And I’m so excited! 
I’m working on putting together an 8 hour crop for National Scrapbooking Day at the local Joann’s. The education department has thoughtfully donated some scrapbook supplies to be used as door prizes, and I will be going through my stash to find some papers and other things to add to the prize pot. National Scrapbooking Day is May 1st, and the crop will be from 12-8pm. Quick question for you–would you rather have a few big door prizes, or would you rather have a bunch of little ones? Let me know what you think.
We’ll demo tools, and I’ll put together a make and take as well.
I don’t have a lot of details yet, but that’s what I’ve got so far. I’ll let you know about price, and post pictures as soon as I have more information.

Won’t you come join me? We’ll have fun!

While doing LOAD, I kept coming across photos that I thought would make a good story. Or that I’d been meaning to do a page about for awhile, and hadn’t done. Case in point:

I bought these paper and stickers with this particular page in mind. He’s about 2 in these photos. He’s 8 now. No time like the present!
At any rate, as a result of finding and pulling all these pictures my work area on my desk was getting smaller and smaller. So, I attempted more digi with the Port Au Prince kit from Songbird Cafe:

And then the freebie kit that Sweet Shoppe gave away in Ella Publishing’s website. Oh, and if you’re looking for inspiration and information along the lines of what Simple Scrapbooks magazine was providing, check out Ella. They sell ebooks aimed at the scrapbooking community.

Another template and digi papers and embellishments from Songbird Cafe and Sweet Shoppe. I scanned some pictures of my mother-in-law and went crazy with the paint overlays from Port Au Prince.

And Cathy Zielske had a free template on her website. Which I took full advantedge of. I love free!

Then I got my desk cleaned up, and put together this page: I love the big picture from the U2 concert. and I had fun decorating the grungeboard hinge to look a bit like a guitar.

And then I got started on Ethan’s baby book. I know, I know. He’s 8! But there is no should in scrapbooking, or at least I don’t believe that there is, and now is when I’m ready to tackle the baby book.

I tried to keep it simple, and bright. I really don’t like pastels for baby pictures. I like happy colors, not wimpy colors. And my kids really weren’t super quiet as babies. I still remember the evenings of Jonathan swinging the kids around in the car seat to calm them when they were fussy.

He didn’t start out chunky, but look at him later:

Lots of chins and drool! that’s my boy!

The prompt from Lain concerned group photos, and it reminded me of this photo, one of my grandparents all time favorites:

The other comment Grandpa always made was, everyone is smiling, even the dog. Who I cut off to fit the photo onto the page. That was a Jessica Sprague template that I rotated to fit the orientation of the photo.
And then on Saturday, I powered through the rest of Ethan’s baby book. I just have to add some journaling spots, and it will be all done. I’ll work on that in the copious free time I have;)

And then, for my last day of LOAD for February, I worked on a few pages from my Everyone Can Write A Little class that I took from Cathy Zielske last year. I’ve got a bunch of tweets and status updates chosen, and I’ll add to the book as I have time. Then next year, I’ll do the same for 2010, and then for 2011. Nothing like planning ahead, right?

So that’s all I’ve got for the moment. I hope you enjoyed these. I loved adding these moments to my story. Are you telling your story yet?

I signed up for LOAD (LayOut A Day) again this month. It looks like Lain and Tami will be running this in May and October as well. I encourage you to sign up for the challenge. There’s something very satisfying about having a new page to show the kids everyday. Ethan especially loves seeing what I’ve done.

Here’s what I’ve managed to do so far:

I used some old digital supplies from Creating Keepsakes’ Kit-Of-The-Month Club for this one. And I scanned the cover of the Happiness Project, a book that I COMPLETELY recommend to everyone, to illustrate the page, along with a photo of myself when I went to one of Pioneer Woman’s signings in NYC in December. I didn’t have time to do a paper page for some reason. Or maybe I just wanted to dabble with photoshop elements. I don’t really remember right now.

I used Core’dinations whitewash paper to do this page. It was fun, except for the whole scrap boss from fiskars that I used to make the dry embossed flower and leaf vine was less than 12.” That required some finessing. I love all the way all the disparate papers came together. All from my scrap drawer. I really have to go through those files and purge the absolutely ugly stuff.

Part of the Cricut Mother’s Day class I’m putting together at the local JoAnn’s. Email me if you want class information.

