I made this frame as a gift for my boss, Michele. I am her son’s nanny and because she does so much for me I wanted to make sure that I gave her a very special Christmas gift. This frame took me less than an hour to make and I made it out of things I just happened to have scattered around my scrap space. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoyed making it.

This past December I met up with my friend Kristel & to make yarn wreaths. I was itching to fit in some crafting time & I was so thankful that I finally did, because I think I may have found yet another craft that I could become absolutely obsessed with. Making yarn wreaths is incredibly easy & fun. Kristel found the directions online & we went from there. Although the steps are rather time consuming I personally enjoy using the time to think or to catch up on some TV, or in my case my favorite television series on DVD. Within that same week of making my first yarn wreath, I managed to make three more and get through Season 1 of Prison Break. A great combination by the way: criminals + yarn = an incredible evening <3. If you like what you see, let me know. I would love to see if I could possibly make some profit off of my hard work so let me know if you think someone, somewhere would buy a yarn wreath made specially by me.

{Bye Bye Birdie Yarn Wreath}

{Pom’s & Berries Yarn Wreath}

Hope it gives you some inspiration.

P.S. – This would make a cute & simple Christmas gift for someone special.

Materials:

Tools:

• Scissors
• Glue Sticks (Archival Safe)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Black Inkpad
• ZIG Writers Markers (Black)

Materials:

• 8 ½ by 11 Black Cardstock
• 8 ½ by 11 Pink Patterned Paper
• 8 ½ by 11 Black & White Patterned Paper
• Two Matte-Sized Black & White Patterned Paper
• Scrap Sheet White Paper
• Scrap Sheet Pink Paper
• A favorite picture!

Embellishments:

• Chipboard Letters
• Butterfly Stamps, two sizes (K&Company)
• Pink Gemstones

Directions:

1. Cut off ¼ inch off the edge of the pink patterned paper, once horizontally and once vertically.
2. Use black inkpad to ink the edges of the pink patterned paper (rub inkpad gently around edges of pink patterned paper to give it an antique look).
3. Glue the pink patterned paper onto the solid black cardstock, centered.
4. Cut 8 ½ x 11 black and white patterned paper in half, vertically.
5. Glue black and white patterned paper half to the right-hand side.
6. Choose one matte-sized paper and glue horizontally to bottom left-hand side of layout.
7. Glue picture of your choosing on solid black matte.
8. Glue matted picture to center of the layout.
9. Pick chipboard letter and trace it unto scrap pink paper. Cut it out.
10. Glue letter onto bottom left corner of photo.
11. Use black ZIG Writer to color the rubber portion your butterfly stamp (both sized stamps)
12. Stamp both of your scrap white & pink sheets of paper with both sized butterfly stamps.
13. Cut out butterflies from paper.
14. Large white & large Pink butterfly, hot-glue pink gemstone.
15. Hot-glue all four butterflies wherever you want to put them.
16. Admire Your Hard Work!

This is the actual demonstration that I worked on while at the October Connecting Point: Get Crafty!

Since I didn’t want to end up with two of the same exact layouts after my demonstration, I simply switched it up and did this layout horizontally, instead of diagonally like the first one. This is one of the two layouts that I gave to my hubby for our one year anniversary, which is why I chose to use pictures from our wedding.

This picture is of both his wedding band and his promise ring. Before I gave Lenny his promise ring I had something engraved inside, which reads “I will follow you.” I made this promise to him way before we were ever even engaged and I vowed to keep it until death do us part. I guess that’s why this layout means so much to me, because it’s a reminder of the promise I made to be a faithful, committed, and dutiful wife.

I love you Leonard. Nothing will ever keep us apart. I promise.

As if I didn’t already have enough reasons to love my school, SEBTS just had to give me one more reason to be absolutely smitten with them.

Each month the Women’s Life Center holds a Connecting Point meeting for a time of fellowship and fun for all Southeastern ladies. Each meeting has a different theme and last months theme was called “Get Crafty”. For this meeting different ladies were asked to host a table where they would bring a craft to showcase for anyone who was interested. The showcased crafts varied from jewelry making to sewing, from cooking to….yes…of course SCRAPBOOKING!  And to my surprise I was asked to host this table and showcase one of my projects.

To say that I was excited is an understatement. It should be obvious from my lack of blog posts that I haven’t really had an opportunity to do anything crafty in a while, so when I was asked to do a scrapbook demonstration I pounced on the opportunity. Thankfully my one year anniversary was right around the corner so I was able to tie the two events together and create two nice little 8 1/2 x 11″ layouts for my hubby.

I was so blessed to have several ladies choose my craft out of all the ones being offered and I had a great time teaching them my project. Here are some pictures from the event, courtesy of Kristel.

I have playfully dubbed it the “Diva Den” and I think the name fits perfectly considering that it is full of the colors hot pink, black, and white. I think it is very chic and sophisticated, but my opinion might be a little biased considering that I’m critiquing my own space.

