Playing with a fun new scrapbook kit

I just wanted to share a couple of new scrapbook pages. These were both done with a brand new collaborative kit at Cottage Arts created by Doris Castle, Julie Mead, and Michelle Shefveland called Bountiful Blessings. I am loving the colors in this! This first layout has photos of my daughter Abi from last Thanksgiving. The kit colors were a perfect match for her dress and her homemade placecard.

I also used a free template which is available to newsletter subscribers in the next Cottage Arts newsletter.

Journaling reads:
The table has been set...the placecards have been lovingly created by Elizabeth...smells of yummy food are wafting through the air...It’s not quite time to eat, but 2 year old Abi is ready at her place and waiting with fork and spoon in hand.

Full credits for this page can be found here.



This second page uses photos I took last week of my son, Patrick, on his 6th birthday. It was a gorgeous Fall day and I took him outside for a offical 6 year old photo shoot. He loved that! This page uses not only the Bountiful Blessings kit, but also a new page tear template set, too. Click on the banner below to find them both.

Full credits for this layout can be found here.

New Video Project

Just wanted to share what hubby and I have been working on for the last couple of days. Maybe obessessing over would be a better way to put it. It is only a little over a minute long, but it has taken hours and hours to put together. If we were more familiar with our software that would make things a lot quicker and easier, but we tend to be the type to learn as we go. This video will be played at the National Youth Workers Convention in St. Louis this weekend. Our youth pastor will be attending and was specifically asked if he could put together a short video like this to be played for all the youth workers at the conference. Since we have done some video work for the church before, he asked if we could help. So, our youth pastor planned it, hubby filmed it and edited the kids and I created and animated the text/graphics. I LOVE the creativity involved in doing something like this. Unfortunately, I get frustrated because I do not know how to do what I want to do in the software (Adobe Premier and After Effects). I know exactly what I would do if I could edit video in Photoshop, though. Hubby reminded me that I have put in many more hours in Photoshop than Premier. I responded by telling him that he needs to get me a DV camcorder for Christmas so I can take lots of home movies and practice editing them. That would probably be as much fun as scrapbooking!

Blue Monday

Today is "blue monday" in our house. No, I'm not saying we are all depressed. I'm talking about laundry day (although, for me, the lines get blurred between depression and laundry ;-) Because we keep getting behind on laundry in this house, several weeks ago I decided to have a laundry day once a week. We had been trying to do a load a day, but it just wasn't always happening. On the first blue monday we had TONS of laundry as well as sheets. On top of that I have been trying to go through our stored clothes. The kids need warmer stuff so it is time to pull out the hand-me-downs. Sadly, I had some stuff that had been invaded by mice andI have been spending a lot of extra time sorting and washing even the sizes that no one even currently needs.

I have a confession to make. I really hate laundry. The part I hate the most is the putting away the clean stuff so I tend to get behind in this area. This has currently invaded my bedroom and I am having difficulty getting everything put away. I have 9 overflowing laundry baskets lined up along the walls (one for each memeber of the family, one for linens/towels, and one for socks). I just can't seem to get it all put away and now it is blue Monday again. Time to do more laundry and add to the Mount Washmore in my bedroom. Ugh! I want my bedroom back! So, you know what I am going to be doing for a better part of my day. [sigh] I have a hope that one of these days I will catch up and have a laundry system that works for us. The other option is running off to a deserted island and forming our own nudist colony so there wouldn't BE any laundry. Probably, that's not a very realistic option so I guess I will just keep plugging away at it.

In other news, I was able to get some scrappin' done this weekend. I can only show you one page (because the other is done with a kit that hasn't been released yet). It is just a fun little page of my silly Abi.
Journaling reads:
Full of sweetness and full of fun, Abi, and always full of silliness. As soon as you see the camera, you begin to ham it up and the posing begins. These are some of your self-proclaimed “silly faces.” Even playing the part of the goof your are beautiful and your personality makes me smile.

Credits for the page can be found here.

Have a great Monday!

Signed Scared

So, does this scrapbook page make you scared? Yeah, they are supposed to be signing scared. Part of the sign is making a scared face, but they aren't too convinving. They're having too much fun!

We have been learning sign language in this house. I have been intrigued with sign language since I was a girl. I don't know why, I just thought it was cool. I learned the whole ASL alphabet and tried to get my friends to learn it too so that we could "talk" in this secret code, but it never happened. A year or so ago, I discovered Signing Time videos. They sounded great and had really good reviews, but I couldn't afford to buy them and my local library did not have them. Last Christmas I was struggling to come up with a wish list to pass around for my baby who was just 3 months old (because in our family we always do this for everyone). Then I had the brilliant idea to put down the Signing Time DVDs. Studies show that signing with babies is such a positive thing. Rachel got the first DVD and all the kids and I watched it. Rachel was too young to learn the signs and we were not diligent in signing them to her. But around her 1st birthday I pulled the DVD back out and we all relearned the signs and starting using them with her. Since then she has learned to recognize quite a few and has signed back to us: milk, more, sleep, and cookie. Our library now has the whole series of DVDs and we have been checking them out and learning tons as a family. It has been a fun project.

