Count Your Blessings -- Kathy McElfresh

What a great challenge we have going this month! It's always fun to scraplift Kirei Baldwin and the one we're lifting this month is absolutely gorgeous. I love the paper tearing and distressing and the white border she left around the page. It's a perfect page to highlight her wintry photos.

I decided to go with an autumn page and chose Paige Evans "Garden Shoppe" because of the cozy and homey feel, a perfect match for the coziness of the November Fox Box -- both the Perspextives and the icons on the Paper Snips.

I started by distressing the floral paper strips and mounting them on thick foam tape -- and I ended up tearing one to make it a better "border" to the dark green polka dot paper. Once I'd decided where my photo and clusters would be I used Stencil 50, a lovely "skinny chevron" design, to brush on a bit of Distress Oxide ink creating a "roadway" for my trucks between the lower clusters.

Before I'd decided where my title would go I built the lower right cluster starting with fussycut flowers and adding the "home sweet home" circle, the striped socks and the lantern from Paper Snips 14, full of cozy images and sentiments. I added in truck, leaf and heart stickers from Garden Shoppe and tucked in a cute pink pumpkin Perspective from last year's October Fox Box.

Continuing with the "truck" theme, I built the floral cluster below the photo specifically to accommodate the adorable pumpkin truck in the Fox Box. I just LOVE the etching that defines the details on the vehicle and the seams in the pumpkins!

I added two of the icon banners below the photo and between the florals and the leaf stickers from Garden Shoppe. We'd all had hot cider that day at the pumpkin patch and of course, there were SO many pumpkins everywhere, even some that the kiddos didn't mind posing with! And the "family" word strip from the Paper Snips page is one of my favorite parts of the layout because it's so simple and yet sums up the entire point of the page.

This upper left cluster was such fun to build! I wanted it to wrap around that corner of the photo so I started with the florals (of course!) and saw the perfect spot for the pumpkin jumper (aka sweater) which reflected the vibrant orange in the photo as well as the sweaters the girls are wearing. I tucked in another lantern and a cute owl from the Fox Box, along with a couple stickers from Garden Shoppe. And the "BEST DAY" word strip from the Paper Snips sheet is perfect for the memories of this day.

Although its placement was the last decision I made about the page, this title piece -- also from the Fox Box was the inspiration for everything -- the photo, the story, the autumn feel. I've felt very sentimental lately about how quickly the kiddos have grown and how soon they'll be embarking on their next adventures -- especially since Barrett just played his last high school football game. Out of the sadness and sentimentality has come a feeling of gratitude and a reflection on how fortunate we were to be so close-by, able to watch them grown up before our very eyes. So yeah, I look at this page and I do indeed count my blessings.

We'd love to see your version of this month's challenge so be sure to stop by our Facebook Group and upload your entry before November 30 for a chance to win an awesome discount! Happy Scrapping!!