Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, I realize Thanksgiving was yesterday, but I was too busy celebrating and spending time with family to pop onto the computer until today.

My folks came over and brought tons of yummy food! My mom and I split the menu, but she always takes the lion's share of the work. Which is quite alright because she and my dad are wonderful cooks! We feasted and visited and even played Dance Dance Revolution on the Playstation (had to do something to work off all that food!).

At the last minute, we realized that we hadn't taken a family photo! So with Anna already in her nightgown right before Mom and Dad left, we plopped everyone down for a couple of shots. They all got impatient with me while I fiddled with my camera and I was wishing we had done this when there was some extra daylight as I really hated to have to use the flash. For you camera geeks, I bumped up the ISO to compensate, so this can out a bit noisy and grainy. But I am happy to have a big family photo of us all.

I put this layout together using my new Thankful Tree Scrappin' set and Paper Pack. I couldn't wait to use it! I have several other layouts in the works with it, too.

Hope you all had a great holiday and didn't eat too much. No one is probably reading this because you are all out shopping! As for me, I plan to stay home and do some decorating.

Teach THANKFULNESS while you scrap!

Scripture Challenge

Ahhhh....life is good. Dinner is done, kitchen is clean, I am home with just my oldest and my youngest children because my dear hubby took the other three to a VeggieTales Night at church, so I have stolen some extra computer time. I did just get a phone call from a friend who is there at church to give me grief for not coming, too. I have to admit I felt a wee bit of remorse, especially when she told me Larry the Cucumber was actually there AND he was really playing the tuba. I guess my daughter, Abi, was just speechless. I can't wait to see the pictures.

But, I decided to do a bit of scrappin'. The layout here is for the November scripture challenge at Scrap Outside the Box. This is my friend's son who I did the photo shoot with last week. I thought this photo was perfect to go along with this scripture verse, especially the word "praise." I kept the layout simple to focus on the scripture and the photo by just using a few papers from my Sweet Potato Pie Paper Pack.

Hopefully this will help me break my scrapper's block. I haven't done much scrappin' lately and the ideas just aren't flowing.

Check it out! My Night Lights Scrappin' Set is the Kit of the week at Scrap Outside the Box!

1st Photo Shoot

Last week I got the opportunity to shoot some photos of a friend's kids. She approached me back when I was about ready to deliver Rachel and asked me if I would consider photographing her kids. She wasn't real excited about the prospect of taking them to Penney's or Sear's for photos and was hoping for some outdoor fall shots. It sounded like fun to me, but had trouble finding a time to do it. We feared that we had missed our window of opportunity because the weather had turned grey and most of the leaves were gone from the trees. BUT last Thursday was beautiful: sunny and warmer, so I called her up and we had a spontaneous photo shoot. I have to admit that I had no idea what I was doing. Other than snapshots of my nephews, I have never seriously tried to photograph someone else's children.

I scoped out my property before they arrived and took some test shots with Abi and Patrick so that I had some idea of what I wanted to do. It was really fun!

I finally have gone through them all in Photoshop and they are ready to burn to a CD. I can't wait to give them to her. I hope she likes them as much as I do. I can see many things I can improve on, but overall I am pleased with how they turned out. I think the kids look adorable!

To see the rest of the shoot, check out the album here.

Scripture Challenge

I am hosting a scripture challenge at Scrap Outside the Box along with fellow designer, Jill D. She and I both created a piece of scripture word art (as seen at the left here). The challenge is to create a scrapbook layout using one of these and post it to this gallery.

The links to download the FREE word art and more information can be found in this forum.



As a bonus for posting a layout you will receive a special bonus from Jill and I:


So lets see those scripture inspired layouts!

Ya' want fries with that?

