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CM had originally made "kits" for the Happy Album.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?

50 States Album--Mississippi

Hello, and welcome back to my review of the additional 50-state album pages. The next updated page in my 50-states album is for Mississippi. This was another stop on the summer 2025 road trip. You're going to love it when I get to that trip in the blog. I hit 15 new national park units and 5 new state capitols! While in Mississippi, I revisited the Natchez Trace Parkway. There is a little of the actual path behind one of the stamp locations along the trail — a lovely arts-and-crafts store. The photo below was taken there. I tried to get a Welcome sign for each state I visited as well.

I cannot locate inspiration for this page. I may have associated Mississippi with the floral-pattern paper and added the cluster in the upper-left corner. I did the state title a little differently for this page. Instead of having the Cricut cut the letters, I used a pen to have the Cricut machine write the state name, then cut around it. The state shape was also made on the Cricut. It's there, though I see that I buried it under the other embellishments.

50-states album--Kentucky

Welcome back to the blog. We are continuing with my 50-state album review. I completed the Kentucky page when I first made the 50-states album. However, since the original page featured only photos of the state capitol and Churchill Downs, I didn't think it fit with the National Park blog content. Now that I've added a photo of Mammoth Cave, I can share it! Mammoth Cave was another part of the Summer 2025 road trip.

This page is part of a layout I bought from Scrapbook Concierge. I kept the horse page for another use, but since I had actually visited Churchill Downs, I wanted to use the spires on the page. Not sure what I did with the word "Derby," as I didn't need it for this page.

50-states album--Kansas

Welcome back to the blog. We are continuing with my 50-state album pages that you haven't seen yet. This week I'm showing you the Kansas page. I'm not sure how I managed to present all the photos from my visit to Kansas in May 2021 without showing this page, but I did! If you want to see the rest of the visit, click on the Nicodemus or Fort Larned links at the bottom of the post.

This layout is based on another pin I saved from Scrapbook.com. I had the wheat and sunflower papers in my stash, so it was quite easy to put the layout together. The grain elevator sticker is from a Canadian sticker pack from Old CM, but it gave me the red barn feel, so I added it. I'm not sure where the small red-and-white flowers came from, but they might have been on the same sticker page. The state flower for Kansas is the sunflower, and the bottom paper covers that pretty well.

50-states Album--Arkansas

Before we continue with my chronological National Park visits, I wanted to spend a few weeks revisiting some of the pages in my 50-States album. I added photos over the last year for most of these, but I forgot to show you what I made. The first page is Arkansas. I visited this state for the first time in July 2025, when Hot Springs National Park hosted the NPTC convention. In addition to the park photo, I included a shot of the state sign that I saw crossing a bridge into the state. Don't tell my mother that I took that while driving 😊. The final photo is of the state Capitol building. 

You'll remember that I created the pages for this album several years ago. It's nice to complete a page quickly by adding the photos. It literally takes minutes to finish a page! I based this page on a pin I saved from the Scrapbook.com gallery. You can see the original here. I created the flowers and the Arkansas flag on the Cricut. The flag was surprisingly easy to create, even with some tiny letters and stars. The small branches above are supposed to be the Arkansas state flower (Apple Blossoms). I think they look a little more like cherry blossoms, but the end result worked!

Fine Dining

Welcome back to the Seward House in upstate New York. Our last stop in the house was the dining room. I LOVE the lavish dining sets. Painted plates with a variety of patterns, ivory-handled servingware, and that gorgeous silver candelabra. What's most interesting about the table is the small vial you see on the right side of the layout. Supposedly, it has a few grains of tea that were taken from the Boston Tea Party. Now, having attended the reenactment of that event, I saw a lot of discussion about how it was frowned upon and that people were severely punished for attempting to remove any tea by secreting it on their persons. From a legal point of view, it would have also been a problem. Technically, anything that came ashore would have had to have been taxed. 

This layout is based on Sketch #4 from the CM Virtual Crop in June 2026. Instead of choosing a collection for the papers, I turned to Creative Memories' new supplement called Molten Lava paper. One side of each of these papers has an almost mirror-like quality, but with a subtle overall pattern. I used both gold and silver Molten Lava for the large squares. The base pages are dark blue shimmer cardstock (though the paper is so light I hesitate to call it cardstock). The small border elements are made with the gold molten lava paper and white shimmer paper. I thought those tones would match the elegance of the dinnerware, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. For embellishments, I found a few remaining stickers from a Blue and Gold collection from many years ago. The title "Timeless Treasures" seemed appropriate. I chose to remove the letters from the hexagonal border and cut the strip to add a bit more interest to the open areas of each page. Another border was placed along the bottom of the layout's left side. I found a simple journal card that seemed to fit the theme as well.