My best friend Sarah..

Today I am grateful for my best friend Sarah.

Sarah and I met while working together about five years ago.  We quickly became friends and over time more like sisters in many ways.  Even though we live far away from one another we are still there for the other anytime it is needed.  She was there for the birth of my Weston and I was there for her little girl McKenna.  She and her husband Donnie are two of the greatest people I know and were there for me through some of the roughest parts of my life.  I love you both like family!

I created this page with some of my favorite pictures of Sarah and her cute little family.  Sarah and Donnie were married in June of 2009 and I was able to be there for their special day, their daughter McKenna was born in April of 2012.  I love this picture on the bottom left of her holding her daughter for the first time, nothing more beautiful than a mother meeting her baby and having that first connection with new life.

I used card-stock from Stampin' Up! as well as a red, grey and black card-stock.

Here is a close up of the flowers I used to embellish the page.  I made these on my post about my mom last week. I think they are so cool and since I have five boys I don't get much chance to use the girly things.  I placed a black dew drop in the center just to add a little more to the arrangement.

For Sarah's name I used my Cricut and the Sophisticated cartridge.  I think this gave a perfect elegance. 

Thanks Sarah for your friendship, love and support always!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

My Mom

Today I am so grateful to the woman who gave me life, my Mother!!

As a little side note, today was a perfect day to honor my mother as it is her birthday.  

Happy Birthday Mom!! I love you gobs and gobs!!

For those of you who are just joining me on my blog I am doing 365 days of things I am grateful for.  We are now on day five and these are in no particular order.  

So this is my mother Kathleen, she does not like to be called Kathleen, she prefers Kathy.  My mom is a wonderful woman and I love her so much. She gave birth to six children and cared for each one of us everyday, she was lucky enough to be a stay at home mom.  We loved having mom there when we returned home from school, church activities, work, a date, and being with friends.  She was always there to listen and help with any problems we had.  She loved our friends and many called her mom as well.  She is loved by so many. She has been able to be there for the births of all of my babies and I have been especially grateful to have her there in the room with me with the last three, and all the help she was with them after they were born.  She is in Utah and I am in Colorado now so it isn't as easy to just get together any more and I do miss that, but we still talk often.

 It was so nice to go through some older pictures and gather a collection to do a layout on my mom.  I am very happy with the way these pages turned out.

I added this beautiful quote that comes from George Washington, "My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw."  I loved this and felt the same way about my mother.  I made these awesome flowers out of four scalloped circles attached to one another by a brad in the middle, I went with yellows because it is her favorite color.  They really made a great look on these pages. Thanks Jeri for teaching me how to make these lovely things!

I love this picture of my cute parents!  I added the word mom with some brown mailbox letters, they fit perfect in the space I had available.  I also added little metal tag words in various places, like the one in the right top corner that says "joy".

Again I am truly grateful for my mother and wish I could be with her to celebrate today, hopefully this post helps fill my absence.  I love you mom!!!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

O'Crowley Sisters

Today I am grateful for the amazing sisters I received when I married my husband.

This was such a fun page to create and I just LOVE how it turned out!!

Here are the O'Crowley women, a force to be reckoned with for sure!  What a great group of girls and I am so happy to be one of them.  From left  to right we have Rachel, Jessiciah, (Robin - mom) Robyn, Tara and Brittany.  We took these photos on Thanksgiving day and unfortunately Brittany was unable to make it, fortunately enough we saw her and her family a few days earlier and had this picture of her to combine with the other sisters.  I love the accent flower in the upper left corner made from tear drops and a small dew drop in the middle.

Here I added a beautiful silver embossed emblem saying "friends", the picture doesn't fully do it justice,  it is bright and shinny and really adds to the page. I placed a pink flower cut out with a punch I had and added another tear drop flower to coordinate with the one up on the top portion of the page.

Using the same punch, I made this cute trio of  flowers next to the picture of us girls.  I feel like it really gave the page the final balance it needed.  

Here is the complete page again.

 These are great women and I truly consider them all to be not only sisters but friends!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara