Mother to Daughter

Above all, remember to treat people the way you would want to be treated.* And remember that your sister will be your best friend for your whole life, no matter what comes. Treat each other with love and respect and kindness. * Don’t listen to rumors; and don’t fall prey to spreading rumors. * Be true to yourself and always follow your "gut" feelings. They are usually right. * Dishonesty never pays. * Quiet time is a good thing. It is always good to get back in touch with your own thoughts. * Being right is not always the most important thing, but being considerate is almost always important. * Don’t let people treat you badly – never shy away from standing up for yourself (or each other) * Attitude really is everything. If you approach life with a good attitude even the most unpleasant tasks are not so bad. * Pray * Even when you think something is impossible, don’t be afraid to give it a try. You might just surprise yourself with the things you can accomplish. * Lying never works out well. Tell the truth, even if you have to do it carefully so as not to hurt someone. * Trust God and love each other *

My Day By the Numbers

I finally got around to doing my first prompt (not the first prompt, just the first one I’ve done) on Shimelle’s True Stories class. Life has been so busy, I haven’t even had time to read the prompts, much less write the responses. But I am determined to do them – I love her classes and always find such inspiration – both for my writing and my scrapbooking – when I take them.

Here’s today’s page:

Game Night

On Friday, Big Girl was under the weather. She had a virus and a nasty fever and spent the day at home. Saturday she was a little better but still not feeling great. However, she was feeling good enough to get “cabin fever” from being at home with little to do for two days except watch TV and rest.

So, we broke out the board games on Saturday night and played Scrabble together.

What started out as four separate “teams” turned quickly into two “teams” playing. What was interesting was how hard it was to make words even when we had fourteen letters to use (instead of the usual seven). You would think it would’ve been easier. But, when you have six “A’s” and few consonants, I don’t think it matters much.

We had a good time, though. I was very proud of the girls’ spelling ability and their creativity in coming up with words. SuperMan’s creativity was impressive, too – especially his “creative spelling” on a few words.

I’m looking forward to more game nights this winter.

More Scrapbooking

Even though Big Girl is sick with a virus and the day was busy on Friday, I still managed to sneak in a few hours of scrapbooking. Here are a few of the pages I worked on.

Surprisingly, I’m almost caught up with my 2010 photos. I have a few more occasions to do and then I can focus on preparations for Shimelle’s Journal Your Christmas class which starts right after the first of December. I did the class last year and loved how it helped me reflect more on what the holidays mean to me (and less on the commercial aspects of them) and I’m looking forward to doing it again this year and finding out what changes have occurred within me in the last 12 months. What will I focus on this year compared to last?

Anyway, here are pages for you to enjoy…

Hey! Guess What!?!

I actually scrapbooked this week!

Can you believe it?

I was beginning to wonder if my scrapbooking mojo had left me for good.

But, I’m very happy to report it hasn’t.

I’ve spent some of my free time in the past week pouring over scrapbook blogs and boards trying to get myself inspired again. It has been working.

I felt the itch come on slowly and begin to build. Now it’s like a case of poison ivy!

I just gotta scratch that itch!

Here are a few pages I’ve made:

I’m hoping to get to do some more this weekend. My Big Girl is not feeling well, though, so I may be busy being nursemaid instead of super scrapper.

What? A Scrapbooking Post?

I know, I know… those of you who originally started following my blog to see scrapbooking related posts have probably gotten really disappointed in me lately… the scrapbooking has been rather absent. As a matter of fact, if you’re still hanging around, I have a special message for you…

Thank you.

I know I have been rather lax in the scrapbooking department. But, I have no good excuses for you – Life just gets in the way sometimes, you know?

But, the good news is that I have two scrapbooking retreats this fall – one was this past weekend and one is in October. I think I have found my scrapping mojo again – although it took me most of this past weekend to find it!

Here are a few pages I did over the weekend. For those of you who are Creative Memories software users, I’ll post some templates later in the week.

You aren’t going to believe this

But I actually scrapbooked this past weekend!

I know!

Big shock!

I haven’t done it in months and months. I had grand plans at the beginning of summer but they were washed away in a sea of other activities.

My girlfriend came over Saturday night and we hid out in the basement and scrapped and caught up on each other’s lives. It was so great. I really miss that time with my friends and the creative time.

