Liebster Blog Award!

A HUGE thank you to Tanya Johnson out of Australia for gifting me this awesome recognition.  We found each other off of a Linkedin group for scrapbookers.  She is super sweet and I'm very appreciative of her tagging me for inspiration.  Click on her name to give some love to her blog. Thanks Tanya!  You rock :)

The Liebster Blog Award is awarded to show appreciation of smaller blogs (under 200 followers) and to help with readership. As part of the tradition, the award is to be passed along to five other blogs that have motivated and inspired me.

To accept the Award you must:

1. Thank your Leibster Award sender on your Blog;

2. Link back to your sender on your Blog;

3. Copy and paste your Leibster onto your Blog;

4. Present the Leibster Award to 5 other Blogs with 200 or less Followers that you feel deserves some attention and recognition for awesome stuff;

5. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving them a comment on their Blog.

So tag I'm it to share the love of 5 blogs that bring me joy, creativity and inspiration!

1.   Ursula Schneider is this amazing beautiful creature that I'm totally in awe over.  Beautiful inside and out she always pushes me to be a better scrapper.  

2.  Heather Innusa is a super fun blog and with 2 kiddos like myself she gets my vote for great PL spreads and super cute craftiness :)

3.  Caz Hancock is another amazing person I met off of SC.  She resides in New Zealand and just has the best attitude when it comes to life in general.  I love her passion for scrapbooking and I love her style :) 
4.  Jessica B. has a blog that is a bit of a mixed bag.  She shares her love for being a girl (something I'm trying to work on so I always love to see), her love for good food (I'm a foodie myself) and of course the scrapbooking!  Her layouts are super fun, girly and fresh.
5.  Magdalena is last but not least.  Out of Sweden she has some awesome layouts that are totally out of the box.  I love that she takes chances in a craft that can kind of get a bit cookie cutter-ish.  She's also a ton of fun on the message boards ;)

Those are my picks.  Go check them out, follow, give them some love and enjoy! 
xoxo,
-M

Heads Up :) Good things are on the way!

Wow so it's already April 11th (how did that happen?) and from the time I last posted to today things have been nuts.  I "celebrated" my 36th birthday, started a class over @ my favorite happy place Studio Calico with Kelly Purkey called Sketchbook 4 (you can buy 3 and Sketchpad off of her site).  I've already done 4 layouts!  Which is huge for me because normally I get that done in 2 months not the two weeks.  Plus I'm using my stash and that's always a great thing.  Go check out KP - she is one of my faves! 

OK so besides getting around to uploading those 4 into the Que so that I can share with everyone I also have a special post that has been needing to go up for at least a month (so sorry Tanya!).  This lovely young lady gave me a sweet shout out and I've not been able to pay it forward.  I hope for that post to go up tonight too.

Lots of changes are on the way into getting better at having a routine to everything.  Time for Zumba, time for this blog, time to scrapbook (and say thank you a hundred times) and time for my hubby and kiddos.  It's been a long time coming. 

First Ice Cream Cone

We have a local farm in MD that isn't too far from the house called South Mountain Creamery.  We decided to check out their open house back in April of 2011 to see what they had to offer, sample their food and feed the baby cows.

Holden was a little over two and had such a blast.  He loved seeing all the animals, feeding the baby cows and petting the baby bunnies.  The food there was wonderful and since I was getting into the less/non processed movement it seemed like a good fit for our family.  They have their own ice cream too (I'm a chocolate person all the way however they have a blueberry cheesecake ice cream that is my favorite!) The little kids cones were super cute and perfect for us to see how Holden did with ice cream in general.

He did really well even though he looks a bit grumpy in this picture.  I used two Mister Hueys - Pony and Dewey, basic grey for the background/foundation and all the stickers and little bits of paper are from the AC Dear Lizzy line. 

Growing...way too fast

I took this picture last summer after my dear husband finished building the kids a playground.  Holden could hardly stand to wait and even "helped".  He was so excited to climb all over it I think he wore himself out in less that 30 mins.  Since it was pretty hot day he took a seat on the bench under one of the sections.  I snapped this shot of his rosey checks not really thinking much of it until it was time to take it off the camera.  What I saw made my heart skip a beat.  My little boy was looking no so little anymore.  How did this happen and how did I not notice? 

I hung on to this picture until I could find the right paper.  I used Echo Park's A boy's life, some grey grid washi tape, my smash date stamp, cord and metal ribbon from Websters, AC Thickers and Echo Park's lime twist mini alphas. 

Sick Sick Sick

So my little lovelies it's been a while.  My family has been sick on and off since the new year so it's been a bit tough for me to get on here and post away.  I promise I have at least two layouts and weeks of PL to share with you which I "hope" wink wink to share this week.  Fingers crossed that since spring is here super early we are done being sick and can move on to the fun stuff.  If you haven't seen Studio Calico's March kit STORY HOUR go to their site here and buy one.  I got ALL FOUR add-ons and started to "kill" my kits on Sat with a full 12 hr crop.  I have another 9 hr one this Sat and hope to get more done.  We shall see.  I always have the best intentions but then you get to talking and before you know it the 10 layouts you had planned only 2 and 1/2 get done.  But you've had a rocking time so...I guess it's all good in the end. 

Be back soon with some layouts of my boy :)

A few changes

I wanted to rename my blog a month after I started it.  Not because I don't like the name.  After all Zoe is my daughters name but because I felt it wasn't something that said "me".  About 10 years ago I moved to Massachusetts with my first husband and we bought a Victorian that needed a good chunk of help.  While there I started a business called Bangers and Mash Designs.  That business has since closed but the name was totally me.  Since last September I've been mulling over blog names that were as me as my old business and just kept coming up with names that were so not me....until last night.  It just hit me and so I renamed my blog from Zoe's Scrapbooking Corner to 5 Cheeky Monkeys because we are a family of five sarcastic silly people.  I know that's not the full definition but it works and it "so me" :)

I will keep the url (zoesscarpbooking.blogspot.com) for now just because I'm trying to make sure it doesn't disrupt everything I've worked for.  Thanks for the support over the last few months, sorry if this causes any confusion and welcome to me! 

Word Art using my ZIG pen

I've always been a doodler/drawing and I think I've had a ZIG pen in my art collection for at least a decade.  I took an online class to get me back to my roots and this is what I came up with.  I'm still on the fence regarding if I should give it some color...

My son who as I mentioned in at least one previous post is 3 and was just not having a good night.  I channeled my "he's going to be lucky to make it to 4" into this little doodle which why you see the words NO NO.  HA!  Kids...