Love & stuff

I had a nice Valentine's day here with my family.

My mother-in-law sent us a box filled with the most amazing brownies, blondies and Snickerdoodle bars. I've asked for the recipes, and I'll share them when I get them.

Mike surprised me with flowers, chocolate, and cooked a lovely dinner for us. All of which he did after working all day, going to C's basketball game, and running errands for me on the way home. I'm the luckiest girl. Ever.

Of all the kids, Tommy was the most excited to give and receive Valentine's this year. I wish I could say that he passed out homemade cards, but he went with Toy Story 3 valentines that came in a little mailbox box. He made this for me at school. So cute.

It's my turn this week to post a challenge at How Much Is Too Much? In honor of Valentine's Day, we challenge you to create a page with mainly brown and red, flowers, an arrow, 2 photos and 14 hearts. Hope you'll play along and link up your project!

Here's mine:

The thing that's really cool about this layout - I made it with a "kit" I put together for myself, shopping from my stash. I was really inspired by this new challenge blog, called Counterfeit Kit Challenge. This is what the site is about:"

If you have ever browsed through those great monthly scrapbook kit clubs and admired their beautiful kits...but knew you needed more supplies, like a "hole in the head"...you know who you are (you're the one with TONS of supplies and
embellishments in your ever growing scrapbook stash)...this challenge is for you!

On the 5th of every month here at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog, we
will choose a kit from a popular kit club (for inspiration) and challenge
you to create a "counterfeit kit", using just the supplies you already own.
And to be fair, just in case you need the "inspiration" kit, we will only
feature current club kits, because we're nice like that! "

The inspiration kit and add ons were these, from Scraps of Darkness:

So here's what I put together:

Some closeups:

You would not believe how much fun I had planning this kit... I set out with the brown red color scheme in mind, and went from there. I got a real homespun vibe from the Jenni Bowlin papers, so I went with that. I rummaged through new stuff and old, and put together a mix of Kraft, red and brown. My embellishments were chosen for texture and theme - home, family, love. The canvas tags are around 7 years old! The colorwash has been in my stash at least five, and had only been used once. The Maya Road doilies are recent, as are the Making Memories Reverie & Hambly papers. Everything else is pretty much in between. How do you think I did?

I'm looking forward to playing along with the mini challenges there, and making a bunch more projects with my counterfeit kit. There's a DT Call going on there too. I'm thinking about going for it, since it would be an amazing way to get some of my big stash used up. Hmm.

Well, it's late here, so I'm off to snooze.

Peace.