Passing on the love

Thank you to Cassie for passing on the Stylish Blogger Award - what a fun way to wake up!  :)   Check out her great blog at:  http://allsmilesandsunshine.blogspot.com/.

Here are a few rules when a blog receives this award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award.
2. Share 8 things about yourself.
3. Give the award to 8 bloggers that you have recently discovered.
4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about their award.

Here are 8 things about me:
1. My husband and I have lived in six countries and our children were born in two different countries.
2.  I love to digi and paper scrap.  I've found a great balance between the two and I'm loving it.
3.  I'm an avid reader - historical fiction is my genre of choice lately.
4.  I love to play board games but don't do it enough.
5.  My favourite exercise is swimming but I also like to walk and hike.
6.  I love to do mosaics but haven't done them in quite a while.  It's taken second stage to scrapping for now.
7.  I grew up in a very small time and I loved it.  I want our kids to be able to experience small-town life too.
8.  I'm a sucker for Lindt chocolate and homemade baking.

I would like to pass along the Stylish Blogger Award to some of the blogs I love to read. Stop by and check out what these talented ladies are doing:

Diana:  http://wickysticket.blogspot.com/

Beth:  http://positivelypassionateabout.blogspot.com/

Jennifer:  http://scrapdrawer.blogspot.com/

April:  http://livewelllaughoftenscrapmuch.blogspot.com/

Shanon:  http://scrappingandtraveling.blogspot.com/

Briana:  http://meplus2.wordpress.com/

Jenn:  http://jennzthoughtfulspot.blogspot.com/

Vanessa:  http://grooveygrover.blogspot.com/

December is done

I have to say, I *heart* our new iMac.  It is soooooo much faster to do my digital scrapbooking on.  I threw together my December monthly in just a couple hours today, compared to I don't know how many hours on our laptop.  Wow!  This is so exciting!

I just love how these turn out!  And now that it's even faster to do, that leaves me more time to do my time-consuming layouts.  :D

Journalling Challenge #7

I'm a bit late this week with my challenge - with all the sickness in our house, I just couldn't get it done on time.  But, I finished it today so here it is.

What are some of your current favourites?  Or, think back to a certain time in your life and what your favourites were then.  Think of anything - from clothes to quotes!  Here's a list to get you thinking.

Pair of jeans
Outfit
Pair of shoes/boots
Make-up/Nail polish colour
Jewellery
Books and/or Authors
Kids' Book
Movies
TV Shows
Song and/or Singer
Sport/Sports Team/Athlete
Board Game/Card Game
Workout
Activity to de-stress and unwind
Food and/or Drink
Restaurant
Meal to make
Room in your house
Piece of art/Decoration
Car
Blanket/Set of Sheets
Outdoor activity
Seasonal activity
Museum
Store
Place to visit
Family excursion
Thing to do when you're aloneBase your layout off these ideas.  Pick one favourite or a few.  Do your journalling in a block, in a list or on journal strips scattered all over the page.  Have one photo, a few or none at all.

For my layout, I went with a few different topics and gave some of my current faves.  Some of them aren't new favourites but ones that I still love after some time.  This also works with a challenge over at Skrap 'n Chat.

I have a thing for grid layouts - I love them.  I like the clean lines and the orderliness of them.  I wouldn't want all my layouts to be grids but I can't resist a good one.  ;)

A new level for my digi scrapping

I have been doing all my digi scrapping on our laptop, which is fine.  I love our laptop and the convenience of it.  But I have to say that doing digi scrapping has been so much harder that way.  Having to always hook up to an external hard drive to download and access pictures and making sure there is enough free space to do a big project - simply a pain.

So when our laptop started acting strangely (not waking up from the sleep mode unless you touch the on/off button), we decided to go ahead and get a desktop.  We'd been talking about it for months so this was the push we needed.  We wanted to have all our media consolidated and on one source, as opposed to two external hard drives and flipping back and forth.  Plus, the possibility of losing it if an EHD failed was scary.

So, without further adieu, here is our new baby.

Being able to access the photos right away and working with that big screen is going to be fantastic!!!  Can't wait to do my first layout on it!