Outside the Box

The way I have been creating (scraplifting everything!) is so out of the box for me.  Prior to this year, my effort went into creating layouts and albums that were of my own design or from sketches.  In the past, it was vital that most of what I created be my own creation and not "inspired" too much by what I was seeing.  ie, not scraplifted.  Because of this "mine" mentality, right now, today, here where I am, I am faced with 

1. Too much stuff that was purchased and not used.
2. Too many photos that were not scrapped or even revisited.
3. Too many empty albums.
4. Too much time spent staring at blank pages struggling to create original designs. 

Last night, my tally for layouts sat at 56.  Wow, I cannot tell you how happy this is making me.  

One of the promises that I made to myself at the beginning of the year was to spend some time everyday creating.  Last year there were many times where I did not even go into my creative space for days or even weeks.  Now, I visit it and put my hands on things every.  single.  day.  I am loving it!  Our busy time is coming up so I know that I won't be able to maintain this level of creating but I am vowing to continue to at the least spend some time on most days.  

Really looking forward to the love and visiting that gets done during the spring and summer for our little family.  We are 3 now but come 2018, we will be 2.  Our youngest is going off to college.  I miss him already!

I have a couple of layouts to share today.  The first one was inspired by Stacy Cohen.  She has a beautiful style and her layouts are all over pinterest.  Her blog (click on her name for a visit) is full of inspiration but I found the layout that inspired the one I created about my Christmas tree here on pinterest.  ...  

This one is probably one of my favorites.  As I was sorting my photos to put in albums, I came across the 2 that are on this page.  One of me in grade school and one of my daughter at about the same age.  Love how this came out!

My favorite detail other than the photos is the tag with the center cut out.  If I could or would change anything on this page, it would be swapping that kraft tag out for a dark brown one.  It really fades into the background too much.  

That's it for me.  Off to workout.  Thanks for stopping by:)

Paper That Makes You Go Hmmmmmm.......

Getting down to the business of using your stash forces you to ask tough questions about why you buy things.  Some of the paper that I have been looking at, well I just have no words.  I don't want to use the U word because I have a lot of respect for the talent and work that goes into creating this stuff and the concept of one man's trash is another man's treasure surely is alive and well here, right now.  Seriously why in the world did I buy this stuff?  It is not my style or color or even the type of paper that I typically use.  But here it is, staring at me in all its multi-color glory.  I had to have bought that at a crop that was serving wine.  Lots of wine.  Take a look.

I know that some of you are like I LOVE that paper, what is she talking about? lol.  I told ya that I didn't want to use the U word because its not that.  It is just not something that I would ever, ever use.  Not my style at all.  I also have a ton of purple, which is my favorite color BUT I rarely wear or use it and no one else in my family likes it.  Sigh

So I have a question for you.  How much stuff do you buy just because it is pretty?  Do you only buy what you have a specific idea or project for or do you get a lot of just maybe's.  That may be just right for this or some day it may be just right for that.  I think that that is where I go wrong.  If it looks good to me right then and there, I buy it with no idea in mind for using it.  Hence the Mount Everest Stash.  

I was able to use a few things on the layouts I'm sharing today.  

I'm still working through my Niagara Falls stuff and had a couple more pieces of ephemera that I wanted to use.  I've only scrapped one photo from this trip and it wasn't of us, it was of the mist in the sky.  Don't know what that's all about.  Anywho, this was inspired by a layout in CK's Jan/Feb 2012 by Keri Babbitt called "Holiday Cookies".  It was based on this sketch.  I liked the brackets and the banner.  My original idea was to use flair to create the banner but no dice, I used stars and these cute alpha beads instead.  I made  lift up tab so that all of the info inside the card was available to see by simply lifting the tab.....

And secondly this layout about our trip to Disney last year.  I pinned this layout by the lovely Laura Vegas for Bella Blvd and used it as inspiration for the page.  I did manage to get a photo on this page.  My daughter took it at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom......

There is very little pp on here!  I have been hoarding that Disney vellum since the 90's and it turned out to have the perfect colors for this page.  Again I glued the pamphlet in a way that it can be flipped open to look at the content inside.  

