Plan with Me- Turkey & Blessings Theme

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This week I am continuing to use one of the Darice sticker books for my weekly inspiration, this time the one titled: Turkey and Blessings.

This book is filled with very cute images of turkeys, squash, leaves and all things fall. I took my clue for my colors from the stickers and I am loving the color theme. The turkeys couldn't be cuter and I really love how this spread turned out.

It is kind of funny now that I look at my finished spread because when I first looked at the sticker book I was drawn to the touches of green on some of the stickers but I don't think I actually used any of those stickers. I did get a few with the bluish tones and they tie in the numbers at the top of the page. Since I was so drawn to the green I used quite a bit of it in my stickers I printed I think those touches of green are what make me love the page. Very strange since green is far from one of my favorite colors.

I don't really have a lot more to say about the page, mostly I wanted to be able to post some higher quality photos of the images for you to enjoy.

November 2015 Ipsy Bag

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It's time for my monthly Ipsy Bag opening. I had been watching the tracking information on this package most of last week and had really hoped it would arrive on the scheduled delivery day which was last Friday. Unfortunately, it was delayed in the transit and I wasn't able to get my hands on it until Monday. Rest assured I opened it up as soon as I had the chance.

My first impression of the bag is I love the colors and design. I have actually been looking at a very similar digital paper to use in my planner for stickers. I love the design, I love the colors it is beautiful. I am not totally crazy with the texture of the fabric it is made of but I do love it nonetheless.

Our theme this month is Beauty Blast, very fitting given the bag design.

Now for the products:

The first item out of the bag was the mascara from Smashbox. I have been wanting to try something from this company for a while now and I was about to order myself a new mascara so the timing on this is perfect. Now the question is will I like this product. Here is a link to the Smashbox Full Exposure Mascara- it looks like the full size retails for $20, it might tempt me if I like it enough.

Next up was the Aromachology Exotic and Spicy Perfume. I am not a huge fan of this one but I think I know someone that might love it. I will have to give it to her and see what she thinks. According to the information I found on the web this perfume has top notes of honeysuckle, rose and pink jasmine. Mid notes of gardenia, orange blossom and ginger. And bottom notes of musk, sandalwood, moss, cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper. I am pretty sure the scents of the bottom notes are what turn me off to it. I love everything else mentioned but for me especially the musk and sandalwood are not fragrances I enjoy wearing. If you do I think this would be lovely and the bottle of the full size is beautiful, it by the way retails for $70, not too bad for a fragrance you love.

The third item out of the bag was a Colourpop eye shadow. I have seen these on a lot of YouTube videos and have been wanting to try some for myself. I have to say the color is wonderful, I absolutely love it! I can't wait to try it out. This one retails for $5 and I think would be worth it.

Our fourth item out of the bag was a tub of gel eyeliner in Navy from Beaute Basics. I do love gel eyeliner and I don't have any in navy so this is another item I am excited to try out. This is an example of a product I couldn't fine online so I have not more information on it.

Lastly was a tube of Hey honey facial scrub, I looked it up and I don't see anything that is citrusy in the ingredient list but I sure feel like it smells of grapefruit. I am planning to try this one out within a day or two. I have been really lax about my skin care routine the last couple of weeks and my skin is really not feeling all that great so I am hoping this will be just the thing to get me back on track. The full size of this product retails for $23.

So there you have the contents of my Ipsy bag this month. I am very pleased with it this month since they managed to send me a couple of things I have been wanting to try.

Did you get an Ipsy bag this month? What was in yours?

If you would like to get your own Ipsy bag here is a code for you to use:

https://www.ipsy.com/new?refer=v8x2f

Plan with Me- Plaid Pumpkins Theme

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This week I am continuing to use the Darice sticker books for my decorations for my planner. This week I chose the Plaid Pumpkin book. It has a lot of cute animal images as well as apple trees, nuts, fruits and flowers that fit the seasonal theme. All through these images runs the plaid design theme.

One of my favorite things about planning has become figuring out the colors and designs for my stickers to go with my themes. This week was no exception. I love the animals and for me the plaid is a reminder of my dad and my grandpa. They both wore lots of plaid flannel shirts in the cooler weather. Since they both always also wore denim that was a must for my design this week.

