Happy New Year!

We've been celebrating birthdays like crazy here at the Pellerin house.

Jack was 9 on November 22. He asked for (and received!) a Flip video camera because he loves to make little mini movies staring his Pokemon toys. He's such a nut! Here he is with his cake. There was some mix up at Poupart's, because his cake was decorated with flowers. He wasn't very pleased about it, but luckily, it didn't stop him from digging in and enjoying his cake!



Next was Caroline on December 11. This girl is fifteen years old! What is up with that? She was just born! Well, it feels that way to me. We celebrated her birthday at my grandmother's house in St. Martinville. Here she is with her favorite lemon daubage cake. Can you tell that she didn't want me to take her picture?



The last birthday of the year was Anna's, on December 21st. This sweet girl is now 12 years old. Crazy, I tell ya! Anna and I are both Hello Kitty enthusiasts, so her cake was an easy choice. Her birthday always seems to get wrapped in together with Christmas, which bothers me more than it bothers her, I think. She loves being a Christmas baby!



I spent some time in November and December making ornaments for our Christmas tree. Here are a few.

This is the picture from our Christmas card in 2004. Caroline was 7, Anna was 4, and Jack was 1. My babies!



I love this picture of Matthew from our time at the beach last summer. It was just begging to be displayed!



Here is Caroline holding baby Jack in 2003. How sweet is this?!



We spent a wonderful Christmas morning at home together. It was our first one in the new house.

Here's Matthew with his new Angry Birds game. This kid loves, loves, loves Angry Birds!



Jack got, among other things, lots of Pokemon "stuff". Little rubber Pokemon creatures, books describing all the different Pokemon, these plush Pokemon critters . . . the boy is obsessed!



Anna got a much-anticipated laptop. No more having to share mom's computer with the boys!



Here is a shot of Caroline with a gift from Sephora, which I think must be her favorite store. Seems like we are always in there! Her "big" gift was a Vitamix blender. She is a vegetarian, you see, so I thought that a Vitamix would be a great gift. I envisioned her starting each day with a smoothie made just the way she likes, maybe some fresh, homemade hummus . . . let's just say that my bright idea did not translate. She was, and remains, unimpressed. There's always next year, right?



That's it from here. Thanks for stopping by, and best wishes for the new year!

Just a Quickie!

I'm back with a really quick little share!

I've been working hard on my photo Christmas ornaments today. I did several like this a couple of years ago, but wanted something bigger this year. We have room in our new house for a taller, wider Christmas tree, so I wanted bigger ornaments. This one is about 5.5 inches. It looks AMAZING!!! I put a picture of Caroline as a 3 year old on one side, and a recent picture of her as a 14 year old on the other. I love it! I used lots of pop dots for dimension, as well as glittery patterned paper and sparkling acrylic gems. I can't wait to get this one on the tree!

Here are the two sides of the ornament before I glued them together.



Here it is once I attached the sides together. I hung it off the edge of my desk for the picture.





I cut the scalloped circles on my Silhouette Cameo, and the patterned paper and photos using my Cricut (George cartridge). So much fun! I used archival quality photo paper, so hopefully we can enjoy these ornaments for many years to come.

I made turkey cupcake toppers for a bake sale at the boys' school last week. Aren't they cute? Gobble gobble!



I've been wrapping Christmas gifts like mad this week! I love the look of plain kraft paper with just one beautiful embellishment. After I wrapped this gift, I tied a couple yards of aqua baker's twine around the box, topped it with a snowflake that I cut out on my Silhouette, and glued little round mirrors on top. It came out really cute, and I think the mirrors will reflect the lights of the Christmas tree beautifully. I've been having the mirror accents sitting in a jar in my studio - didn't even have to make a Michael's run!



The boys were invited to an ice skating party last weekend. Ice skating is a fairly big deal down here in Louisiana where it's almost always warm. A friend was kind enough to snap this photo of me and my boy, Jack. I love it!



