A Day at the Beach

Last week, my Bestie ALISSA, her son, my youngest daughter, and I headed to the beach for the day. We live about an hour and a half away from Galveston, and since we made our trip on a weekday, we didn't have to worry about heavy traffic or overly large crowds.

Alissa and I packed a cooler full of drinks, hot dogs, PB&J sandwiches and lots of fresh fruit; we liberally slathered sun screen on the kiddos; and we were off! Despite the 6 year age difference between her son and my daughter, they play together really well. That worked perfectly for Alissa and me because it gave us the chance to reeelllaaaxxx a bit while the kids dug in the sand and played in the water.

It really was a fantastic day! Of course, I couldn't let the trip go by without taking pictures; however, I was extremely hesitant to take either of my cameras with me to the beach. My solution? I stopped at a convenience store and picked up a $3 disposable film camera. The clarity of the pics left a little - okay, a lot - to be desired, but overall I like the different look I got. Here are my first two layouts from our beach trip:

I found the coolest sketches over at SASSY LIL SKETCHES (that's right, yet ANOTHER great sketch site!), and I dug out some fabulous netting given to me by a friend in a Secret Sister Swap over a year ago. I have been on a mission to use up my scrap paper, so most of what you see on my layouts are scraps - which made me feel proud and a little virtuous (never mind that I had just shopped for new papers earlier the same day)!

Want to see a couple of close-ups?

Recognize the two smaller flowers, by any chance? They are Seven Gypsies flowers (the same as the large one) that I simply turned backwards so that only the plain kraft paper showed.

Don't want to clutter up your layout with journaling spots but you still want to record your memories? No problem! A journaling tag peeking out from behind the picture is the perfect spot. I inked mine with two colors of distress ink and used a piece of netting in place of twine or ribbon so that it would tie in perfectly with the rest of my layout.

That's all I've got for now. But we have some fun family activities planned for this holiday weekend, so I am sure I will have a ton more pictures to scrap real soon!

Happy Canada Day and Happy Fourth of July, my friends! Hope YOUR weekend is full of good weather, good times, and good people!!!