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

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