 That's it for me.  Except for mentioning that I am thinking of taking the dive and trying Calvinball.  I had never heard of it before and just happened across NicoleJones911's prep videos.  Not sure yet.  Me and commitment are about on the same speaking terms as me and chronological are.  It is hard for this girl to stick it out to the end BUT it does seem like a ton of fun.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Wildly Popular Trend That is Not For Me

Feathers.  they look really pretty when i see them used on other peoples pages but i just can't seem to get into them.  They are so not for me.  Believe it or not, I am kinda literal so if I were to use feathers on a page, it would have to be a page related to something with feathers.  Strange considering I just put a bunny and a cat on a page about my daughter and my niece.  They were a girl bunny and a girl cat so I'm good with that.  

So with March rolling in next week, I am getting a head start on prepping my supplies to meet my goal of creating at least 57 pages for the month.  I will count up the total number of pages that I created for February on Tuesday and give them a post.  February was a fantastically scrappy month and if I can keep rolling with that, my stash will be screaming by the end of the year:)  

I haven't made much progress on getting my loose photos into their dedicated album.  In fact, I don't think I have touched that album since late December, early January.  Thumbs down for me.  Could have been done by now....

What is done, is 2 more layouts (is that even good English?  IDK but it sounds funny).  The first is my sisters Christmas card from 2009.  Yep, 2009.  I scrapped it bc when I got it in the mail and took a look at it, I laughed so hard!  My brother-in-law is mean mugging like crazy in this photo.   Grinch much BIL?  Still makes me laugh all these years later.  

The design is based off of a 2013 sketch from Studio Calico.  

And this next one is of my youngest daughter with my brother.  I have no idea what she was upset about but thought that it was so sweet how he was trying to comfort her.  That is pretty typical for him.  He is a fantastic Uncle!

I scraplifted this from something off my pinterest board.  Do you delete pins once you have gotten inspiration from them?  I tend to just move them from one place to another and have a really hard time deleting anything, especially if it is from 2peas.  

The page was based on this pin.  The designer is not noted and the link just takes you to the We R Memories blog.  I loved how she just stacked a whole bunch of pretty stuff to the right of the layout but left the rest of the page with a lot of white space.  It looks very clean even though there is a ton of lovely detail.  IMO, this is because she kept all of her clusters tight together in one central spot.  I could be inspired by this one all over again, especially how she tied that twine in the corner:)  

Thanks for stopping by!

No Respector of Sleep

As I was driving home one day, a comedian was doing a skit (on the radio) on how young people don't respect sleep.  I found myself agreeing with everything he said and nodding as I laughed my tail off.  This is soooo true.  When i was younger I could sleep anytime, anywhere and I could get there real quick.  Now that i am older, I find myself having to work at getting sleep.  It's a process and there's a long list of requirements that have to be met before I can settle in to a good night.  It can't be hot, nothing can be on my feet (no socks, footies, long pajamas, etc), I have to be covered (it doesn't matter what kind of cover.  Sheet blanket, throw.  Just covered), my bed must be soft, no bra, nothing smelly on my face (try finding a face cream that fights wrinkles, exfoliates and plumps lines that doesn't smell funny.  It is a process too), I have to be clean, the room has to be both dark and quiet and my husband can't be snoring yet.  

Yeah.  It's that serious.  And I still get up at 2am for absolutely nothing at all.  Who knew that as you got older, you stopped sleeping through the night?  Ughhhhh.  Crazy town.

A few months ago, when I decided to start creating stash kits, I came across Jen Schow on youtube.  She has a ton of great video content on her channel.  What I was looking for was inspiration on creating stash kits and I found it with her old meets new series.  In one of the videos she talks about sewing on her pages and that is something that I do alot.  What I don't do however is take care of my loose ends.  I just trim them and it is what it is.  If they come loose okay.  If they don't fantastic.  

