Where has the week gone, it's time for our Five Things link up already?! Who is ready to join the party I co-host with Tairalyn over at Little Miss Mama and share with us five things that are on your mind right now? 

First a few reminders...

1. Five Things link up is posted every Thursday at Midnight EST. Share any five things that are on your mind right now. Whether it's something you are obsessing with on Pinterest, a new and exciting event going on in your life, or even sharing five of your favorite books; it's totally up to you. 

2. Please put the Five Things button on the post you're sharing for the link up; sharing is caring, the more players involved the more fun we'll have.

3. Please follow both your hosts Diana from The World Around Her and Tairalyn from Little Miss Mama via Facebook {here and here} and/or Twitter {here and here}. As it’s not mandatory it is greatly appreciated. 

4. If you tweet about your post or Instagram it, feel free to tag me or Tairalyn and use the hashtag, #FiveThingsParty

5. Check out the other bloggers who have linked up, show them some love and comment on at least one other bloggers link-up post.

Shall we get the party started...

1. It's May 1st and that means there are only 10 days left until the Mother's Day Susan G. Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure. It also means that I only have 10 days left to reach my goal of $250, currently I have raised $98, which I am very grateful for. Please help me succeed and help all the mothers, daughters, sisters, and all of the women out there find a cure, click here to donate. 

2. I can't wait to wear my custom Atutudes tutu, Kristal is such a sweet heart and took note of everything I had in mind for my one of a kind tutu! I even inspired my sister to get a tutu, she bought one on Amazon, mine is a lot cooler than hers though! 

3. This weekend I was in a fashion show for the local women's group that I'm in. This is the second year I volunteered to be a model and this year was even better than last! The clothes from Chico's were very comfortable and fit so nicely! Plus, the traveling tote from Career Bags matched my first outfit perfectly. It was a great day out that I enjoyed with the ladies of my local BPW organization, and my mom and her two sister-in-laws as well.

4. This Saturday, May 3rd is National Scrapbook Day and I'm joining in with Big Picture Classes and 10 nationally known scrapbookers including Becky Higgins for the Instagram National Scrapbook Day 10k! When you follow along with the hashtag #NSD10K or #ProjectLife you will get the chance to win awesome prizes from all of these ladies plus awesome scrapbook sponsors! There will also be plenty of items on sale during National Scrapbook Day, don't miss it! Stop by here to register for your chance to win, it's free!

5. I shared this sneak peek on Instagram of what I made my husband for our anniversary, but you'll have to wait a little longer for the full details! Come back tomorrow, I can't wait to show you the tutorial and how easy it was.

Now it's your turn to link up, thanks for stopping by! PS, don't forget to enter the giveaway I'm co-hosting with my friend Busy Bee Kate! 

Happies and Crappies: Let's Get Focused!

Happy Friday! I really want 2014 to be all about getting organized and more focused. I'm trying to procrastinate less, yeah right...spend less time on Social Media, which I did okay with at the start of this week but then crashed mid-week, and really focus more on what I want to and should be doing. So more personal blog posts, more exercise and eating healthy, more crafting and scrapbooking, focus more on my work instead of staying on Social Media for 2 more hours than I need to be, and pay more attention to the positive things in life and focus less on the negative things. What do you want 2014 to be about for you? 

Alright, now it's time for Happies and Crappies, who is joining me?! 

Happies

1. I have to give a shout out to our Happies and Crappies host Steph over at The Vintage Modern Wife and say CONGRATS on your little bundle of joy you are expecting!! So happy for you and your husband! 

2. It's getting warmer here in the Northeast and the snow is melting, yay! I'm looking forward to Spring and to the Philadelphia Flower Show. This year's theme is "Articulture", pretty cute play on words there huh?! 

3. I am finally putting together our wedding album four years later and I'm so glad I waited because I just loved these pocket page style scrapbooks! I knew I didn't want to go the traditional route of just getting our photos printed in an album. Though I wasn't sure how I wanted to put together our scrapbook either. So, if you are thinking the same thing, well you are going to love Project Life and similar products like these. I have Project Life pages, but cards and similar style pages from Me and My Big Ideas  as well, which I used here...

