Freebie Frame and Quick Tutorial

Are you looking for great iNSD sales?  Well, my good friend, Anna of Delicious Scraps always has great deals - most of her kits are always 99 cents!  And right now, everything including her awesome CU stuff is 99 cents too.  She also has a ton of freebies on her blog.
Here's her latest kit Bloomsberry with a page I made for my Chloee:

Here's a quick and easy tip/tutorial:
If you want to make a 2 page spread so that you'll have matching pages in your album quickly and easily.  Take your first page and duplicate it.  Then rotate it or rearrange it!  That's what I did with the 2 pages above.  Now I have 2 matching pages ready to be printed and put into her album :)  Makes it so much easier than starting from scratch each time!

And I've got a freebie for you (Thanks, Anna!)  It's the cluster frame I made for my page in png format with a transparent background:

For a limited time, Download it here!
You can find Anna's store at DeliciousScrapShop.com
Hugs,
Denise aka A Grieving Mommy

Donate Blood, Save a Life and then Scrap it with this Freebie Kit!

Whenever we have a birthday or angel day for the girls, we always try to do some kind of charity or service project.  This time for Chloee's Angel Day yesterday, I donated blood.  Chloee was hospitalized for the majority of her life and had a blood transfusion after one of her surgeries.  I often wonder who donated that blood for her and gave her that gift so this time I went in and donated myself.  I really can't believe I've never done it before - it was super easy and my blood will probably go to help 3 people who need it.
If you haven't donated before or haven't in awhile, I hope maybe you will think about doing it and giving up a half hour of your time to help someone else that you don't know.  Something good comes out of giving with no thought of anything in return.
Then, you can take some pics and you come back and scrap all about it!  Cause I've got a very special freebie for you called Donate Blood, Save a Life :)
My dear hubby gets the Donate Blood Wuss sign - he said he was afraid of needles...  I'm making him next time though :)

Here are my pages of me donating in Chloee's memory yesterday.  I donated at my local Red Cross Donation Center.

Here is the freebie kit for ya.  I really hope that it inspires someone out there to donate blood!

Download here
If you get an error message - please try again in a few minutes, it just means the server is really busy at the moment.
Sending hugs to you!
Denise aka A Grieving Mommy

5 Months in my Arms, 5 Years of Missing Her

Yesterday was my daughter Chloee's 5th Angel Day - 5 years since she died.  We spent the day spoiling our living son, donating blood in her memory and getting memorial family photos.  I also started working on a "Lost Princess" kit in her honor since she is MY lost Princess.
I wanted to share our family pics since a lot of my friends out there are grieving and family photos can be so hard when the ones you love are not here to be in the pictures.  Our photos were done by Fotofly and they did an awesome job so if you are in the Salt Lake City, Utah area, check them out!

and just a fun family photo

And of course I got some of my cute boy!  One thing I learned from losing Chloee is that you can never have too many photos.  Ever.  Cause you never know what's going to happen.
Here's my boy in a RockBand style photoshoot we did:

So go take a photo already!

For my girls this week

I'm trying to do a page each week for my girls.  Here are the ones for this week.

These are pages for Chloee.  I only have 2 photos of her outside...  This was just before she was hospitalized.  She should be out playing in the sun, sledding down hills, and marveling at the snow.

Credits: Creations by Rachael's This Moment

And a page about Bree's diva blanket - given to us by one of my mom's friends.

Credits: Creations by Rachael's kit Gurrl's Nite

Happy Birthday in Heaven Angel Chloee

 It's Chloee's 5th Birthday today.

Happy Birthday in Heaven Baby Girl!  I love you and I miss you every second.  I just want you here with us...  I want to know what you are like at 5 years old.

This year, we got a princess birthday cake with a frame on top and took it to her grave to have her balloon release and birthday memorial.  We did a nail polish drive for Utah Share - an organization who helps families whose babies have died.  They give the nail polish so that parents can paint their baby's nails as a final gesture of love and to lighten the color post-mortem.  We collected a whole bunch of them that will go to help other grieving families :)

I spent the day enjoying my living son and making a digital scrapbooking kit in memory of my little princess!

It's called Princess Chloee and here it is with the page I did for her Princess birthday cake:

You can get it for free by completing this challenge over at MouseScrappers this week.

And I have a gift for you in loving memory of my Chloee, a past kit I've made - TeaCup Fairies.

Download expired

 

Hugs, A Grieving Mommy

Chloee's Birthday in Heaven

Every year we celebrate the girls' birthdays.  Sometimes we go to the cemetery, sometimes we have their birthday at our home.  I'm just getting to scrappin' Chloee's birthday from last September (only a year behind... sigh...)  We went to the cemetery and decorated her grave, let off balloons to heaven, and did a random act of kindness there.  Happy 4th birthday to my baby girl!

