A Key Finding

Welcome back to the Happy Album page review. Today's entry is from March 2023. For spring break, Jim and I planned a trip somewhere warm — Key West! You don't get any further south on the US mainland (or so the marker on the island says). We flew into Fort Lauderdale and had dinner with a couple of our NPTC friends — Carl and Marla Raboi. The next day we explored Key Biscayne on a boat ride. Although I had been to this park before, I didn't get a chance to explore the water portion, which is the largest part of the park. Plus, this was Jim's first time at the park. The ride was terrific, and there was a small lighthouse to explore, too.

To create this layout, I turned to CM's project recipe for Happy Album #14. You can watch a video of it going together here. The papers are from a collection called "Sun Kissed," and those were made for the 12x12 pages. Or rather, the papers come in a 12x12 configuration. I just trimmed them to the appropriate size for these pages. It took me a while to get to that mental state. Partly, I wanted to use the papers created specifically for the Happy Album (I bought all 24 packs plus the accessory papers). Partly, I wanted to celebrate those tropical vibes, and the Sun Kissed collection was the best way to do that. 

Oops!

Hello, and welcome back to my Happy Album page review. Our next entry is August 2022. I held my first meetup to celebrate NPTC Meetup Across America (the inaugural event was in August, but we later changed it to June). No one had volunteered to host a Southwest meetup, so even though I lived in PA, I chose to host at Waco Mammoth in Texas. It was well attended, and we all had a good time. I had felt a little congested on the flight down, so Friday night I bought a COVID test and took it in the hotel room. Luckily, I was negative! So on Saturday we held the event, and we all went out to lunch afterward. On Sunday I flew home, and Jim commented on how scratchy my voice sounded. When we got home, I took another test, and unfortunately it came back positive! I felt horrible that I had exposed all those people, but it doesn't seem like it spread to anyone else!

I didn't follow a layout or sketch for this page. It goes back to an old technique that I haven't used in a bit called "wallpaper". The background papers are a nice print, and they didn't need much accentuation. I did mat the photos to give a little definition around the edges. The printed paper you see was made specifically for the Happy Albums. It was an accessory pack of papers that included some embellishments. 

Bonus post 4x4x4x4

Hello everyone! Tonight I'm posting a bonus layout because I played along with this week's Lasting Memories challenges. This layout is from a trip to the Women's Rights National Historical Park. In March 2022, I traveled to upstate New York for one of the NPTC meetups. While there, I visited this park and toured the museum. Below, you can see how I used the selfie stations without my usual assistant to take my photos. Do you think I look good as the President? Keep an eye out for another opportunity to take on that role soon! The other photos include Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, also major influences within the Women's Rights movement.

The Lasting Moments Challenge this week is #817--Just 4 Laughs.  This month they've been focusing on numbers, and the sketch needs to include 4 photos (I'm using the trading card of Harriet Tubman as a photo), 4 squares (2 large and 2 small), a 4-word title (which was the hardest for me to construct), and 4 embellishments. I used the CM's new kit, "The Grand Exhibit," made for museum trips. There were 4 of these wax seal stickers, and I liked how they added a little texture to the page even though they are flat.

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?

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.

This is Us

Welcome back to my New York blizzard trip in March 2022. Remember that we are visiting the Seward house (of Seward's Folly fame). The next space we visited was a large drawing room or living room. Off to one side was a massive world globe. Mr. Seward was a world traveler, so there are many Asian pieces on display as well. And more books! As if the library wasn't big enough. (Though are they ever?) 

This layout is based on the June 2026 CM Virtual Crop (Scroll to layout #3). I searched through my Heritage papers and, though not a religious topic, chose the Keeping the Faith collection. There were the perfect brown and slate papers that matched the photos' tone. I found one laser-cut border for the bottom of the left page. The problem of having only one was compounded by the fact that it was only available in brown. A brown color on the right would not have worked, as it would just blend in with the paper. Punches to the rescue! This Diamond Lattice punch was very similar in design, and I could use it to punch the slate paper remnant on the left page. The 4x6 card on the right side is from the Homestead collection, but that blue was a good match, and it fit the design perfectly. A few smaller embellishments from my stash completed the look.