Least Common Layout for Library of Memories. Although I could do a place page, I have done travel albums, but not much about all the people I love. I thought I’d try to embarass my brother, the most non-mushy person I know.

A quiz from Ella Publishing’s Quick and Creative Quizzes. One sheet of patterned paper from Sassafrass Lass with the border still attached. Leftovers from a set of glitter letter stickers. This was SO fast and easy!

Template from Barb Wong, a fellow LOADster. More papers from CK’s KOTM. My second digital page for the month.

Mom got me a 3 month subscription to Little Red Scrapbook’s Monthly Kit. This is the first page I’ve done with the kit supplies. I’m really liking the little chipboard Amercan Crafts frames. I cut one apart to make the brackets around Simon’s face.

So the prompt for this day was to scrapbook a pile. I have to admit I have taken a few pictures of the piles of laundry I do, but I didn’t have any printed. So I used my last piece of 4×6 photo paper to print one-and was rewarded with the odd line down the lefthand side of the photo. I decided I was going to use it anyway, and added some flourish stamps and distressed the whole thing.

I used my category drawers to pull together all these photos for Simon in various boxes and bins. It sort of a defining characteristic.

Since I only have about three pages about Jonathan, I thought I’d do another, with random bits of trivia on assorted tags. I’d like to put a dent in the tags and labels I have. I don’t use them as much as I thought I would when I got them.

More Core’dinations paper, and more tags. And a quiz from an old Simple Scrapbooks special edition.

Paper leftover from making this year’s classroom valentine’s and one of my favorite pictures of Ethan ever. And a quick letter to him because he was missing a Valentine’s party and a field trip due to Strep. (Everyone in the house but me has it. I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m not looking a gift throat in the mouth.)

I can’t help it. This is what popped into my head everytime I saw this photo. Don’t tell me you can’t see it.

I love this photo of my mother and sister. They are truly beautiful here. (And other places as well, it’s just OBVIOUS here.)

I love the Doodlin’ Around paper stack from DCWV. This is from the stack. It’s got the doodle flowers and circle printed right on there, along with some glitter. I just added some flowers to add some dimension.

Yes, this is the same photo as the page above. I can’t help it, I absolutely adore this photo of Ethan with Lexy’s dog Lucky. It so perfectly catches the spirit of my not-so-little boy.

I don’t usually do birthday party pages. That’s just not what I do. But I thought I should use up some of my supplies. Ethan’s eight now, and as you all know, eight is great!

Some paper from Heidi Grace. All the birds are flocked, so I kept petting the page while I was putting it together. That bottom photo makes me laugh!

Ethan had company yesterday, so rather than get caught up with paper and glue I re-used the template Barb Wong made, and some brand new digital paper from Songbird Cafe’s Port Au Prince set. (All proceeds from that go to Doctors Without Borders.) And found some flower photos. I have a lot of flower photos. Some of these are on the doors of my craft room cupboard now 🙂

Thanks for looking! I hope I’ve given you some inspiration. Are you telling your story yet?

I turned 40 yesterday. It’s a completely weird idea. I’m so not even close to where I thought I’d be. As a teen I was always dreaming big. Scientist. Author. Even President. (Because I like telling people what to do. What can I say? It’s the big sister in me.) At any rate I was someone successful. Accomplished.

What have I accomplished since being a dreamer in high school? Just about every job I’ve had I’ve worked my way up to a supervisory position. From seasonal help to store supervisor. Temp worker to forecast analyst for service parts of a multi-million dollar lawn and garden manufacturer. But now? I’m a mom. Of two boys. I always thought I’d have a daughter. But I have boys. And I don’t think we’ll be having any more. Who wants to have a baby at forty? Sounds exhausting. Looking back, it seems like my whole life was preparation for being the Mom of boys. Always surrounded by boys, whether relatives or friends in college. And cleaning animal skulls as a job completely out grosses anything they can think of. I hope.

I teach scrapbooking and stamping, and sell supplies thru The Angel Company. I could even be considered passionate about it. But I’m not going to force people to tell their stories. I just try to explain that everyone has stories their family will want to remember, and scrapbooking is how you pass them on. Everyone has their own version of events, and scrapbooking is how you get to tell your side of the story.

I guess I should have taken more art classes. I never thought I’d be earning money in any art related field. But I’ve always been crafty, so I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised.

