Purple Fries

Today I am grateful for the fun things Jeremiah and I do, such as our purple potato fries....

Jeremiah and I have tried so many fun things since we got married.  We are always coming up with new things to do.  This was especially fun.  We grew a great garden a few years ago.  We decided to plant potatoes we had seen purple ones and decided to grow them.  Once they grew and we dug them up we thought it would be fun to make homemade fries with them.  Here I am frying them up.  The kids thought they were so fun and they tasted so good.  

This page was a fun one to do but a little difficult because really how do you scrapbook french fries?  :) There was nothing to fancy about the page but I love the memories.  

I embellished with some diamond dew drops from The Robin's Nest, then I used some cute chipboard die cuts from Gina's Designs.  I distressed the edges of the two and covered the heart with the same purple I used running down the side of the page.  I added the yellow ribbon as a final detail and loved how this page turned out.  

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

Craving a burger....

Today I am grateful for receiving a much needed burger from my dad-in-law and Jeremiah, that I have been craving for about a week now.... oh so yummy!!

Okay here is the story, because I know this seems like such a funny thing to be thankful for but you have no idea how bad I just needed this last night.  I was having a rough day, we have been remodeling our kitchen since the day after Jeremiah came home from his deployment. Nov. 5th to be exact.  (We left for a full two weeks to go to Utah to spend time with family for Thanksgiving.)  Jeremiahs mom and dad came into town Christmas day. Today we have all been working around the house.  We scored a double oven, drop in stove top and a microwave today for a crazy good deal.  I was stressed about making the decision to purchase these things as we had not planned to replace them, but the price was sooooo right!!  Anywho Jeremiah and dad were headed to home depot to pick up a few more things for the kitchen and I said, "hey just bring me home a burger, that's all I need."  Anyone who knows Jer and I knows we aren't big on eating out because we love cooking and enjoy our food way more than any restaurant or fast food place.   The guys had been gone for over and hour and I decided to start dinner, about ten minutes into cooking they walked in the door with Burger King just for mom and me...I have to say it totally made my whole day and I was a much happier person.  The boys still ate the shepherds pie I cooked. After dinner we watched a movie together to end the evening and I am sure we will have an early start back to the remodeling.

 Here is just a little sneak peak of the process of our kitchen....

Here's to the simple joys in life :)

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

Joseph Smith

Today I am thankful for the first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith.

I am grateful for Joseph Smith for having the faith to do the things he did to restore the fullness of the church to the earth today.  I have a testimony that he saw God the father and his son Jesus Christ at the young age of 14, when he prayed to know which church to join.   I am truly grateful for this because the gospel and being part of the church brings a happiness to my life that nothing else in the world could ever do.

Not sure if you can read the journaling I did here with this picture, but it explains where this came from.  This is an actual photo hanging in mom and dad O'Crowley's spare bedroom. This is Jeremiahs favorite photo of Joseph Smith and in person it is quite a neat one to see.  It felt fitting to use it for this page.  I used The Robin's Nest paper called Service.  The words printed on this paper were perfect to describe Joseph, patience, service and brotherly love.  

I found this picture of Joseph and his wife Emma Smith and thought it was perfect to add to the page.  I added some dew drops to embellish and it added the perfect bit of elegance I wanted.

The bottom left is a picture of a statue of Joseph that I believe is at Temple Square.  It is a beautiful representation of the Prophet and really looked good with the other two photos I had chosen.  

I was grateful to be able to post this today as it is not only my dear handsome husband and his twin Jessiciah's birthdays but it is also Joseph Smiths birthday as well. 

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

More functional and usable space..

Today I am grateful for more functional and usable space.

The left page is the cubby space and closet in our master bedroom when we bought our house last year.  We have since painted the room a beautiful midnight blue with white trim, as you can see in the pictures on the right page.