A couple of days ago, I decided to cut what was left of the cattails to add to an arrangement I made awhile back. Matt wanted to help, so I let him hold the cattails once they were cut. He pretended that he was a soldier and the cattails were his "soldier guns". My sweet baby boy!



Gotta run, but hope you enjoyed this little share! :)

Hello Again!

I've been saving several little projects to share with you, so here goes!

This is the time of year when I slow down on page layouts and start working on Christmas. I love, love, love to make beautiful gift bags for my kids' gifts! I use my Christmas Cricut cartridges, stickles, ribbon, acrylic gems, pop dots . . . so much fun, and so pretty under the tree! I have to start early, because of course I have four children, and three of the four have holiday birthdays. Here are a few pictures of my favorite gift bags so far!
















I did complete one new layout recently, and here it is!



I made it using my new Silhouette Cameo. The Cameo is similar to the Cricut, but instead of using image and font cartridges, you connect to your computer and download the images you want. So far, I really, really like it! I don't think it replaces the Cricut. Not for me, anyway. But it is a nice addition!

A friend recently asked me to make birthday party invitations for her daughter. The party theme was pink and brown owls. This is what I came up with. Isn't it cute? I love the little folded leaves and the flower in the owl's "hair"!



We did some serious trick-or-treating a couple of nights ago. The kids scored lots of loot and had a great time. I must say, they looked mighty cute, too! Anna was a beautiful little witch, Jack was Pikachu (his silliest costume yet), and my sweet little Mattie was . . . The Very Hungry Caterpillar! Cute, cute, cute!







Caroline went to her first homecoming dance a few weeks ago. She was beatiful! So hard to believe that my precious baby girl is so grown up . . .



Anna has been busy with her Tuesday horseback riding lessons. The horse she rides is named Buddy, and Anna loves him!



Our family is working together on a special Thanksgiving project, so once it takes shape a bit more, I'll be back to share with you!

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for stopping by and visiting with me!

Tropical Storm Lee

It's actually starting to feel a bit like fall here in South Louisiana. The temperatures have dropped into the 50's for a few nights now, and the highs are only in the low 80's. For September, that's about as good as it gets. We had to suffer through Tropical Storm Lee to get here, but I think it was worth it!

Last Friday, before the weather got really nasty, I went to St. Edward School's weekly mass. As always, it was nothing short of amazing, with hundreds of smiling little faces and beautiful music. Jack was chosen to be a gift bearer, and he did a great job. He was very excited because not only was I in church that day, both of his grandparents (my parents) and his dad were there to support him. That afternoon, he told me, "I really appreciate Dad coming to my mass. I know it was hard for him to make it because he had to work today." What a sweet boy we have. We love our Jackie!



We had several days of rain, which caused the Bayou Teche to overflow its banks a bit. I took this picture of Gil's bloodhound, Bella, on Monday. By this time, the worst of the weather had passed. You can see that the bayou is really high - there are some elephant ears sticking up in the background on the left. Those are usually not underwater! Luckily, it didn't get any higher than this.



There wasn't much to do over the long, rainy weekend. We couldn't really get out, so I was left with no choice but to work on a few scrapbook pages. Our sweet kitty, Snowy, loves to hang out in my studio with me. She likes to sleep in my basket of paper scraps. Silly kitty!



I put this page together pretty quickly. I've been having these cute little stamp stickers for a while now, so it was time to make hay. It came out pretty cute. I like the bright colors!



Here is Jack's back to school page. He got a new, much shorter, haircut right before school started. I know it's a lot cooler, but I will miss his longer locks.



I've been looking at my Cricut cartridges with a new eye lately. I want to try to do more with them than I have in the past. The "Give a Hoot" cartridge has lots of adorable, earth-friendly images, and I love the little deer. It reminds me of a newborn baby, so small and fragile. That's Jack at 10 days old, having a bath. I love his wispy baby hair!