After she had sewn on one of her pages, she casually flipped it over and proceeded to pull the thread through to the back of the layout.  What!  Where has this idea been all of my life?  I'm sure its been around but seriously, it was new to me.  I have been doing it ever since.  Maybe it doesn't make a huge difference in the looks of my pages, but it makes me happy to not have frayed ends and loosening threads.  So now I'm obsessed and always looking out for great tips.  If you don't mind me asking, what tips have you come across that you actually use and love?  I would love to check them out and thanks in advance for spilling:)

I didn't sew on either of these layouts but I did get 2 more finished and they will be heading to an album today.  The first one is of my husband during his color guard days.  I loved to see him in this uniform!  I haven't finished the journaling but will get it done today before I put it in the album.

And this one is of me and my oldest son when he was a baby.  The picture is so casual.  Just an early morning shot of us on a random Saturday. We are still in our pajamas and had probably just finished breakfast.  This lo has a good mix of really old (hello orange Chatterbox paper) and really new.  The really new stuff hit my stash less than a month ago.  And again, the journaling will be added today.  I have to get better about putting the writing on my pages before I move on!

Hey, thanks for stopping by!  See you soon.....

So Classy :)

I'm taking so many classes that is.  Cheesy I know but I am really, really pleased with how many layouts I have been doing.  I've completed more than 50 this month alone!  Yay me....  But it's not just the quantity that makes me happy, I am loving the pages too despite the fact that a large number of the layouts don't have any photos on them yet.  I seem to be motivated by just getting getting moments and events down that I want to remember right now, right this moment, right this second.  That being said, I am happy to find that I am doing only slight fewer pages that have the photos either on them or with them waiting to be edited.  That is joyful folks.  And bonus - I am even using photos from the recent past instead of just my old pictures.  Let's just say that me and chronological are not speaking at the moment and I am not even sure that we were ever friends to begin with....

Last month, I signed up for some classes at Big Picture Classes and for a couple of classes at SB.com with my main goal being that I could take some (let's be real. ALL) of the creative pressure off of myself.  Between that and not forcing myself to look at my entire stash for supplies my pages are getting done, my albums are getting filled and there is a wonderful side effect of letting myself off the hook creatively.  New ideas and thoughts about what I want to create, ideas that I want to try and techniques that I want to take a shot at have been sparking.  

Yesterday I created 6 layouts.  6.  With a capital 6.  Wowzer.  I know that some of you are like only 6.  Please, I create that many every day.  My hat is off to you for being so prolific but this girl sometimes only creates 6 layouts in 2 months so this is a big deal to me.

It is very hard for me sometimes to let go of the idea that every page or album has to have.....................  Fill in the blank.  There always seems to be something that makes me get up and walk away to think about what that something is.  Several days later, I could still be thinking about it which is tragic. 

 I have gone to crops with layouts to finish and walked away from the crop with -1 layouts completed.  They don't give away prizes for that by the way in case you were wondering:) and yes that is a negative 1.  Negative because instead of completing a page, I actually took one apart because it wasn't "right".  Don't judge, I know that I am not the only one who has done and does do this.

Changing my ways has started with the classes.  In Nancy Damiano's class I walked away today with this beautiful page designed by her than built by me.  And the bonus page that was inspired by her ideas to overlap the photos, frame the title and diagonally stack the embellishments.  Love them both.....

 This is the page almost exactly as she taught it.  Love the photo but for some reason my printer is printing all of my photos dark.  My daughter took this photo of my husband and I goofing around on the swings in Downtown Charleston.  

And this is the layout that was inspired by the class.  I originally wanted to put 2 pictures of my niece on here but could only find 1 so added a journaling card instead.  I use the tag that was intended for my journaling to add the details like dates and places.  

I also created this layout about my daughters college graduation.  The journaling is on the back and talks about how happy we all were that day and how promising life is.  

It was inspired by this card by Tammy Tutterow. I love her work and was happy to be able to capture the feel of the card in a completely different format.  

