Hello October

Hello, October. I'm looking forward to football, comfort food and beautiful foliage.
I'm doing a photo challenge for the month of October with some friends. We have a big list of inspiration prompts to use as guidelines.


This is my take on Something Orange.

I stopped in the middle of prepping for supper to take photos. Butternut squash is my absolute favorite vegetable. And that's saying something because I love veggies. I picked this up at the Farmer's Market at City Hall from Noquochoke Orchards in Westport MA. They also sell a variety of apples and gorgeous dahlias. That's a whole lotta happy in one farm stand!

Today, I'm making the Barefoot Contessa's roasted squash. I'll toss the peeled and cubed squash with some olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme from my herb garden. Roast at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, stirring once or twice for even roasting.

We'll have it with pulled pork sandwiches and harvest spice beer from John Harvard's Brew House. This is one of my favorite fall beers. Then we'll watch the Patriots take on the Oakland Raiders.

Love These Girls

Challenge #10 at Paper Thrills was to a "use your stash" challenge. If you are like me, you could scrap for months straight without buying a single supply. These challenges are a great way to use that stash up in new and creative ways.

We were challenged to not use patterned paper. That's an easy one for me because I love cardstock. The twist was to use stamps, paints, stamps, etc to create a background pattern. I'm not a very technique driven scrapper but I love how this layout turned out.

The background is embossed Core'dinations cardstock that I sanded to add some texture and color. I put a piece of KI lace cardstock over the cream photo mat and sprayed it with gold Smooch spritz to make the photo mat.

The journal spot is a Papertrey Ink stamp and die combo stamped in aqua pigment ink and backed with watermelon cardstock. I used the same watermelon cardstock in the upper left corner and stamped and embossed a leaf patter on top of the circle. Then I added some chipboard butterfly that were embellished with some pearls and twine. The die cut title and flower accent are super old My Mind's Eye that worked perfectly with the color scheme of this layout.

Journaling reads: Having lunch with Patrice was a delight. She is just as sweet in person. So glad we could spend the day with her.