Three months to go!

I have to admit that I saw a picture like this in a baby photography book, and that's where I stole the idea. I loved it! The hardest part about taking this picture myself wasn't the aiming of the camera, but covering the rest of me up so that I was decent! I used a black sheet behind us, brought in an extra light, and opened the blinds a little (as much as I dared!) for some natural light.
Wow! So much has happened in a week! I have been using the Cm program, Storybook plus and LOVING it! I can't believe all the stuff you can do with this program, it blows every other kind of digital album away! I am almost done with my album, including journaling. I'm just trying to get the Disney princess embellishments I've had trouble ordering. I have done just a page or 2 of Jae's traditional album this week, even though I did leave everything out and plan to do the same in the upcoming week. I actually preferred to do the digital album!!! It was just so fun figuring out all the features! You can add pictures and text anywhere you want to, which is pretty awesome! You can mat your pictures, use so many fonts, enlarge your pictures and text, even make tags, shadow, change texture (just by sight, it won't actually feel different), and so many other things I won't even get into here! I do have to say that because of all the options, it can take quite a while to do an album, although it always has taken me a long time to do a CM digital album, probably because there are so many more options than the other guys. UPDATE! When I wrote this last night, I hadn't finished the album yet, and now I have. I went to the Cm website and found my consultant's website and ordered the princess embellishments. Let me tell you , it was pretty easy! This is just a download, so it cost me just $4, no shipping. I could use it immediately, too, and believe me, I did! It was awesome! I had so much fun, and stayed up til 3am. UG! But I couldn't tear myself away. I reviewed my book carefully, and it's a good thing, too because I had some things that were too close to the edges and needed adjusted. I kept a scrap piece of paper and wrote down the page numbers and what needed switched and then saved all that for today. So, I ordered my album at last, and it is probably the best one I have ever done. (updated on Oct. 5th)

Anyway, I still have found plenty of time to do all the other things in my life, including hobbies! I started on the back of my daughter's quilt and I am making headway with the baby blanket, probably because I tried to work on it for an hour a day this past week. I like knitting because you can do it while watching TV. I also ordered a bunch more pictures, and am just waiting for them to come in and swallow me up! Seriously, I am so behind I don't even want to try and figure out how much I have to average a day in order to be done by my due date!
Scrap Happy!

Digital scrapbooking

Lately, I have been doing some digital scrapbooking. Not that this is entirely new to me, but I have learned several things lately, and thought I would share. First, as you know, I am a huge supporter of Creative Memories. I had made several albums using them, and was always happy with the free program. However, I had some problems with the last book I made, and couldn't get it to print. Finally, and this is over a year after I had completed the album, I found a number for CM, called and received another number for the tech department, sat on hold for about 7 minutes and finally talked with a wonderful guy, who understood my uncomputer saavy way of saying things and was able to help me answer all of my questions! Now, in the meantime, I had purchased the new Storybook Creator plus from Creative Memories and found it harder to use than the original FREE version that you can download by going to Creative Memories website. In fact, I became so frustrated one day, that I felt sick and had to give up on it! I decided to try another company! ( I know, *GASP!*) But Picabo turned out to be a big pain as well! I had to download all this stuff, and then I ended up not wanting it. It was a huge waste of time. I always get my pictures printed from Snapfish, an online company, and I'm usually pretty happy with them. I order them and they get shipped right to me. I like that. So, I noticed they had a sale on scrapbooks and decided to make one of my family summer. We saw so many family members this summer, and I wanted a book for myself to remember it. One night, when I had insomnia from my pregnancy, I went on and completed a whole album! I found it very easy to use. it was very simple, there just weren't a whole lot of options for backgrounds and layouts. But when I ordered it and got 40 % off, I was excited. (You have to watch for the sales, they aren't going on all the time. But you can always create a book and wait for a sale. Just be aware that although they do not tell you you can only order one at the sale price, that has been the case, at least I've heard that is. I personally didn't try it.) The book came so quickly that I was amazed. Compared to CM, it was much quicker. I was pleased with the result, although the pictures are a bit grainy, you get what you pay for! After receiving this album, I really wanted to get back to CM, if only so that I could return the product if I couldn't get it to work. After calling the CM tech, finally geting to order the album I'd made for my cousin a year ago, and having it shipped straight to him, (that was a nice feature and saved me paying shipping twice) I started to work on an album for Princess Camp. One thing I like about CM over the others is that I have more room for writing. I never felt like I had enough room for journalling with Snapfish, and often it really wrote small, too small to read on the computer screen. Sometimes you can enlarge your font, but not always, and at times you lose a lot of the words by enlarging it as much as you'd like.
So, that's where I am now, creating an album about Princess Camp via CM. I like that I'll be able to send my album to the other princess' moms when it's done. Then they can decide if they want one, too! I still have to figure out how to add on the second disk from the Storybook plus, but I'm getting there!