It only took one look at this wasted space, for Jeremiah to say he was going to open it all up and put some shelves in.  That is just what he did last summer.  We wanted to make the space really feel like a part of the room and so we carried the colors over into the bookcase area and it really looks like it has always been there.  He gave the shelves a beautiful curve instead of just a plain straight across.  We have so many books and various decorations and items from places of travel.  It is so nice to have all this space to store and display so many of the things we love.

For this layout I used just some nice textured blue card-stock. Lined my pictures with a red.  For the before page I used a lot of rub-ons and a few dew drops for some dimension. 

Here is a close up of the bookshelf. We hung some rope lights around the inside where they can not been seen and have them on a timer so they light up the room very well in the evening hours.  

I really struggled at first scrapbooking these pictures.  The colors in the before pictures are just awful and they aren't exactly exciting.  I ended up really liking them when all was done and said but it sure took some creativity for me to be happy and feel like they were actually complete.  I used a journaling tag from The Robin's Nest and made a darling clothes line with items hanging from it, I kept laughing at this cause I just thought it was so dang cute!

As for the closet, we took off the bulky doors.  When they were open they hit the bedroom door so we decided to just take them off.  Shortly before Jeremiah left for his deployment he finished the closet.  I swear we have become pros at figuring out how to get more functionality and usability out of small spaces, and this was no exception!  He built these great square boxes in the top part of the closet that have fabric boxes in them, this allows for storage of the smaller clothing items or things that are worn less often. At the bottom where there was so much space that seemed wasted he built a couple more boxes and shoes racks.  You can see that he left a section on the far left so that my dresses still hang nicely without getting bunched up.  

All in all both of these projects turned out very well, I have plenty of space for just about everything!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

My husband, Jeremiah

Hello, hello.  Welcome to Hidden Scrapper!  My name is Tara O'Crowley, I am married to a wonderful man named Jeremiah and we have five handsome little boys. I have the privilege of being a stay at home mommy to three of our five little guys.  Our older two boys live in Utah with their dad and step mom.    I am very excited and a bit nervous to be honest, about FINALLY starting my actual blog.  

  I will be posting at least once a day for 365 days!!  That's right, everyday for at least one year is what I have committed to.  To give a little detail about the blog.....Jeremiah challenged me a few weeks ago to start my blog, but there was more to it than that.  He challenged me to blog and scrap about something that I am grateful for and each day has to be something different with no repeats.  I took a minute to think about it and decided this would be a wonderful thing for me to do.

 So without further ado lets get things started!

Today I am grateful for this man...

This is my husband Jeremiah.  He is truly my best friend.  He is a wonderful father.  A dedicated and honorable Army Officer.  He is a loving son, brother, and uncle. Those of us who know him, would consider him to be very sarcastic, and playful.  He is one who would truly do anything for anyone, at anytime. He is far to often misunderstood and read wrong.  He has a love for gardening, our 210 gallon salt water fish tank,  working on the home improvements and our soon to be newest adventure, sailing. He is so talented and can honestly do just about everything, and do it well!  

Fist page and a close up view of the dew drop swirl.

  These 12 x 12 pages were done on The Robin's Nest Olive/Stripe card-stock. 

The dew drops (cute little embellishments all over the page) are also a Robin's Nest product.

I created a nice accent swirl around the top corner picture with the dew drops.  I also added a Time Flies rub-on from The Robin's Nest.

You can check out their store at  http://www.robinsnest-scrap.com/  I will be using a lot of their products on my blog so keep their website handy in case there are things you would like to order for your own crafting needs.

Second page and a close up of the words, ribbon and dew drops.

I used some brown stickers for his name. I found an Army rub-on and added it to the corner of his military picture in his dress blues. With my cricut I cut out in brown the words, Soldier, Husband, Father and Friend.  I placed a small piece of Stampin' Up! ribbon behind each of these words & added a few dew drops.  Then I drew stitches on each letter to complete my look.  Scattered a few dew drops in various places on my two pages for a final touch.  Here is my two page layout once again.

Thanks so much for joining me today.  Until tomorrow.

Happy Crafting, 

Tara