Bon Scrapatit Designs: IT’S FANTABULOUS FREEBIE FRIDAY AND I AM BACK IN THE FISH BOWL Y’ALL!

ROFL! Now, whatever do I mean by being back in the fish bowl??? Well, rather than go on-and-on, as we ALL know I can easily do, I will tell you how I see myself in the life of a goldfish!

Firstly, I’d like to say, it’s SOOOOOOOOO good to be getting back to Scrapland after two months of MIA status, with but a few posts in between. UGH! I have to admit, while I have been having a GRAND time of it all, I was feeling like a floundering goldfish who had found him/herself jumping WAY too high and right out of the fish bowl! Can y’all visualize this one? Uh, huh … I’m sure most all of us have had goldfish in our childhood or that of our own children and either watched a goldfish jump out of the bowl or we’ve found one that has already perished as a result of doing so. I’ve experienced both!

I remember as a young girl watching one of our goldfish jump out and then watched as it floundered until either my brother or I scooped it up gently and returned it to the fish bowl! We would then watch as it would swim away as if nothing at all had happened, but I do remember one that must have been out of the water just long enough to make it a little more slow-going upon it’s return to it’s much needed water-based environment. Of course, we did find a few that were not lucky enough to be found soon enough and being children, we’d have a good cry and usually have some sort of service to lay our poor fishy to rest. Boy, am I reminiscing at the moment, or what? How wonderful it is to ponder upon, *Days Gone By*, eh? *wink*

With one DELIGHTFUL event after another and preparations being made for several family events, including the marriage of my son and WONDERFUL new daughter-in-law (I will share a few photos soon), I just found myself feeling more and more like a fish out of water, floundering and wondering if I’d ever be scooped up and returned to my fish bowl aka Scrapland! ROFL! HA, HA, HA, HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! Y’all KNOW what I’m talking about!

So, here I am, back in the fish bowl and I find myself being like the aforementioned fish that had been out of the fish bowl a little TOO long and was a little slower in picking up the speed after floundering for SO long! YUP, that would be me, however, I am happy to say that I CAN still swim, even though it be at a bit slower pace for a while! WOOT, WOOT!!! I’ve missed y’all immensely. You are a part of my family that I was accustomed to visiting on a regular basis and then … NADA! I got homesick for y’all! He, he … *big grin*

Well, I am returning to my beloved Scrapland with some news and, of course, a little something for y’all! After all, it IS *Fantabulous Freebie Friday*, now isn’t it? *wink*

I mentioned (last sentence of the third paragraph) how wonderful it is to ponder upon, *Days Gone By*. Some of you already know that Dawn aka Snowsmoon’s Design and I had started a challenge in the DSO forum called, *Days Gone By*. Well, during my absence and the fact that neither one of us will be selling our designs at DSO, Dawn had gone ahead and moved our challenge to our blogs as we LOVED Dawn’s idea so much and had some FABULOUS masterpieces submitted, that we just HAD to keep this AWESOME challenge alive! I, myself, look forward to participating in it as well to help inspire others who, like me, may not have ANY or just a few photos from childhood, yet hold some INCREDIBLE memories that need to be preserved for our children, grandchildren and further down the line!

While Dawn was working on her blog post to announce our challenge for October, I was in creating a special place in our gallery at Scrapland Express for y’all to upload your layouts to each month as well as posting the guidelines and the challenge for October in the Scrapland Express forum. Please bear with us as we work towards bringing the forum and gallery together on our site in the near future. For now, you will find it easy to travel from the forum to the gallery via links that you will find posted in the GUIDELINES thread and along with each month’s new *Days Gone By* challenge. You will also find the links to both the gallery and the forum posted on our blogs. I will mention to you ahead of time, that you will need to register separately in both the forum and the gallery to participate as the two are not connected … yet! LOL!

As I have a few more things to share with y’all, I am not going to post the actual challenge on my blog this time, but will post only the links to the appropriate forum threads for you to read, which will open in a separate window so that you are not taken away from my blog (THANK YOU JEANNETTE!!! MWAH!). You will need to register to gain access to the forum. If you are interested in reading what the *Days Gone By* challenge is all about and what is required of you to participate, please read the GUIDELINES first and then hop on over and read about our October challenge in the AUTUMN/FALL thread. Please DO stop in and say hello (right in the current challenge thread) as we will check in often to answer any questions you may have, as well as to check for your links once you’ve posted YOUR masterpieces in the GALLERY for October! I am SO excited and cannot wait to see what y’all have to share with us this month! WOOT! I’d better get busy too as I have NO photos that will work for this month’s challenge, so I shall be working with digital scrapkit papers, embellishments and honing up on my journaling skills! I look forward to bumping into y’all throughout the month! Ready? Set? Get YOUR scrap on!