As for traditional scrapbooking, I decided to take over my daughter's desk for a bit and leave my scrapbooking supplies out. I have done a few pages and my problem there is that I have laid out all the pages, but have consistantly forgotten things I want to include (8x10 pictures, a program...) and end up having to reconfigure everything. Fortunately, I do this on paper with a pencil so that I can fix my mistakes. Whew! It's hard feeling this much pressure to get things done before the baby arrives! I haven't even mentioned the quilt and afgan I'm making!
Scrap Happy, I know I am!

capturing the little things

My daughter learned to tie her shoes last year, but since she didn't HAVE shoes that have laces, she had to learn on a shoe that was too small to wear. This is fine, but it really would have been strange if I had taken a picture of her tying a shoe that wasn't even on her foot. This soccer season, when she pulled out her cleats and started tying, I had to run in and grab the camera! I am impressed with all of the little things. When she learns to snap, does math in her head, suddenly shoots up an inch and 1/2 seemingly overnight, and says her classic sayings, the most recent one being, "way six" meaning that this is something that is perfect for 6 year olds.
A lot of these things are impossible to capture in a picture, so I write them down, and make mention of them in her album. But when I remember to capture the little things that I can take a picture of, I'll hold on to those memories forever. So, by all means capture the high school graduation in meaningful pictures, but don't forget to take a picture of that first lost tooth as well. One last thing; just as I didn't get a picture of the first time she tied her shoe, it's OK to get a picture a little late, even months later. It's still just as exciting!

Winners!

The team you see above and below is my husband's softball team. Sure, a lot of the faces have changed, not that you can tell because the first picture is taken from so far away!!! I can't be sure that I could even pick him out from the group! But as the team has gotten better, so has my photography! (and those uniforms!)
This lower pic was taken this year, just after the guys won second place in the top division for the tournament, and had won first in the top division for the overall season. (I'm explaining the 2 trophies) Getting close up shows you how dirty they got this day, as well as their tired faces. It shows their personalities a little bit and the comraderie they share. Yeah, I'm proud to be a fan, and thankful that I got this shot, because although this group of guys were a little bit easier to arrange and photograph than a group of kids, they didn't stay in place too long!

Scrap happy!

Soften that picture

I was talking with a wedding photographer 10 years ago and I learned something interesting that I didn't try until last year! He said if you put a little tulle in front of your picture, it will soften it just enough. The picture below was taken this way.Another year passed, and my cousin came to visit. I don't know what you do to entertain your out of state company, but we spent a good bit of our visit playing with our cameras! I showed him the tulle and he thought it was the greatest thing.
He took several pictures of me with the tulle in front of his lens, and they pretty much turned out like this.
He has a nicer camera, so that could be why they were so cloudy. Actually, the one above is one of the best he was able to get.
Here he is showing my daughter the pictures. I took some as well, and you can see the tulle in the one below. It was blowing in the wind and is doubled in that corner.

I love the way it softens pictures and just thought I'd share my hint with all of you. Wouldn't this be a nice touch for baby pictures?

