Lucky St. Patty's Day Mini Album

Lucky: Click here to go to this item on Etsy>>>>>> LUCKY

Baby Album

New Esty Posting for tonight: Click here to go to Etsy >>>>>Baby Album

Creativity and the blogging habit

I'm trying to get back into the blogging habit. I think it's working. ;) And I'm trying to get back into doing creative things each and every day. Unfortunately, I teach English, and while I usually enjoy it, grading it is not so fun. We're at the end of the trimester and I'm playing catch up grading 90 reading portfolios, survival stories, essay bits and pieces and then my social studies tests too. My goal is to finish tonight so I can be as creative as I want this weekend. It's probably going to mean an all-nighter though. Haven't done that in a long time.

Sweets for my Sweet and other projects

I'm a bit behind on the project share thing. It's nice to say that I have actually DONE projects within the last month. For awhile, not so much. Since I'm behind . . .

Xander's Valentine gift bags for preschool. Bags were from the Target dollar spot and I cut the hearts with my Cricut (Doodlecharms cart) and the dinosaurs are from the Paper Dolls cart.



Quick birthday card made with scraps from the mini albums below



Some cards based on CPS sketches that I'm now blanking out on.







Cards using my Cricut, new Scor-Pal and new Cuttlebug embossing folders

Love Mini Album

Love 3x4 Mini Album

I loved the colors and vibe of the paper bag album so I made a fun shaped mini album with the same papers.

LOVE Etsy Album

Click here to go to my Etsy site>>>>>>LOVE

Etsy album - Be Mine

Click Here to be Taken to this Etsy Listing>>> Be Mine


I love the way this one turned out. Classic and sort of romantic looking. I even parted with some of my beloved Scenic Route for this layout. It's the paper I love to use and love to hoard.

Everyday Creativity Day 2

I did create yesterday for a little while. :) I'm glad I did it earlier in the day because I was BEAT by the end of the day. I did 2 more cards based on the CPS sketch. I need either some ink or my picture order to come in so I can attempt a few layouts. :) Until then, here are some of the LOs I did for the SYTYCS contest at Scrappers Bliss.

CPS sketch #26

Today's creative endeavor was the CPS sketch. :) I'll upload it tomorrow.

Something creative EVERY day

I can do this, right? Riiighht?! That's my goal. I have a lot going on now. School aka work is only two short weeks from starting and I have a to-do list a mile long that still needs working on. So I'm going to work my list AND still try to make sure that every single day I do something creative:
- work on a scrapbook page
- make a card
- work on ebay albums
- work on Christmas gifts

Something! Every.day. I haven't carved out my time yet today, but I will and I'll share too. :)

I bet you didn't know

I have a lot of hobbies. Yes scrapbooking is one of them, but home decor and organizing have gotten more of the attention lately. The purging/organizing continued today. I've been in the garage ALL day. And I'm sadly not done. I'm having a garage sale tomorrow. I've got everything just about set up but I think I'm going to ravage the house ONE more time to make sure there's nothing else that needs to go. I'd rather this NOT become a yearly necessity.

Lots of stuff needs to GO, go, go out of our garage. Still trying to figure out what to do with grandpa's rocking chair. :( I don't Really want to sell it, but it has no place in the house. Our house is only 1400 sq. ft and we have no attic or basement for storage, and the garage is a one car. *sigh* And I feel like Lily Tomlin in it; my feet don't touch the ground. *hehe* I better consult with my mom first though.

Alright, back to the grind. I've even gone so far as to color code my storage. All Christmas stuff is in the silver rubbermaid, Easter is bright blue, Halloween black, etc. But for posterity's sake I'll make labels too.

