Well, on this fair New Year's Eve, I've been messing around with different functions in PSE, trying to learn more about it so that my scrapping just gets better. There are some great PS tutorials on Jessica Sprague's site -- the Photoshop Friday index. Here's what I've been working on (this is the original photo):



And the after:



*The Grunge mask is from The CoffeeShop.

And cuz I love you, I am sharing the fun wordart I made for this pic:



*Click on preview to download.

Wow, it's been a crazy couple of days. A week ago today was Christmas Eve, and let me tell you...it got a bit scary at my house. Around 9:00 pm my daughter called me to tell me she was on her way home for Christmas, and about 15 minutes later I got another call from her, not on her phone, saying that she had rolled the car and wrecked it. She was transported to the hospital, but aside from a concussion, she is ok. But it was still a bit scary.

Of course, I took pictures of the car, which will be in my HIH album (when I finish it). I didn't get any of the pictures from Christmas Eve that I wanted, but mostly because I was sidetracked.

Do you have any resolutions for the New Year? Mine is mostly to have a better outlook on things. This has been a rough year for me, but things are starting to look up. And my plan is to keep it that way! Another of my resolutions is to create more "stuff." Maybe templates, maybe word art, maybe full on kits (we'll see!). But I really love this whole digital scrapbooking thing, and sharing makes me happy.

And as a parting gift to 2009, I created the first in a series of recipe cards. I know many of you will be planning on a new diet in the New Year (as am I--see my new blog "Vegetarian for a Year"), so recipe cards are always nice. I will keep adding completed cards as well--who knew those would be so popular?

So without further ado--Happy New Year!!!




*Click Preview to Download

Well, today is the 23rd, so I guess I'm not too far behind. This is actually only four layouts, because December kind of got away from us. Steven was sick for over a week, and we had to get caught up on his homework before the winter break, so a lot of time was spent working on that. Also the general "Christmas is here, we better get with the program" stuff happened as well.

Steven got braces on his teeth on the 21st--that will be a two-page layout. Yesterday will be movies, and today we have friends, so fun pics there as well. And then Christmas eve will be a 2-pager (I hope), as will Christmas day. And then we'll see how it goes from there. But still fun, and I am so glad I participated in this!

Yesterday I made teacher gifts for Steven to take to school. They are tiny little gift bags that hold a tea bag of Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Tea for each teacher. I printed two bags per sheet of paper, and they were just the right size to hold a tea bag. If you print one per sheet of paper, it should work for a bag of cocoa.

As my gift to you this Christmas, I am sharing the template I made. Along with a finished bag using Sweet Tweet Designs Roasted Marshmallows kit.

*Click Preview to Download

Yes, I've been working on my pages (and I will share more soon), but I've also been doing other stuff as well. I made recipe cards for four of the cookies in this year's cookie swap, which I am sharing here with you. I've also made a card for our go to soup (which we eat when nothing got pulled out of the freezer for dinner). It's yummy and filling--and perhaps even kind of gourmet. :)

*Click on the preview to download

I know, I know. I have been mostly keeping up with the picture taking, but I've gotten a bit behind on the layouts. I am trying to remedy that, however. I am thinking the next couple of layouts will be 1 pagers, though--that just seems to be how it worked out.

So, without further ado:

I have a freebie for you (oh, yeah--one of my own!). This is the word art I did for one of my Holidays in Hand pages.

*Click on the preview to download wordart.

We pretty much did nothing on the 9th except cuddle up in blankets on the couch and watch Christmas specials. Steven spent a lot of the day in bed, but he's felt well enough to eat dinner.

I took him to the doctor today. He has a sinus infection and bronchitis. Great. Luckily, we've been able to get most of his homework online, so he shouldn't be too far behind when he gets back to school (Monday? I hope so!)

So, as you may have seen from previous posts, December 8th was the winter band concert. Steven plays in both the Concert Band, and the Jazz Ensemble, so it's a lot of playing. On top of that, he's sick, but had to attend the concert because it is a huge part of his grade. So we made it, but that was pretty much all we did that day.

Tonight was my son's band concert. The picture on this video isn't very clear, because they didn't have all the lights on in the gym, but the sound isn't too bad.



Charlie Brown (and Vince Guaraldi) is the bomb!

Here's a picture of my boy before hand. I think he's quite handsome. Goofy grin and all. :D

Are you working on those last minute Christmas gifts? I think I pretty much have my Christmas shopping and making done. But, Shabby Princess just posted these wonderful recipe cards and I am feeling the need to make some! I will probably use them for my Christmas Cookie swap on the 12th.



