Look, up in the sky!

Welcome back to perusing my Happy Album layouts. There was a 6-month gap where the layouts had no national park affiliation, so we are now up to July 2022! As you can imagine, you can't do a July layout without fireworks! But the right side shows my annual trip to the NPTC convention, which was hosted in St. Louis. The Gateway Arch was my 150th park. We also visited several other locations around the St. Louis area, including the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. I never knew that after his presidency he traveled globally. The children's area of the visitor center had some GREAT costumes reflecting the many locations he visited. I couldn't help myself—I had to try them all on.

I created this layout based on the CM Happy Album Project Recipe for Kit #7. You can watch a video of the kit construction here. I used different papers as I wanted the blue and green tones to match my photos. I added a second photo to the right-hand page, and it improves the overall layout. It also provides a bit of space in the corners for some journaling.

Home and Away for the Holidays

Welcome back to my review of my Happy Album layouts. This set of pages is from December 2021. My friend Robbie (in the photo, she's second from the right in the green sweater) traveled from her home in New Mexico back to her hometown of Boston. Since she would be there for a couple of weeks, she decided to host a meetup between Christmas and New Year's. The venue was Springfield Armory, and I covered the trip beginning in May of this year. Click on the Springfield link below to see the full 12x12 pages.

This layout ALSO uses CM's project recipe for kit #9 (just like the apple-picking layout from 2 weeks ago). You can see that switching up the papers drastically changes the layout! On the left page, I chose one of the frame embellishments from a kit as a journal box (I would rarely get a photo that small to use as a frame). On the right side, I used some of the sticker pages in the kits to add what look like banners and washi tape. No, those are all just stickers! 

One thing I struggle with in the Happy Album is the shortage of space. I've started using the Peekaboo pockets to add more photos to the layout (both of these pages have Peekaboo pockets). Since the album is only 12 months, I am not too worried about making it too thick.

Wonder-fall

Welcome back to my Happy Album layout collection. The next entry is for October 2021. You can see the right side of the layout with our trip to the Poconos area. My friend Mel lives near there, so she joined us for a rail-bike ride (which was extremely fun; definitely try it). We also visited Dingman's Falls, part of the Middle Delaware NSRR. This is a quick boardwalk hike, and the falls are impressive! I covered that trip in my blogs from November 2025. Click on one of the park names below to see those posts.

This layout is based on one of the CM Happy Album Planner project recipes. You can watch a video of someone assembling Kit #12 here. If you would like a copy of the project recipe, let me know, and I'll email it to you. This recipe includes 3 different pages. Kit #12 was to be the last one in the album, so they provided an idea for the end page. That's what I used for the left side of the layout. The right side is similar to their sketch — and super easy. It's just a 4" strip of paper mounted under the photos.

The papers were from a different kit. CM provided monthly kits, and there was also a Happy Album paper pack with neutral tones. That helped when I was looking for something to set the Poconos photos against. 

A Little Taste of Fall

Welcome back to the perusal of my Happy Album pages! This layout is from September 2021. The left page is a photo from our trip to Hopewell Furnace during their apple-picking event. There is a small orchard there with heritage fruit, and when the season starts, people swarm to pick the apples. You pay by the pound, but that price includes use of the bucket and the apple picker that you see in Jim's hand. You previously saw the event in this blog post.

I based this layout on the CM Happy Album Kit #9 project recipe. You can watch a video of this kit being assembled here. I actually used the kit and papers EXACTLY as they instructed. How often does that happen? I have the PDFs of the Happy Album project recipes. If you would like a copy, let me know, and I'll email it to you.

A Little Puzzling

Welcome back to the Happy Album Review! Today's page looks at the August 2021 layout (or half of it). I chose to only show the right-hand page, as this is one of the photos that was featured on a 12x12" page (see this blog post for the full layout). I am assembling a National Parks puzzle with Murphy's assistance. 

I think I used the Happy Album kit layout #17 directions, but not those specific papers. Just like the Project Recipes, you can reuse the ideas with whatever papers you have for an infinite number of uses! The kits include the small Washi-tape-looking stickers as well as banner stickers. It's meant to put the page together quickly, possibly even while traveling.

Small but Mighty

Welcome back to the blog! Before we continue with the regular 12x12 chronology pages, I thought I would take a minute to highlight my "Happy Album" or "Scrap Journal" sized pages. Part of the reason is that I haven't shared these with you before, and we have about 5 years' worth of pages to go through. The other reason is that I've taken a new job and have moved from Pennsylvania to Minnesota. As I had to pack up the scrap room, there isn't as much opportunity to prepare pages for showing!

The first set of pages I want to highlight is from July 2021. My albums feature a 2-page monthly calendar where I enter the month's highlights, followed by a 2-page layout with a few select photos of those events. In July 2021, I attended the NPTC convention in Washington, DC. Those photos are on the right side of the layout. You'll see me riding the Glen Echo Park carousel and our group photo at Belmont Paul Women's Equality National Monument.

If the photos look familiar, it's because I have already shared the 2021 convention trip. Check out this post on Belmont Paul and this one on the Glen Echo Park carousel. That's probably the best way to see the difference in size of these pages. Each Happy Album (as it was originally called) page is 6 3/4" wide x 10" long. I based this layout on a sketch I saved from the CM Blog (scroll to "traditional").

CM had originally made "kits" for the Happy Album. Each contained a few sheets of paper sized to the page, plus some stickers or other embellishments. This is Kit #2, which included the tropical pattern for the left beach page. The right is similarly colored but less "beachy". The coral cardstock mats help tie the 2 halves together.

50-States Album--Montana

The last entry for the updated 50-states album pages is about my most recent visit. As I put these photos in the album, I started to leaf through the completed pages. That's when I realized I hadn't posted the other pages! 

In early June 2026, I had a conference in Seattle. I decided it would be the perfect chance to take the Empire Builder Amtrak train to Glacier National Park, since it stops just outside the park entrance. You'll see much more about this trip in a few years when we reach that part of my chronology. For now, here are the photos of us at the entrance sign, the iconic Red Buses, and a view of the mountains from Two Medicine Lake, where we took a boat trip with other NPTC folks.

I made this page by copying an idea from the Creative Memories blog. One of the papers in the Explorer collection had a map of the 50 states. I chose to highlight Montana rather than Minnesota, and I think the combination of lakes and mountains worked perfectly for the photos I ended up using. Can you tell I mixed 2 sets of sticker letters to spell out Montana?