Made in the Usa...4th of July Parade

Every year my development has a Fourth of July parade. All of the kids dress up their bikes, strollers or wagons and they ride around the development. Last year was the first year we were able to participate and since our little babies were only a couple of weeks old we decorated our stroller. They seem like giants now compared to this picture. I can't believe I put the both of them in one seat ...they were so tiny! Too precious!

I started this layout with my little Uncle Sam that I made with several of my Cricut cartridges and of course my ever so faithful Peachy Keen Stamps. I used PK-490 for this layout. The adorable firecracker stamps are also from Peachy Keen that were an exclusive stamp a couple of weeks ago that was available when you made a purchase. For the Title border I randomly stamped some stars from Close to My Heart in several shades of blue and red. When I started this Lo I was kinda stumped on what to do with the arrangement of photos etc but then I saw sketch #71 over at
The Scrappiest and the sketch over at Sketches in Thyme. Once I saw that I got my juices flowing. For the circle in the sketch I used CTMH dimensional elements ON TARGET. I cut out different sized stars and added them around the circle with some being popped up with mounting dots. The challenge over at
Everything But the Kitchen Sink and Charisma Cardz was to use Aluminum/metal. So I cut small pieces of aluminum foil and ran it thru my Cuttlebug using different folders. Since I had the stars already cut out with DP I turned them upside down and ran them thru my Xyron. I glued them to the back of the foil and cut them out.

Here are the other challenges I based this LO around:

ABC Design Blog - Red, White & Blue
Stamptacular - Stars & Stripes
The Corrosive Challenge - use flowers
Lexi's Creations - 3D
The Cuttlebug Spot - Independence
The ABC Challenge - X is for Xtra dimension
Pixie Dust Studio - Red, White & Blue
Raise the Bar - Colors of Your Flag
Frosted Designs - Red, White & Blue and Stars & Stripes
Wee Memories - Red, White, & Blue
Stamp Something - Colors of your flag
Fairy Fun Friday - Anything goes

This parade is very special for a reason and I have included a picture to explain it. One of my dear neighbors/friends walked with me and helped me since I just had a C-Section. We just talked and she held one of my twins the whole time and loved every minute of it. I took a great picture of her and in the picture she looks like she is wrapping herself around my daughter almost protecting her. Sadly this was the last picture taken of her because shortly after she went to drop her babysitter off and as she pulled in the babysitters driveway a tree uprooted and fell on her car killing her. It was a complete shock to us all since it was literally around the block...very freak accident. I can't believe it has almost been a year since she has passed away. I know that my children have a wonderful person up there with them.