Avid Writer

My son won an "Avid Writer" Award today at school!


{Supplies: Paper and staples by Cilenia Curtis at Digital Designers Shop; font: Bookman Old Style}

I'm so proud of him!

Have you seen her?

Have you seen this great new designer? Here's the shop. Her name is Cilenia ("Seleena"). I love her stuff. Here's a page I made from a quickpage (it's actually psd, so it's a layered file & it's awesome!)


{Supplies: Love Matters Quickpage by Cilenia Curtis at Digital Designer Shop, handwriting font- mine with a Bamboo tablet, font: Adobe Garamound Pro.}

The hardest part was finding enough photos of me and DH together! You'd think after 13 years that we'd have more than a handful! lol

Guess what? She asked me to be on her design team! WOO HOOOO! I hope I do her justice. :) You'll be seeing alot more of her stuff around here. She adds new kits, templates, and tutorials to her shop all the time. And she has freebies every week! Go check it out!

Since you're still here, would you like my "All my heart" wordart?
Download HERE.
(Edit: Download link fixed.)

Sun Worship

I live in Alaska. Right now we are getting about 4 hours of daylight, and where my house is located compared to the mountain that I can see from my window {and usually love to look at}, I get about 20 minutes of sunlight a day- IF there are no clouds blocking the rays. A couple of days ago the sun did come out, while I was in the house. I stopped what I was doing and sat in the chair by the window for a good 15 minutes (minus the time it took me to set up the camera and take 4 photographs at different shutter speeds to make sure I got at least one that you can see the dimensions of my face) enjoying the warmth of the sun.

{supplies: photo, Build a Background overlays by Creative Dreams; fonts: Zapfino and Century Gothic}

It's a pretty easy layout, but one that really tells the story (winter, depression, skin cancer, sun worship) and I'm glad I thought to take that picture.

Christmas family favorites layout

During the Christmas season I asked my family members some of their favorites:
Favorite Christmas song,
Favorite Christmas movie,
Favorite Christmas ornament,
Favorite Christmas treat,
Favorite Christmas tradition,
and things you want to do for Christmas.
I just got the list scrapbooked.

{supplies: papers & trees: Holly Days kit by Creative Dreams; grungy photo mask by Jessica Sprague; wordart (both) by Katie Pertiet; fonts: Hoefler Text and CK Becky}

I don't know if I'll print it 8x8 and put it in my Christmas album or if I'll put it in the "Things We Do" LOM album. Maybe both. ;)

Layout 1 for 2010

Well, here we are... January 2, 2010. I'm not used to that yet. lol I happen to know that Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life class has just started again. I took it last year [edited- I took it in 2008], and even though I could have taken it again for half price, I decided that I could play along with my friends and do the layouts on my own, since I do templates all the time anyway, and I understand that is the only difference between this class and the last. (Although, knowing her, she'll make lots of new funny videos of herself. I will miss seeing those!) Anyway, I went and watched last year's Week 1 video, and did Assignment One.

My kids and I go to the public library quite often, and I have never taken pictures of it, or in the building. So I did that last week, and decided it was important enough to us that it should be in our scrapbooks. So here it is....


{Supplies: sketch by Cathy Zielske in the DYL class 2008, text paper- Jessica Sprague, brown paper behind the journaling- Creative Dreams, Dec. tag (really small, bottom right)- Katie Pertiet. Quote- Walt Disney, found HERE. Oh, and the striped paper strip at the bottom- that is a photo of a bookshelf.}

By the way, that layout was REALLY easy to find in my new (Library of Memories) organizing system! web layouts>2010 Places We Go. :)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I looked at my goals list from last year, and I don't think I accomplished any of them, so I'm not doing any resolutions this year, aside from my One Little Word (see a few posts down).

But this morning, as I sit here in my jammies, I accomplished something already. Sort of. Okay, here's the story. I've been reading a lot of messages in my Yahoo group about people signing up for Stacy Julian's Library of Memories that starts up here in a few weeks. Some of them wanted information, some of them wanted to be talked into or out of the class. I took it in 2007 and 2008 I think, when I was strictly a paper scrapper (aside from typing up some journaling occasionally). It was an awesome class, and really changed the way I thought about the meaning of scrapbooking to me. The photo/ layout organization, yeah, but I couldn't figure out how that would apply to digi- other than I have my 4 albums (us, people we love, places we go, and things we do), along with one for each family member. That stuck, but not the photo part.


So anyway, I do put my printed layouts in those categories, but my digital versions are quite another story. To track them, I always put them in albums by quarter- 2009 Q1, 2009 Q2, and so on.

Last week I was typing a reply to aforementioned Yahoo group about LOM. I was writing about the one lesson where Stacy explains how we think about memories. How we reminisce. When we're talking to our mom, dad, husband, brother, etc.... We think, "Oh, remember that time at the beach when..." and then "but remember this other time at the beach...?

or

"Remember that Christmas at Grandma's house...?" and then "but do you remember this other time at Christmas...?"

We don't think "Oh, remember back in June of 2007 when this happened..." then "and then the next thing in June 2007 when THAT happened....?" No, that's not how we think. Well, not ME anyway!

So why should we put our layouts in date order??

It just doesn't make sense.

So, I was telling the group about my printed albums. BUT, I just made my first photobook a few weeks ago. I was trying it out to see if they were as great as I keep hearing about. My digi organization is still in sequential order, so when I decided to do an album about my youngest son, I had to go through all these folders- 2007 (I didn't have many digi layouts in that folder), "2008 first half," "2008 second half," "2009 Q1," "2009 Q2," etc to find all my layouts about my son.

All that to lead to what I just spent a half an hour doing. It goes along with many New Year's Resolutions, although that's not what prompted me to do it.

Are you bored yet?

Here goes: I changed my folders for my web sized layouts. Instead of dates and quarters, I started one for each son, for me, for DH, for Things We Do, for People We Love, and for Places We Go. Oh, and for Special projects (like A Week in the Life and our Wedding Album).
Here's a screenshot:



Yes, I separated 2010 from previous years, and then at the end of 2010 I'll put all those layouts into the "pre" folder. This is just so I can find the more recent layouts easier for posting.

Make sense? Feel free to ask questions in the comments section.

Have a great new DECADE!!