Anyway...I went into all of this to explain this fun scrapbook page. One of Patrick and Abi's favorite signs is "scared." I am sure this is because they get to make a "scared" face along with the sign. When I had the camera out on Patrick's birthday, they decided to pose silly for me and this is what I got. Details and credits for the page can be found here.

Here is a song from the Signing Time Zoo Train DVD. We got it from the library and my little ones love it.

Oh, and this one has been requested a lot by the younger set in this house.

Cleaning House

The blog house that is...

My blog formatting went whacky today and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I had never upgraded to the new version of blogger, so I decided it was time and to clean house. As time allows, I am going to tweak this a bit, but for now be patience. My links and goodies will return and hopefully be better than ever.

A bit of fun photo tweakery

I was perusing the gallery at The Digital Scrapbook Place earlier this week and found some unique pages that caught my eye. I discovered that they were done as part of a stylelift challenge. I wasn't even familiar with a "stylelift" which is to copy the style of a particular artist. This month's stylelift is based on the altered art of Jessica Dittmer called Wish You Wells. Unfamiliar with her, I checked out her site and was immediately in love with it. She plays with photos and gives them this combination of an old photo and a drawing. Then she adds goodies like crowns, buttons, and pixie wings along with some sort of verse. Well, I decided that I really wanted to be able to do that! You can see my attempt here. It is close, but not exactly Jessica's look. It was incredibly fun to do, though! I have also shown a before and after shot because the difference is pretty dramatic. Credits for the goodies I used can be found here.

This was so much fun, that I will probably do this again. Shoot, after seeing how much one of these custom art pieces costs on the Wish You Wells site, I am thinking that I am in the wrong line of work. Anyone want to buy one? I'll cut you a great deal!

The Big Birthday Boy

Here is my big 6 YEAR OLD boy. He feels so big now! Yesterday was his official birthday and I told him that I wanted to take an official birthday photo of him. It was beautiful outside, so we found a spot under a tree to snap some shots. I was unable to post this yesterday because I had promised him that he could play Age of Empires with his big sister, therefore I was not able to get anywhere near the computer. He is currently obsessed with that game. He is constantly begging his dad to play it with him.

So happy birthday little buddy - love ya'!

So Long to the Zoo

Our local zoo has officially closed for the season. It always makes me sad because we really love our zoo. We made one last visit last week. We always go with my mom and dad, but this time our good friends joined us, too. Their children are about the same ages as Patrick and Abi and are good buddies. I have more photos that I want to scrap, but for now, here is one of all the kids except Elizabeth posing with the Rango the orangutan statue. I have more photos than I can count of my kids sitting here throughout the years. Of course, Elixabeth, my 13 year old, is conspicuously missing. I guess she just figures that it is no longer cool to pose with Rango. Gotta love teenagers! Credits for the LO can be found here.

1st Birthday Portrait

Happy Monday morning!
I am trying to ready myself to jump into a new week. I feel like there is so much to do and so little time. What I would really like to do is sit and scrap and forget about everything else. Maybe, if I am lucky I can squeeze in just a little time for myself. We'll see.

Just thought I would share a scrapbook page that I finished up on Saturday. It is another photo from my baby's crazy birthday photoshoot. I was thinking I really should do an outake scrapbook page of all the many bad photos taken that day. Anyway...here is one I liked. I kept the page soft to match the photo.

Journaling reads:
In a mere year’s time, you have matured from a helpless little infant to a sweet, pretty little girl.. You are on your feet and taking your very first steps. Although you say few real words, you love to babble back and forth with your family. You are starting to learn some sign language for more, milk , sleep and eat. Your eyes light up when one of your siblings interacts with you. There is no doubt how much you love them and can’t wait until you can keep up with them. What a cute little charmer you already are and we can’t wait to see the young lady you are yet to become. September 26, 2007

Credits for the layout can be found here.

My Little Birthday Fairy

It is a frazzle-day! Why am I frazzled? Well, you see that cute little fairy-girl in this scrapbook page. She is currently cutting 2 teeth and is not dealing with it well. In fact, she has been dealing with it by screaming at me in the most piercing way that a one year old can. It tends to wear on the nerves! This too shall pass. Hopefully, I will keep my sanity in the process. Adding to the chaos around here is the fact that I have a couple of energetic preschoolers who really need to go outside and run and today it has turned kinda cold. They got up and dressed like they have been lately in shorts and short sleeves. I sent them outside not paying attention to the temperture and they came right back in saying it was too cold. Shoot - I checked and it is only 46 degrees!

In other news, I did a little "scrap-therapy" to cope and relax a bit. I had so much fun turning Rachel into this birthday fairy. I took a bunch of pictures of her on her birthday in our homemade basement studio. It is laughable how many BAD photos I got. She is just not about to be troubled with sitting still long enough for a picture! This picture is one of the better ones and she isn't looking my way at all. When I went to create a layout using this, I realized that I did not have a kit that quite matched this photo. I wanted something with an aged look with just a touch of yellow. So I pieced this together from a bunch of kits by Doris Castle. Full credits can be found here.

I am off to check some math...have a great day!