This month’s Posting Bonus was LOVINGLY created by Dawn of Snowsmoon’s Design and I am DEFINITELY leaving you with a preview of her GORGEOUS creations! Thank you girlfriend, these are YUMMY and SO perfect for heritage scrapping! Keep your eyes peeled for some goodies from Dawn on her blog this weekend as well! WOO HOO!

Scrapland Express will also house a VERY dear friend and as some of you know, my virtually adopted daughter, Sarah of Designs by Sassy! Sassy is a well-established designer and also the owner of Designs By Sassy (where Dawn is currently selling her designs). Sassy has done most of the “behind-the-scenes” work in getting our forum and gallery up and running, for which we are EVER grateful and SIMPLY ecstatic! THANK YOU Sass! MWAH! You DA bomb girlie!

As I’ve been away for SO long and have taken LOTS of photos and it being TOO overwhelming to share A LOT at one time, I am going to break things up and, my goal is, to incorporate some of the past two months events into a CT layout for one of the girls and/or using something that I create to share with y’all!

Your *Fantabulous Friday Freebie* tonight will be from a FREE kit, *Icky Burpday* (we’ll have to ask Sassy about the title as I know she told me some time ago where she got it from and my mind has gone blank, but it does sound like something a child would utter, now doesn’t it? LOL!) that I used to create a two-page layout of our grandson, Lohgan’s second birthday party that we attended mid-September. With Sassy’s permission, I am offering up not one, but two “scrapatits” with a combination of Sassy’s kit and two multiple-frame templates that I created! Stay-tuned as I will be posting the templates for you this weekend! I made the grids a bit wider, which makes them nice for journaling on! As I am typically a clean-lined scrapper, yet lover of embellishments and am going to be making a photobook for Lohgan, I have chosen to create templates that will allow me to scrap LOTS of photos per page as this is a large family and I take LOTS of photos! LOL! I’ve also asked Lohgan’s mommy to send me some of her favorites to add to the photobook as well.

Here are my two layouts of our DARLING grandson, Lohgan, son of Robert’s number three son, Travis and his wife, Sofie! Sofie picked such a CUTE theme for Lohgan’s birthday and if memory serves me correctly, MOST everything came from Celebrate Express, which I have already passed on to my son, Mark and his new wife, Jessica for Kaleb’s second birthday coming up in April of next year! Oh, how I wished it was this convenient when my children were growing up! LOL! Everything all in ONE place and delivered to your door! Makes me wonder how it’ll be for our grandchildren when they have children! Ya’ll remember the Jetson’s? OMGosh, that was like my favorite cartoon and I would just imagine what it would be like to drive a space car or to get beamed up … or down! ROFL! Meet George Jetson … His boy, Elroy… daughter, Judy … Jane, his wife … and, of course, their rog, rastro! Did I get that right??? Anyhoo, you’ve just GOT to love the Jetson’s … family of the FAR OUT future, although not THAT far out anymore! He, he … REP!

Lohgan LOVES music! He has been dancing since he could stand on both feet and he is QUITE the little ROCKER! OMGosh, he was WAY too cute and this was one of the only poses I did not get a good shot of. If you look closely, you will see the smaller photo on the first page where his little head is cocked backwards while he is strumming his Fischer-Price guitar and singing his precious little heart out to the crowd! Not a bit of stage fright going on here I tell you! He just LOVES to perform! Oh, oh, OOOOOH! I have to mention to you that the birthday hat you see on Lohgan’s head as he is reading his new Sponge Bob book is actually from Sassy’s kit (you would have been none-the-wiser if I’d not mentioned it, right? *smile*) and I made the number “2” from it as well!

Okay, I could not resist! For those who remember and better yet, for those that are WAY too young to know unless someone MUCH older has clued you in growing up! Meet … The Jetson’s …

And last, but certainly not the least, your *Fantabulous Friday Freebie*, courtesy of Designs By Sassy and Bon Scrapatit Designs! Make sure to head on over to Sassy’s Blog where you can pick up her *Icky Burpday* scrapkit for FREE right now. She also has a *Buy My Store* deal going on too and you will find all the details on her blog as well as some LOVELY photos she has worked on in Adobe Lightroom from her wedding! Please make sure to leave her some good old-fashioned Scrapland lovin’! MWAH!