*Click on preview to go to download page.

It was very cold today. A 75% chance of rain. And I had to go out for the newspaper to cover the American Legion and the VFW's flag ceremony for Pearl Harbor day. I am really glad I went, although Sunday night I was starting to get sick, and after an hour outside in the freezing cold wind, I really felt it. But I got some good pictures, and a great story, for both the newspaper and my scrapbook.

I know it isn't a Holiday memory. But it is December, and a "day that will live in infamy..."

The picture prompt for December 6 was to take a picture of your holiday symbol--a symbol that has particular meaning for you. Well, mine is my nativity set. Actually, two of my nativity sets. One is a set from my grandmother that she made. The other is a set from my mom that she made.

These are my favorites, although I have several more sets.

Steven was still feeling sick yesterday, so he didn't want me to take his picture. I had to go to the Lost City Museum Open House (I was covering for the paper--but I really love to go there anyway, so it isn't really work!). Mom and I went for a while, and then when I got home, Steven decided he wanted to go as well. This enabled me to get pictures of both musical groups playing, which is good for me, because I love music and they played some great stuff!

Here's my layout:

I am really enjoying the process of making my HIH album. A friend sent me the link to Jessica's website, and I feel like I am missing out if I don't visit there every day.

Jessica is awesome!

Anyway, there are a ton of freebies on her site, but this one I really love, because it goes right along with the HIH album. She is splitting her album into a December Daily type album and a journaling album. Mine is more of a December Daily album--but for the most part the prompts are what is working for me.

I've never done a daily album like this, and I'm feeling like I could really tackle a Project 365 album. I haven't decided for sure that I'm going to do that, but I am seriously considering it. Especially since there are so many darn cute Project 365 templates out there.

But, I digress...the freebie:



*Click on the preview to go to the freebie.

And while you're there, check out Jessica's site. It really is awesome. :)

Steven stayed home from school today. He's been fighting a nasty cold all week, and last night it finally got to him. His best friend was supposed to spend the weekend with us, and he was too sick for it...

But, even though our plans changed a bit because he was home, my mom and I still made it to the Festival of Trees. We wanted to look at all the trees, and spy on the silent auction (because our cool nutcracker was being auctioned off). What I didn't know was that there was a nativity room.

I love nativities.

I have several of my own, but I saw a whole lot more that I wouldn't mine having. :)

My pictures for Dec 4 are all from the Festival of Trees. No person (Steven wanted nothing to do with the camera). Really fun, though. And a fun remembrance of this year's festival.

And the nutcracker ended up being subject to a bidding war. And selling for a good amount of money, which will help the Old Logandale School Historical and Cultural Society (otherwise known as OLSHACS).

Last night was bunko. I feel very lucky to be a part of this group. I didn't know most of these ladies before I joined, but they welcomed me into their group, and I have had a great time with them ever since. So it was appropriate that the game was on the day that the picture prompt was JOY. They gave me a bit of a hard time about them fulfilling that picture, but it was all in jest.

The picture prompt for December 1st was to take a Welcome to December picture of the family. The problem with that is that we weren't all home (and awake) at the same time. So I made do, and took pictures of each family member that was home--the dogs. :)

I think this layout turned out quite good. And I like to include these guys in the pictures--they are certainly a large part of our life.



You may have noticed that the final product (and even this isn't quite--I added another picture) is a bit different from the original. That's because I have a tendency to keep tweaking things. It's just who I am. :)

I am very excited. The next assignment is to get our album started. The thought is, if the album is done, minus pictures and journaling, it will be a lot easier to put together. My plan is to complete a layout the day after I've taken pictures and done my journaling. Some of the journaling I may start now, but we'll see.

Jessica gave us some awesome products to use in our books:



But I am also using some other products for my book. I want the feel to be the same, so the products are complimentary:







The last three kit images are linked to the respective designers' websites. I am all about free, so that is where we are going with this album.

Here are my first layouts. The rest will look much like these. I am leaning towards two page layouts, but if I only need one, I'm not going to worry about it.

Today is the day for some serious consideration. Do I want this album to be all digital (well, that's a no-brainer! Of course I do.), hybrid, or all hands on paper-stuff? Do I want it to be 8x8 or 12x12? I am going to design it as a 12x12, but probably print it as an 8x8. I need to come up with the actual alb... Actually, I have the perfect 8x8 album. It is covered in a red velvet that just screams Christmas. So there you go. :)

Jessica has given us an awesome sketch/template (depending on how you are doing your book). It is so extremely customizable, and you can flip it, turn it, rearrange it to come up with many, many, many different layouts. Here is an example of one:



There are also some awesome journaling tags and date stickers included. I am very excited about how the album is going to turn out. I've already started looking at a variety of kits to use for this album. We will have to see which I choose!