Scrap happy!

Fun with Paper! part 2

It's no secret that I like to use paper to make personalized embellishments, but here are some more ideas in how I used paper on our Disney Cruise album. Above, I used a mickey punch and gave him a pirate look to match our pirate night page.
Matting your pics (especially your favorite one on the page) is great, but mat with a little flare sometimes! Matting this picture the way I did, and including the letter stickers underneath was all I needed to decorate this page.
I love this page! I filled in the blank spots with pink and later journalled on it. It is so much easier to journal on pink than black.
Once again, I used to paper to make a mat/ journal block for this page. I also used 2 stickers to "make it my own". A title sticker on top of a regular sun sticker. I used letter stickers to spell out Grand Cayman. Love the result!

Scrapbooking is so much fun! School is starting, along with a miriad of other activities, so I won't have the space nor the time to get a lot of scrapping done for awhile. But I continue taking pictures and thinking, "How can I take this picture so that it looks unique?" Still trying to figure that out. But, it's fun!

Scrap Happy!

Reflections

I have been scrapping like crazy and I have finished from Christmas thru March. My Easter pics were fun to scrap! It's good to just sit there, putting my creativity out there for my family and friends to see. It's also good to look back, and see all the exciting things we've already done this year. I was copying a letter I'd written to my daughter into her album and it was funny how much things have changed in a year. In the letter, I wrote how I sometimes regret not giving her a sibling! Funny, because now I am pregnant! I'm so happy that I have family pictures of us from every year. Although I'm sometimes tempted to forgo the pictures because I know that I will encounter some complaints from my husband who every year tells me he doesn't have anything to wear and asks me just to call and reschedule. (which I won't do!) I'm already thinking ahead to this year's family picture. We always get it around Christmas, and this year, my belly should be pretty big at that time. I'm not planning what I'll wear, but I am thinking of the shot I have of my husband and I with my big belly showing which was taken just before my daughter was born. It will be neat to have the same kind of picture, just with my daughter in it this time!
Summer is over, and we have one week left before school and all of the craziness of a too full fall schedule start. I'm using my daughter's school desk to scrapbook on, so I feel like I have only one short week left to get all caught up on my spring pictures before packing everything away. It's been a great summer, that went too fast as always. I still have to order a lot of pictures before I can even start scrapping the summer, but I'm sure that as I get to that, it will be nice to remember the warm summer sun, being pregnant, wearing shorts and needing to pull my long hair up in the heat.
Scrap happy!

" I look like a bride!"

Sometimes, you just have to be in the right place at the right time! I was with my cousin as she got ready for her wedding, and when her mom put her veil on, she saw herself in the mirror, and it just hit her! She gave this pretty and excited smile, and scrunched her shoulders up. See that face? It's pure joy! I have lots of pictures from the wedding, but this pic, taken in the bathroom before the ceremony officially started, is my favorite.
Hey, guess what?! This weekend, I spent some time laying out pages in my power layout box. I planned out from Christmas through Easter 2008. I also was able to go to a crop on Sunday. (This crop is in a new location, right in my hometown, so even though I had to drive since I couldn't very well lug all my things there, it took me just minutes to get home!) I was able to complete 10 pages there, not much for 5 hours work, but at least it has gotten me started. I'm excited and now have plans to have a scrapbooking desk for myself in our new office. (Our office isn't built yet, but I have my dreams!)
Scrap Happy!

Her first look at Disneyland!