I’m hoping I get to do more of that this fall once we get the school and activity schedules nailed down.

I have been challenging myself to do two things:

Work only from my stash. No shopping trips allowed.
Use some of the many inspiration page layouts I have filed away.

Here are some of the pages I worked on: (along with their inspiration pages)

Here is the inspiration page:

I need to go back and add my journaling to this one. I want to list all the books I’ve read this summer.

And the inspiration page:

Again, needs more journaling. The medicine I’m taking is making me a bit loopy, so I decided to wait and write when my head was more clear.

Inspiration page:

This was my own invention. 🙂 This two-page spread I tried just fiddling with some of the design principles I’ve learned in the past few classes I’ve taken.

This one is still a work in progress. Nothing is even glued down yet, but I love how it’s going so far.

Here is the inspiration page:

I can’t believe all these pictures are from LAST YEAR at this same time! The girls have grown so much. I’ll have new first-day-of-school pictures tomorrow that will quickly go in my pile to scrap.

Friday Scrap Inspiration

I subscribe to, oh, about a million blogs. I don’t read them all every day, but I love to spend a little bit of time each day to read a few blogs. I have some standards – my “Daily Fix” that I read every day – and then a whole host of others that I read when I have time. I have them categorized in Google Reader (do you use this? It is awesome if you’re a regular blog reader) – categories like Cooking & Baking, Scrapbooking, Parenting, etc.

Today, I have been perusing the scrapbooking blogs I subscribe to. I thought I’d share with you some of the layouts I’ve seen that are inspiring me today – giving me ideas and getting those creative juices flowing.

So, grab your cup of tea (or coffee) and sit back and enjoy: (you can click on the images to link back to source blog post)

I just LOVE this spiral with the hearts. Gotta try this.

and this one? LOVE the magazine-style layout.

Same gal did this one, too. Love it. Can’t wait to see more of hers in the future.

If you’re a digital scrapbooker, you should check out Songbird Avenue. Each month, they post a kit for $8 and the proceeds benefit a charity. That’s not why I buy their kits, though. I buy them because they are beautiful. Every single month. I love them. Here’s June’s kit:

I’m also finding colors inspiring today:

The cool teal blue of the water and the hot pink of the float and goggles. Must figure out a way to scrap these pool pictures and make those colors “pop” even more.

What is inspiring you today?

New Scrap Space

I spent a lot of time last weekend moving and reorganizing my scrapbooking stuff. I moved it from the sitting area in my master bedroom down to the basement. I decided it was time to make our bedroom a real bedroom, and not a scrap room with a bed!

Here are some pictures of the new scrap space in the basement. I have some decorating to do – I want to get some things on the wall to make it a little more inviting/crafty/creative. Last weekend I was just focused on getting everything downstairs and set up.

This is the space – two parallel tables nestled in the corner. One is my worktable and the other will be for storage and for laying out larger projects.

My worktable (complete with inspiration – a picture of SuperMan, some chocolate, and artwork by my kids)

The view as you come down the stairs.

I decided to keep my stamp pads close by as well as the tools, idea books, pens and other things I use on a regular basis. The cart tucked beside my chair holds odds and ends. I want to reorganize it and put some other things in there like my stamping tools, etc.

The sort/store/Cricut table. SuperMan made the shelves for my tables out of stair tread boards. I love them and it is great to take advantage of vertical space for storage. Behind the CM paper tote I have a Rubbermaid drawer that houses mini albums and some other projects-in-progress. The 3-drawer Rubbermaid has ribbons, brads, eyelets, and other stuff. Behind the CM photo box are my stamping and embossing tools. Paper and stickers are on the top shelf.

I also need to get some storage space. Everything is under my table and it’s not very pretty. I want to get it organized better so I can find things – and so little fingers don’t go wandering through my stuff (the kids’ play area is at the other end of this room)If I have a buddy over to scrap, there is room across from my tables to set up another table for them. I also have a TV and stereo downstairs so I can watch TV or listen to music while I scrap. I am going to keep my eye out for a cheap DVD player to put down there, too so we can watch chick flicks.

Templates for You

I have created a few more templates to be used in StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0.

The pages I created using them are below. They give you a good focal-point picture and still have room for some other photos. I had a lot of pictures and I wanted to fit them all in a few pages. I think this did the trick.