When we lived in New Orleans, we looked forward each spring to Earth Fest at Audubon Zoo. There was great food, live music, vendors selling beautiful art, and of course, lots of animals. Gil snapped this picture of Caroline and I, and it is one of my very favorites. My sweet little girl!



I hope that you enjoyed this share. I've got a couple of projects on my desk that I hope will be ready to post soon. Please come back and visit again!

What Do You Mean, Layouts?

Yes, you read right! I'm back, with new layouts to share. I haven't gotten many pages done in the last year, what with all of our house renovating and moving, so I have to make up for lost time!

All four of my babies went back to school a couple of weeks ago, and I harassed them until they agreed to let me take their pictures! Caroline is a freshman in high school. I know, it's crazy! Here is the layout I made for her.



My little Mattie-Moo is in Kindergarten! He had very "mixed" feelings about going back to school. He had such a good time in Pre-K that he wasn't real sure about leaving. After a bit of a bumpy start, he's doing really well. Thank goodness!



Anna-Banana is officially a middle schooler! She's at the same school, Catholic High, but in the middle school building. She's got a locker this year, and lots of different teachers. So far, so good!



I once read somewhere that it's perfectly okay to use the same design over and over. Good thing! This page is about Matt playing on the swingset at my grandmother's house. This swingset has been enjoyed by Bienvenu kids, grandkids and great grandkids since the 1940's!



We went to Gulf Shores in July, and in less than a week, Jack went from being petrified of the water (despite 5 years of swimming lessons) to being a boogie boarding master! I had this same picture enlarged and printed on canvas for my studio wall!



I wanted to include lots of pictures from our trip, so I used a divided page protector (American Crafts, I think) to add them in. I then added this page of pictures to his album right after his "Slick Lizard" layout. Pretty cool! I will probably go back and add little captions to the individual photos.



This layout for Anna is the first one that I made in my new studio! I wanted to keep it simple (shocker, right?), and ease myself back into the scrapbooking groove!



Finally, finally, finally! We've been in the blue house since June 4th, and my studio is finally taking shape! I've moved my desk, three tables and lots of supplies to my new space. It must be said that my new studio is about 1/4 the size of my old one. But it's all good! The new studio is on the first floor, right next to the kitchen and living room, so I can sneak in time to play while dinner is cooking or the kids are hanging out. My other studio was on the second floor through the attic and totally isolated. Don't get me wrong, it was over 400 square feet of scrapbooking bliss, but it was almost impossible to get up there unless the younger kids were with me, and then they usually "distracted" me to the point that I couldn't really get anything done. So this new studio is working out great!

This is the where I stash my cardstock and patterned paper. It still needs a bit of organizing, but it's okay for now. I love the canvases on the wall! I want to go all around the room with my favorite pictures of the kids and Gil.



More paper with jars of goodies on top.



Here is my Cricut table. I spend lots of time here!



I love all the jars of buttons. To me, they look like glistening jewels! I plan to hang the fishy canvas in the boys' bathroom, and the butterfly is for Anna.



Baker's twine is totally hot in the scrapbooking world right now. It comes in lots of gorgeous colors, and I'm all into it! It can be used to tie buttons, to stitch with, to tie around packages . . . I love it! The spools fit perfectly into sugar dispensers. I got these at Walmart for $1.00 each! The computer isn't cooperating, so I can't give you a clickable link, but I ordered the twine at whiskergraphics.com.



I hung my beautiful stained glass stars in my studio windows recently. In the old house, they hung in the kitchen windows next to the table where we ate our meals. They are so pretty! One day I'd like to learn how to make cool things with stained glass. Anyway, when the sun shines through the windows, the stars come to life! These come from Kurt Knudsen's etsy shop.



They even make cool shadows on the wall!



Thanks so much for stopping by, especially after my two month absence! I truly appreciate all of you who take the time to visit with me. :)