Polly prints the prompt cards precisely...say that 10 times fast! So the assignment today was to actually get those cards printed! Yesterday I was messing around with the cards in PSE, but it was taking a long time to get the colors I wanted exactly right.

So I slept on it.

This morning I had a flybaby moment: I was trying to be a perfectionist and create the perfect product. These are prompts, for goodness sake! These aren't the finished product, they are a tool to help us create the finished product. And they are beautiful with the colors they have, even if I am thinking of a final album of completely different colors. And they actually fit my decor, which is good because they are going to be displayed on my desk.



So, I printed them. The only thing I changed was the size they printed at. Because finances are so tight, I am in a "use what you have" state of mind, and I had 32 pieces of white cardstock that are 6 3/4" x 9". I printed them on that. I am still deciding what I am going to display them on, but they are printed. And some of them even have writing on them (for example, Dec 10 is Steven's concert--so that is written in that day's do section).

Woohoo! I am keeping up and not letting my perfectionism get the best of me!

I've been crocheting like crazy, and while it has been fun, for the most part it takes a while to finish a project. And I still have to finish a gorgeous berry colored blanket that I'm making before Christmas. But, I can't resist adding some other, less time-intensive, crafts to my holiday season. There are some fun looking ones that Jessica has suggested, but nothing is really striking my fancy. I did look at one for decorated tubes for cookies (because I need something to package my 15 DOZEN cookie swap cookies in!), and I got sidetracked by this. I am totally making these pet tags for my dogs for Christmas! They are so cute and so easy...

So to make:

• Dog tags


• Cool Box Bag - I think this will work great for my cookie swap cookies! I need to get working on these, though...the swap is Dec 12


• Christmas Cards


• Christmas Cookies - we will be making lots because we give cookies to neighbors each year. Plus my mom takes them to work, and dont forget the cookie swap I am participating in.


• Helping Steven with presents made out of duct tape. I am liking the pink flamingo purse.


• I'm probably making some Tea Jelly to round out my jelly making this fall.


• And I have to make Divinity. It is my absolute favorite. I'd never made it before, just eaten other people's creations. When I started working in the bakery, another girl and I tried it (a huge batch) and it was awesome! And now that I don't work there, it is an absolute necessity for me to make it at home.

Ahhh...I don't want to be overwhelmed by things to do in December, but I want to do things! This is my life. :)

Here are some activities I know we will be doing:

• Holiday Concert - Steven is in both the regular band and the jazz band at school, so we will be attending his concert (and taking pictures!)


• Christmas Cookie Swap - this is a girlfriend get-together, but it is still a fun activity that warrants pictures--especially since I will be with my girlfriends!


• Cookie-Making - to participate in a cookie swap means you must make cookies! This is fun, because we all get involved (even hubby comes in and "steals" cookies as we are making them. *this may qualify as a 'make' rather than a do.


• Watch Christmas movies - this is something we always do as a family, and sometimes we invite other people to enjoy them with us. White Christmas is our Christmas Eve movie.


• Make and Assemble Teacher Gifts - Steven has 8 classes at school, although 2 of them are with the same teacher. That means 7 Teacher Gifts. We've already decided we are making cocoa kits with homemade peppermint marshmallows.


• Look at Christmas lights - this is something we didn't do last year, but it really is one of my favorite things to do. I think part of why we didn't do it is that I was working in the bakery so I was in bed early. Now that I am a freelance writer, I can stay up later than I did, so we can go after dinner.


• Attend our local Festival of Trees - This is actually coming up: Dec 4-5. It's fun to see how everyone has decorated the trees, and it's fun to bid on them, even though we are always outbid.

That's it for now. But it really is quite a lot, so I can get my prompt cards filled out!

Jessica has created some beautiful prompt pages for us to print. I believe the goal is to display them, like a daily calendar, to help us complete each goal for the day. We aren't supposed to complete them yet (except for the "Do" and "Make" sections), just print them and figure out how to display them to fit our own life. Here is an example of one of the pages:



Tomorrow and Thursday she will be giving us ideas on what we can fill in for the Make and Do sections. I already have one that will be in there for one of the days--The most recent Pillsbury magazine cookbook has a recipe for homemade peppermint marshmallows in it. Steven and I will be making those to go with his teacher gifts this year (which will be cocoa mix and marshmallows). Very excited!

