My little sister, Rachelle

Today I am so thankful for the best little sister anyone could ask for!  I just love my baby sister Rachelle. She just celebrated a birthday this past week and I wanted to celebrate her on my blog today!!

If anyone has been following, I was doing really good with my blog....got two full weeks in....then Christmas came and with that our mom and dad O'Crowley were here visiting with us and the kiddos.  We jumped right into to more of the kitchen remodel and had some very long days working hard on that, then the kids were all sick for about a week.  I had to take a brief break from the blog to enjoy time with the family and take care of the little ones.  I am excited to get back to my everyday of things I am grateful for.

So back to my sister Rachelle - 

I could not find a picture on hand of Rachelle alone, but as you can see everyone just loves her and so does the camera! Anyone that knows Rachelle knows that she is a pint size spit fire, and I do mean this in a good way. ;) She is maybe 5 feet tall and tough as nails.  She played full contact women's football a couple years ago, she is certainly not one to mess with lol. She is so funny and has such a great personality.  There are a few photos of her with her husband Richard and oldest son Zhane, they just added another adorable baby boy, Brody to their family.  Rachelle and I are 3 1/2 years apart and I always wished we had been closer in age as I always enjoyed having her around.  She was there for the births of 4 out of 5 of my boys. She has always loved my kids as her own and was often a huge help to me with them.  Rachelle and I were able to work together a few years ago and we really enjoyed being together each day.  She lives in Utah with her family and I am in Colorado I miss her dearly and wish I was still able to see her and her boys often.  I am grateful for the phone calls and messages we share even if sometimes they are few and far between, I always know I have a sister there if I ever need anything at all and I hope she feels the same way. Happy birthday this past week Shell, I love you very much!!

For these pages I used The Robin's Nest, Green Glitter Butterflies card-stock. I also used the Distressed Purple card-stock to back my photos on both pages.  I used the pink glitter alphabet stickers for the name, also from The Robin's Nest.

I took some clear glass gems I've had kicking around my craft room and the dragonfly stickers from the Summer stickers sold by The Robin's Nest and used mod podge to keep the glass look over the stickers.  I love the accent these gave to my page.

On the opposite page I used these chipboard dragonflies from Gina's Designs and painted them two different shades of purple and dusted them in glitter.

Around the glass gems and across the bottom on the right page I used some white fiber ribbon as a final touch. Really loved how these came together!

  Thanks for reading today and hearing a little about my sister Rachelle.  

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

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

Buchholzer Sisters

Today I am grateful for some of my best friends, my sisters by blood and maiden name!!

I come from a family of six kids I am second youngest.  There are five girls and one boy.  Grateful to say that my brother married a wonderful woman who added another sister to our bunch. 

I am so pleased with this layout in every aspect, it was fun finally putting these pictures together. They are like seven years old, even though we have all had more kids since these were taken, we all look pretty much the same...only thing I see different is my hair is long now.... ;)

The picture on the right has our precious handicap sister Shauna in the center, she was the only one out of the six kids that got brown hair.  We are all redheads.  There are not a lot of pictures we have of all of the girls together, but I loved that she was in this with us. 

With these pages I had a lot of fun adding various details.  I loved the puzzle pieces for my words as they were just letters until put together they created sisters, and friends.  So perfect!

Here are the girls up close, from left to right let me introduce you to my sisters, Tammy, Shersten, Jamie, Tara (me), and littlest sister Rachelle.  

I loved the butterflies and what they added to these pages.  I was able to use my cricut for the letters, butterflies and the white scalloped circle I wrote our names on.  I used some brads in the butterflies and added some orange buttons as a final pop of orange.

"We are sisters by fate , best friends by choice."

Until next time time, 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