Thanks for stopping by!  See you soon:) 

By The Numbers

I have made a commitment to using what I have this year.  So far, so good.  I haven't really bought a ton of stuff since the beginning of the year but in order to really hold myself accountable, the numbers are coming.  So this is what is in my stash kit for March:

1. 20 photos from our pre-digital camera days plus the option to print more from after we had a digital camera.  Yay for getting photos out of lock-down!
2. 66 pieces of 12 X 12 patterned paper.
3. 3 pieces of 8 1/2 X 11 patterned paper.  And the question of why do I have any at all?  I have never, ever scrapped 8 1/2 X 11.....
4. 56 pieces of 6 X 6 patterned paper.  I must stop buying 6 X 6 paper pads ugh.
5. A bowl full of miscellaneous loose embellishments and finally
6. 45 packs/sheets of stickers and embellishments.

I have my permission to use as much of the other stuff in my stash as I need to to round out my "stash kit".  I've actually been doing this for a few months now and it is working out great.  I did try to do a curated stash kit but found that it killed my mojo.  So what I do now is just randomly pull out items from storage and than put them together in loose page kits with a sketch, pin or other inspiration that I have been wanting to try.  Works so much better for me.  

My overall goal is to get the pictures that talk to me on a page so that the memories that are important don't get lost.  Some of the photos are just nice and don't require a whole lot of thought or journaling, but others are important to me.  Also, I am the worst photographer ever and my pictures reflect that.  I have been able to improve them a little in Photoshop but most of the time, it is what it is and what is most important is the journaling.  

Enough of my rambling.  My goal is to 100% complete 57 pages in March.  I did a similar kit for February but didn't count what I began with so the numbers are a mystery lol....

Here is a look at 2 pages that I have been able to get done in this month.  The first is of my adorable niece when she was a baby.  Her mom had driven over for a little visit and we snapped a photo of her waving from the hood of the car.  What she was waving at I don't even know but she looked cute as a button.

Did I mention that in order for me to meet my goals, most everything that I scrap is going to be a lift?  Yep, this one is straight from my pinterest boards and based on this layout by Nicole Samuels using a Studio Calico kit.

I love the frames at the bottom of the page!  Love, love, love them!!  I used a stamp to stamp them in a loose row than filled the centers with random embellishments and papers that represented the page to me.  This is also one of those layouts in which there was no real story but the photos are an all time favorite.  Not great enough to blow up and frame because of all the distractions (car, no shoes, street, etc.) but just so adorably her at that age.

The other is of my daughter getting her hair put in pony tails before school.  And she is being way dramatic about it.  Really Ariel?? Really?

This photo had a story to it.  When you have a girl and she has a lot of hair, and you have a mom and she is terrible at doing hair, this is what you go through every.single.day.  Every Day.  Until I came across this photo, I had forgotten about the daily struggle to get her hair done.  So there is a large amount of journaling on this and even more that I can say that will probably go on the back of the layout before I put it away.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Have a happy scrappy day.......

I Would LOVE To Scrap With

Debby Schuh and Laura Vegas.  Love to.  It has been years since I scrapped with anyone other than myself but I really, really miss going to crops and scrapping with my friends.  Since we moved, I am the only person that I know that scraps as none of my sisters or nearby friends do.  One of the things that I plan to do this year is to find a circle of scrappy friends in my area to hang out with on a regular basis.  

I still love to visit blogs and I stop by Debby S. and Laura V.'s blogs almost daily.  Can taking a class from someone be considered scrapping with them?  If so, I've scrapped with Debby before.  She is absolutely the sweetest person!  Love her and her talent is off the charts to boot.  I consider myself a terrible student in creative classes because I always end up doing my own thing but in her class, I was so smitten by her process and project that I followed along and created the album as she taught it and exactly as she taught it.  I still have that album 10 years later and I still love it.  

Laura V. has been a long time favorite scrapper of mine and she has been mentioned a million times on here over the years.  It would be a scary experience for her to scrap if she were to scrap with me :).  One because I am chatty and two because I would be looking over her shoulder the entire time trying to get a glimpse of her using that layout magic that she has.  I'm sure that I'm not the only fan girl out there that would be terrible to scrap with so feel free to fess up and share your story or a person that you would love to scrap with in the comments.  