I have gained 50 pounds since college. It’s horrible. I’m surprised everytime I look in the mirror, because the outside so does not reflect how I feel about myself. Two years ago, I did manage to lose 20 pounds, and kept 15 off for a year, but the stess of the past year just undid all that work. But I have to lose the weight. My cholesterol count is way too high, and it just keeps getting worse. If I want to avoid pills for as long as possible, I need to loose weight. So. I’m dieting again this winter, and this time I’m going to keep going till I’m where I need to be for health’s sake. And yes, I know I need to exercise too, but exercise alone will not help me loose the weight. It can help me loose 5 pounds here or there, or help me maintain weight, but in general it won’t help me loose 50 pounds.

So here’s my public announcement. Because I’m great at making big plans, but terrible at follow thru. You guys are my weight loss assistants. Feel free to ask for updates, but please don’t nag. Nagging makes me feel contrary. Just ask Jess.

I have been meaning to write this all month so that if anyone wanted to play along with us, they’d be able to. However, we’re all familiar with the problems of even the best-laid plans, so it’s no surprise my haphazard planning has led me to post this at the last minute.

For those who are not familiar with it, Ali Edwards has been running, or perhaps instigating, a December Daily Scrapbook group for three years now. She has put together a flickr group, and posts her planning, designing, and creating process on her blog. For info about this year’s group go to her blog. That will give you all the information you need to play along if you want.

This will be the second year I do this. Last year I did not manage to take a photo every day, but I got photos and story for most days. I thought I’d share what I did with you. I’ll also post before and after photos for this year’s book on my flickr page (link on right) and try to update here on a regular basis.

I used a planner from Martha Stewarts’ craft line, and added a bunch of different papers to try to achieve an eclectic look. I may have only made it to “hodge podge,” but I like it. Of course there are some pages I like more than others. I’m only including the ones I found interesting here:

I loved using the acetate overlays and plain pages. They added a fun element of depth and unexpected layers. Here’s a couple more from later in the month:

And page 14? A piece of Tim Holtz’s grungeboard. I love that stuff. I even used craft foam for a couple pages:

And I used die cut pages, and shaped my photos to conform:

Other favorite techniques included full page photos on the backs of single sided papers.

Not all my photos were well composed; some of the ones I used could be considered downright awful, but they documented our life last December. That was the point. To be in the moment, rather than trying to recapture a feeling or thought months after the fact. And to enjoy that moment for what it was, in all its daily messiness. I hope you’ll consider playing along.

Making Ethan’s Lifesaver costume was very easy. I measured how tall Ethan was from his armpits to his knees, and around his chest, then got a piece of scrap material in those dimensions. I laid out a piece of florist’s wire on each end so I could give the finished piece some shape when I was done. Then I just covered the cloth with two strips of duct tape and used each color in turn.

I just taped the sides together on the inside and outside of the tube, then made two straps out of duct tape folded over on itself. (Simon took the photo above. He does a good job for a four year old, don’t you think?)

To make the label, I cut a piece of handmade paper that my sister gave me to approximately the right size, and cut out letters with my little cricut. I think they were 5 and 5.5 inches high, from the Opposites Attract cartridge. I just used a glue stick to attach them, then used a piece of clear shelf liner to attach and cover the whole label on the tube.
And now may I present Darth Vader and his LifeSaver:

Well, I made it. Actually I made a lot. Two twenty page mini albums, 28 more layouts, 5 of which were double paged, for a total of 73 pages done. That’s 131 photos out of my storage albums and onto pages. I need to push myself like this more often. How’s February sound? Anyone want to join us? I’ll be sure to let you know when that starts getting organized.

I was feeling rather worn out and sicky, so I thought about just slapping a photo on some cardstock and calling it done. Then I thought, what about using labels to make a photo mat, and it just snowballed from there. This has an awful lot of stuff on it for a slap it on the page kind of day. Oh, and have I mentioned how much I love grungeboard and stickles? Cos I do.

This photo has been sitting on my desk for weeks, calling me. I scanned it before I put it on the page, and then had fun weaving some patterned paper scraps together. I’m really loving these particular letter rubons. Getting them on clearance at AC Moore’s may have something to do with that.

This is an inside joke for the adults; my kids will never know the pleasure of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Since some days seem like I’m living in a zoo (Who am I kidding? Most days…) I thought the nature documentary style journaling would be appropriate.