Credit for template: Photocowgirl
Credit for kit: Irene Alexeeva

Dear Chloee, It all Belongs to You...

I wanted to do a page for Chloee and write to her since I am missing her so much right now.  My heart is aching today and my arms and the rest of me :)  The pic on this page is when she was dying - we didn't know it but her heart and kidneys were failing for the last time.  She looks so swollen and sick and tired - she was so... done.
I used the lyrics from the song Belongs to You by Emerson Drive to help me with the words!  I can never say what I want to say...
Chloee, I love you and my life belongs to you baby girl.
Love, your grieving mommy

Credit: Project B

Memorial Day

This memorial day, we remember our sweet girls.  Sending love to you in heaven!!!!  We miss you.
I made a page to show how we decorated their graves this year - with a heart made out of balloons.
There is a quote that goes like this, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."  I say screw that quote!  And so I changed it to fit me and my grieving heart...
"It's okay to cry because it's over, but it's also okay to smile because it happened."  This memorial day, I will both smile and cry because I cannot love my daughters without both smiling and crying.

Credit: Melissa Daniel Designs

Is it Spring yet?

I don't know about your weather, but here it's like spring is teasing us.  One day it's almost warm and the next it's freezing!  It snowed yesterday!! and it's MAY for crying out loud...
I wanted to do some springtime pages for my kids.
The first one is of my son waiting and wishing for spring to come!  And the second one is my Chloee - called Springtime in Heaven.  I wonder what that's like...

Credits: ScrappinDsigns

You Make Me Smile Pages

Pages for my new fav song by Uncle Cracker called Smile.
Chloee's page says You make me smile and Bree's has part of the lyrics on her page.

Credit: DigiDesignResort

Lyrics of Smile:
You're better then the best
I'm lucky just to linger in your light
Cooler than the flip side of my pillow, that's right
Completely unaware
Nothing can compare to where you send me,
Lets me know that it's ok, yeah it's ok
And the moments where my good times start to fade

You make me smile like the sun
Fall out of bed, sing like bird
Dizzy in my head, spin like a record
Crazy on a Sunday night
You make me dance like a fool
Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold, buzz like a bee
Just the thought of you can drive me wild
Ohh, you make me smile

Even when you're gone
Somehow you come along
Just like a flower poking the sidewalk crack and just like that
You steal away the rain and just like that

You make me smile like the sun
Fall out of bed, sing like bird
Dizzy in my head, spin like a record
Crazy on a Sunday night
You make me dance like a fool
Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold, buzz like a bee
Just the thought of you can drive me wild
Ohh, you make me smile

Don't know how I lived without you
Cuz everytime that I get around you
I see the best of me inside your eyes
You make me smile
You make me dance like a fool
Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold, buzz like a bee
Just the thought of you can drive me wild

You make me smile like the sun
Fall out of bed, sing like bird
Dizzy in my head, spin like a record
Crazy on a Sunday night
You make me dance like a fool
Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold, buzz like a bee
Just the thought of you can drive me wild
Ohh, you make me smile

Pink Love

This is possibly my favorite photo of all time of Chloee.  Probably because I remember taking it of her so well.  We were in her hospital room like usual sitting in the glider chair just me and her watching TV or something.  She was in my arms (she almost always was) and I had the camera held out in my other arm away from us.  The black at the bottom of the pic was my shirt.  She looked so beautiful in my arms and I am so thankful this photo turned out exactly as beautiful as she looked then.  My heart ACHES to hold her again... Miss you Chloster  Love, Mommy

Credits: Pasion by lisettescrap

Princess Pages

Each week, they have Disney digital scrapbooking challenges over at MouseScrappers.com, a Disney fan and scrapbooking site.  They are super fun and have great prize packages for those that complete a challenge.  Check it out here

This week, the challenge was to create a Disney scrapbooking page with pastel colors.  Of course, I thought of doing a princess page with a princess fairy kit I was working on for JKCreations and even though I don't have any pics of my girls with any of the princesses - I decided to do a few Disney Princess inspired pages for them anyway!

The Cinderella page is for my Chloee.  It says, "A Dream is a Wish your heart makes.... I made a wish and you came true."  We love you Chloee!