Beach

Usually it has to be 80 and sunny for me to even think of going to the beach and the weather today was more like 75 and cloudy. Not beachy enough for me. Today, however, since the inlaws were camping at the North side of the lake (it's a big lake ;) ) we headed over there. Being as we live on the South side, we only go to the North side 1-2x a year. Sat around their campsite and chatted for awhile and then headed to the beach. Xander and Erick were the only two swimming. Xander gets cold when it's 90 out fast so I knew they wouldn't be in long. Came out and dried off and then we built a sandcastle together as a family. Everyone but grandpa got in on the action. I really don't think I've every MADE a real sand castle before. It was fun. :) It took us nearly an hour and when we were done X destroyed it, but I got pictures first.

Headed back to their campsite and the boys changed, we chatted and ILs made dinner. After dinner we pretty much came right home.

And the not-so-much-my-birthday celebration continues

with the purchase of . . .

Some new Autumn Leaves stamps:

All because I wanted one little embossing folder that wasn't in stock at the other place. *blush* I've spent a lot of money on scrapping this summer considering I've made maybe 5 pages and 6 cards. Well, and about 10 mini-albums for ebay. Better get back to that considering I need to pay back the checking account at some point. ;)

Happy Birthday to me!

Well, okay, so technically it's not my birthday. But, should someone who is about to turn thirty want to buy themselves anything they want in the weeks approaching that D-day it shoud definitely be allowed. So Happy Birthday Carrie! ;)

I bought myself a bug. I JUST got a QK but I think I might sell the handle. I only paid $35 and the alphabet alone is worth that price. And I have the WB which is great, but not so great for quick little things and it cannot emboss. I found a great price on the Cuttlebug and a bunch of dies/folders and bought it. DH isn't so happy but he'll deal. He was going to get me QK embossing folders for my birthday. Those are almost 4x the price of the Cuttlebug ones though. I hope it's here next week so I have some time to play before going back to school.

I'm still way behind on scrapping and behind on uploading already finished layouts. I'll get there someday though. Right now I'm just enjoying the ebay thing. :)

Scrapper's Bliss

I was in the So You think You can Scrapbook contest at Bliss. Well, I'm officially out as of this week. It was a challenge, that's for sure but I discovered I do not like scrapping people I don't know. LOL!

So you see, everything was going peachy while I had my own photos to use. Week one I had Boho Chic and I made the CUTEST little owl. Definitely going to use him again. I found him on a retro 60's pillow, traced him in my Wishblade program and then cut him out and stuck him on a tree limb. The second week I had romantic. Found this coaster my MIL had crocheted and figured out where to go from there.

Then the next week two bad things happened (1) I had to use someone else's pictures and (2) I got Freestyle. Now, freestyle is just about the polar opposite of my style except for maybe that we both like bright colors. And while the little girl certainly was cute, I wasn't feelin' the layout. Probably because for me, 1/2 the layout is the story. So I was scrapping for my life this week. And again we used other people's pictures. I eeked out a decent layout I thought but apparently it wasn't good enough. But really, it's okay. I'm not upset at all. :) I was getting to the point where I was ready to be done. In 2007 so far I've scrapped maybe 10 layouts and two of them are now of unknown youngsters. And I really LIKE my own style. So now I'm ready to go on being myself. The contest taught me a lot. First of all that I can step outside my box and still create some good work (like the Romantic LO) and secondly that I still have the groove to really create something fantastic. It is like riding a bike. I really enjoyed finding my inspiration again. The last two weeks were hard because of time commitments and the fact that other people's kids don't really inspire me. LOL! But, I'm back in the groove. Right now my time is pretty much being given to making great albums for eBay, but at least I'm scrapping again. Maybe cards will be next. I'm just so proud that for the first time in a long time I scrapped in a contest not really caring about the results. I lost and you know what, I don't care! It doesn't bother me at all that I lost. That's a big hurdle to cross and it's one reason I stopped scrapping for a year; I just got too caught up in competing. But I'm good now. In more ways than one. All is well.



As I'm not suppose to share the layouts yet I'll leave you with my losing layout. :) I figure since it was posted on the blog with my name attached it would be okay.