I really love the way the colors work together. I was able to pick up some plaid digital papers to use as well as some wonderful denim ones. I love how both work in this spread and I know they will be featured in many more spreads in the future. I love them that much.

I was able to use a lot of the stuff I made last week, since I had made enough to use for multiple weeks. I mixed in some more pieces with the denim and plaid and I love how it turned out.

Here are some closer pictures of each page. I hope you enjoyed the video.

Plan with Me- Fall Friends

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A couple of weeks ago I made he impulse decision to purchase 4 of the Darice sticker books in the fall/thanksgiving themes. Since I pretty much ignored the Halloween ones I had gotten earlier I knew I had to make a plan for these. Since there are 4 full weeks in the month of November and I have 4 of the books I decided to just pick one book for each week and plan my spreads that way. So for the first week I chose the Fall Friends book. I do love the colors in this one and the all the absolutely adorable animals. I really wish the turkeys were a bit smaller I would have loved to use them but they were just too big to fit in. The sitting fox was my next choice so he was the first sticker to be placed. I love how he looks in the bottom corner and he fit that spot almost like he was made to go there.

I picked mostly browns, oranges and tans with just a hint of wine red for my color pallet. I added in some orangish plaid, some tree and leaf designs, and some wood-grain designs too. I love this mix and I know I am going to smile each time I look at my planner this week.

While last week was probably my least favorite of all the spreads I have done in my Erin Condren this is one of my favorites. I love all the warm colors, the fall themes and the cute animals. 

Fall Card for a Friend

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This week I decided I wanted to make a card for a wonderful friend that has been going through some health problems and I decided to turn the camera on and let you all join me.

When I started I really wasn't sure where I was going with the card design. I knew that I wanted to use my maple leaf stamp with my Perfect Pearls on a dark color paper. I have used this technique in the past and I love how it looks when done. I wish the camera could do it justice because it just glows and I feel it is a must in the fall for a card. I picked out a sheet of dark brown card stock from a package I had picked up at JoAnn's a while back. Then I dug out my leaf stamp, this one is from a set from Hero Arts that I have had in my collection for a couple of years. I am not sure if this exact stamp is still available but I am sure you can find a leaf stamp that you love just as much.

So the first step was to cover the sheet of brown paper with some random maple leaves in the different colors of Perfect Pearls. The sets of Perfect Pearls come with everything you need to use them (4 containers of Perfect Pearls, 2 brushes and a small pad of Perfect Medium) Just use the Perfect Medium on your stamp like any ink and them brush/dab on the Perfect Pearls. Brush off any excess and repeat with as many colors and leaves as you want on your page.

When I was finished with my stamping and applying of the Perfect Pearls I simply misted the page with some plain water. This will help to set the Perfect Pearls so they don't rub off the paper. Allow the page to dry. I cut mine to size off camera.

Next I got out my new set of phrase stamps and used the one about friends. I stamped this on a 2” strip of a Vanilla card stock (same package as the brown) then added a gold embossing powder. Heat this with a heat gun to melt the embossing powder.

Now it was time to assemble. I used my tape runner to attach the leaf sheet to the card front. Then some foam tape to attach my sentiment band. I waited until I had the band adhered to the card to cut it to size so I could place the sentiment just where I wanted it.

Since this card has to travel all the way across the country I wanted to keep the card fairly simple (better chance of it arriving in good condition that way)

I hope you enjoyed the card I made and come back again next time. Thanks for watching my video and checking out my blog. 

Plan with Me- Halloween!!

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Since this is the week of Halloween I am just kind of using a general Halloween theme for my plan with me. I had purchased a bunch of the Darice sticker books in different Halloween themes and hadn't really used them very much so I decided to depend on them for the décor this week. I have to say I am not really all that happy with the end result but maybe by the end of the week I will like it more.

Also since this is the last week for the October colors I wanted to use up the extra stickers I had made this month. I hated to see them just sitting there not being used. Mostly I had the full check boxes left and I like how that part came together. I debated a lot about whether I should make a couple of green ones to tie the green from some of the stickers in better but in the end I didn't. I still am not sure if it would have been better or not if I had.