My neighbors recently had a gorgeous new baby girl.  She is just beautiful!  As I was shopping for a gift for her, it gave me a nudge to 1) scrap more of my own baby photos and 2)  to create a baby book for her.  Since I don't regularly shop for baby stuff anymore, I forget how beautiful and soft the colors of baby things are.  Even though the entire rainbow of colors is used, the colors are so delicate and gently hued that they all just work together perfectly.  I don't want to create a mini album for her because I just don't think she would use it but I do want to do a simple, fill in the blanks book that a busy new mom doesn't have to invest more than a few minutes in and that has space for just one 4X6 picture on each page.  That way, she doesn't have to do anything other than add a small amount of info and a photo that doesn't have to be cropped.  I also plan to gift her with some snapfish shots so that when she is ready, all she has to do is upload and order the photos.  We'll see.  Still thinking that whole thing through.  

My layout shares for the day are......

From our visit to Niagara Falls last year.  We love it there and plan to go again this year.  The Maid of the Mist is one of our favorite things to do but you would be crazy to take a good camera on it.  It is a super wet ride and there is nowhere to hide from the water!  We put our phones in clear plastic bags but you don't get the best photos that way.  I used a postcard that came with our package in place of a photo for this lo.

My inspiration came from Scrapbooks, etc. magazines "Storage" edition from 2012.  I don't remember who the lo was created by but I was inspired by to use the banner.  My lo doesn't look anything like hers but if I find it again, I will come back and add her info.  I looked for it on pinterest and online but no joy and I don't know what I did with the mag.  Oh well, i'll be more careful in the future.             

And this one was inspired by this lo on pinterest.  I love the layering that she did on the page.  My son was a very happy baby and would almost always wake up like this.  Again, my photog skills are absolute crap but the photos had a story for me so I just lightened them in Photoshop, cropped them and put em on there.  The journaling will be on the back as I have a long story to tell.  

I have this super pretty, iridescent glitter in my stash and really wanted to use it on this page.  I simply used my finger to dab thick white glue directly on the page than sprinkled the glue with glitter, smushed it in with a scrap piece of paper, let the glue dry and tapped off the excess.  Love the look of it!  So sparkly but it doesn't take over the whole page.

Thanks for stopping by!  See you again soon.

Planning What to Eat

In about 1996, I started using meal plans to make it easier for a busy working mama (me) to get a good healthy dinner on the table in a timely manner.  Before I started using a menu, we ate out a lot, we ate junky frozen & boxed meals or we ended up eating dinner at an outrageously late time.  Like 9pm outrageous.  When you have 2 little ones with a bed time of eight thirty, eating at nine does not make any sense and is exhausting for us all.  

So, as a fix, I fused my love for trying new recipes, writing lists and my desperate need for an easy process for getting food on the table into an easy planning system.  Thankfully it worked than and it still works now.  The only major change that I have made over the years is the amount of time that I plan the menu for.  I used to do it a month at a time but now that I have more time, I can plan for 2 weeks instead.  I usually try at least 11 new recipes in a 2 week period. 

 Ideally I would like to try a new recipe every time I cook but it doesn't always happen.  My guys do not like to eat leftovers so every recipe has to be reduced and reducing recipes to fit a family of 3 can sometimes be tricky.  

We all fend for ourselves for breakfast and lunch so only dinner needs to be included in the menu.  Next week we are having:

1. Pork Chops with Orange Pepper Glaze (new recipe)/Brussel Sprouts/Rice Pilaf
2. Chicken & Rice Streudel (new recipe)/Pickled Cucumbers/Broccoli Florets
3. Paprika Lamb with Mint Sauce (new recipe)/Mixed Veges/Spaghetti Squash
4. Sausage Cavatelli (new recipe)/Green Salad/Steamed Asparagus/Garlic Toast
5. One Pot Pasta (new recipe)/Green Salad
6. Fried Rice made with leftover Pork Chops (tried & true family favorite.  We always have a ton of leftover rice so I end up making this about 2 times a month.  We have a dinner version and a breakfast version made with bacon that we just gobble up:))
7. Eat Out

Five of the meals are made from recipes that I wanted to try.  On average I spend 30 minutes or less cooking each night even when I'm cooking something new.  What about you, how do you get meals on the table each week?  Are you the only cook in the house or do you share the duty?  

