no means a master at this but I thought I would share how I recolored these papers to fit my layout. I use Adobe Photoshop for all photo adjustments I make so that is what I will be showing you. Most of this is pretty easy stuff. I first pulled up my photo so I could get the right color of blue. See the two overlapping squares on the left side about half way down. Click on the top square to change the color. Now when you move your curser over the photo you will have an eye dropper. Simply click on the color you want to choose. Simple as that.
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Now pull up your digital paper. For this part I used the Paperazzi kit from 2 Peas. Use the paint bucket to drop the new color onto your paper. Easy Peasy (as my girls would say) :)
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The other color change is a little more difficult but still pretty simple. Here is the other paper I wanted to change. If I used the paint bucket, I would lose all that great detail on the paper. First you want to make sure that you still have the color you want to use in the square off the the left. Now go up to the top and pull down the Layer tab. Choose New Adjustment Layer and then Gradient Map.
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This should be what you see. Simply hit OK and it will change the color of your paper.
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Want a really cool tip? This is how I change all of my photos to black and white too. Learned this from the great Jessica Sprague. After pulling up the Gradient Map, do not hit OK. Click on the little down arrow to the right of the color. One of your choices is a square that shows black and white. You can click that and then hit OK.
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So now all you need to do is Flatten your layer and your paper is ready to print. To flatten go up to that Layer tab again. Go all the way to the bottom and click Flatten.
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That is it. Hope that helps someone out. This was probably already well known information and I am just late to the party. LOL
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Make sure you stop by here this week also. They are giving another free kit away at Creative Charms. Who can pass up free bling??? :)
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Have a wonderful day and thanks so much for stopping by!

What a team

Happy Tuesday everyone,
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L had another meet this weekend. Didn't get a whole lot of great pictures. Between my zoom lens being broken and the terrible lighting at the gym it was hard. I did get this pic from her bar routine though.
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She has made friends with some of the sweetest girls through gymnastics. She just loves spending her time at the gym. Begs to stay at Open Gym on Fridays after spending 10 hours a week there already. These girls have a lot to do with it. I was so glad to have had a chance to get a picture of everyone. There are so many meets where either they have split the girls by age or someone wasn't able to make it.
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And of cours you have get that silly pose in there too.
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These two hit it off from day one. They have such a good time together. We adore her family as well and were fortunate to be able to have dinner with them after the meet on Saturday night. The girls were so tired though that they just sat next to each other zoning out. Very rare with these two. :)
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Wanted to share a project with you this morning also. I created this card using Melissa's sketch from Emma's this last week. Check it out on the Emma's Paperie Blog. You can find my complete supply list there as well.
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Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

It's all coming together

WOW what a busy weekend! We completely enjoyed our long weekend, even if it involved LOTS of driving. The girls had off Monday for Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and then had a teacher in-service day today. Way back in October we had given DH's dad tickets to a Chicago Blackhawks game down in Nashville, TN. It is always really difficult to get tickets in Chicago and this was a great opportunity to visit Nashville. That was before we knew we were movinig. So we kept the trip planned, had a wonderful time at the game (even though Chicago lost). We even got to go on a backstage tour of Ryman Auditorium, where the hold the Grand Ole Opry. We had to cut our trip short though, so we could drive back and head up north to work on stuff for the new house.
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Yes, that is right, WE HAVE A HOUSE!!! :) We don't close until the end of February but the house is ours. :) It is a brand new house built by a fabulous Amish builder in the area. Since the house isn't quite complete yet, we got to pick out a few of the finishing touches. We spent a good part of Monday picking out the carpet and light fixtures for the house. I thought I would share a few pictures with you. I can't take credit for these pictures. They were taken by the realtor.
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This is the great room. Look at all that fabulous light coming in.
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Here is another view so you can see the cool beams in the great room. We have picked out a gorgeous ceiling fan to go up in those arches.
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Here is a picture of the kitchen. They have added gorgeous black granite counter tops in here since the picture. There is a breakfast nook to the right that overlooks a pond and had a door out to the patio. Those wires hanging down will be connected to under cabinet lighting soon.
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This is the view from the great room towards the front door. Don't you just love those spindles. We have those on our stairs in our current house and I just love them. Look at that great wainscoating in the hall too. Isn't that cool? Love all the unique touches the builder put in this house.

