Wanted to share some pics of our baby, Cooper. We got him on November 4, 2011. I call him my birthday present since we got him a day after my birthday. He's a Golden Retriever. He's now 6 months old and weighing in at almost 60 lbs. He's the best thing that's happened to us. Love him to pieces!!!

Evan's Birthday Card

Uuuggghhhh!!! It's snowing here again! And the boys have yet another snow day home from school. This uses up their last built-in snow day for the year...after this, they start tacking them on to the end of the year. :( I got my creativity flowing this morning while the snow was coming down. I have been so busy making invites and thank you's that I almost forgot about the most important card...Evan's birthday card. His birthday is tomorrow and he'll probably get the day off from school too seeing as the snow is REALLY coming down. I decided to stick with the Colts theme but didn't want his card to look like the invites or thank you's. So, this is what I came up with. I used 3 Birds on Parade for the little football playing birdie, Create a Critter for the horseshoes for his little helmet and jersey (I cut an extra wing a bit bigger and cut off the end to give his jersey a sleeve), and Celebrations for balloons and the number 7's. I inked all the edges, added some string to the balloons and tied them to the little birdie's tail! I looked online and found this awesome picture of a Colts rug that looks like the actual football field. I printed it off and used it for my background. I stamped a simple "Happy Birthday" on the inside. So, do you think he'll like it?? TFL

Birthday invites and thank you's

Evan's birthday is coming up this Friday...he's going to be 7!!! We had his party this past Saturday at Metro Sports Center in Evansville. We had a blast! The kids got to run and play games for an hour and then sit and enjoy pizza and cake. We even played a game of dodgeball...parents vs. kids. That was fun but I'm still sore. LOL Evan wanted an Indianapolis Colts themed party. I was able to find plates and napkins and goodie bag items for the party but they had no invites or thank you's so I made my own.

Invites: I used my Cricut and Gypsy (of course). I used Sports Mania, George, Create a Critter, and Old West for these. I welded the football shape to a rectangle from George and cut that in white. I then cut the football using Sports Mania in brown and embossed with my Cuttlebug Tiny Bubbles folder to make it look like the texture of a real football. I then used Create a Critter for the horseshoe and stretched it a bit to resemble the real Colts logo and added the circles from George. I put that on the invite using pop-dots. I used Old West font for the PARTY title. It was the perfect Colts font. I stamped all the info on the inside.
Thank you's: I kept these a little more simple. I used Sports Mania and Create a Critter for these. I used Sports Mania for the football helmet and Create a Critter for the horseshoe and a white get pen for the dots on the horseshoe. I used my Cuttlebug Thanks folder for the background. Evan just wrote the last of his thank you's today while he's home sick from school. TFL

Oooh Fuuudge!

DH LOVES A Christmas Story!! He has the entire movie memorized and can recite any line from it. It's really fun to watch the movie with him. I was running short on time to make him a Christmas card because Evan has been down and out with one of the worst cases of stomach flu that I've seen. He started getting sick on Monday night and is just now getting to where he can eat again. So, my first chance to sit down and make a card was last night. I had this envisioned in my head and was very happy with the end result! I used my Cricut and Gypsy for everything except for the icicles. I used an assortment of Paper Doll Dress Up and Everyday Paper Dolls for Ralphie, his glasses, and the bar of soap. I used Old West for the Red Ryder BB Gun and words. I used my Martha Stewart edge punch for the icicles. I love how it all came together and I hope he enjoys it. TFL Wishing all of my bloggin' buddies a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and Happy New Year!!!!

Mini album-Christmas present

6 more days til Christmas! Boy, have we been busy this month. We had Space Derby with the Cub Scouts, Polar Express train ride in French Lick, IN, Rudolph's Land of Lights, roasting chestnuts at Santa's Candy Castle, and a night and breakfast filled with Santa visits. It's all been SO much fun. On top of being so busy with everything and making this mini album for the student teacher leaving Evan's class, I still managed time to get sick with a triple whammy...ear infection, sinus infection, and strep throat. I'm still working on getting my antibiotic finished.

Evan's teacher came to me and asked if there was something neat that we could give to the student teacher that just finished at semester break. I came up with this mini album that the whole class got to help out with.

Here's the cover. Font is from Printing Press cut at real dial size and the heart if from George. I bound the album with my Bind-It-All and tied ribbon on the o-wires.
The next 12 pages were art work and writings from the students. I printed the phrase on the pages and the kids completed them. This is Evan's page.

Here is the autograph page that I made using Learning Curve for the font and Locker Talk for the pencil.

Ms. Corne wanted a page that she could write a letter to Ms. Scott so I came up with this. All cuts except the zig-zag were from Locker Talk and the zig-zag was from Plantin Schoolbook.

Class list printed on a page with hopscotch cut from Locker Talk.

I have pictures from several activities that the class has done so far this year. This page is from their Field Trip to Cate's Farm in Henderson, KY. The Field Trip sign was cut from Locker Talk, the wooden sign from H2O, and the pumpkins from Happily Ever After.

Here are pictures from the kids' Thanksgiving Play and Feast. I used Create a Critter for the turkey and the title.
The class just made gingerbread houses last week and I got some pics of all of them. I used All Mixed Up for the title, Simply Charmed for the peppermint, and My Community for the gingerbread house.