I am also thrilled about the photo prompts because one of the things I know about myself when it comes to December is that I am really bad at taking pictures. I don't really have Christmas pictures because I am so caught up in the moment of what is happening. Hopefully this will help add a picture or two of Christmas for me. :o)

I signed up for a class (Holidays in Hand) at JessicaSprague.com. I'm excited because I haven't had a lot of time to scrapbook. But I miss it, and I am hoping that setting aside time will allow me to get some scrapping time in. The first assignment is to write down your values and goals. So let's get started.

My goals:

To spend time together as a family, focusing on being together. We were doing weekly Christmas movie nights, but we didn't last year. Maybe we will do that again this year. We used to drive around and look at Christmas lights, but again, that has fallen by the wayside. We should do that again. Maybe have an impromptu photo taking session. Maybe just make cookies.

We have already implemented (several years ago) a standard of one Christmas gift per person--that is, each person gives one gift for each person in the family. No more than one. And, to be honest, that is really hard. At least for me. I see stuff that I want to get my kids, but in the back of my mind I keep remembering that one gift. And because it is only one--I want it to be the best possible gift for that person. I already have my daughter's gift this year figured out. It is so awesome! I wish I could share it with you, but there is always a chance that she will read this, so it will have to wait until after Christmas. My goal is to find the right gifts for the rest of my family.

To spend time with friends. I would like to host a December dinner club. We are having a cookie swap--but that's girlfriends only. We need to get families together. I need to work on that. Everyone is so busy during the holidays, but it is always so much fun to spend time together. Maybe we can just do a cocktail/appetizer hour.

Another goal is to have a memorable, fun Christmas without spending a lot of money. Because, let's face it, money is extremely tight here.

My values:

This is kind of hard. I value time spent together. But what else? I want to teach my kids how important time spent with each other is (actually I think I have taugth them that--but I want to reinforce that).

Whew, what a crazy weekend! On the same day as Kaylee's party, we also had football to cover for the paper. Which isn't a chore, by the way, because, hello--Micah is OUR star football player.

But crazy...during the first minutes of the game, Micah caught a punt and was helmet-tackled by THREE players from the opposing team. And he didn't get up off the field. OMG! It was so scary. His mom went running out there after a couple of minutes (while the coaches were calling the paramedics). I went down there too. He was laying on the ground and his elbow was DISLOCATED...OUCH! He told me I could take pictures for his scrapbook, so of course I did. This is the outcome of that.



This is done with Penny Springmann's Game On kit (as are all of my football layouts--I just love it that much), and a template for whom I can't find the author. I have it somewhere, but I am drawing a blank at the moment.

Anyway, he is fine. They took him to the hospital and relocated the arm. He has a fracture and may have to have a pin put in, but we don't know yet. He NEVER cried--because he is awesome like that. Unlike me. Who cried like a baby in the stands after they wheeled him out to the ambulance. Because I'm like that. :)

And he came to scouts last night (since his football season is over--which is ok, because there is only 1 game left in the regular season, and 2 after that if they make it all the way through playoffs). And he and Steven are still hosting their joint birthday party on Saturday. It's all good.

I've been working on this one for a couple of days, but mostly because my computer is just being sooooo slow! But it is done, and it looks great!



As in the last post, the kit I used was the Game On! kit by Penny Springmann over at Sweet Shoppe Designs. I also used Misty Cato's Date Bits 13. I love her dates--they are awesome! I also used a template by Andrea Gold - Template #238

Well, today my daughter turns 20. And I'm trying to get some scrapping done, but my computer is running really slow. I did get this one done (yep, it's football time again!). This year Micah is playing football, so he is actually in the uniform.  :)



I used the Game On! kit by Penny Springmann over at Sweet Shoppe Designs. I use this kit all the time--it is one of my favorites. I also used a Cyndi Price template called "The Rookie." I don't remember where I picked this up, by Cyndi designs for Scrap Matters, so that may be where I got it.

As you can see, I love templates. I love the versatility of them, and the fact that I can make them look however I want. They are a starting point for me, and since my time is so limited, I need all the extra help I can get. :)

It's been kinda busy with baseball taking up our lives here.  My husband has been an "official" coach for the last 2 years in Little League, although he has helped coach every year before.

With his official coaching duties, he pulled me in--first by scoring (whoa--scoring is really intimidating when you don't know what you are doing! I'm an old hand now, though), and then by scrapbooking team pictures.