And here’s today’s page. I figured I’d do a Halloween page and get in the spirit. After all Halloween may be the most important holiday for us, since if it weren’t for a Halloween party thirteen years ago tomorrow, I wouldn’t have met my husband. He was a pseudo-french intellectual with the Communist Manifesto under his arm, and a cigarette in a cigarette holder. I was the night sky. We’ve been together ever since.

We’ve been rather busy lately, but I’ve managed to keep up with LOAD. I’ve been trying to keep it simple, so I can do other things, like dishes and laundry. You know–housework! You all know how much I love and enjoy that, right?
Anyhoooo….
This was my next page, one 5×7 and a mat only attached on two sides makes a cute pocket for some journalling. If you’re looking for something to say, writing a letter to the person in the picture is a good place to start. Love this kid.

Another thing you can do, is to make a list of traditions or meaningful things, and then expand on that idea. I love this page. Not only are the photos okay, but I love all the product I ended up using. If I could use the Making Memories journalling cards on all my layouts I would be a happy woman.

And I’m seriously loving all the pieces I ordered from Scenic Route. It’s really sad that they are going out of business.

Another thing I’m really really enjoying is the Doodlin’ Around stack from DCWV. There’s a page for every season.

This is not a great page from a design point of view, but it really carries the idea of legos well. I used paper strips and a circle stamp set to make the “legos.”

I have had piles of brother themed stickers lying around for ages. I decided I should use them before my children are grown and out of the house.

Simon’s been helping me by picking out photos to use. I’ve had a craving for jellybeans since I made this page.

I got a book called Scrapbook Page Maps by Becky Fleck. There are all sorts of cool designs, but what I really like about the book is the set of cards in the back. I now have a deck of sketches for quick and easy reference and inspiration.

Feeling no creativity, I used a kit from Creating Keepsakes Kit of the Month from a couple years ago, and took advantage of someone else’s creativity.

And then I figured out which pictures I could use to go with this paper. The design of the paper totally dictated how I did this. I can see a few things I might have done differently now, but on the whole I like it.

And then I made another mini-book. Twenty pages, most of them very, very simple.

Here’s the title page:

And then we were back to Simon for inspiration, and a sketch from Page Maps. Love the arrow from Scenic Route, and the mesh paper has got to be at least five years old.

One more Page Maps Sketch, and more of Simon’s favorite foods. I didn’t use any patterned paper on this page, but used stamps to create my own on the strips on the right hand side of the page.

That’s all for now. I’ve got today’s page almost all done, I’m just waiting for the glitter glue to dry before I finish putting it together. Four more days, and LOAD will be done for October. It’s been a fun ride so far.

Or perhaps this should be titled “Maintaining My Groove?”

Ethan turned 8 on the ninth, and I decided to actually do a birthday page. I think this may be the second birthday page I’ve done, ever. What can I say, I don’t concentrate on events, but rather moments. As an aside, he would have been very unhappy if he had not gotten any legos. When I saw the little guy holding up the page below, I knew that set was for Ethan. The lego figure even looked like him, don’t you think?

I put this page together while working the table at my local Joann’s for the meet the teachers open house they do every month. I think it may be a little bare, but I’m not going to waste my time second guessing myself. Moving on…

This photo was taken by a family friend (Hi Marios!) I used paper and stickers from DCWV, and I love how they all go together.

Next I used some new papers I got in my order from Scenic Route. They are going out of business (sniff), so if you like these papers, order some quick. When they’re gone, they’re gone!

These are the first two pages in my Me:The Abridged Version book. The design is by Cathy Zielske, and she put together a great class teaching this at Big Picture Scrapbooking. Even if you don’t take a class from her, you should make a book like this. It will change the way you see yourself, and how your family sees you.

This page I did NOT do for LOAD. I made this at the beginning of the year as a memento for choosing the word “JOY” as my word of the year. This is something Ali Edwards talks about, and it’s a great idea for bringing mindfulness to your life.

The prompt for yesterday was to revisit your word of the year, if you had picked one, and make a page about it. This is what I came up with. Hankies may be necessary.

I finished off the week on a decidedly cheerier note, with a photo Simon took of me last spring, and a bunch of silly quotes I like to use.

So that’s it for this week. Seven layouts, and nine pages, for a total of 34 pages this month. Woo hoo! Nothing like list making to make you feel more productive 🙂