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!

Stars, Stripes and Tender Hearts

One more week, some more layouts!

The week started with a bit of a strange twist in our family life. The service dog that was being trained for us, Captain Picard, wasn't working out, and another one became available. So we switched dogs again. Although we haven't met most of them, each time a prospective dog is introduced I get invested and each switch is a bit tough. I do have a really good feeling about this one though. So cross fingers. I started the week with two days of intense focus on picking a name for him. I will have to scrap his photo and journal how and why I picked the name Mani for him!

                               

Bella Gypsy released two new kits again, and being lucky enough to guest for them, I wasn't going to let them pass without using them!

First is the absolutely gorgeous Tender Heart:

Isn't it a beauty? I used for my Facebook Timeline, but I feel like I need to reuse it for a layout!!

At first I thought I couldn't use the next kit, as it is a Fourth of July theme, but the more I looked at it, the more I thought I could make it work for another double page for the Disney album I've been working on.

It's called Stars, Stripes and Smiles and has a girlier matching mini (which is not that small!) called Stars, Stripes and Sparkles:

Here are my layouts with the two combined of the second half of our day at Magic Kingdom:

On this note, happy first day of summer (it's cool and rainy here, we might not get any...) and happy Father's Day to everyone!

A Charming, Happy Summer

A new week, two new kits to show!

I had a busy week with lots of meetings but I managed to get a few pages done.

All are with new releases by Bella Gypsy :D

The first is with their new kit Charming, which is a beautiful boy kit:

I used it for another layout of Cedric and Helio. The colours were perfect for my photos and I LOVE the calm loving feel of my kiddo and his dog in these!

The second layout is a double page done with Happy Summer, a bright kit that is appropriately named as it is happy and summery!

I used it to add a double page to my road trip to Florida album. This one is of the first half of our day at Magic Kingdom, with a focus on the teacups, one of our favourite rides in which I took really fun happy photos :D

I realized after the fact that I forgot to add a title, but hey, it's cute anyways and it's the beauty of digital: I can just go add it ;)

Thanks for looking and if you like them, go shopping (the kits are linked and as usual on sale and with added bonus for a short while!).

A perfect match and a garden gnome

The enigmatic title is comprised of the things I liked best in the two new releases I got to play with last week.

The first one is Bella Gypsy Designs' new Snap Happier installment. As I am lucky enough to be guesting for one more month, I got to play the June 2015 Collection and I can tell you it is beautiful and enormous:

My favourite thing about it was that the beige and burnt orange colours were a perfect match to some photos I took of my little guy and myself on a day where we matched! I love matching colours (my socks to my top, the dude's plate and cup, my purse to my clothes, ...). I love colours, I love rainbows, and I love matching. I might sometimes be guilty of matching Cedric's clothes to mine a little :/

But a couple weeks ago, my husband noticed that we accidentally matched. That made me so happy, I asked for photos :D And when I saw this kit, I knew right away it was perfect to scrap them:

*Note: if you want more proof that I'm a geek, he's wearing his Harry Potter Marauder's Map t-shirt...

The second kit that released this week is from Mel Hains Designs. She created a great gardening kit called Veggie Patch. It has veggies, gardening tool and a super cute garden gnome, which I had to use even though he didn't really match my photos.

I used the kit for some photos of our first visit this past March to the Garden Grill, a great restaurant in Epcot. The colours and theme were perfect for it!

*Note: for another touch of geeky, I made striped of the different parts of the decor seen in the photo on the left: earth, grass, yellow wood siding on the house , tree leaves (for this one, use your imagination a little more and see the green triangles as leaves and the white ones as gaps between them, and maybe the red and yellow can be apples, lol), and the sky!

Hope you like them, thanks for looking!

A super dog, a twirl or two, and a burst of sunshine

I've had a really busy week with two days of work, an all-day meeting, no dishwasher and no respite worker for the weekend... The weather has also been up and down, not knowing if it wants to be winter or summer (rather than just sticking to a nice spring climate)!

But the designers I CT for still released some great kits and that always makes me happy :D

Mel Hains Designs released a beautiful Mother's Day kit, just in time for you to scrap those photos you took a few weeks ago ;)

I however used to for a template challenge at Mousescrappers with a fun template by Pixleyyy (which there is still time to participate in, by the way).

The kit is called Mother's Day and is exclusive at My Memories:

And my layout is of my Dad, hubby, little dude and me in the Mad Hatter's Tea Cups in Disneyland Paris in 2012. Cedric loved it soooo much, even though his Dad and Grandpa were going as fast as they could. I wanted to keep it fun for him and kept saying "wooooo". He seemed to have his stoic face on the whole time but when we left the cup, he kept saying "encore wooooo" because he wanted more. Since then, the teacups are a must-do at every Disney park visit :D

And the ever productive ladies of Bella Gypsy had another two kits out this week.

The first is Super Dad and combines a super hero theme with a Father's Day theme. It even has an add-on for Girls called Super Daddy's Girl!

I used it to start scrapping some pages of Helio way too short time with us. This one is one of the first rides in the car, which I used to get them used to each other is a safe space at first, but which we also kept taking and Cedric always played with Helio ears and lips.

The second kit is called Burst of Sunshine and has great matching Chips:

The colours and theme were perfect for me to add a two-pager of Typhoon Lagoon phtoos to my March 2014 Florida album:

I also got good news last week as the Bella Gypsy ladies asked me to stay another month in their guest CT. That makes me super happy as I had a peek at what is coming out in June and it is pure gorgeousness :D

So I'm going to go clean the house and shower so I can get to scrapping sooner ;)