Quick and Easy Collage Cover Page for St. Louis Road Trip

Yesterday I began working on a few photos from a quick road trip my son and I took in August to see the total solar eclipse. We drove to St. Louis, stayed overnight, and saw the eclipse the next day. I had chosen to use the Simple Stories 24/7 collection for these photos since I liked the look of it and color scheme, and it was a set of supplies I had on hand! One of the sheets included in the pack was a pre-printed photo collage. This page was perfect for a cover and ended up being one of the quickest and easiest covers I've made. Since the page already had the frames and inset patterns, all I really needed to do was add a few photos, a couple of tags, and label them.

I chose one small photo for each of the places we visited, one additional photo of my son and I, and decided to use two frames for labeling our trip. I trimmed down the photos to fit and added some lined paper to one of the frames to add the journaling. 

Although the purpose of this trip was to see the eclipse, we stopped at several other places along the way, so I wanted to be sure to include those as well. But the highlight really was the eclipse. 

There were a few frames in which I didn't really like the graphic that was there, so I covered it with a cut-down journaling card or sticker over the top.

This layout took about 15 minutes and was really fun to make. I loved the clean and simple look of this page, and the idea of this mosaic-grid-collage style page inspired me to try to incorporate this look into the entire album.

Here is the final layout:

Thanks so much for looking!

Mountain Biking in Moab Scrapbook Page

This summer we took a trip to Utah to visit their National Parks and Monuments, and while we were there we spent 3 days in Moab. Since we like to mountain bike, we thought it would be fun to try mountain biking there. So we booked a tour at Dead Horse Point State Park, whose trail system is well known out there for mountain biking. The trail was hard. A lot harder than we thought it would be. But it was quite the adventure and we did have fun. Although I wasn't able to stop often or take many photos on the trail since we were with a group, I was able to get a few good shots before and after the ride, and at one of the overlooks we stopped at.

Scrapping these photos was so much fun! I had been keeping an eye out for any biking themed papers or supplies for a while, and had picked up a few things that I wanted to use including some metal gears, wooden cut-outs and bike themed paper. I was able to find paper with bikes, gears, and tire tracks that fit the color scheme I wanted to use.

The pattern in the yellow paper reminded me of the inner spokes of a bike tire.

The color scheme I used on here - kraft, grey, blue, yellow, and white, I used throughout the Utah albums. I was able to mix and match papers that were not bike themed with those that were to keep the same feel as the rest of the layouts in the book. These layouts also have some black accents in the tire tracks.   

We stopped at one scenic overlook in the park where we were able to do some photos, which turned out really nice. Our tour guide even took family photos of us all together.

I tried to add the wooden and metal bike related accents where I could on the pages, and I was able to download a few Moab pieces of clip art and printed those out to use as well. I used several wooden cut-outs on these laytouts, which I haven't used a lot before. I wasn't really sure where to place them, but ended up layering some of them on journaling cards, and I really liked the look of that.

Here are the final layouts, thanks for looking!

White House Scrapbook Page - Washington, DC

Our first stop on our DC trip was to walk from our hotel down to the White House and have the kids get their first look at the White House! On the way we walked through Lafayette Square and approached the White House directly from the front for the best view!

After viewing the White House from the front, we walked around to the back side to see the back lawn and also the Ellipse, where we saw the National Christmas Tree. The Ellipse was blocked off with barriers due to the 4th of July, so we were unable to walk through but could still see across.

Since we were unable to get a White House tour, we did the next best thing and went to the White House Visitor Center. This very impressive visitor center had tons of history on the White House, a great interactive model with a virtual tour, and lots of artifacts from the presidents who lived in the White House. We all really enjoyed this visitor center and I would definitely recommend it.

The visitor center offers a Junior Ranger badge, so the boys both got busy on working on their booklets, and after completing a few pages, watching a short movie, and talking to the Ranger, they received their badges.

The supplies that I used for these pages were a combination of several different kits and paper collections that I had been collecting and discussed here. The color scheme for the entire DC album was based off of grey, white, tan, and black, with different accent colors mixed in on various pages. The only memorabilia included on these pages is the White House brochure and the Passport Stamps we picked up at the Visitor Center. I also included a photo of the Junior Ranger Badge.

Here are the final four layouts:

Thanks for looking! Our next stop iss the Washington Monument.

Bear Country USA Scrapbook Page

Our very last stop in South Dakota was to drive through Bear Country USA in Rapid City on our way toward the interstate. It was something we had planned to do, as we had driven past it last year but didn't have time to stop, so it was on the list for things to see this year. Unfortunately Mother Nature had her own plans for the last day of our vacation, and we ended up cutting the day short and heading home due to poor weather. But we swung through Bear Country first.

As we entered the park, we began the drive-thru portion and saw elk, wolves, mountain goats, and big horn sheep. As we continued further, we entered the bear section and couldn't believe how many bears there were. Since we arrived pretty early in the morning, it was feeding time! We watched the truck toss out the food to the bears and were able to watch them eat. All of the bears were clustered really close to the road since that is there the food was. After the drive, there is another section of the park where you can walk through and see other animals.

I created 2 layouts for Bear Country and wanted to include photos of as many animals as I could, but also include the map of the park. I ended up doing a collage of the small animal photos to fit in as many as I could. I also created one bear page since we spent the majority of our time there looking at the bears. 