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This is our master, minus the carpeting of couse. :) There is a second door out to the patio from the master bedroom and so it also overlooks the pond. Love that little sitting area!

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Check out the cool ceiling and doorway in the dining room. There will be a chandalier hanging in the center.

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This will be our main living area (the basement). The carpet down here will match the carpet we are putting on the other two floors. The builder is also building us a window seat to go in that little nook area. The TV will be on that back wall with the girls have play space to the right of the picture. He is also building us a big walk in closet at the bottom of the steps for all the girls games. Next to where the closet is going to be there is a door for an additional bedroom that will be my scraproom.

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So happy we found this house. We have all fallen in love with it. Now if we could just move our amazing neighbors and friends with us all would be good. :)

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I can't leave you without sharing a project. I created this card for Emma's Paperie last week. Make sure to check out the blog for the other designer's projects. You can also find my complete supply list there.
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Do you facebook? Creative Charms is giving away lots of goodies this week. This one is easy...invite your creative friends to "like" Creative Charms, let me know how many friends you invited and you will be put in to win $20+ worth of great items from Vintage line. As usual you have until midnight on Sunday.
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Thanks for all of your support everyone. I am so thankful for all of the love I have received about our move. You are all the best!!! Have a wonderful week!

Uneasy calm

Is that even possible? To be uneasy and calm at the same time? I can't think of a better way to describe how I am feeling this morning though. We listed the house this morning, everything is clean and sparkling and things are moving along so quickly. I have been going full speed for so many days now, I don't know what to do with myself. It is such a relief to know that we are ready, but I still feel like I should be cleaning something, doing some laundry, doing something.

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I do have such wonderful people to thank for helping me during my stress time. :) My sweet neighbors who had my girls over at their houses to play the last two snow days so that they weren't here destroying the house. Sweet Cindy at Emma's Paperie that gave me as much time as I needed off so I could get the house ready and the people that have stepped up for me and helped out on my other teams. I have such amazing people in my life and I am so grateful to all of you.

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So, speaking of teams and assignments, I thought I would share a Valentine's Day project I created for Glue Dots®. That fabulous chipboard bird and swirls on the roof are from Magistical Memories.
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Before I go, I want to share a quote that JD Chandler from KLove posted this morning on Facebook. Love the great quotes he finds.
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“We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have...but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
*Frederick Keonig
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Hope your weekend is fantastic. Thanks for stopping by!

Finding a home

Happy Thursday everyone!

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I spent the last two days looking at homes in our soon to be new town. We looked at 20 some homes and none of them really jumped out at me. There are a couple that aren't bad it is just hard to find a replacement when you love the home you live in so much.

It was a 3 1/2 hour drive to get there and that gave me a lot of time to think, as you can imagine. DH and I have been working in Sunday school for the last several months and we try to go for 2 hours on Sunday mornings so that we are not missing the service but it doesn't always work that way. So I downloaded a few of the sermons I have missed to my iPad. Our minister, Tom is amazing and if your looking for some inspiration I highly recommend that you listen to a few of his sermons. You can find them here.

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It just happened that the sermon Tom was preaching on was Thankfulness. As a family we talk about the things we are thankful for often, but I don't know if I express it enough to others. I have really been trying to look at the positives of this move but when I am talking to others I am not expressing that.

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1. I am thankful that DH still has a job. His company may have asked us to move, but he still has a job.

2. I am thankful that we have the means to find another beautiful house even if it will be in a different neighborhood, with different neighbors.

3. I am thankful that we have had the experience of belonging to an amazing church.

4. I am thankful that we have made some incredible friends. Friends that I wouldn't give up for for anything.

5. I am thankful for the opportunity to stay home and support by children by helping out at their school.

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I know God has got great plans for us in our new home and I am prepared for the challenge.

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I can't leave without sharing some little bit of creativity. I was in charge of creating the sketch for Emma's Paperie last month. Here is the sketch I created.

And here is the card I created based on this sketch.

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You can find all the supplies as well as the other designer's amazing projects on the Emma's Paperie Blog.

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Make sure you check out the Creative Charms page on Facebook too. They are giving away free product. You don't want to miss this!

Well, the house goes on the market one week from today. Suppose I should get cleaning. Thanks for stopping by. I can never express how thankful I am for all of you. Have a wonderful day!!!