Our Golf Weekend

We've managed to figure out how to have the guys for only one night on our golf weekend! We planned it on their poker weekend. So, they stayed in town and played golf on Friday, played poker Friday night, played golf on Saturday and didn't come out to the farm until Saturday afternoon. Works for us!! Only kidding.

Bruce, Hugh, Butch. We had a taste test as soon as they arrived. I wanted to know if you could really tell the difference between the expensive Grey Goose vodka and the cheap stuff. We pretty much proved that you can't. Of course, there was some debate about whether the test was done properly. Karolyn had made mini vodka tonics. The guys said the lime over-powered the taste. Bruce and I guessed correctly, but honestly, I thought they both tasted about the same.

We like having them around, but it does throw a serious kink in to our scrapbook time. I had decided that I was going to stay up late. After everyone went to bed, it was just Bruce, Karolyn and I. He went out to see if he could "hunt" one of the pesky armadillos that have been tearing up their landscaping. We were surprised when he knocked on the back door with this.

Armadillos are nasty. They have migrated here from Texas. We want them to go back.

Speaking of nature, Butch texted this picture to me on Friday morning. We've had the turkey coming around for several years now. I always thought it was just a mix of male and females. But, boy was I wrong. Apparently, they have ALL been females. I'm not sure how that can be as we've had so many. But when he sent me this, I knew it was true.

For the first time, we had a big ol' tom---fully fanned out with the big red thing hanging down (is that the gobble part?) I know that gobble is the sound they make, but I have no idea what you call that red thing.

Back to our scrapbooking. We accomplished a lot. I got 16 layouts done and will share them over the next few days. We girls left on Tuesday. Getting away to scrapbook is when we all get the most done. I've been planning to do some of these pages for quite awhile.

 I've actually put these pages together backwards. The right side is supposed to be on the left, but it works this way too.

Here is a close up of the technique I taught the St. Louis girls. I taught it to Pam and Karolyn too. Karolyn came up with the idea to stitch between the pattern strips.

 "Christmas Cooking" is about all the food prep that's done for the holidays----from cookie making to our Christmas meal. A lot of food, time and effort goes in to the preparations.

 I don't use stickers on my layouts very much. But when I do, I love to stack them up like this to make a journaling block.

I stitched around the outside of the page and stacked up some embellishments.

When I first had the photos printed, they didn't turn out as I'd hoped. Half the doors were cut off. I re-sized them and printed them at home. But what to do with the "boo boo" pictures? Cut the title out of them, of course.

I love the look of a title cut from photos. I traced around them with a blue pen to help them stand out against the white.

 Since there was no patterned paper on this page, I made a couple of squares the same size as the photos. I layered them with washi tape and added a flower.

 "Is She Ten" is the layout I made from a previous blog post.

 I stitched the title and added a little to the butterfly.

I didn't want to over-do the stitching. I added just a little here and there next to the buttons.

"holiday Happy Hour" is about our Christmas happy hour that the Lapps family were able to attend. Catching up from the week is a great way to re-connect with each other. Whoever can come, comes. At Christmas, the whole family was here. We celebrated Jordan's birthday after with cheeseburgers, sweet potato fries and fudge pie with peppermint ice cream for dessert. After, we had an activity as seen below.

 "Another Competition" tells the story of our little craft project that turned into a contest.

 I made two layouts very similar since they are going in to the girls albums.

I did some hand stitching for added interest.

I'll share the rest of the layouts tomorrow.