When we walked up and saw Disneyland, I was somehow able to get this perfect picture of my daughter's face in absolute bliss as she saw the park for the first time. We had a great vacation in CA! I took over 500 pictures of our time with family and sightseeing as well as the wedding we attended. (The real reason for our trip!) My daughter now wants to live at Disneyland. Since my husband and I haven't been to Disneyland since our visit 8 years ago, we had never seen California Adventure, and we really enjoyed our time there. We found the parks to be more detailed and different in little ways than the same rides they have in Disney World. We liked the little differences, since we have gotten very used to things at WDW. It was nice to notice the extras. For the most part, we found these differences in the rides, fireworks and parades to be for the better! We do think that the haunted mansion and tower of terror are better in Florida, however. Another difference was the weather! We never saw a cloud in the sky! It was very hot, in fact, you had to work to keep hydrated. The people in California do not impress me. I'm sorry, but it was my experience that had me thinking of them as rude. They shove right past you, knocking into you, without even an "excuse me" or an apology! They curse, push and even the castmembers would ignore you at times. I left CA thinking I wouldn't want to live there. They can have all that nice weather; I'll stay near the nicer beaches and have seasons, thank you very much!

Tip of the Day: When I got to Disney, I asked a photgrapher to take our picture. Thankfully, he told me that my camera was on the wrong setting, and Will was able to fix it so that all of my pictures at Disneyland would be taken as clearly as possible. I noticed that my camera would change settings often, I guess because I was taking it in and out of the camera bag a lot and buttons were getting bumped. Check the setting really quickly when you pull out your camera.

Scrap happy!

Summer pictures

These pictures were taken this week on a trip to the Pittsburgh Zoo. I have so many little settings on my camera that I don't ever use. I realized that I wasn't able to get a clear shot of the cool looking flower in picture 1, so I found a foilage setting in my camera and took picture 2 using that. The difference is amazing!
I have had a fun and busy 2 weeks, without any time for scrapbooking! I had princess camp, and then this past week I was visiting with out of town family every day. It was great, and I got a lot of great pictures. My cousin, David, is a photographing fool, just like me, so we had a blast playing with our cameras. Our last day together, we make a CD (this time, 2!) of all the pictures we took during our week together. He gets a copy and I do, too. This way we both have all of each others pictures. The summer is far from over and there are still so many pictures to take! Scrap happy!

Fill that page!

Since I take a lot of pics, I find that I need to squeeze more onto a page than fits. The page above is of my husband and daughter snorkling. I included pictures taken with the underwater camera. Since there is a lot of water and a lot of pictures of fish, I laid my favoorite picture of them snorkling right on top, didn't cover up anything important, but it all goes together. I also left space for journaling, see my little journaling block? I was so excited to find stickers of Mickey and Minnie snorkling because it exactly went with the paper I used under the vellum! I love when that happens! These pictures are from our Disney Cruise, so the Mickey stickers made it even better!
Here's the page of my daughter and I snorkling. I filled in the little spaces with strips of pictures, and once again...left room for journaling. That's important!
This page is a little different, because 2 of the pics are bigger. There were 3 cameras capturing these dolphin moments! The professional photographer took the big pics with his nice camera, I took pics with water cameras, and a friend of ours used my regular camera to get shots from the dock. But although they are similiar, there were little differences, so I had to include the little ones, as well as the big ones. I accomplished this with major cropping! I'm happy with the results! I hope that after this, you will feel as I do, that it's Ok to cram sometimes!
Scrap Happy!

Backyard summer fun

Here are some pictures of my girl and her little cousin. They don't get to see each other more than once a year. Aren't they cute?
I just love this one! It shows the size difference between a 2 year old and a 6 year old.
Apparently, the slip and slide also works as a drinking fountain!
These girls have such a great time together. I just loved to watch them play.
Scrap Happy!

Make it Yours

I'd like to encourage you to personalize your scrapbooks. After all, this is a very personal thing, why not change your stickers and die cuts to fit your page just right? For the above picture, I really wanted the wreath to be in a mickey shape. I ended up using grass paper, then covering it with holly so that it went with the round wreath. Ta Da! A perfect Mickey wreath to match the mouse himself!
Something I do a lot with the title stickers is add regular stickers to make them perfectly match your theme. For this beach page, I added seashell stickers to the title sticker.
I did the same thing on the page below, only this time, the clear title sticker is placed right on top of the other stickers.
I had a lot of fun on this book, and just finished putting it all together this morning. My husband looked at it today and pronounced it "Nice" which must mean it's fabulous! Happy Fourth of July everyone! Scrap Happy!

