Hello Sunshine

I am starting a brand new vacation scrapbook: Mexico 2015.  We spent 11 days in Mexico: Six days near Tulum at a villa on the beach and five days in Cancun.  It was a fun time:)

It was so hard deciding which pictures to use first, but since I just got done making tons of die cut limes, I decided to go with some pictures we took at one of the beach restaurants near our villa.  We ate there once and got pizza to go a few other times.  These pictures were taken while we were waiting for our pizza.

Really, isn't he just beautiful?!?  Preston was 18 in these pictures, just graduated from high school.  This was a special trip for him since we let him pick the place to go, as a graduation present.  I added on a few days for me:)  He wanted to go to Mach Picchu in Peru! I was like, NO WAY!  However, we settled for the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan:) You will see lots of pictures of the ruins later!

I used the great sketch over at The Scraproom. It is the July challenge and works great for my pictures.

I also am entering this layout over at Cut It Up. They are celebrating their 100th challenge, and it is an Anything Goes challenge, as long as it has at least one die cut.

Paper Challenge: Used 1 sheet
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Celebrate and a Challenge

I can't believe it!  I finished!  I'm done!  Two scrapbooks, 70 scrapbook inserts, 140 layouts later, I have finished my cruise vacation from 2013! I am so happy!

I haven't been scrapbooking continuously since that vacation, I scrapbook in spurts.  I have been on a long spurt this time though - working since February!

So, now I am on to our vacation to Mexico last summer.  I'm looking forward to doing it while it is still fresh in my memory.  I hate losing the details!

Along with the new focus, I am starting a new personal challenge I saw over at Lori's blog, A Happy Life.  She wants to use up her old patterned papers - her goal is to use 100 patterned papers! (Old papers, NO new ones).  I like this idea.  I have tons of old paper(some is from my original scrapbooking days, over 10 years old!) as well, patterned and cardstock, so  I am changing the challenge up a little: USE 100 old papers. I am going to see if I can find some type of counter to keep track!

To start the challenge, I used up 2 sheets making the lemons and limes below:)  We used lots of limes on this Mexico trip - Mojitos, Guacamole, Fresh Salsa, etc!  Thanks to Michelle McClure from A Page out of My Book for the lime Silhouette Cut file!  I found her site through a lime google search!

 

I'm off and scrapping!

St Lucia - Sightseeing

For Scrapbook Challenges Sketch 486, I pulled out the last of my St Lucia pictures.  I have scrapped SO many of those pictures but I just don't want to leave any out! Here is Sketch 486.  Love the digital strips.  It think they worked great.

Carnival Valor

We really enjoyed our cruise on the Valor.  Sometimes you hear that Carnival is the party ship, with the impression that it is low class.  Well, I either like low class or that impression is wrong:)  Our family really enjoyed the cruise and we are not big party people.  I'm sure there are higher class cruises, but for the price, we were super happy.

This layout shows the ship and where are rooms were.

Let's Scrap is having a great double layout sketch challenge this month.  I used their sketch for the basis of my layout.

St Kitts - Waters

Did I mention that St Kitts has beautiful waters?  We saw so many different water areas on our island tour (Royston Tours - AWESOME).  I want to go back and explore more! This layout just shows some of the different waters!

Barrichina - Home of the Pina Colada

During our "after the cruise" tour of Old San Juan, we stopped by Barrichina, the Home of THE pina colada.  They even give out free pina coladas if you eat there:)

I say this layout on pinterest and loved it so I recreated it and made it a double layout.

All the papers used allowed me to enter challenge 106 at The Paper Girls challenge blog. This challenge was to "use your scraps".  I definitely did that with this layout!

St Kitts - Land of Wonder

Our tour of the island of St Kitts was a great tour.  We saw so many things and so many aspects of St Kitts, from the beautiful water to the historic fort to the ruins of sugar plantations.  This layout shows some of the things at one of the sugar plantations/ rum distilleries.

The title is from the June challenge at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge. That challenge requires you to use the word Wonder or Wonderful in a title or journaling.  Go check it out.