Artbooking Made Easy: Friendship Layouts

Clearly The Best: Subway Speak

Simple Scallops

Artbooking Made Easy: Wintertime Layouts

Clearly The Best: Swirlin' Shapes

Artbooking Made Easy: Elegant Mini Albums

Clearly the Best: Create the Date

Clearly the Best: Party Favor Flavor

Washi Wonderland

OCD Much?

My family thinks I have fallen off my rocker. They really do!  For years I have wanted to re-do my pantry but have never gotten around to it.  I still want to paint and put up Elfa shelving sometime soon but I was able to finish one project that has been bugging me.

Pantry Can Organization!

The can food!  It has been driving me nuts.  So here is what I did and yes I did find this company from Pinterest.

This is just one side of my pantry, the other side is baking and all of the “other” stuff I need to clean out.  I did check all of my spices today and boy can you tell I have not cooked in a LOOONG time.

Monday I will be going to the grocery store to replenish the spices and buy the supplies for Christmas Dinner.

Here is where I was able to find the organizers:

 http://canorganizer.com/can-organizers/cupboard-organizer-4-pack/ 

Yes they are cardboard but $7.00 for a 4-pack vs. $12.00 for one on other websites I will take cardboard any day and take care of them.

I know that it is silly but this makes me all happy inside.

This and the cookbooks I have purchased and I am holding up my end of the bargain and cooking most nights now. 

Now I have this conflict of …

Scraproom or Kitchen?

Scraproom always wins!

Convention Layouts

Well when I went to put the first of the 9th grade layouts into Kaela’s album I found some layouts already in there from convention. 

We always make a few layouts during convention to showcase new products and I guess I did not want to loose these so I placed them in the empty album that I have pre -  labeled as Kaela’s 9th grade year.

I LOVE this layout and I forgot that I even did it!  Can you imagine? How in the world did I forget about this beauty?

The next two layouts from from Studio J.  As a general rule I do not use Studio J mainly because I love the smell of paper.  I know that I am a weirdo but that is just me.  Studio J is fantastic just not what I reach for first.

I added some 3-D bling to the pages and was very happy with the way they turned out.  A plus to Studio J is that the pages are very light without the adhesive or layers of paper on each 12 x 12 page so the whole album will be lighter if you do a full Studio J theme.  It is also much cheaper than regular traditional scrapbooking because you do not have to print your photos before you scrap them.  They get printed with the layout and shipped  to you!  How cool is that!

But I am still old school and love the smell and feel of paper in my hands. But if we ever RV full time Studio J will be going with me!

Freshman Album

I want to shout from the roof tops that I have started Kaela’s high school album.  Who cares that she is a junior – I have started working on the album before she graduated.  

Here are the first couple of pages.

There is some glare that I have to work on a way of removing but you understand the general layout.  This is one of the art pieces that Kaela worked on this year and it is also one of my favorites so it gets to be the first page of the album.  I work in chronological order and this layout represents her whole year.  It was ART or Choir all year long.

She looks very pleased that MOM is taking another photo of her at school – get over it kid.  You will love these one day.  Trust me!

Allen High School as a beautiful Performing Arts Center and this year is the first year it has been open.  What an awesome place to sing.

I have a feeling that this album is going to take me a little while to finish.  I love to sew on my pages and well that does slow me down just a touch but also because of the ice storm…. I still do not have the photos that I ordered from Walgreens from December 4th!  They are supposed to be delivered today but since there is a line going outside of the door at the post office I think it will be later than today.

  When they come in I will just enjoy the process and get this little book done when it gets done.

I love my life.

What A Mess

First off let me just state that I am glad that I did not have a “real” job the last couple of weeks.

I am so happy that I have CTMH to be my full time gig now. 

First we had the great ICE storm of 2013:

I am a Florida girl which means I never learned to drive in the stuff very well so I was ever so happy to stay home in my jammies and not put anyone in danger.  Yes I am “that” driver in ICE!

But that did not mean that we did not have a teaching moment on our house.  Dad thought this would be a great time to teach the teen all about ice.  She was not pleased!

This is Kaela trying to get her car door open so that she could get her JACKET out before dealing with the windshield.

I was upstairs looking out the window because I did not even go outside to take photos.  Nope, I sent Mike! 

