Gramma's Pride and Joy

I had plans to finish this up in February for a challenge at Skrap 'n Chat but it didn't happen.  However, I did get it done this week.  The challenge was to use layered hearts.  I used a pop of pink to go with my daughter's shirt in the picture.  However, the pink looked lonely so I chalked the flower brown and then added a tiny bit of pink.  I also chalked the edges of my cardstock.  The title didn't stand out very well in the photo but it says, "Gramma's Pride and Joy". 

 

I love these pictures of my mom with her grandbabies.  She came out for when Aidan was born and she spent 2 months with us.  The kids, especially Kirsi, got so attached to her during this visit and these pictures show just how much she loves them.

Cathy Zielske's Monthly Templates

Some of you already know that I love Cathy Zielske.  I love her blog and writing style and her scrapbooking.  When I was new to digi scrapping last year, I discovered her monthly templates.  She has a few different templates (and now has an add-on pack that I haven't used yet) you can use to make photo collages.  I love that it's mostly photos, with the chance to journal about your month.  She has the big journalling template (that I always use) and then another one that allows for much less journalling and more photos if you don't have much to write about or want a different style.

Since March is project month for me, I got started by doing November's section of our family scrapbook.  And here's what November was for us:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love how these turn out.  They totally summarize our month and it's completely do-able.  You can have as much or as little as you want, and what's best of all, you get it done.  I've used photos again in individual layouts so that's not an issue.

I have to do January, February, March and December yet.  I won't need to do a ton for December as I have my December Daily album documenting our month and January will be slim too as I'm working on albums for our two big trips last January. 

Reorganizing the upstairs

None of us have been sleeping well lately so we're going to try something different.  So the kids and I spent the morning reorganizing the rooms upstairs.  My scrappy space is going to move from our bedroom to the kids' playroom.  I hope it'll work out well.  I'll make sure to get pictures once we get everything done.  Hopefully I'll have plenty of creative inspiration there!

A bit of a toot!

I got an email from Allison Davis, the brilliant scrapbooker whose sketches inspire many people, saying that my layout based off one of her sketches was chosen to be on her blog, Sketch Support.  I am so happy to have been chosen, especially by her!  When you see the calibre of the layouts on her blog, you can only aspire to produce something like them.  So, it's an honour for me.

Here's the link if you'd like to have a look:
http://www.sketchsupport.com/2011/02/my-way.html

Project Month

February was the month of challenges for me.  Between my two message boards, I had so many challenges to choose from and I tried my best to do all of them!  It was so inspiring and fun that I loved it.  However, in doing all the challenges, I neglected doing some ongoing projects that I need to work on.  So, I've declared that March is project month!  I need to tackle a few things before I allow myself to do any more challenges (though I will continue with my journalling challenges as I love doing them).

My two main projects that I need to tackle are my mini album for our anniversary and finish up our family album from 2010, using Cathy Z's templates.  It's not tough to do but I've had so many other scrappy things on the go that I haven't been doing them.  If I can get these done, I'll be a very happy camper.

My other "projects" are to do the online, self-paced scrappy classes that I've registered for.  I paid for these classes back in December/January and haven't done anything with them.  What a shame!  I've got two Jessica Sprague digital scrapbooking classes waiting for me and Cathy Zielske's "Design Your Life" class over at Big Picture Classes.  I want to do them but I've been so busy scrapbooking that I haven't invested the time I need to in these classes.  

I also need to sit down with the external hard drive and upload all of the digital layouts that I did early on and didn't convert to JPEG for printing.  I now have a good system in place where I save the layout as a PSD, then convert it to a JPEG (so I have two huge files of it at once) and then resize and save it for the web.  I have a folder of layouts to upload so I can do a few at a time.  I like that Persnickety Prints lets us have unlimited storage space so it acts like an online backup system for me.

How about you?  Do you have any projects you should do?  Will you join me for Project Month?

Journalling Challenge #5

This week's challenge is to start off a sentence and finish it with a variety of endings.  There are so many ways to go with this one that it should be an easy one to do.  Here's my sample LO:

My starter is "There's nothing better..."  I wanted to talk about the reasons why newborns are so  wonderful so I went with journal strips as I like how it separates the ideas.

Here's a close-up of the journalling:

Here are some ideas of starters:

• There is nothing better
• When I was young
• _______ makes me think of ________ because
• A year ago
• When you grow up

Our Song

Every week, Erika posts an issue challenge over at Club CK.  I love doing them but lately, I've been dropping the ball.  I can't seem to get them done within the week but I try to get at least one done for the end of the month.  One of the challenges this month was to use a song as inspiration for a LO.  I had been thinking on this one for quite a while.  I wasn't sure what song to use or what photos.  Then, one day last week, it came to me.  Why not use "our" song?  I had to get some of our wedding photos scanned so that happened on Friday. 

I used Julie Billingsley's kit "A Love to Last" and the fonts are Pea Jack and Jane and Blackjack.

Yesterday was spring cleaning day.  Derwin attacked our bedroom with a vengeance and it looks so great.  I decided to tackle my scrapbooking area which had become a disaster zone.  I got all the sheets of paper put back where they belong and then it was the scraps.  I used a system that a message board friend suggested and I love it, but I'd fallen behind.  Jennifer (paperclipz) cuts her scraps down to the nearest inch starting at 2" and then attaches them with a bulldog clip so it forms a kind of fan.  It's so much faster to find the scrap you need.  However, the key to this system is to keep up with it, which I've failed miserably to do.  So, last night, I decided to get cutting.  I got through a good chunk of them but after 2 1/2 hours, my eyes were going buggy so I stopped for the day.  I'm doing it again every chance I get until it's caught up.