Honestly though I think my scrap room was very well thought out. I used a lot of hand-me-downs, like my desk, two little round tables, two end tables, bookshelf, storage cabinet, and four drawer shelf. My parents completely restored all of the furniture; they made it all look brand new by cleaning and painting each and every piece.

A lot of the things I used were things I already had just sitting around the house or taken from my old house. I created new uses for most of my objects and used them for storage purposes. Considering that I am such a girly girl I already had a lot of pink things that were made useful in my new space, especially all of the Hello Kitty things I just couldn’t get rid of.

In the end I think I managed to make good use of the space I was given (especially considering the fact that I’m sharing half of the room with my husband; the room was split in two to accommodate both of us). Although I wish I had more materials to fill some areas of my room I am thankful that God has blessed me with the amazing space to begin with. For now I will enjoy all of the materials I already own and the incredible space that I have been blessed with.

I hope my Diva Den will be a source of inspiration and hope for all of you ladies out there who are starting to create a scrap space of your very own or for those of you looking to re-vamp an already decorated scrap space. Whichever the case….enjoy the pics and feel free to leave comments, questions, and/or suggestions. Happy scrapping!

Drumroll please for the big reveal…..Tuh-dah!

We’ve experienced culture shock to the extreme and we’re loving every minute of it. We feel so blessed to come to a place that is so beautiful and clean; full of life and gentleness. The people here are so warm-hearted and welcoming. We couldn’t have asked for a better transition than the one we’ve received. 

Part of our grand transition came from the help of our friends: Anne Marie, Kristel, and Alex. Without them we probably would have felt completely lost and alone. Thankfully Anne Marie was generous and thoughtful enough to make sure that our grand arrival was met with much care and devotion. 

Anne Marie created this awesome scrapbook for us that contained tons of useful information necessary to survive our first year in North Carolina. It has all of the best supermarkets, all the nearby wifi locations, good restaurants, and even places where we can eat Cuban food. This album really helped to make NC feel like our new home.

Thank you Anne Marie for making our arrival to Wake Forest a very special event! 

The Goenaga's Move In to Wake Forest

Yes, I know it’s been a while and I haven’t had a chance to catch you guys up with what’s been going on. I’m sorry to all you readers who actually follow along with my blog, but I have good news…

I’m back to blogging! YAY! (And the crowd goes wild…or at least I do!) 

As most of you know already my husband and I recently moved to Wake Forest, North Carolina (the greatest place on earth) exactly 11 days ago. We came here to attend seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Leonard will be getting his Master of Divinity in Apologetics while I will be pursuing a Master of  Divinity in Biblical Counseling. We are both really excited to start school and even more excited to explore the town of Wake Forest and all of the surrounding areas.

Thankfully we have a good group of friends from Miami already here in Wake Forest who have helped us get situated and acquainted with this big change. (Thanks Anne Marie, Kristel and Alex! You guys are amazing!) 

Although things are finally beginning to settle down, about a week of my life was spent surrounded by boxes and bubble wrap. There were moments when I contemplated jumping off of my balcony just to get away from the excess amount of packing materials, but thankfully a container of banana baby food calmed me down and knocked enough sense into me to change my mind. 

On the brighter side of things, we have completely unpacked our lives into our new home and it looks amazing. I will be posting a video tour of our house within the next couple of days for your enjoyment. I will also be posting a very special video tour that shows off my (drumroll please) brand new SCRAPBOOK STUDIO! Hopefully you’re as excited as I am because I’ve planned a three hour long video segment that really shows off, in detail, my scrap space. Just kidding, but that probably wouldn’t be too bad of an idea. 

After years of hoping and praying for an awesome space to scrap I finally have my dream studio and of course I followed through with my fav color combo: black, pink and white. I’m not gonna lie…it looks freaking FAAAAN-TAS-TIC! Now all that’s left to do is to find a group of scrapbookers over here NC, which I’m finding might be a little harder than I thought considering that they have no privately owned scrapbooking stores in my area. Sad, but true. I guess this will be my new mission in the next couple of weeks. 

I promise this time to keep you updated on all that is going on in my adventure-filled scraplife. Until next time…happy scrapping!

Although I am ecstatic to move into our very first “real home” and start grad school, the whole move is rather bitter sweet.

On one hand I am excited that God has blessed us with the opportunity to move to a new place and start a new chapter in our lives, but on the other hand I’m a nervous wreck because this will be the first time that I’ve ever lived away from my family.

Things sure are going to be different, but I’m definitely trying to look on the bright side of things. Although I”m almost positive that I will suffer from some sort of separation anxiety I know that God is going take care of us throughout all of our triumphs and struggles.

So regardless of whether or not I’m scared out of my mind, North Carolina will have to be ready for the Goenaga’s…because we’re on our way!  

Here are some pictures from our last visit to Wake Forest in November of 2008. It’s thrilling to think that I’ll be living here in less than a week!