scrap therapy

I've been a little bummed this month because my favorite scrap site, IDOS ~ my home on the web, has been down since before Christmas. :( I have not been as motivated to scrap because of that, and haven't gotten nearly as many layouts done as I normally would. I finally forced myself to scrap last night, though. (That sounds funny, that, as much as I love to scrap, I would have to force myself to do it. But for some reason, there was a mental block there that I had to push my way through.) As always, scrapping was very therapeutic. I'm feeling better now and am hoping to make my goal for the month, to get caught up on Ben's photos thru December.

I got 4 pages done last night, and decided that since the IDOS gallery is down, I would share them here, along with the other layouts I've done this month (all October photos). Here they are:

A friend made the cool title for this one. These photos were taken in Chicago by the river, after we had lunch with one of George's friends. Ben loved the fountains!:

Here we are at the apple orchard. B insisted on holding an apple the entire time, and kept "tasting" it with little licks:
After we picked apples, we went to the petting zoo. B was delighted by all the animals!:

The following pages are the ones I created last night. My friend Cheri issued a scrap challenge earlier this month ~ she provided a long list of things and you have to try to use everything on the list... but you can only use up to 3 items per layout. I finally got started on that challenge with these pages.

Benjamin discovers chalk (and I crossed black ink, 3 patterned papers, and rub-ons off my list. Oh, and those green and starry papers were in my DT prize package!):

Grandma's Little Pumpkin (I used stickers that were 3+ years old, a non-Becky Higgins sketch... the sketch is one of my favorites by my friend (the sketch queen) Jen:), and this is a non-event layout... 3 more things crossed off that list!):

B and his pumpkin. (With this one, I crossed off chipboard, letter stickers, and vellum ~ which is what the background is... I adhered the stripy vellum to a piece of white cardstock.):