Here is the pic the boys got last year:



This year, again, my husband requested that I do a layout for the boys. He wanted action pictures, though. I went to the park during one of their practices to get the action pictures. The pic on this layout happens to be a recreation of a double play in one of the games. The shortstop grabbed the ball, ran to 2nd base and then threw the ball to first--getting out 2 runners in the process. The pic is of the shortstop in the air just after his run to 2nd base:



And finally, based on the layout I did last year--one of the other teams requested that I do their pictures this year. Apparently I need to start charging. :)  This last layout is a cross between the Devil Rays and the Sun Devils layouts.

Whew...I'm having fun with the recipe cards--although I am not too sure about the color scheme of this one. But I like the blue and green--kinda goes with the Fish Tacos.

The Card:

Papers are from Anna Aspnes--Something Springy (from here). Template is a recipe template from Digitreats, as is the metal tag. Thanks!

I've been looking for quality places to print my layouts, at good prices. Up until now the best price I've found has been a toss up between Polka Dot Potato and Scrapbooks to Share.

That was until now.

I just ordered a bunch of 12x12 layouts ($.99/each) and 8x8 layouts ($.50/each) from My Pic Tales. I've read nothing but good things about them, and so I decided to take the plunge and order some pages done.

Might as well get those layouts into scrapbooks, right?

I will let you know what I think in a future review!

I know. It seems like a weird title for a scrapbook blog. But, well, it's cuz I scrapped the recipe. This has become a favorite, not only in my house, but in the households of all my dinner swap pals as well.



This awesome recipe card template came from Canay's Corner. The font is 2Peas Flea Market. The background paper is by L Grier from the Forget Collection. The graph paper is from the Dirty Lovely Love Me Collection, but for the life of me I don't know who designed it. Not the tab either.

Sigh.

I obviously need to come up with a different way to organize my stash.

The recipe came from The Everything Meals For A Month Cookbook. And believe you me, it's a keeper.

Now, if I just felt better...

Yep--I am still working on interesting people layouts. These are layouts for Micah and Steven's books--so it is only fitting that there is a layout of each of them for each of them. There will be more, as well. I am loving the quotes! Bethany is the best...I can always find what I am looking for there!



I was playing around with overlays--this one is from Gunhild Storheide. She has some awesome stuff over on her blog--check it out!  The papers are all from Carrie Stephens--part of her Spontaneous Delight collection. I don't know who made the bracket. :(

I love interesting people--don't you? I spent the afternoon with a bunch of people my husband works with and knows, and I had forgotten how interesting they are! We don't spend much time together (in our defense--we do live at least an hour away from most of them), and we have let time get away from us (as we all so often do). But there were definitely some great conversations going on today!

This morning I had a bit of time to start this page, and I was able to finish it up this evening after the party. I will try my best to give credit to all the product designers, but I use Ro's (from Scrap Girls) method of organizing my digi-stash, which makes it easy to find, but not always easy to identify designers...

The 'Interesting' WordArt is from Elegant WordArt by Bethany. The polka dot paper on the large bracket is by Zoe Pearn. The paper on the smaller bracket is by Julie Billingsley--part of the Old Beach House collection. The background paper is by K Lewis and is part of the Starburst collection. And the letters in 'Steven' are adapted from the font Malonia Voigo by Pizza Dude. I don't know who made the brackets...

Yep, it's baseball time of year! My husband and I are on our local Little League Baseball Board, and as such--get to do all kinds of fun baseball things! Of course, I have to take pictures, which isn't always easy considering I'm supposed to be working at the same time.

This layout is from our Board Member BBQ last night. The point was to get all the sponsor banners hung up, which is more difficult then you might think. Especially since they have to be hung quite high so that people can see them, but also still be able to see the fields. We accomplished it though, and then enjoyed some great food.



Okey dokey...so the background paper is from Shabby Princess. It is from the 2006 Seasonal Sampler Line. The template is an M Original template--one of the awesome Project 365 Templates. The cool little Let's Eat button is also Shabby Princess. And the baseball and Play stickers are from Penny Springmann's Game On Collection at Sweet Shoppe Designs, one of my all time favorite stores.

isn't that how it goes? In with the lions, out with the lambs? Well, anyway...I have been stalking Shabby Princess' blog waiting for her latest desktop, and she delivered today. I know I could make my own (and have plenty of times in the past), but I have several computers in my house, and I generally end up with at least one Shabby Princess desktop somewhere. :) Anyway, this desktop was made with the new Happy Go Lucky kit (yep! The same one I made the Menu Planner with), which is just adorable. And instead of featuring my kids, I decided to use a pic of me and my hubby--taken on New Year's Eve 2008 (so pretty recent in the scheme of things). And without further ado...my desktop.