What the ... ???

Well, the month of March came and went - and not a single blog post from me. My bad. I was going to post yesterday, April 1, but then figured you'd write it off as an April Fool's Day joke!  My birthday was last week and the boys sent me the cutest little plant and teddy bear, which arrived at the office, right on time.

The flowers are teeny tiny and so adorable.  The pot they came in is only about two inches tall.

Scrappy-wise, I have so many layouts to share that they would crash the blogger server LOL ... so, I'll go with a selection instead.  Starting us off is my most favorite layout at the moment - Queen Bee. The layout came about for a challenge at a new blog, Lift This, being run by Vinnie Pearce and some of the girls at Two Peas.  Vinnie used to have her own site (Pixel Canvas), but recently joined the designer group at Two Peas - yay for us!  Lift This is a challenge blog designed to help digi scrappers improve on their shadow work, to create more realistic pages.  Each week a paper/traditional page is posted that we scraplift and try to get our shadows to look like the 'real thing'.  Of course, I took my scraplift in a somewhat different direction (that shouldn't surprise you LOL) ... so here's my page and a link to the original page to work with:

Also from Two Peas, the digital morph game finished and WOW, hard to believe we all started with the same page!  You can find the links to  both groups here, on this message board post - and it includes information from some participants on where they found inspiration from the layout they received.  This is the page I did for the challenge:

Over at Design House Digital (or DHD), we just finished a month of "March Madness" with some awesome Monday sales - freebies plus two or three kits for just $1 ... AND, I believe that offer is going to keep going into April.  Oh, and speaking of April, imagine my surprise to log in yesterday only to find that the admin group had been working hard overnight, adding bits 'n' pieces to the designer and decorator (CT members) profile pics. Right now, I'm sporting a beautiful moustache! LOL  Thanks girls, real cute.

I'm running my first month-long challenge at DHD - a photography challenge.  I hope you'll stop by and play - and as an added incentive, everyone who participates has the chance to win a gift certificate for the sight. Now, come on ... how hard is taking a photograph?  Really. The designers run challenges, too, and some of my CT team-mates have things for you, too.  Everything can be found in our Challenges Forum. Also, check out the designers at DHD ... we had a few new ladies join the site in recent months - welcome Kate Teague and MaryAnn Wise!  If you're a Two Peas digi guy or gal, then these names might sound familiar *wink*.

Speaking of MaryAnn ... I used some of her spring stickers (recolored) in one of my latest P365 layouts.  This is a two-fer as it combines P365 with Melissa Esplin's March Swatch challenge:

People ask why I "went digital" ... this page is a good example.  For whatever reason, if I ever took a whole bunch of stickers and tried to layer them like the cluster I have here ... well .. it would look like I sneezed product on a page.  Hopefully, that's NOT the effect I achieved here LOL   The photo is of a bud on my azeleas, which appear to have survived the 2-3 feet of snow that got dumped on them.

For a little fun, I just HAD to scrap this photo of my son. Funnily, some people thought he was hugging a REAL kangaroo ... um, no.  Just a statue.  During our visit to Australia last year we visited a place called Cockington Green, which has the most amazing miniature houses, replicating cottages and scenery from England.  At the entrance to the gardens, there was a kangaroo statue that just begged to be hugged.

The template and papers for this page all come from Deena Rutter - who, by the way, also has a great line of die-cut templates, as well as things for the hybrid scrapper - envelopes, boxes, etc.  I love Deena's templates and used one for a color-blocked, fun pages about the boys:

Speaking of hybrid ... well, I did it ... I broke out the traditional paper supplies and used Deena's envelope template (SSSSOOO easy to use!), and created a little something.  Of course, I realized that I'm VERY out of practise with my inking skills! LOL  But, for a first (in a long time) attempt, I think this came out pretty well:

The March issues of Scrapbook News and Review magazine is out - do you have a subscription?  If so, you'd see some of my work in there *** hint hint *** LOL  Here's a few things from the January and February issues that I can now share with you:

 

Okay, I think I've just made up for a whole month with no posts! LOL  The weather is beautiful, so I'm going to head outside to do some gardening - assuming the ground isn't too mushy from all the rain we've had recently.