I'm back!!!

Hello and my apologies---
The last few weeks at school have been absolutely insane and my craft room has not gotten a lot of use! I ended up working a full day today (I usually work part-time) and so tonight wasn't looking good either.  But I had ingredients for tuna casserole and all of a sudden the stars aligned and I was able to complete one page (Can you hear the hallelujah chorus swelling in the background?  Can you?).  I can always turn to Sketchy Thursdays for inspiration (see their sketch in a sec).
Here's my page, of Lu's first day of kindergarten:

The challenge called for this layout:

However, they added a twist---you had to take inspiration from two of the following:  juicy fruits, cool popsicles, and patriotic treats.  May I just say WHAT THE HECK?  Well, I gave it my best shot---especially since my pictures were not summer pictures.  When I think of fruit, the first thing that popped in my head was citrus.  So if you look closely, you will see that I stickled sections of citrus in some of the circles on the paper, and added some bling to the center.  Whew, one inspiration down.

I was totally not getting anything from the cool popsicles, even though my daughters and I are going nuts for EDY's coconut fruit bars (imagine coconut cream pie on a popsicle stick) so I figured I was stuck with patriotic treats.  Even though the picture showed cupcakes, when I think of 'patriotic treats' I think fireworks and stars.  So that led me to silver---and the silveriest material I have is this meshy stuff that I cut flowers out of.  I made little "flags" with pins and chipboard stars.  I placed them along the left side of the pictures.

One other cool thing---I read about this in a magazine a long time ago and have used it several times...use a foam brush dipped in paint and run it along the edges of your pictures.  A quick and unique way to 'mat' your pictures.

There you have it!  Thanks for looking.