Please do not disturb! Scrapbooking in progress

Let me apologize for the bad quality of these pictures of 2 pages I did this week. I took these pics at night, with the flash off, so they aren't the best!
Aside from that, the page above is of our room on our December cruise. I made the little portholes from paper, using the circle punch.
The page below is of unposed pictures of my daughter's reaction to items we found in local stores while at Key West, Florida, our cruise's first stop. I only used a little paper, and then took one shell sticker and placed a title sticker over it. I love it! You will see that I used quite a lot of title stickers on this cruise. I often used them with stickers to give them a unique look.


Ah! I'm now 12 1/2 weeks pregnant! I really feel the pressure to get caught up on my girl's album and other dangling projects before the baby comes. This week, I worked whenever I could on my daughter's album and was able to get all the pages designed and created! I am now in the process of journaling, which will probably just take me one more day's work. It is so much faster to journal than scrapbook! When I work, I just scrapbook, only adding page titles if needed. I save all the journaling for the end. Especially when I'm working on a project that is many pages long.
I loved reliving the cruise, and I really like so many of my pages! I try so hard not to do the same thing over and over, and I was quite satisfied with the ideas I came up with. Not to brag...I just can't wait to get it all journaled and finally show it off.
Scrap happy!

Baby Butterfly

When I had my daughter, I thought that the next time I had a baby, I wouldn't worry so much. I believed that the next time I was pregnant, I would eat whatever, do whatever; because I already had her so if I lost the pregnancy, it wouldn't hurt so much. But now that I am pregnant with my little one, I worry. I carefully eat what I should and shy away from things my husband has warned me not to eat. ( Oh, yes, he is very much like that. The first move he made after I told him I was pregnant was to e-mail me a bunch of pregnancy eating tips.) I already know that when I go to Disneyland I am not going to be riding the rides with warnings on them. Because this baby is already so important to me. I already want to protect it. I already include it in my future plans and in my prayers. I am in no hurry for this pregnancy to be over, because I love being pregnant. I love feeling the little kicks and seeing my daughter's face light up in a huge smile when she heard the baby's heartbeat. I even like looking pregnant. I like having the baby all to myself!
This week was a special one because the caterpillars that my daughter and I had watched turn into chrysalis', broke out and became butterflies! We were actually able to watch many of them emerge. As they climbed from their cage, my daughter would put her finger out and they would climb on. Her face was priceless. As she held one, she said, "This is the best day of my life!" She was able to let all 9 of them fly free for the first time from her finger. It was an amazing thing, and would you believe that I took 100 pictures?
My, I'm chatty today! As for my scrapbooking, I am moving right along on my cruise pages. I keep it set up in the school room and sometimes my daughter even comes to "scrapbook" with me. I did let her do a page of pictures that she herself had taken on our pirate adventure.
That said, I am now itching to get off the computer and get something done!
So, Scrap Happy!

Mission Accomplished!

Before I explain the page above to you, can I just tell you that I have finished my Disney World (Dec. 2007)vacation pages?! There are only 20 some this time, which isn't much for me. Last year, I had 2 books for my Disney trip! I still have to scrap the cruise. But I have finished a big part of my trip, so I'm excited. I just was realizing that I only have a couple weeks free this summer before my big trip to CA, so I really need to get to work on these albums!

The page above is of my birthday dinner at Teppan Edo in Japan. (really in Epcot!) I have since journalled on this page. It's a simple page, but I like it very much.

Scrap Happy!

Scrapping and loving it!

