"Backyard Adventures" with Kira

Hello friends!  Kira here with a 12x12 layout using the main "Sonoma" scrapbook kit.  I am swooning over here over the colors in this month's kits!

The first paper that immediately jumped out at me was the Dear Lizzy "Green Thumb" paper.  I loved all the little vases of flowers/plants.  I knew it would work perfectly for this picture of my son playing in the backyard.

We just moved into a new home right before Thanksgiving!  It has been such an exciting time for my family and me.  But the greatest thing about our new home is definitely having a backyard space for my boys.  And since the weather remains in the high 70s with sun shining daily, we are able to play out there, eat out there, or just relax out there 90% of our day!

I snapped this photo of Elliott during a final walk through before the house was "officially" ours.  I love his sweet little expression, almost as if he's in shock this backyard belongs to us now!  And since the colors in this months kits are so vibrant, I kept the photo in color to coordinate with the papers and embellishments I planned on using.

I started fussy cutting the little vases almost immediately after getting my kit (which happened to be my first piece of mail at our new house!), even though I had no idea what I was going to do with all of them!  So I chose a few more papers to go with my photo before deciding.  I loved the wood grain of the Crate Paper "Warm Wishes" paper, and thought it mimicked the wood fence in my photo.  And the Fancy Pants "Fancy Free" paper worked well with the colors in my photo so I pulled that paper out too.

I cut my title "backyard" out on my Cricut using the goudy stout font.  And I stitched around it with some dark blue embroidery thread from my stash.  Then I started playing with embellishing my page.  Once I started moving the fussy cut vases around my page, it all came together fairly quickly.

I hand cut the reverse side of the Dear Lizzy paper to look like grass, and layered a few pieces to give a little dimension.  I added some pieces of ephemera from the Fancy Pants "Take Note" die cut pack around the page, and I loved how the "adventures" piece finished off my title.

I am so happy with my finished layout!  I can't wait to see what everyone else does with this kit!  Thank you so much for stopping by!

Kira