How cute are the cards?! 

4. I saw this really neat idea on Facebook of using a jar and writing down happy thoughts and memories each time they happen and storing them inside the jar. Then on New Year's Eve you open the jar and read all of the memories from that year. I don't always remember to write them down, but I really love doing it. It makes me smile now when I write them and I can't wait to read them aloud to everyone on New Year's Eve to share all of my wonderful memories of 2014 with them! It's not too late to start yourself! After everything that happened at the end of 2013, I just felt like this was really needed to help bring my spirits back to a better place. 

Happy Memories of 2014 Jar!

Crappies 

1. I don't really have too many this week, one really funny one I guess?! So, I wasn't feeling that great earlier this week and I had this same feeling last week too. My stomach was upset, my head was aching bad, and all I really wanted to eat was soup and crackers. Well, it turns out that this little illness or whatever it was may have been caused by a spider bite or what we think is a spider bite that is on my hip! Yes, I'm really telling you about this, haha! I looked up bites and found that you can feel nauseous and sick from spider bites and they looked similar to the photos that were with the article. I love how in the dead of winter all these creepy bugs like spiders and stink bugs like to hibernate in our house! Well, Spring is almost here and hopefully they will go outside!

I hope your week had more happies and less crappies, here's to a great weekend! 

Talking to the Moon...

How was your weekend? We had a really nice one, my mom and my sisters came up for a visit to take my mom out to lunch to celebrate her birthday. Happy Birthday Mom...April 18th! We went to AppleBee's and had them sing to her...it was really cute! Here are a few photos of the album I made for her...using paper lunch bags, thanks to my best friend for helping me!

My sister gave us this house warming gift..since this was her first time visiting our new place!

Now our Butterfly Meadow set is complete...PS my sister didn't even know we had this set, it was total fate and coincidence that she bought the same design! LOVE!

Random Pictures of the Moon!

Scrapbooking!

More scrapbooking! Did I tell you about the scrapbook fair we went to, it was really interesting and fun too! I've never been to one and didn't know what it was going to be like. It was so adorable to see all the avid scrapper ladies waiting in line waiting for them to let us look around, they had shopping bags bigger than a tote bag and on wheels too! I really wanted to take some photos since this was my first scrapbooking fair, but I didnt feel like carrying around my camera all day. My best friend took some great photos of all of the amazing cards and scrapbooking ideas but we forgot to take a photo of us at the fair! So when we got home I got my camera out and we took some photos of us holding up the cards we made. At the fair there are about 30 or so scrapbooking, and stamping companies and some of them have what they call, "Make and Takes". A Make and Take is when you sit down to learn the card making idea from the scrapbooking company and you make your own and take it with you! Some of them cost money, since they are using their own supplies and some of them are free! We did two, one of them was make 2 cards for $1 and another one was free! You can't beat paying a dollar, especially when you get to take this idea home with you.

The night before the fair my friend stayed the night since she lives out of town and we stayed up again till the wee hours, well this time until 1am, not 3am! I'll have to take some photos of the amazing mini album she showed me how to make, it's made from three paper lunch bags! Wait till you see it!

So here are some photos of us after we got home, with our cards!

My best friend who was also my maid of honor...with our scrapbooking cards we made!

Heres my little frog my mom bought me at the Philadelphia Flower Show and his little Gnome buddy I bought to keep him company!

Not sure what these are but they're growing outside our home!

Love this little blue bell!

Grow little tulip, grow!

Scrapbooking...

I wanted to show everyone what my best friend and I were doing a few weekends ago while scrapbooking until 3am!! First we did a few pages in our scrapbooks and then she showed me how to make a mini album from putting scrap paper together. Hope everyone had a great weekend, it was finally warm out for the entire weekend so we all went bike riding on Saturday and Sunday!