This page design came to me as I looked closely at the border of the picture on the upper right hand corner. It took awhile to punch all of those mickey shapes out, and then I even cut some of them because I wanted them to go right up to the border of the page. I adhered these with the regular tape runner as well as the CM glue pen. I even put 3 silver Mickeys on the page, and those are actual confetti from Disney World. Here's a close up:

I started scrapping again, and I really have been booking! I completed my Disney World trip last night, and now I need to find my notes so that I can go back and journal all 8 days. I still have the cruise to do as well. I feel so far behind. Having the room set up so that I can scrap anytime has been just what I needed. I also have had to cut way back on the anount of things I do around the house, since I get backaches or lower abdomen pain if I do too much house or yardwork! I have to spread my work out now, and that gives me time to scrapbook.

This is probably one of my favorite pages (above) from this trip. I love using punches and you can use different colored paper to match any page you're doing! I have used some of these punches for years! I have 4 slightly different Mickey punches.

Scrap Happy!

Different Angles

First, I have some news! I'm pregnant! Yay! These pictures were taken yesterday by my newly 6 year old. I feel like my tummy is enormous already, but I can see from picture #2, that I'm not. The first picture is from my daughter's point of view. But it really wasn't flattering! So, I had her stand on the second step of our porch and take another picture. Sometimes it's all in the angling!
My plans for scrapbooking are as follows: I have a huge desk for my daughter, which she won't need for the summer since she is done with Kindergarten! I've taken over this desk as my scrapbooking station and I plan to sit there for hours every day and scrap. This room is right on the main floor of my house, so this plan HAS to work! I simply feel the need to catch up now that I have a baby on the way. That is the best incentive for me. As for after the baby comes, I plan to still scrapbook for my oldest, but keep up to date on the baby's album by doing Digital albums as I take the pictures. Once I fill up a book, I'll simply order it and it will come to my house all done! Those of you who think that it is unfair to the baby to only have a digital album, keep this in mind....Which child will need to rent 2 U hauls to take their albums when they move out, and which child will just need a van? Which child will be laughing then?!
Scrap Happy!

"I see Pooh!"

The picture above was published as the photo of the week in allears.com's newsletter! Yes, that's my little girl and I took the picture! The funny thing about this picture is that I took it in November. I knew it wasn't the best picture I've ever taken, so I sat on it until deciding this week to just send it in to Allears. It was chosen immediately. I had to crop it first to get rid of the flash. It's the first time a picture of mine has been selected, and I've been sending pictures in for years!

I was sitting in a Walt Disney World restaraunt, waiting for my daughter and husband to come back from the buffet table. Our seats were right by the windows and a line had formed in front of the window as people tried to get in to eat lunch. A little boy in Mickey ears smushed his face up against the glass looking in. We were enjoying a character meal, so Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore were making their way around the tables, an awesome view for any little boy. I asked his mom if I could take his picture and she nodded, but I just didn't get the picture I wanted. I knew that it was a unique shot. So I had my husband and daughter go out there after our meal so that I could recreate the shot. This is the only one I got. I think the title had a lot to do with them choosing this picture. "I see Pooh!" is just funny!

Scrap Happy!

A Star is Born!

This year, my daughter paricipated in a Dance recital again. It was our second recital. It was just as time consuming as last years recital was, and just as worth it once again! This year, we did feel more comfortable and knew what to expect, and thus were better prepared. I took most of my photos at the dress rehearsal. This is because the school asked that we not take pictures during the performance, and I like to get action shots as well as posed pictures! I did take a picture of my daughter with her Grammas and Auntie after the show. I like to remember who was there. Tickets are in high demand and we were blessed to get 2 extras this year. I also spent a good deal of time trying to get one of the 3 of us that was perfect. I'm very picky and this is a big night, so I was a bit grumpy with my loved ones as it seemed to take awhile to get a shot of my husband, the star and myself that I would settle for. The picture above is the last picture I took. She looked so adorable in her white coat and was holding her flowers with so much happiness. She had practiced really hard before this recital and it showed! She had done a stand out job, and we were all so proud of her. My sister and I both cried during her ballet number. She was like a beautiful angel!

Scrap Happy!