Southwestern Escape

Last night, I came home earlier than I thought from a Mom's night out. Once I checked that all was well, my husband and daughter were both asleep with the windows opened enough and the fan's positioned to bring in the cooler night air, I snuck down to the basement to scrapbook!

I'm still working on our Arizona trip, because my aunt will be here this weekend, and I'd like to be able to show it to her. I'm mostly using both the neutral and the jewel snap pack. The colors are very south western in the jewel pack and the dark browns and grays in the neutral one work well with the rocks, too. Arizona is akin to a different planet! It's challenging to me, because I'm used to using completely different colors than these.

9 pages later, I felt so exhausted! I came to find out that the time on the clock in the kitchen wasn't the right time when I originally looked at it! It was actually much later! Even so, I am pleased with my completed pages and glad that I didn't realize that I should have been in bed!

Stripes are in, girls!

HI! me again! Did you know that stripes are in? Well, they are! At least for scrapbooking. I chose two pieces of 10x12 paper to make this layout. I chose the pink because it matched what my daughter was wearing and the blue, just because it looks so fun! I chose to mat my pictures in white, because the blue paper WAS a little busy, and I felt like my pictures were getting lost, just not standing out enough!

Can you find Stitch? After all, this is my insane album, where Stitch appears on every page!

I haven't been scrapbooking for a couple weeks. I have a sticker pack that I bought and am looking for. Most likely I put it in a library book when we were traveling, and returned it to the library. Oh well!

I received my new Scraps in the mail today. It's a magazine from CM that tells me all of the new stuff, and I can't wait to order now! There are new kid paper packs and album kits! They look just right for my daughter.

Scrap Happy!

What you mean to us

At my Mom's 60th birthday party, I made sure to get a picture of every guest. This is something I always do at my daughter's parties. Next, I handed journaling blocks and a CM pen to them after taking their picture, and asked them to write something to my mom. I've learned that people like to have some kind of guideline with this activity, so I asked them to write something they had learned from her, or something sweet about her and how much she meant to them. It's very important to collect them before people leave the party. They always want to take the paper and write later, but in my experience, you probably will never get that person's completed journaling box back, so strongly encourage them to finish it before leaving that day.

I then put together a 7x7 album for her, including the pictures of the party first, and then placing the journaling boxes with a picture of the person who wrote it. It's one of my favorite albums I ever made! It was relatively easy, too. I used the Paradise Storybox, and it comes with paper and journaling boxes that are perfectly coordinated.

I gave it to her for Mother's Day, and she loved it!

Scrap Happy!

P.S. I answered your questions as best as I could in my own comment. See the comments in the blog below this one!

Once a Year

Once a year, I take pictures of my daughter's little feet and hands. I also stamp her hands and feet to put on the page. Looking at the first set of footprints I have of her, and comparing them to the way her feet look now just blows me away! She has gotten so much bigger! I love her little hands and feet! I time this page so that it's right after her birthday.

Scrap Happy!

Take me out to the ballgame!

Sometimes you get the perfect seats, have a great time at the game, and even get a game ball! Those are the moments you want to capture; first with great pictures, and then on a page that compliments them! I chose the background paper because it just screamed "baseball" to me. Both the paper and the stickers came from CM. I just stuck the pictures on without matting any of them, and made sure to journal about the day. What do I like about this page? Well, the pictures! The page doesn't take away from the pictures. I love that you can see the happiness on our faces:) We had a blast, and I think anyone who looks at these album pages can tell! So, the pages convey the feelings that we felt at the game. I'd say that's a home run!

Dance, baby, dance!

My daughter's dance recital was this past weekend, and in light of that, I'd like to give some tips for taking pictures at events like this!

Y I chose to get the smallest photo package from the professional photographer because I liked the idea of having a picture of the whole group of kids and the papers they gave us strongly discouraged us from taking pictures while the photographer was there. One mother was chastized by the photographer for taking a photo and ruining his light.

Y On the way to the rehearsal, I allowed time to stop and take a few pictures of my daughter on my own. This meant, I chose the background, just a simple walking trail, with trees along side. You can't tell that there are cars driving by, can you?

Y In my own photos, I encouraged her to do some of her dance moves.

Y I took both full bodied shots and some closeups. The outfit is a big part of the day, right down to those little white shoes!

Y When taking shots of your kid and another backstage, try to either get a plain background, without people walking through, or really zoom in for a close up.

Y When the papers you are given tell you that pictures and video are restricted to the dress rehearsal, please listen! It's distracting to everyone around you and flashes are also distracting to the kids on stage.

Y On this same note, you may actually get better pictures at the rehearsal, because the room will most likely consist of parents waiting for their kids. As their children leave the stage, the adults will leave the room to meet up with them. We found 2 seats directly in the front row at dress rehearsal, and had the best seat in the house for taping and photographing our little girl! She happened to be on stage directly in front of us!

Scrap Happy!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!

I have used the zoo sticker pack that Creative Memories makes TWICE now. Since we go to the zoo once a year, and Animal Kingdom the same amount, I have to be somewhat creative when I do zoo pages. For these pages, I used this paper throughout the zoo pages, as well as a deep red paper the same shade as the flowers. I cut out the flowers from the paper from time to time, to add a little something to the pages. I used the same color of letter stickers, and I still haven't even journalled yet. The pages are plain, but I think they are fun!

Tip of the Day: Zoo pictures are great! But make sure you take enough pics of people you are with, too. Put at least one picture of a person on a page with all those animals, or the viewer will most likely lose interest. If you can get pictures of your loved one interacting with the animals in any way, that's the best!

Scrap Happy!

A Flower from my Girl

Hello! Isn't this a beautiful tulip? When my daughter gave it to me the other day, I thought it was so gorgeous, and would live so much longer if I took a picture of it! It's currently my profile picture on My Space. What a sweet little gift!

After I put my daughter to bed tonight, I grabbed an hour to work on her album. I didn't feel like starting with Christmas, so I skipped ahead to March and did a fun 2 page spread, using journaling boxes, matting a few of the pictures and using a couple stickers. It's cute!

Tips of the Day: The pages I did today were of an event that my husband took my daughter to. Since I wasn't even there, I simply added the journaling boxes, and I have asked him to fill them in. I'm really into using journaling boxes lately, especially since I have been journaling later, rather than at the time I do the page. Each pack of perfect fit paper comes with coordinating journaling blocks, and you can find them in the storyboxes as well. I like that they have different sizes, so that I can fit them to my page.

Scrap Happy!

A magical moment!

This Disney trip was my 10th since I have been married, so you would think that I would have run out of things to photograph. As you can see, that is not the case! I adore this page! It was taken in Cinderella's castle, and I wanted it to capture the magic and the royal feel there. The paper and stickers are from the princess pack from CM. You can't tell, but the paper has little magic wands all over it! The punch is the new mickey punch, and the paper underneath , just peeking through, is from the metallic paper pack. It's silver, but looks gold due to the lighting in the room when I took the picture of the page.

Today I did a program at my local library. I had done one before where we made a border, but today, I just did a crop talk about vellum, and showed them some of my albums and the pages I had used vellum, and how I had used it. We really only have 1/2 an hour for the program, and there isn't much you can do in that time! Next week, I have encouraged everyone to bring their albums so that we can share our lives a little bit.

Quote of the Day: Ecc. 5:3 says "Too much activity gives you restless dreams; too many words make you a fool."

Scrap happy!