Nuts About Sketches 230 - Life begins

There is a great new sketch up at Nuts About Sketches today, I really enjoyed working with this one!

This past Friday (7th) was my birthday. My 40th birthday. The saying goes "Life begins at 40", and for me right now that is very true. A whole new life, in a new country, meeting new people, doing new things and having new adventures. I have started to exercise more - I started the Couch to 5K program, and although the first couple of days almost killed me, I am starting to get into it.

The photographs were taken at a photoshoot I was given as a Mother's Day present, by the extremely talented Mandy Hunter.  She has mad PhotoShop skills too ;). I usually hate any photo of me, but these ones, I kinda like lol. The purple one is just so cool - I actually have this framed on the wall lol.

I took the purple colours from the main photo as a starter for my colour scheme, and I found some Bo Bunny papers to match - they are actually a Christmas collection called "Winter Joy". But the purple was perfect and the shade of green is one of my favourite colours just now. So I went with it :)

The day of my birthday I was taken to a Bosnian coffee shop for cake and coffee by some friends, and then in the evening we went for a family meal out at Chili's - their Sparkling Pomegranate Margarita is to die for ;) The kids got me a huge cookie and ice-cream cake from Publix, and spoiled me with some chocolate, flowers and some new workout clothes :) I don't like a big fuss, so my day was just about perfect for me. Age is only a number after all....

Nuts About Sketches 229 - Abe by night

I am so excited to be back on the Nuts About Sketches Design Team! Shawn designs the most fantastic sketches, and I love working with them. I have missed them so much!

So, this weeks sketch is a two-pager. The original sketch called for three 5x7 inch photos, but I had way more photos, so I got a little creative...

So, this is the layout. All about our night-time visit to see Abraham Lincoln when we were in Washington, D.C in June. Tom said the one thing he would like to see on our trip was the man that sat in the big chair. Anyone who has seen "Night at the Museum 2" will remember President Lincoln coming to life at night, but if he was the night we went, he was sitting very, very still lol.

It was an amazing experience. The Lincoln memorial is truly one of the most reverent places I have ever been to. The atmosphere inside was undescribable - the respect the US has for this man is enormous. The night we went, there were plenty of other visitors. I even saw girls in prom dresses, posing on the steps with their dates.

I made little mini foldout books and added my extra photos. I wanted to add the photos of the engraved speeches, especially as Tom sat down and read every single word of them. He was sat, cross legged on the floor with people swarming about him, and he didn't move until he had finished reading all of it.

I also had more journalling than I had space for, so I made that into a mini book too :)

I used the scraps I had left over from my Scrapbook Generation kit - Echo Park 4th July papers - and added some Basic grey (red) and Chatterbox (blue) for the circles. The title I cut using my Cricut, and added some Frosted Lace Stickles for a bit of dimension. The red, white and blue dots are from Craftwork Cards.

The rest of the team have done a great job with the sketch, head on over to the blog, and have a look!