I did make some full box decorative boxes since I had used up most of those and I like to use them. I got to use a few different designs that had come in my batch of digital paper I had purchased as well as I got to use some of my favorites again.

This is my 4^th week using the dinner tracker in my planner and even though I never thought I would like it, I have to say I love it! I use it mainly as a record of what we had for dinner and I only list the main dish but I love to be able to look back and see when we ate different things. I have also found I am using up the leftovers a lot better because a quick glance at my planner reminds me of what we ate so I can remember if I have leftovers to eat at lunch time. It will also come in handy when my son starts in with his “you haven't made____ in a long time” I can now say when we did have that.

I am really enjoying the making of the stickers a lot for my planner. I am slowly finding myself understanding my Cricut a lot better. I am not to the point where I want to do any videos with it yet although, I am going to do some card making videos using items I have cut on it. I think the two main problems I am still having are my slow internet speeds where I live and for some reason the Cricut and my printer don't seem to communicate very well.

I think as far as making the stickers goes though I am developing my own style and I love putting together my weeks. It is just so much fun to do.

Now onto the deocor for this week. I am just not sure how I feel about it. I love looking at all the cute stickers in the Darice sticker books but I am just not sure how I like them in my planner. I did a week in August and I liked it a lot better. Maybe it is just I don't like the Halloween ones in my planner. One problem I ran into was finding stickers that would even fit. All the ones I really liked were way too big to go in the planner. Also the colored backgrounds were a problem for me. Especially since several of the ones I ended up using were on a turquoise background, they just don't fit in since that color is no where else. But, I just didn't see what I wanted on the other pages.

I am going to really concentrate on making the sticker books work next month. I have 4 of the Thanksgiving theme ones and I am going to use one book per week. This time I am going to be making the rest of the stickers to go with the backgrounds so I can see if it works better that way. Also I think the backgrounds in those books work better for the colors I am comfortable using.

Thank you for reading my rambling blog post today, I think I should have gotten more coffee this morning before I tried to write but I am trying to get everything uploaded. Hopefully, you made it through the post so you can look at these photos of my planner pages. 

Adult Coloring Pages

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I have seen so much about the adult coloring pages online the last couple of months and they sure look like a lot of fun. The biggest problem is that some of those coloring books are really expensive! And to add to the cost of the books themselves your either have to drive around looking for them or order them online and pay for shipping. Either way it counts up really quickly.

I know myself well enough to know that I might very well get bored this particular fascination fairly quickly so I knew I didn't want to throw a lot of money at it. At least not right off the bat. If I do try this and find that I do indeed love it I may then purchase some coloring books. But I do tend to get bored quickly and I am trying really hard to be careful about new hobbies.

I have for several years subscribed to the newsletter from Printable.net because I use so many of the free printables on that site. I also usually really enjoy Kevin's newsletter, he has a wonderful mix of personal stuff mixed with the announcements of what is going on with his site. It makes it all feel very comfortable and friendly. If you aren't familiar with his site here is the link tothe main site where you will find printables for just about anything you can think of. He has stuff for the home, for moms, for businesses, for teachers, for kids, the list is endless.

In his newsletter this week he mentioned his Printable adult coloring pages site. I took immediate notice of this and went right over to take a look. He has 15 coloring pages up at the moment and I downloaded all of them. I used the excuse that I wanted to show all of them to you on the video but let's get real. I want to color! I think the variety of designs is great, a bit of something for just about everyone. The best part is if we all start downloading his coloring pages Kevin will add more sooner! So here is the link, go over and download to your heart's content. Grab at least one to try out.

Like most of Kevin's printables these coloring pages come as a PDF so they are easy to print off as many times as you want.

I used some plain white inexpensive cardstock from the craft store to print mine on. I know that no matter what medium I decided to use to color with it will work on this paper just fine.

Now I have a couple of big decisions to make: which page do I color first???? And what do I use- I have my alcohol markers, waterbased makers and colored pencils..... hummmmm I need to get busy.