I'm Back and Ready to Share! School Layouts & DCWV Sketch Challenge!

Hello my long lost blogger friends!  I've been away from the blogging world for quite a bit, with my crazy life, overpacked schedule, and the hectic holidays - I had so many other priorities to tend to and something had to give, so I've been unable to post.  But I'm Back and wanting to get back in the swing of things.  Although I haven't been posting, I have been creating quite a bit, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to post a bunch of my projects throughout this week and next week (but it is my little boy's birthday on Thursday and I'm going out of town this weekend, so bear with me!).

I have to first post this super cute layout of my little boy's first day of Kindergarten.  I had previously posted the layout of my daughter's 1st day of Pre-K in my last post, so this is the follow up...

This year he had his very first country project.  He was assigned Spain and told to include the title, flag, type of money and write two sentences.  I'm always one to go above and beyond and I pass that on to my kids, so we started brainstorming things we could do with this.  The teacher in me uses any and all opportunities to learn, so we researched and I taught him about the colors of the flag, the map and major cities, bull fighting, the "Euro", etc.  We created the title from napkins, rolling them into little balls and glueing them on the cricut letters (which he cut out himself :), we made the flag with beads and he wrote five sentences within another flag that we made.  When the project came back home, I took off all of the elements that we had created and used them on this layout with the pictures of him holding the project and the fully completed project.  This way I "saved it" without the clutter of the actual poster board around my house.  I see it as a win-win!  Check out the layout below...

Next I wanted to share a layout I made from this month's sketch challenge at the DCWV blog.  This was the sketch, which I loved...

I had just found this great DCWV travel stack and I used it to create a page opener for our Road Trip to Kennedy Space Center.  Take a look...

I will have another Kennedy Space Center layout to share tomorrow, I just realized I haven't uploaded those photos, yet! 

Finally, I have to share with you my fabulous surprise Christmas gift from my hubby - a Silhouette Cameo!

For those of you who have no idea what it is, it is similar to the Cricut (it's competition, actually), but instead of a cartridge system, it connects to your computer and can be used to cut your computer fonts, create your own shapes and also purchase images from their online store.  There's some things I love about it and also some things that I have issues with, but I'm hoping to post my very own review about my thoughts on it after I've given it another week or so to really test it out.  This does not in any way mean I'm abandoning my Cricut - it is still my love, but I'm hoping to expand my capabilities even further with this new machine.  We'll see how that goes!  Be on the look out for a future post about my experiences with the Cameo.  

Well my friends, that's all I have time for today.  I'm glad to be back and hope you'll be joining me again on these crafting adventures.  I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this, especially since I've been away so long, but if you are - please let me know...leave a COMMENT!  

Come back soon and

Thanks for stopping by!