This last page was finished after it was given to her. We had some ice this past week so we bumped up her going away party to Wednesday since we were pretty sure that school was going to be canceled on Thursday and it was. I went in and took the picture of the kids in their jammies on Friday and came home and printed it and took it back up to school for her to put in her book. I superimposed the picture of the kids on the page here so it's not straight. I have this awesome Polar Express paper that my mom got me from our Polar Express train ride so I scanned it in and shrunk it down to 8x8 for this page. I used Joys of the Season for the bell and Gypsy Wanderings for the title. Hope you have enjoyed this little album. Ms. Scott loved it.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from the Bockelmans! We had our family pictures taken a week ago Sunday at JCPenney. They did a wonderful job again this year. Here is our family picture. I just love how it turned out. I was able to get outfits that all the red matched on. LOL
Here's a picture of just Charlie and I. We haven't had our picture taken alone since I was pregnant with Max. The photographer talked us into it even though I didn't want to but I'm glad he did because I love it. I'm also excited to show off my new-do. I got it cut right after Thanksgiving. Got some length cut off and lots of layers put in along with some long side-swept bangs.


The boys together. I can't believe how big they're getting.


Max with husky.


Evan with his Christmas turtle.

Indiana Jones & Harry Potter

I'm just plugging away at LOs here. It's felt SO nice to sit down and scrap. I've really missed it. These two LOs are from Halloween pictures from this year...can you believe it? I'm still way behind but I like doing up-to-date photos. LOL The boys picked awesome costumes this year. Max was Indiana Jones and Evan was Harry Potter. They both looked fabulous!

For Max's LO, I used background paper from the DCWV Once Upon a Time stack. It kinda looks like an old crumpled up piece of paper or treasure map...perfect for this page. I printed Max's pic in sepia tones to go with the overall LO. I used my Cricut for all the cuts. I used Printing 101 for the title. I looked online at the IJ logo and copied it by making each letter smaller and curving it a bit. I cut it in yellow cardstock and then chalked it in to fade from yellow to orange to red. I love how it turned out. I used Paper Doll Dress Up for the hat and October 31st for the giant spider. Max's costume had a huge spider printed on the back shoulder!For Evan's LO, I used the new line of Harry Potter paper by Creative Imaginations. The whole line is SO cool and I was lucky enough to grab up a bunch at an Archiver's in Louisville!! I printed Evan's pic in sepia tones too to go with the overall LO. I used Black Letter and Robotz for the title. Black Letter was almost a perfect match to the HP logo but I had to weld on some lightning bolt shapes from Robotz to the P and I had to create the H from scratch. The uppercase H on Black Letter was nothing like the HP H. I welded some I's together and a swirl from the cart and it made an almost perfect HP H. I used Camp out for Hedwig. I think she turned out pretty good. TFL

You Rock

WOW!! My second post with a LO is as many days. I'm on a roll. I just wish that I could keep it up but I've got a very busy week next week with Thanksgiving and Evan has a Thanksgiving Play and a Feast at school next week. So, I'll be up at school plenty next week.

Here is Evan sporting a "new-do". LOL If anyone knows my boys, they know that are neat freaks when it comes to their hair. They like it combed over on the part, gelled, and hairsprayed so it looks good all day. They've ALWAYS been this way. So, I was totally shocked when Evan came downstairs on a Saturday morning with a spike!! He said that he asked Daddy to fix it that way. It was super cute and then he started to cop a "tude" to go with the spike! So, I had to grab my camera. This would never fly on a school morning but it was the day before Halloween...time to be fun. What makes the pictures even more funny is the fact that he's got his "tude" and he's holding Velvet Pup from Build-A-Bear!! LMBO

I used Indie Art for stars, guitar, and skull and crossbones. I used Happy Hauntings for the font. All the printed paper is from the DCWV Rockstar Stack. It was so totally perfect for this page. I distressed all the edges of my mats and pictures with my Tim Holtz distressing tool and inked them too. TFL

Zombie Farm

I've been working on this LO off and on for 2 weeks (more off than on). Life has just gotten SO busy. I stay super busy with Cub Scouts and all that goes on with that. I really thought that it'd be no problem being a leader for Evan's Den and being an assistant to Charlie for Max's Den but it has proven to be quite the task with planning 2 meetings. Plus we just finished up selling popcorn with the Scouts where I served on the Popcorn Committee this year. We got the last of our popcorn delivered yesterday!! WOOHOO. The boys did wonderful this year. They sold together and sold $1,819! I'm very proud of them.

Anywho, back to the LO. We had taken the boys to this haunted house several years ago but we went to the no-scare version. It was still scary. I thought that they'd be up for the full scare version this year. I remember going to haunted houses when I was their age. So, we bribed them to actually go and they took it. This is our local haunted house right here in Newburgh. It's not too scary but it is to a kid. Max was OK with going but Evan was absolutely terrified. His face shows it in the pictures. The one of him crying hysterically is after we went through. They chased us out with a real circular saw and it freaked him out! I printed the pics in black and white to add the scare-factor! I used Cricut Happy Hauntings for every cut on here. I absolutely LOVE the font that's on this cart! I made a duplicate LO for Max so that's what took so long was cutting everything twice and piecing everything together. I also used my Martha Stewart Drippy Goo punch. I did my journaling the tombstones. TFL

Lincoln Campout

This is my first LO post over on the new Cricut MB. It's nice to have a MB that moves fast again but I'm still trying to learn how to navigate my way through all the forums. I finished this LO a while back but couldn't get my scanner to work right. These pics are from a year ago from our first Cub Scout campout. We had a blast as you can tell by the pictures. I used the Campout cartridge for everything. Everything is inked and layered. Background paper is by Cloud 9 Design and it's part of their Happy Halloween Dustin T. Dust line. TFL