I was hunting for somethibg in last year's archived pictures and stumbled upon these three taken at Burger King. Now, they're not the greatest, but they made me chuckle because my sister-in-law and I still refer back to this day as "The day when fast food was NOT fast." so I HAD to scrap this. You see, every Sunday after church we all go out to eat as a family. Between my in-laws and my brother-in-law's family there are now 14 of up with baby Rachel. It can be a little crazy getting a big table for all of us, and keeping all of the little cousins well-behaved through the meal. My mother-in-law suggested we try the fast food route.
Here's what I wrote on the layout:
A: When you take the whole family to Burger King on a Sunday after church. In an effort to have a quick and easy lunch, we decided not to go to one of our regular sit down restaurants. I think Burger King was chosen because Grandma Mary had coupons. We placed our order and they said to go ahead and sit down because our order would be a couple minutes. No biggie - we did order for 12 people. We had no idea that a few minutes meant THIRTY! One of our regular restaurant choices would have been faster. Needless to say, that was the LAST time they got our Sunday business! 8-2005

Oh, and the kids were much harder to keep under control in this kind of setting.
This really fun little scrapbook kit is called Fries with That and is from Atomic Cupcake.

The joy of a sleeping baby!

It is kind of ironic that I am posting this layout now. You see, I am typing this one-handed with a fussy NOT SLEEPING baby Rachel in the other. At least I got to experience the wonderful peace of a sleeping baby this afternoon when I snapped this.

I was able to put this layout together quickly using a quickpage from Doris Castle's Sweet Baby Album. Boy, these quickpages are SUCH a blessing for a busy mom!

By the way, Rachel is officially 6 weeks old (as of 8pm tomorrow). Time flies! And it hasn't ALL been fun, but it all has been a joy! Her siblings seem to have all adjusted to her presence in our home. Even Abi has stopped peeing on the floor and is using the potty consistently once again. Yay!

Speaking of Abi, as of last Saturday night, she is sleeping in her big girl bed. She threw a stink about being in her crib and Barry let her be in the bed. We have tried this before, but she wouldn't STAY in bed. She has decided she dislikes her crib and the threat of putting her back in there has worked wonders. She is doing GREAT and she looks so sweet in that big bed. I am dying to snap a picture of her sleeping there, but haven't wanted to turn on lights to get the shot and risk waking her. I may just have to stage a photo and get her to pretend to sleep. How else am I going to be able to scrap this momentous occasion?

Feeling quirky?

I was when I created this fun little deck of cards. I gave them a worn, antique flavor, but I wanted them to be just a little fun and offbeat, too. They are neutral enough that they will go with a variety of kits and layouts. Shoot, they could easily be colorized to match just about anything. I think they would be really fun to print out and used on an altered art type project

My 5 year old son, Patrick, saw these on the screen and was completely taken by them. He is totally into his alphabet and phonics right now. What a blessing! My first two children were so NOT like this and teaching them to read was painfully slow for all of us. Patrick is such a refreshing joy in this area! I may just print him out a set to play with!

Oh, and they are on sale just like everything else in my store this week!

SALE!

Scrap Outside the Box is having a grand re-opening. In honor of it, my entire store is 30% off. Just thought I would let you know.

6 HOURS and a SALE

Yes, my baby girl slept 6 whole hours last night - in a row! But I am so used to dealing with her every 2 or 3 hours that I kept waking up and checking on her anyway. :-) I am still ecstatic because it gives me a glimpse at that light at the end of the tunnel. SOMEDAY she will sleep through the night and I will get a full night's sleep. Forgive my excitement, but I have been pretty tired, so this feels big even if it only happens one night.

In other news, I have gotten a couple more things into my store at Scrap Outside the Box. First I created some yummy papers that I put into a paper pack called Sweet Potato Pie. I can't wait to get some Thanksgiving food photos to use this with.














I also put together a set of Jiffy Scraps using my Night Lights Scrappin' Set. I will let you in on a little secret: both the scrappin' set and the jiffies are ON SALE today and they are 50% off!















I have a couple of other things on sale too. Both my Quilted Comfort Jiffies and my Cherished Times Brag Book are also 50% off. But today is the last day for this.

I personally am feeling a bit behind on my own scrappin.' I even just realized that I am behind on my photo taking. I don't think I have taken any pictures of baby Rachel this week. Shame on me. She is changing so quickly, too! That's on my to do list for today.