Since I work from home now, the cooking duties are normally mine but even when I worked outside the home, it was mostly me.  As my kids got older they did chip in and cook a meal during the week but seriously, there is only so much hamburger helper or Manwich that a body can eat before going off the deep end!  My husband cooked occasionally but my goodness did he use a lot of dishes.  The kids would actually volunteer to cook for him if they had dish duty on a night that he was supposed to cook.  True story.  Even now.  He made limeade a couple of weeks ago and used the blender, 2 pitchers, 2 strainers, 2 bowls, 2 large spoons, a measuring glass and 3 cups. For real! ugghh... 

I do have a couple of layouts to share.  For the first time in years, we sent Christmas Cards.  I decided to start documenting my cards so will do a layout every year.  I put a list of who we sent the cards to on the back of the layout.   

This is a layout about my youngest daughter.  I just liked the photo so I enlarged it and put it on a page.  This sketch from Prima was my inspiration.  

The embossed paper is just absolutely gorjuss.  It almost went back into my stash!  Thanks for stopping by everyone!  See you soon.

Valentines Day Surprise

My husband sent me flowers.  I think this is the first time he has ever done that.  He will bring me flowers, but not send them.  He also sent me chocolate covered strawberries.  They were beautiful and delicious.  He never gives me candies which is 100% A OK with me.  One time he witnessed what I do to a box of chocolates and must have decided that it would be to painful to see it again.  I cut all of the chocolates in half and only eat the ones that have nuts in them, after I have scraped off most of the chocolate.  Most boxes only seem to have 3-4 pieces that I like and my little guy doesn't eat chocolate candy so they go in the garbage.  Sorry no photos but I loved everything so much that I wanted to mention it.

 So on the crafty front, I have had this laser cut paper by Basic Grey for 2 forevers!  Ditto the photo of my MIL & niece from the first time they met.  What better way to celebrate them both than by putting them together on a layout.  Not 100% happy with it because of how strong the laser cut paper is.  It just seems to steal from the photo a little.  But my motto is that once it is done, it is done and I really don't like to redo pages. 

What I did love on this page, was the layering and the black & white gingham brad that I have been trying to put on a page since Moses was a kid.  It didn't work on anything until this page came along........

I realized that I am getting a little behind on my journaling.  I have about 10+ pages that I need to get the journaling onto.  I guess there will be a tv marathon on Sunday.  

I enrolled in 2 classes at Scrapbook.com and signed up at Big Picture classes.  Taking the classes is all part of my scrapbook domination plan.  Big picture has so many classes that I am planning to take that my goal is to just follow the classes and not think about being creative at all.  Mindless creativity to get the layouts done!  But, with the classes that I took at Scrapbook.com, I create my first page pretty close to how it is taught and than I create another page using the concepts that I learned.  Yay me:) I get a gold star for being more prolific.  This first layout was for Nancy Damiano's class "Designing Your Story".  There is no journaling yet because I am still considering what I am going to say.

This is my take on her class.  I loved how she painted the cork so I took that idea a little further by watering down the paint and using it to water color some tags to match the cork numbers.  I will use the pull-out tag at the top to talk about where each one of us at in our lives in 2016.  My plan is to number each of the photos and again to number the journaling once I get it on.  This class is so fun and is making me crazy happy right now.

The next class I am loving is Becki Adams on Big Picture Class "Line it Up".

I stayed pretty close to her design and used one of my all time favorite photos of my crew at Disney.  

Loving the classes by the way.  And they are free.  If you don't count how much money you spend on class supplies.  Wuh Wuh Wuuuuuhhhhh lol.  Yeah I spent $100 on supplies which is crazy considering what I have already but at least I am contributing to keeping SB.com Alive right.  Anyway,

Thanks for stopping by and see you soon.

