Back to School

Our school system had officially began it's first day of school yesterday on the new balanced calendar.  Back to school on August 1st has its' perks, we get two weeks off for fall break in October and two weeks off for spring break in April.  Luckily, my boys were eager to get back in the groove of school too.

My oldest, Keaton, is starting the second grade and my little man is repeating kindergarten.  My little, Isaiah, has high functioning Autism, ADHD as far as some other minor developmental delays.  He has three years of being at school under his belt.  Two years of their Early Childhood program and a year of full day KG.  While he did a wonderful job last year and worked really hard academically, he struggled still socially at the end of the school year.  We had a little bit of a let down and Isaiah was not able to remain in the same class as last year but I am already hearing wonderful things, he has a sweet new friend named Jacob that he has been playing with.  As for Keaton, he is too social, it is only a matter of time before I get that phone call that my son will not stop talking in class.  

Back to school to mommy means craft time!  Woo Hoo!!  As sweet friend gifted me her Canon Selphy CP760 last week and it had taken me some time to figure out how to use it with my Windows 8 computer.  There are no drivers for this device on a Windows 8 system but there is a trick, download the Windows Vista drivers.  Here is how I learned of the solution to my printing problem.  So, yesterday, I got busy and started printing photos and pulling out all my goodies and creating.

 Page made from contents of my Studio Calico Valley High kit, Planetarium kit and Halley's Comet add on.

 Page made from contents of Studio Calico Valley High kit, Spencer kit and Elle's Studio Cameron goodies.

This page was made with the Pretty Little Studio Nature Walk line.  Lisa Wilkinson had a class where she worked with this mini kit.  Everything else here is all from the line with the exception of the washi and glassine sacks.  I still need to do the journalling on this layout.  

I am ready to get some more pages created!  My goal is to work on more pages this next week.  Also, I am trying to hardest to compile all my goodies for my December Daily.  Thanks to a sweet friend of mine I got a huge crate full of scrappy goodness!  But Cubmaster duty calls and my week will be full of setting up popcorn booths, training sessions, and fall recruitment prep and meetings.  More goodness to come soon.

It is Blog Hop Weekend time: Lets Talk About Kits

This week, I have finished a few layouts and put some finishing touches on last week's Blog Hop Weekend post so if you want to go here and give this a second chance you totally can.

I have received some happy mail as well as a few kits so here I am going to take out all the kids because there are a few that I have not even opened yet.

First off lets start with Studio Calico Roundabout Project Life kit because this is my first month as a subscriber and I have to admit that I love the quality of the cards.  In the new box, which I love because they are so similar to Becky Higgins' core boxes, I received 6 4x6 cards, 24 3x4 cards, two alphas and 4 specialty cards that were the embellishments of this kit. As a subber the kit cost 19.99 and shipping for just the kit in the USA was $25.50.

I Like:  My opion is that the cards are awesome.  I love the style and colors of ALL the SC PL cards I have ever recieved so this is really the best fit for me.  The quality of the cards are wonderful.  Normally the embellishments are super awesome too and you can't go wrong with the Thickers or the Basic Grey alpha.  

The Cons: for me is that there are only 24 3x4 cards and out of those 24 cards only nine of them are two sided.  All the rest have the grid backgrounds so they are still usable in the event that the graphic direction does not work for you.  Personally, I would rather have more cards than a 'half' pack of Thickers all though I do love the cork Thickers.  And lastly the lack of embellishments is frustrating.  I would prefer to not have the 4 fancy cards.  

Wrap Up:  Although most SC PL subbers are losing their minds about the lack of embellishments I feel that the cards in the kit are so busy and colorful that embellishments would be too much on most of these cards.  But I am irritated that there are less cards in general this month.

Next up I have Scraptastic's A Day in the Life kit.  This June 2013 kit is the first PL kit as far as I believe.  It was $28 and with shipping my total came to $33.50 in the USA.  

The Pros:  The quality of the 24 3x4 and 4 4x6 cards and the fact that they are Ormolo exclusive cards is a huge plus to me.  And the Ormolo stamp set is great.  

The Cons:  Lack of embellishments.  Cost more money than the high popular Studio Calico kits.

Wrap Up: I love Ormolo but these cards are not my style.  I do not think I will purchase another Scraptastic kit because of the embellishments and price of the kit.

Here, in this crappy quality Instagram photo I have the Limited Edition Elle's Studio kit for June.  If you purchase this kit on it's debut, the 10th of every month it only cost $9.99 but after that day it jumps to $11.99.  Also, shipping was just a few bucks.  There are 8 3x4 cards, some tabbed, 3  4x6 cards, 2 frames, a sheet of vellum labels and a handful of die cut bits.  

The Pros: the designs and the price.

The Cons: I want more.  When I purchased this Elle released her new lines Cameron and Saltwater, so my total was more than the cost of just the kit.

Wrap Up:  I will likely keep purchasing these kits.  The designs are adorable.

So these are currently the three kits that I purchased this month.  I also purchase parts of Pretty Little Studio's Nature Walk line, which always has a vintage feel to it to me, which I love.  As well as a few goodies from TSY 1.0 on Facebook.  

And lastly, I have the most adorable Pen Pal, Mrs. Jones, who sent me my first goodies.  We did a getting to know you theme.  I am just finishing up one last pen pal package for a lovely lady in Austrailia and then I am off to the post office to mail these off.  But here is a look at my goodies.

So cute!  Plus it coordinates perfectly with my Seafoam and Jade core kits I am using this year.

So anyways, how do you feel about the kits?  What does your mailman bring you every month?  Lets talk.  

See you soon for more Project Life spreads!