Scrapbook layout for January 2004

Here are my little cuties at age 19 months. This one was easy. I made this layout about a year ago, so all I had to do was crop my photos, mount on white cs, then journal. My journaling is usually minimal; in this case it involved their names and the date (bottom right corner) on white cs, then punched with the SU! slot punch. I love that punch! Anyway, I forgot how much Julia liked her "hats". In these pictures she is wearing a Coldstone Creamery ice cream bucket, and my Washington Redskins hat I wore in elementary school (I told you I saved everything!) Julia is my blue-eyed girl (light brown/almost blonde and Kathryn is the brown-eyed beauty/brunette. (I think if you click the pic you can see more detail.) Thanks for stopping by!

Next project...Scrapbooking Julia & Kathryn

See this black notebook (pictured bottom left)? This is filled with scrapbook pages I have made (at least partially) waiting for photos and photo mats. Behind the notebook and to the right of it is an overflowing crate of scrapbook kits. The crate is so full there are kits propped in front of the crate!

The last completed page in my scrapbook of my girls is December 2003. Now that I have the girls' photo albums and art work albums updated through June 2007 (yea, me...Tracy and Lauren thanks for cheering me onwith your blog comments!!!), I developed pictures I'd like to scrapbook for 2004. Here is the goal...think smarter, not harder...I want to use pre-made pages and/or these scrapbook kits as much as I can to help me catch up faster AND use up what I already own without buying more stuff (okay, I can hear some of you ROTFLOL! I know, I know, I've said that before and yet I buy more stuff.) I am very picky about my decorative papers matching the colors in the photos (i.e. the outfits the girls are wearing), but I hope to be able to find kits that coordinate well with my pictures. I will post the layouts as I complete them. They may not be new and trendy, but I'll be using my stash and what was trendy for 2004, at any rate.

Tracy and I taught classes at Memories and one of the perks (besides an AWESOME employee discount) was for every class you taught, the teacher received two class kits. One to make for the store to keep as a sample and the other for herself. Alas, Memories closed the east coast stores earlier this year (a moment of silence, please for my happy place closing.) Okay, so most of the time after making the store sample, I did not want to do it again. Hence, the overflowing crate. Confession: I have two more crate fulls in the closet! One filled with mini book kits, and another with Travel kits, Heritage kits, Calendar kits, and 12x12 craft keepers labelled with various themed stickers and embellies e.g. alphabet, baby, school, fall, winter, spring, summer, etc.

Check my blog when you can to track my progress :)

Nice Matters Award

The Nice Matters Award is a friendship award. This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Ila nominated me for this award. Thanks, Ila! Check out her wonderful cards here: http://artfullyila.blogspot.com/ I understand that I have to pass it on to 5 other nice bloggers. I have made quite a few blogger friends since beginning my blog June 1st, but here is my list:

1. Tracy http://suzyscrapbooker.blogspot.com/

2. Jean http://prettykittydogmoonjewelry.blogspot.com/

3. Lauren http://llaurenb.blogspot.com/

4. Ingrid http://scrapbookmaniaandmore.blogspot.com/

5. Corie http://creationsbycorie.blogspot.com/

Art work: before & after picture

Ahhhh...I finally got all these pictures in Julia's art work albums and Kathryn's art work albums. I've already picked out a few pieces I wish to keep, and the 4 piles you see are waiting for the grandparents to choose what they want before the rest goes in the trash (dating from Jan. '06-June '07). Okay, so I have not started on a fifth pile of art work, the one from camp this summer. The last day of camp is Monday (camp party.) So I can take a break and start a new project, right?

To Do List / Clutter / Craft room

Answer me this: Do any of you have a "To Do" list that has items on it that are a year or two behind? This is just one of the three piles of Julia & Kathryn's art work sitting in the floor of my craft room. After pre-school let out in June, Doug and I did a whole house clean out. My craft room is the tiniest bedroom, but somehow when the rest of the house got cleaned out (even the garage), everything we did not want to get rid of ended up here.

I am blogging this so that my blogger friends can hold me accountable. I am on a mission to get this room cleaned up and organized again! It is making me nuts!!! I never seem to have enough time just to get a card made, but I am determined to make this work. I will go without sleep, if necessary, but I want it done! Like all of you, I have a lot of balls I am juggling. Even though there are never enough hours in the day, sometimes I get more done when I have too much to do. It's times like these when I work on something I probably really don't have time for, but it feels good getting it done even though there are other things to do of higher priority. And some how I get it all done when I am determined to do it.

On Monday's post I mentioned I worked on updating my photo album, Julia's photo album, and Kathryn's photo album. I was 21 months behind, and now I am caught up. So next chore? Get caught up on the girls' art work. I am 17 months behind on this job. (Not counting the pile from camp this summer!) Doug helped me take pictures of each piece of art work for each child. I have gone through and picked out a few special pieces I wish to hold on to. Now the piles are waiting for the grandparents to choose what they wish to keep. The rest goes in the trash. I have the pictures developed. 7 boxes of photos to sort and put into their art work photo albums. I am dreading this chore (I always do) and I keep promising myself I won't let it get so far behind...

So will you be my cheerleader?

Caardvarks Challenge: Easy as 1,2,3!

The current challenge is to use 1 embellie, 2 patterned papers, and 3 flowers. This was perfect for me since my craft room lately has been a disaster area...worst it has ever been. I usually can't create in such a mess. Clutter makes my crazy. Yesterday my husband had the girls out for a little bit, so I took that time to try to clean it up. I have so many projects going at once right now, and I don't want to put away certain supplies until they are complete, kwim? One major project I started in June is getting our photo albums caught up. I was 2 3/4 years behind! My husband and I developed the photos and sorted them, but I had not placed them in the correct albums. All of this was in the floor! So this is where I started. After putting all the albums away, I moved on to my craft table. I uncovered these American Crafts papers I used in a previous post, with the large decorative brad. I had intended to use the flowers on that original card, but it overpowered it. So I decided on this simple 4 square design, one of my favorites to use scraps. What do you think?

10 layer card. Count 'em! 10!!!

Using my scraps again. This is not a new layout by any means. I've used "LOVE" and "NOEL" in this square before, but never with so many layers. This simple basic design took forever! I felt like every square needed a little "pop". So I matted each pp (discontinued MM) on white cs, trimming closely. The letters are stickers. Digressing here...when I first started to scrapbook 4 years ago, I only really knew about paper piecing, MM coordinating papers, and letter stickers. When MM discontinued these papers soon after I got bitten by the scrapbooking bug I actually thought, what am I gonna do now? Funny, huh? I've come a long way from that time. I was inspired to use my stickers and these papers again when Nathalia posted a blog entry where she used some old tired stickers that she made new and cool. Check out all her fab creations here: http://funkyphreshpapierkreations.blogspot.com/.