Mani, Gypsy and a freebie

Three things on the agenda for this post, and they rhyme :D

I'm actually going to talk about them in a different order than the title suggest, though. Let me start with a bit of fun news: Theresa of Simple Girl Scraps misses designing...! She stopped a little while ago but felt that she missed it, so she made everyone a freebie!

It doesn't have a fancy  name, but the colours are gorgeous. Take a look at June Mini 2015:

I used it to scrap our new future dog Mani:

Here's a little more about Mani. Our next service dog was supposed to be a lab mix, whom we had called Captain Picard. The trainer was starting to feel that he might not be a good match and a great pyrennees mix that she was training for another child became available. She thought of us right away for him and after hearing about him and about Captain's shortcomings, we decided we would indeed switch. His name was Marty but as we know a few human Martys, it would have felt strange. The trainer offered for us to keep the name Captain Picard as we had never met the lab mix. But in our minds, we had associated the photos and personality traits she had described to the name and it would have felt wrong to use it again.

So I starting going through the old list of names, and the Internet. Now, I have to say, I might be hard to please. I love words and names. And I put a lot of thought behind choosing one. I don't think I was being unreasonable in wanting a name that was: unique, two syllables, easy to say in both French and English and sounding similar in the two languages, and with a nice meaning. But I also had to make sure that hubby would also like the name, which had been a struggle the past coupe of times we had to come up with one.

I searched for Basque names because of the connection to the breed, I searched for cool words that meant "white", or "snow", or "pearl", or anything related to his colour. We considered Alonso, a Doctor Who reference which would have allowed us to say "Allons-y Alonso" in our best David Tennant voice. But we weren't convinced. Then it occurred to me that if our previous service dog was Helio, partly based on the god of the sun which worked well with his colour, maybe this guy should have a name based on the god of the moon. So I looked up a list of moon gods and discovered Mani, the norse god of the moon, a beautiful giant who guides the moon. It worked for all my demands and even sounded quite a bit like Marty which would make it easier for the puppy to get used to it. Dave wasn't 100% convinced but didn't mind it and it slowly grew on him and got picked.

Moving on to the Bella Gypsy new releases of the week.

The first kit is inspired by Inside Out, the new Pixar movie which I really want to see. The more I hear about it, the more I want to go! The kits has gorgeous, vibrant colours, and is great for a layout about feelings, good or bad.

I tend to scrap happy moments, good memories, big smiles. I don't even usually take photos of the harder times. But for some reason I had taken photos of my little guy on a day after a short night (he has sleep issues). I think I had one of him where he looked soooo sad I couldn't stand to look at it and deleted it, but the two I kept give a good idea of how tired and upset he was.

They also released Wildflower, a beautiful collection which I thought was perfect for the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival photos, for my March 2014 album.

I have many more photos of the topiaries and plan on a project that combines them all. But I tried to compile my favourite ones on this double page!

Happy Sunday, hope your is as sunny as ours started!

Healthy

I don't tend to make new year resolutions. Hubby always jokes if anyone asks for his that he will give up crack, lol.

Every year, though, the holidays bring an overindulgence in the food area, especially the past two years where we spent them in Florida, in the parks and restaurants, etc.

So despite not really making a resolution, January and the new year do bring a return to a healthier diet.

This year, I am sort of making a resolution to get back to a healthy lifestyle not only in the diet department, but also for exercise. I used to do yoga regularly, then I lost all my teachers one by one and didn't find a time and place that worked. I used to go to Jiu Jitsu regularly, then with work and getting a dog and class schedule, I sort of stopped going. I even tried a personal trainer for a while, but I felt really stressed for time and I quit.

All in all, I haven't done any kind of exercise or activity in about 6 months...

So like many people in January, I signed up for a gym membership with the goal of going at least 3 times a week. They have all I need for toning and hubby will serve as personal trainer, they have 3 yoga classes with decent schedules, and they even have a couple of group classes that make sense with my goals of toning and increasing muscle mass.

I went last week for the first time. I overdid it by taking two classes in a row and I hurt for days but at least I went.

When I saw Simple Girl Scraps' new kit, I knew it was perfect to scrap the Instagram pic I took after my first classes. It's called Love It, and it's really pretty and fresh:

And here's my layout:

I went back to the gym today and I feel very energized. Now I just have to stick with it, wish me luck!

As if nothing happened

See this post's title? That's how I plan to come back to this blog... As if I didn't neglect it stop writing for over 6  months as if I didn't plan writing once a week at least in 2015 and already skipped over 3 weeks, as if I didn't fail the designers I scrap for by not promoting their products, as if nothing happened!