While we were shut – in’s because of the storm we watched movies and ate all of the food in the house.  Once the ice melted enough that I could go out it was time to finish that Christmas shopping. 

WRAP CENTRAL

The family knows that this time of year they stay out of my scraproom because that room turns into wrap central!  If they peek – it does not make me a happy girl.

I put all of the wrapping supplies in the Crop Area and all of the gifts in the scraproom because it has a door.  Once the house was empty I turned into a wrapping machine.  Put a book on the IPod and get some coffee and get it done, (yes it is now done).

Now I can get back to what I love to do…

SCRAPBOOKING AND CARD MAKING!

My room is back to normal.

A Little Elegance

Over a year ago I made a set of thank you notes from Grandma for her birthday.  I loved the way those turned out so well that I wanted to make another set. 

This time I used Grey Wool (retired) and Ruby for my colors.

The original artist for this card is:  www.ejoym.blogspot.com 

Once again her elegant design shines for the world to see.

If you would like to purchase my version this card, I have 4 listed on Etsy. 

Have a wonderful day and stay warm.

Get Crafty!

Brick Wall Birthday Cards

Yesterday while I was waiting on the upload of all those photos I decided that I needed to spend some time on Pinterest.  I know, I know…. Pinterest always makes me want to make cards and yesterday was no exception.

While I was playing I found an interesting design that I wanted to try. 

The original Artist is Narelle Fasulo from Australia

It is very masculine but with a simple elegant feel to it.  I did not want to scrap lift art for art so I changed it just a tiny bit.

The embossing folder is from Cuttlebug but all other supplies are CTMH. 

Then I went on and changed the colors …

Does this scream “yellow brick road” or what! 

Both of my cards are already uploaded and ready for sale on my Etsy shop.  There are only 4 cards per design so if you like what you see buy them before they are gone.

Retired List 2013

 

I was double checking my emails tonight after camping over Thanksgiving and found that CTMH as posted the “Retired List 2013” on our websites.

The FULL retired list is on my  CTMH website on the bottom left hand side.

I just placed my personal monthly order yesterday but after looking at the list I had to place another order for $75 in products that I just can not live with out.

TEXTURE TOOLS

OPAQUES MOCHA ADHESIVE GEMS

OPAQUES LICORICE ADHESIVE GEMS

OPAQUES PEARL ADHESIVE GEMS

PRISMA GLITTER

BTTY OPAQUES PEARL ADHESIVE GEMS 

COLONIAL WHITE ROSETTE RIBBON

SLATE SATIN POLKA-DOT RIBBON

VERSAMARK® REFILL

If you have been on the fence thinking about getting any of the items on the full retired list do not wait.  Every item is WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Extra Long Upload

I had the best day planned.  I was going to start working on Kaela’s high school album.  I started by pulling out her 9th grade drawer and starting looking at the photos.

Then I realized that I only had the first semester of photos. 

No problem…

I just started looking at the second half of the year and picked out 197 photos to print.  Normally I can upload to Walgreens and print with about 2 hours.  So I planned to go out at lunch and pick up the photos with a Sonic drink.

This was at 9:00 this morning.

The upload finally finished at 3:00 pm!

It took so long that I decided to organize the photos that I do have.  When Kaela was in 6th grade I started gathering “Allen High Colors” so far I have a box with all kinds of paper, ribbons and such to choose from when creating this album.

Here are the photos that I do have as of right now.

I was about to start journaling these photos but then I looked over at my little pug …

Radar is just about 14 years old and this little guy just needed a nap. Since this upload was taking forty forever's I just took my little pug for a nap.  When we woke up around 3 pm it was still working.  So much for picking them up around lunch and working all afternoon.

Finally finished and I just decided to have them shipped to the house.  We are expecting winter weather soon and my little butt is not going to leave the house.

I guess this is good thing in the long run because since I am no longer working at the hospital I do need to start cooking at home.  If I get knee deep into a project so late in the day I am not going to want to stop to cook dinner for my family.   When I worked I rarely cooked and that was OK but I really need to step up here and get this going.

I bought myself a new cookbook to get back into the feed my family mood.

The cookbook has mixed reviews on Amazon.com but I love Rachael Ray and I love this idea so why not. 

I plan on making 3 meals because we LOVE leftovers!

Pray… Tonight is the first night I plan on cooking