Freaky Friday Challenge and Free Collage Templates

Early in the year I blogged about being inspired by challenges...I am going to super charge my scrapping this month by participating in the Freaky Friday Challenge at AC Bailey EVERY Friday in November. The first one is using left over scraps (in honor of left overs around the holidays). I created the photo collages tonight for the pages and will print and complete the layout tomorrow. Here are the two collages for the layout...I used free templates from Scrapbooks Etc. The blank boxes on the first page will have a journaling block instead of photos...cuz getting Erica's ears pierced has such a great story with it (story below)! I hope you'll come back tomorrow for the finished layout...and check out the challenge at AC Bailey each Friday, too!

Cecile is Erica's God Mother and has asked for a year to be the one to take Erica to get her ears pierced. Erica has been scared and hasn't wanted to...so Cecile has patiently waited. This year, one of Erica's birthday presents was a Tiara dress-up set for four. With it was some cheap clip-on earrings. Of course Erica had to play with them, but she always complained that they hurt. I told her that clip-ons hurt ALL the time and pierced ears only hurt for a second when you first get them. After hearing that she decided she was ready to have her ears pierce.

We waited for 20-30 minutes for Erica's turn at the store. While waiting, Erica watched a girl who flinched (she didn't cry or gasp or anything...just flinched) and that was enough to scare her out of it. So I told her, "OK, you can keep wearing clip-ons that hurt all the time." She was initially OK with that...and then Cecile told her she'd buy her two more earrings of her choice if she got her ears pierced that day. Ian (Cecile's son who's just a few weeks younger than Erica) picked out one pair and Erica picked out a set with several pairs. Whew...SAVE!!! She was still scared, but wanted to get them done. I was a bit nervous that they weren't going to pierce them both at the same time...I thought we'd end up walking out with one pierced ear (ha!). When it came time for the actual piercing, all Erica said was "OW" in a very matter-of-fact voice...not a loud voice, not a whiny voice, just very neutral.

And of course, within a minute of having them done, she was all smiles and the pain was gone. We celebrated with Dairy Queen afterward...what a great day!!!