So this week, I have a few kits to show you and none of the layouts are Disney related, which is crazy coming  back from over 2 weeks in Florida. But it's nice to scrap everyday life and other things. I had a stretch of scrapping mostly Disney photos. Then I feel like I had a stretch of lacking inspiration as to what to scrap, not by lack of good kits or even inspiration, but by not knowing which photos to scrap.
 First is one by Artgal Style. It's a gorgeous winter kit called The Big Freeze and its Add-On:

I scrapped the decor at the Toronto Airport with it. The journaling explains that after a xmas vacation in the sun, it was oddly pleasant to see the snow decors and even the snow itself at the airport:

Next up, I scrapped with Simple Girls Scraps latest kit, Frozen Wonderland:

I used it to scrap a moose we saw up close at the wildlife park we have in town:

And then I have three layouts with Jen Yurko products!
First, she released Elderberry Lane, a super fresh versatile kit with which I scrapped the first photo of our little family in 2015:

And she just released the first parts of her Everyday 2015 Collection. This is a huge collection using a large palette for which she keeps releasing parts over the year. There's a full kit every month and some varied other parts.
She released the January Bundle (with lots of categorized parts that can be purchased separately or as a bundle) with which I scrapped my brand new winter coat:

And some versatile alphas (huge collection) date strips (including blanks for other languages :D), graph papers, solid papers and striped papers:

I used them all to do my January 2015 desktop (better late than never...):

I'll be back with more news and info, hopefully in less than 6 months...

Disney, Disney and more Disney

WARNING: Disney puked all over my week-end last week and all over this blog post!

A couple of weeks ago I discovered MouseScrappers. I think it was while browsing Pinterest for Disney things...

And as I browsed their forum, I saw they were having a speed scrap marathon from Friday the 7th to Sunday the 9th. I was supposed to work all day Friday and had given up on the idea when the stomach flu hit! All three of us had a horrible flu all week-end, we were stuck at home, with no energy, so I scrapped my butt off :D

I did not have enough energy or time to do the whole marathon. They had 16 speed scraps over 3 days!! But I did make 9 layouts!! And here they all are!!

1. My son meeting all the Winnie the Pooh characters at the Crystal Palace on his 6th birthday:

Done with Happy Days by Mel Hains Designs

2. Some random views of the China Pavillion and the three of us eating there at the Nine Dragons:

Done with A Little East by Designs by Jen Yurko

3. The Dude in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground at Hollywood Studios:

Done with Monster Mash by Pretty In Green

4. A look at us meeting Mickey and Minnie in 2009 and 2013

Done with Main Street Magic by Connie Prince, Mouse Scraps by Fran B and It's A Good Life by Just Jaime

5. The three of us taking our family photo in almost every park (I realized after that we had more of those, like the one at Blizzard Beach that you can see in a lower layout):

Done with Forever Family by Bella Gypsy and a template by Megan Turnidge

6. My crew arriving in Epcot (Cédric with his Dad and all 4 grand-parents, doesn't happen very often!!):

Done with Earthy by Artgal Style

7. Group photos at Blizzard Beach:

Done with Happy Go Lucky and Girls Rule by Artgal Style

8. The Magician Hat of Hollywood Studios (it was out first time!):

Done with The Fourth and Magic by Simple Girl Scraps

9. My hubby really enjoying his millefeuille in the France Pavillion in Epcot:

Using Cook With Me by Danimoy Designs (retired), I Live I laugh I Love by Simple Girl Scraps (kit retired), and Baked Memories by Modern June Designs

The marathon has inspired me to keep going, so you might see more Disney photos soon :D

Hope you like them, and if you have anything Disney related to scrap, I highly recommend a visit to MouseScrappers for inspiration!!

Let's talk layouts

Today I participated in a speed scrap, which I haven't done in ages, and I decided it was a good occasion to show some of my recent LOs.

I will not show 6 months worth of them...

I'll be lazy and just show my layouts without linking (but I'll name designer and store, so if you like what you see it will still be easy to get!!

So first I did a speed scrap this afternoon at Scrap Takeout, using My Mom by Mel Hains Designs (available at Scrap Takeout):

Also by Mel Hains Designs, I scrapped our xmas card this year with Celebrate Christmas With Me:

 

I also scrapped a fun game themed layout with Game Night by Artgal Style (available at Plain Digital Wrapper):

And I revamped my Facebook Timeline Photo with Pumpkin and Scarecrows by Artgal Style as well:

From Simple Girl Scraps (available at GingerScraps and GottaPixel), I scrapped my morning shakes with January Story:

 

A visit from our friends with Best Friends Forever:

 

And my desktop with Fresh Start (LOVE the colours in this one):

There you go!! Busy January scrap-wise I guess. Last year had gotten a bit slow and I'm happy to see myself scrapping more :D

Releases!

As always, I'm back to show you some awesome new releases and hopefully make you want to get them :D

In alphabetical order, let's start with Artgal Style!

She released the adorable kit Murphy:

And a super original kit, for all German-beer-sausage fans, Oktober Fest:

Danimoy released a gorgeous collection called Family Tree:

And finally, Simple Girl Scraps released a bunch of things I haven't shown yet...

First there was the Wild About Glitter and Vellum Papers:

Which I used with her kit Funky Fresh and a template freebie from her too:

Then she released the Messy Doilies Papers:

Which I used with her kit Have No Fear:

And finally she released the Moving Out collection:

 

 

And that's it for today :D