This is the final scrapbook layout from our South Dakota trip. Please click here to see the complete album. Thanks for looking!

Harney Peak Trail Scrapbook Page

We saw a lot of great stuff in South Dakota last summer, but our best experience was hiking the Harney Peak Trail in Custer State Park. It was the most challenging hike we've ever completed as a family, and it was an amazing experience. I loved Harney Peak so much I made 11 2-page layouts for it in the scrapbook. Yes, 22 pages of just this hike. There's a lot to talk about and look at!

We made the decision the day before that we would hike Harney Peak. It was a question mark up until then, but after we easily hiked the 3 mile Sunday Gulch Trail which had a fair amount of uphill terrain, we decided we could do the 6 to 7 mile hike up the mountain. We planned to leave early the next morning, as they were calling for rain in the afternoon and we didn't want to risk getting stuck up there in a thunderstorm.

We hit the trail at 7:30am, it was a crisp and clear morning, and very quiet on the trail. Admittedly I was a little worried about this hike - how we would all feel, how strenuous it would be, and if we'd make it to the top. From the trailhead, we could not see the peak and we really didn't know where it was. So we just started hiking, and followed the signs for Trail #9.

After hiking for about 30 minutes and gradually gaining a little elevation, we rounded a bend and off in the distance we could see it. What looked like a little stone hut on the top of a mountain REALLY FAR AWAY and REALLY HIGH UP. My heart sank a little and I really started to have my doubts. But we kept hiking onward.

It was very still and quiet on the trail, we all spread out and didn't talk much. The boys trailed behind us, picking up pine cones from the Ponderosa Pines and peeling them apart - they made up some kind of game doing this and entertained themselves for quite a while.

The main section of the hike was very easy, the uphills were very gradual and you didn't really feel the elevation changing. There was always so much to look at that we just kept hiking without really noticing how high we were getting. As we started to near the peak, we could feel the terrain changing and the inclines becoming more steep. We knew we were getting closer. From here, the real hike began. A lot of uphill, and a lot of stone stairs. There were some rest areas and overlooks along the way that we pulled off into to catch our breath. It just seemed to keep going and going upward, and we still couldn't see the top or the lookout tower. 

But the higher we climbed the more excited we got - we could see for miles and knew we were getting up there, we knew it was close. We finally reached a sign for a trail that branched off that said "Harney Peak Lookout" and made our way down that trail. As we rounded a bend, we could begin to see the top of the stone tower emerge from the trees. After lots of stone steps upward, we reached the tower...we had made it! 

At the peak it was extremely windy, and there was no one else at the tower with us. We explored the tower a bit, took some photos and video, and ate some granola bars we brought along. The kids ran around and explored the tower, while I mostly took pictures and tried to capture it all on camera. We hung out at the tower for about a half hour, then decided to start making our way back down. It took us just under 2 hours to hike up, so we figured the hike down would be a little shorter. We were all a little sad to leave the peak. 

The hike down went quickly and the trail was getting much busier, we probably passed over 60 people heading up. We were the 4th group to make it up that morning, as we passed only 3 others coming down on our way up. It was great to see so many people out there hiking  - people of all ages and abilities. We practically raced down the mountain, as the kids needed to use the bathroom, and we made it back down in a little over an hour. Our full hike was 3.5 hours to cover the almost 7 miles.

I took a lot of photos on this hike and decided early on that I wasn't going to skimp on the scrapbook pages for this one - all the photos I wanted were going in! So I ended up with what might be considered an exorbitant amount of scrapbook pages for this hike, but I know we'll look back at this hike often. So here they are, all 11 layouts:

Thanks for looking! If you are ever in Custer State Park - do this hike! You won't regret it.

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site Scrapbook Page

While we were visiting the Badlands, we also visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, which is literally right across the highway from the entrance to the Badlands. This was one of the more complex national sites we have visited, as it is spread out among 3 different locations, and getting tickets for the tour can be tricky. So we got up early and made our way to the visitor center to get in line!

We arrived at 7:30am and the line was already long for tickets for the tour, but when the visitor center opened at 8am we were lucky enough to get a tour later in the afternoon - we were actually the last tour of the day! Each tour only takes 6 people so we got lucky that day! We first toured the visitor center, and my son worked on his Junior Ranger booklet and got his badge. We had about 5 hours until our tour, so we went back into the Badlands again and hiked some more, got lunch, and drove the scenic loop again. We left there and headed over to the first part of the tour, the Missile Silo, and looked at that on our own and then went to the Launch Facility for our guided tour.

Here they took us down into the actual underground Launch Facility and we learned about the missile program during the cold war. Hundreds of these underground bunkers were scattered all over the midwest. We learned about the men who lived and worked here, and got to see the control panel where they would have launched a nuclear missile if the order would have been given. It was a very interesting tour.

I created 3 2-page layouts for this site (one page for each of the sites, and also used the park guide, passport stamps, and a photograph of our tour ticket (we had to hand in the tickets so I always try to take a photo of the ticket beforehand):

For these layouts, I tried to choose papers from the collection that seemed to fit a little better with the theme of the site - stars, arrows, and triangles - they look a little bit like rockets! 

After finishing up the tour, we headed back to Wall, SD, where we stayed for our last night before heading over to Custer State Park.