The Tinkerbell page is for my Bree-Elle.  I found the perfect quote for it... "And in the end, Peter Pan stole Tinkerbell's wings so she would never leave."  How we wish we could have stolen her wings and kept her here with us forever...  Miss you Bree

Credits: JKCreations

Chloee's Favorite Color is Yellow

We don't know what her favorite color would have been.... but there have been so many things that have happened, it has to be more than coincidence, that we think Chloee's Favorite Color is Yellow.  So I wanted to do a page for her and her fav color :)

Credits: Haynay Designs

In Loving Memory, Remembrance Scrapbook Pages

These pages were made with a very special kit by a designer friend - Just Jaimee.
She made this digital scrapbooking kit in honor of me and my angel daughters.  It is called Just for Denise Never Forgotten by Just Jaimee
I feel so honored and thankful for this kit created especially for us and I am so thankful to have the perfect kit to scrapbook these memorial pages.  Scrapping my girls helps me keep them alive.  Thank you soooo much Jaimee!
The last page has the lyrics from the Josh Groban song To Where You Are - one of the songs that we played at Bree's funeral.

Chloee's a Gift, a Letter to Heaven, and My Grieving Bleeding Heart

These are my pages that I made this week.  They are all so very different.

The first is a page for Chloee called Chloee's a Gift.  It's so super sweet and bright and beautiful just like she is/was.  I love that photo of her!

The second page is a Letter to Heaven.  Sometimes I write to them and I wanted to do a page with a letter to heaven...

The last one is so dark.  I love it.  I wanted to do a page to show how much I hurt and the pain I've been through losing 2 daughters.  I feel it shows so much how much my heart has broken... and it answers the question of how could my heart ever be reparable with that kind of damage?...  it can't and it won't ever be... and it just feels good to express that even though it's painful.  And yes, I bought that heart with skeleton shirt so that I could cut the heart and wear it on days that I'm hurting...

Credits: Veronica Spriggs

More Pages for my Girls

I've been working on some pages for Diana's Creations new kit called The Smell of Flowers

The first page is called Bree Grows in Heaven :)  So cute and fun! in her little flower pot in heaven.  That's my favorite picture of her - it's the one on her headstone except it's in purple.

The second and third pages use the lyrics in a song that I love called Bubbly by Colbie Caillat.

Bree's page says "You make me smile, please stay for awhile."  I remember thinking that every day she was here just wanting her to stay... Until she got sooo sick and the seizures were so bad that we let her go.

Chloee's page says "Wherever you go, you're in my soul."  That's not exactly how the song goes, but that's how I say it in my head... 

Pages for my girls

I worked on some pages for my girls.
The first one is called Bree's Floral Heaven.  That pic of her is when she was just born.  You can just see how she fits in her daddy's hand - sooo tiny and beautiful.
The other one is called The first hole in my Heart.  That one is of Chloee.  It's a beautiful page but the reason I like it is because the heart actually has a hole in it - it's hard to tell but it's there.  I knew I wanted to use that heart on a page.  This page makes me happy - I love how it symbolizes the hole that she left in my heart.  And how I keep her in my heart even though my heart is not whole.

Credits: Fan fan rues des Anges

ChloeeBug Pages

My little ChloeeBug!  I was so happy to do these pages for her.  The body is actually Bree in her ladybug costume but I put Chloee's face in the photo because Bree is our BumbleBree and Chloee is our ChloeeBug.  Then I turned the red ladybug costumed pink - because how could I not?!!
It makes me happy to be able to do a page like this - she's been gone 3 years and I'm just happy to be able to "make" new photos and pages for her!  Love you Chloee Bug!

Credits: Pixel Perfect Designs

Growing in Heaven page for Chloee

A page for Chloee called Growing in Heaven!  We miss you Chloster.
I just love that little angel hanging from the vine!  I wonder what Chloee's doing in heaven...

Credits: Kristi W Designs

What is heaven like???

One of the things I love about digital scrapbooking is the ability it gives me to create a scene that doesn't exist.  Obviously like these pages above that I made for my girls...I tried to imagine what heaven is like. 
These pages use the lyrics from the song Angels in Heaven by Brandon Silveira that we played at Bree's funeral.

Heaven Needs Angels Lyrics By Brandon Silveira

Heaven needs Angels and hearts that are kind.
Sent for my baby, said “Angel, it’s time.
You come meet me.” But she completes me.
Children are a blessing from God to us all.
Sent down from heaven to keep faith in our hearts.
Sometimes we’re tested. It must be destined.
What do you do when God calls for you?
Where do you go to hide all of the pain.
Hold me tonight. I just want to be by your side.
Sometimes we think we could have done this and that.
Keep living our lives as we did in the past.
But it’s inevitable. This pain’s unbearable.
A short time on earth is all that you’ll miss,
For an eternity with God in complete happiness.
Please know you are missed. I hope you hear this.
What do you do when God calls for you?
Where do you go to hide all of the pain.
Hold me tonight. I just want to be by your side.
Heaven needs Angels and hearts that are kind.
Sent for my baby, said, “Angel, it’s time.”
A road down from heaven is the path which she came.
Returned back to home when God called her name.

Credits for Scrap pages: Designs by Moo