(Girl Owls!)

(Just picture it with pictures!)

(Buttons!)

I put the three girl owls at the top because all of the pictures in this mini album will be of me and my two step daughters and all of our little adventures together...baking cookies, going to walks, and just hanging out!

continue reading for more scrapbooking...

I LOVE SCRAPBOOKING!!!

I must say it again...I love scrapbooking! It's such a wonderful craft and very relaxing. It gets your mind in such a creative state and it's tons of fun when you scrapbook with other people...like I did last night with my step-daughters to be! I'm almost finished my scrapbook my fiance gave me for Christmas...which is All About Me and what and who makes me who I am. I started off with pages of me and the things I am like a scrapbooker, a writer, a listener, a soon to be wife, etc. Then I made a page of pictures of me growing up and then started with pages of people in my life starting with my fiance all the way to my grandparents, cousins, etc. So here are the three pages I've created last night. The first one is of my grandparents( my mom's parents in the black and white photos and my dad's parents holding me in the colored photo!), the 2nd is of my aunts and uncles, and the last one is of my cousins.

Life is Good...

What a wonderful weekend with my MOH and my bridesmaids...and of coarse my fiance too! I found my dress! And we also found bridesmaid dresses. But the thing is...we forgot to take pictures! Well...the story is that we were told we were'nt allowed to take any pictures unless we were going to buy that particular gown...but through all the trying on and excitement we forgot to take pictures of the dress when we finally knew that it was, "The One"!! I'm planning to go back to the bridal shop sometime soon...maybe this week...to try on the gown again for my mom who couldn't make it to this gown trip. But I knew the wedding gown was the one...it has everything I am looking for...lace, beading, sparkle, and it makes me look thin!! LOL! We all knew it was the one...the girls loved it, and the sales lady was so nice...goofy, but nice! Then after shopping the girls and I got some chinese food for lunch and then saw X-men Origins: Wolverine...which was a little violent...but it is a great movie for all the X-men or Wolverine fans! :) We came home and I sooo wanted to tell fiance about the dress...but I guess I can keep the details to myself until our wedding day! On Sunday we had a nice relaxing day with each other after the kids and MOH went home. And then you look into each other's eyes and you know that they are "The One"...and that you are lucky in love and lucky in life. How amazing is it that I get to spend the rest of my life with this human being who makes me feel this way. So since I didn't get to take any photos of my gown yet...here is a new scrapbooking layout I made tonight! Happy Monday!

Scrapbooking Addict!

I admit I have a problem...I'm addicted to scrapbooking and especially of buying scrapbooking paper!!! I also love stickers...who doesn't love stickers! Stores like AC Moore and Michaels are great esp. when I get coupons and reward points! QVC is a great help too supporting my addiction...today in the mail I got my new paper kit...and I just love it and can't wait to start using it!!






The last picture is the whole Colorbok kit together, it came with 200 pages! The first pic is the regular scrapbooking paper it came with and the other two pics are the style paper it came with that has awesome edges and cool designs! I had to get it after seeing Lisa's awesome creation!

More Scrapbooking!!!

Scrapbook Preview!

Here's a little peek: This is the last page of the album, which will lead to my next scrapbook for the wedding pictures next year!!!

Scrapbooking!

I've finished our pre-wedding scrapbook and I love it!!! He got me a few scrapbooking items for Christmas that came in handy when I was putting together the last few pages. He knows me very well!! I will be posting pictures very soon!!! I just have to say that I love scrapbooking, it's such a relaxing hobby. I love looking over the pictures and remembering things like our first date or our first trip together. On another note...we bought his younger daughter a scrapbook set for Christmas...she LOVES IT!! We had so much fun putting it together...the older daughter helped and she loved it just as much so we bought her a scrapbook set for her birthday, which we will be celebrating this weekend!!! His younger daughter calls me her "scrapbook buddy"!! I just couldn't imagine life without my new family. They are just such wonderful people and my future step-daughters are so beautiful inside and out. :)