How Many Albums Are Too Many Albums

I Recently listened to a Scrap Gals podcast in which they discussed scrapbook albums.  One of their listeners has way to many (in her opinion) albums and is running out of space to store them.  Which really made me think, once I use up all of my stash, where am I going to put the metric ton of layouts that I've made.  Most albums hold about 40 layouts so with my goal of creating about 365 layouts this year, I will need about 10 albums to store them all.  If I do this every year for the next 5, and I totally have enough stash that this is a realistic number, that's about 50 albums on top of what is already in my house. Holy smokes, do I really want that many albums?  Do I?  My answer has to be yes since the stuff is here and I am already in the process of creating all of these pages but the thought of would I have started down this path if I had thought about the end results is so relevant right now.  

My answer is probably.  Because although my parents talk about our childhood and we know a lot of stories from when we were growing up, we don't know everything.  We don't know the daily stuff.  What was our everyday life like?  What kind of students were we?  What were my parents like before they had us?  What were we like as babies?  Where did we travel to?  All of these stories and more have been told in my albums and will be available to my kids and my nieces and nephews, if they are curious about them.  That makes me really happy.  Since we don't have a shortage of storage and I know that my kids will want the albums and photos when I go, tomorrow can fend for itself on this issue.  I enjoy the process and we all enjoy looking through the albums and remembering the things that were important, fun, thoughtful or even routine in our life.  I'll leave it at that.

Now for some layouts.  One was created for a challenge and the other was created to document our most recent Disney trip.  

This is one of my favorites!  Oh it just came out so, so perfect for me.

It was inspired by Summer Fullerton's page from Creating Keepsakes June 2013 issue.  It doesn't look anything like the inspiration page but I really liked the clear separation between the photos and the tag on top of the "then" picture.  

And of course, I love my girl in her beaded Mickey ears....

I had this photo of my husband and youngest daughter when she was a baby.  It was so sweet to see him hold her so gently and carefully.  Love how tiny she looks in his hands....

The page design was inspired by sketch 470 on scrapbook challenges.  I pretty much followed the sketch exactly even down to the paper design and embellishment placement.  Very fun!  

So I am curious about how often you participate in challenges and why?  I want to do more of these in the future and would love for you to share your favorite challenge sites for me to check out.  Thanks for stopping by!

Being Prolific

This year I have a goal to do 2 things in my creative life, well maybe 3 or 4.  

1.  Blog More - I say this every year and end up fizzling out by the time the summer rolls around.  This time I plan to meet this challenge by changing my focus to documenting our life instead of documenting my creations/business.  

2.  Create More - I want to finish at least 1 layout a day this year.  Seriously, I am off to a really good start!

3.  Cut My Stash in HALF - Yikes!!!!  

4.  Participate in The Crafty Community More - Take challenges, post projects more, join in discussions and go to a crop.  A real life crop.  I am soo excited about going to a crop.  

Part of my plan to accomplish all of this craziness is to scraplift.  Most every page that I will be sharing in the near to distant future will be scraplifted.  From pinterest, sketches, message boards and finally pinterest.  I love pinterest.  So much.  And yes it is at the beginning and the end of my list.  Because I love it.  

I have 2 layouts to share today and both were created with no photos.  Which is great but I ran into a problem with one of them that just frustrated the crap out of me.  It is no secret that I hate, hate, triple hate to edit and print photos.  It is the bane of my creative life.  So I made this page about my oldest son.....

The pictures are terrible!  Dark, blurry, off-center, wrong size, ughhhh.  I tried everything in adobe to get them better but no joy!  I am going to give it another go on another day but I was done.  Still this layout is one of my all time favorites and came out so, so cute.  Every thing that went into making it is from my mountain of a stash!  Katie Pertiet's "Your Age" layout from Creating Keepsakes January/February 2012 issue was my inspiration.  Yes I do hoard magazines and have some from the 90's.  I couldn't find the layout online to link to but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.  

This next layout was created at the beginning of last year and I took a photo of my son specifically for it.  The editing for it went much better but seriously, editing is a pain!

The inspiration for this one escapes me at the moment, but I am sure it had something to do with the letters.  I couldn't make any more words that I wanted to use but loved this alphabet so much and wanted to use it all up.  

That's it for me and thanks for stopping by.