Book it

Happy Friday, everyone. I'm going to temporarily change the blog posting frequency. As I have some personal issues to work around and not a large supply of completed National Park pages, I'm going to return to weekly posts on Fridays starting today. Hopefully, in a few months, I'll be able to resume more frequent posting. Thanks for understanding.

Welcome back to the Harriet Tubman meetup in March 2022. In this post, we look at the Seward family library. I thought the ceiling light fixture had the most interesting design. It sort of reminds me of the figureheads you find on old sailing ships. And look at all those books! I'm not repeating photos there — each one is on a separate wall. I could get lost in here easily.

This layout is designed from the CM Virtual Crop for May 2026. Scroll to sketch #4. The creator of the sketch said it was a good way to display all the different papers in a single pack. It's also a great way to use up scraps of a pack! The squares at the top are great display boxes for stickers, letters to make a title, or just another place to display the lovely patterns. I didn't have enough small photos for the bottom row (you COULD fit 10 photos in this layout!). Instead, I made each row's center a black cardstock box. One became a journal box, and one became a title location. Each has a set of photo corner stickers to add a bit more interest. And with that, I finished up another pack of paper--Our Moments. 

What Folly

Welcome back to the Harriet Tubman meetup in Auburn, NY, March 2022. While in the area, Melania, Allan, and I decided to tour the William Henry Seward House. That name might not mean much on its own, but he served as Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and was responsible for purchasing the land that became the state of Alaska. (Remember Seward's Folly now?) He was a good friend to Harriet Tubman, and both he and his wife used this house as part of the Underground Railroad. There was a time when getting over the Mason-Dixon line was not secure enough--runaway enslaved people needed to get to Canada for true freedom. His house includes many of his personal belongings and notes. You can see the entry, parlor, and front staircase below, along with a desk he was given. It had served for one of the signatories of the New York State Constitution.

This layout may look unusual. The left side is the back of an 8 1/2 x 11 pocket page. The front of that pocket holds my Junior Ranger booklet for the Underground Railroad (I completed that at the birthday party in the visitor center). The design for that side is loosely based on one of Noreen Smith's formulas for the CM Journal-size album (see layout #3).

The right side of the page is based on the CM Virtual Crop sketch from December 2025 (scroll to sketch #2). For the paper, I used an Advisor-only pack called Welcoming Woodblock Prints. Those papers came with matching embellishments, and the pack includes a 4x4 card. I fussy-cut the title cluster from the card so that it fit in the space better.

A Diamond in the Rough

Welcome back to the Harriet Tubman meetup in Auburn, NY, in March 2022. Not far from the cemetery where Harriet Tubman is buried is this old church. In the 1800s, Harriet Tubman helped found it and often worshiped here. It covered several different denominations. It lay dormant for many years before the NPS started renovating and restoring it. While we were there in 2022, the renovations had just begun, and you can see how badly it needed help. Preview of coming attractions — by 2026, the church will be back in fine shape and open for visitation! I will have to plan a trip back to see it again.

This layout is based on a sketch from the CM Virtual crop in May 2026 (scroll to sketch #2). I used a very old paper pack from CM called "Be Bold and Flourish". The bottom papers had large circles previously cut from the middle, so they worked well as the base, with the peach paper layered in the middle to cover the gaps. I had enough other scraps to be able to create the four 2" squares on the left and the photo mats. The butterflies on the left are cut from a sticker border that  I found in my stash. There's no real reason to put the butterflies there, I just wanted something in the squares, and I think they fit best!

A Grave Situation

Welcome back to the Harriet Tubman Birthday celebration in March 2022. One of our friends from the club helped Melania, Allan, and me to find Harriet Tubman's grave in the very large cemetery in town. It was a snowy walk, but we wanted to pay our respects to her. There are a few other famous people buried here, but we'll save them for a warmer day!

This layout is based on one of the sketches from the April 2026 CM Virtual Crop. Scroll to sketch #3. I thought the wavy borders at the bottom worked well for a cemetery full of snow-covered tombstones. I chose an older pack, Winds of Winter, to complete the layout. The papers are not your traditional winter decor (it's more about rain than snow). This paper pack was originally made for our Australian advisors, but they chose to re-release it here in the US the following year. Since the papers were a little on the muted side, I chose a nice royal blue cardstock to serve as the base.