Morning Routine

Here's where I get real with you...  I am not a morning person...my boys get up before me...my boys make their own breakfast...yep, I'm that mom!

Our LOAD challenge was to document a favorite routine and I love the way I start my morning!

Design Inspiration: This time the design was all me.  I made a strong block in the center of the page with one supporting line, except that it's across the top.  :)

Color Inspiration: This was another snack bag layout.  When I saw the flowers and buttons I knew exactly what colors to use.

White letters just seemed like the way to go.  But they didn't stand out enough so just like I did here, I outlined them with Sharpie.

For the journaling I made a simple list of my morning routine.  Super fast and easy page!  Love that!

























What does your morning routine look like?  Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear all about it!

I Hope You Dance {take two}

Do you remember this layout?  I shared it with you here.

I love the page, but the journaling didn't seem to do justice to the impact dance has had on my life.  The journal strips were cute but they didn't leave me enough space to write what I wanted to say.  The nice thing about digital is that you can just open the file and try again.  :)

I used a blurred shape in PSE as the background for my journaling.  I put it at 50% opacity so that you can see the heart paper behind.

And because of that I was able to write much more about my love of dance.

















Do you have something in your life that molded who you are today?  Ever had to "fix" the journaling on a page?  Or just wish you had a dancers body?  :)  I'd love to hear all about it!

In My Life...

You know those historic moments?  The ones that you will always remember where you were when you heard ______ happened?  Every generation has them.  Recently I decided I wanted to document the ones in my life.  I wanted to tell the stories as I remember them, and the emotions I felt at the time.

The events in my lifetime that stick out in my mind are...

1. The Challenger Explosion
2. Princess Diana's death
3. 9/11
4. Election of President Obama

My design inspiration came from Moon Ko.  I loved the look of the rounded edges on opposite corners of each block.  Even though this is a paper layout, I thought I could recreate it better digitally.  Especially since my photos were ones I found on the internet.

Since all of the photos had blue in them I chose that as my first accent color.  Then as I scrolled through my digi papers I found this yellow to go with it.  Not my usual colors but they seemed to fit this layout.

For each of these events I know exactly where I was at the moment I found out about it.  I was in 5th grade when the Challenger exploded.  I was standing in the art room with all of the other 5th grade students watching the launch on TV.  I had a personal connection to this event because a friend's mom had been one of the finalists for the teacher spot on that mission.

I was a senior in college when Princess Diana was killed.  As a girl I had watched her wedding and as I grew I was always drawn to stories about her life.  Her death was so sad to me.

Of course 9/11 had to be included on this page.  I was teaching at the time.  I remember walking to the office to make those final copies and seeing a group of teachers around the TV in the library.  I simply couldn't believe my eyes.

The final event I highlighted was the election of our nation's 1st African American president.  I spent my career teaching under privileged black boys and girls.  As I watched Obama give his victory speech I just sat and cried.  I was blown away by what this would mean in the lives of the students I taught.

I know that I still have a lot of life to live, and there will likely be more memorable news events in my lifetime.  But I felt it was important to honor what I remember here and now.

It took me awhile to figure out how to make a rectangle with two rounded corners.  Once I did I was able to create the template and just copy and paste it 4 times.  Then all I had to do was clip my papers and pictures in the appropriate boxes.  (Look for a PSE tutorial on how to make those shapes sometime next week).























What are the events in your lifetime that you will always remember "where you were?"

10 Years of Wedded Bliss

Today is the 10 year anniversary of my wedding day!  As I hinted in an earlier post my husband and I celebrated by taking a trip for two to New York City!  Next week I'll show you the travel album I created especially for that trip.  But for today I wanted to share a layout I made in remembrance of our special day.

This layout started as just the left page.  I made it for LOAD and tried really hard to leave it as a single page layout.  But I couldn't do it.  :)  So the next day I added page two.

I used some simple elements with tone on tone colors.  I thought the neutral colors played off of the colors in the sunset.  I truly love the simplicity of this page.

For the right page I paired some of my favorite pics from our special day with the stories I wanted to remember.  Honestly I had a hard time fitting it all on one page!  :)  I covered the proposal, the wedding, and I added in our vows.  I'm so glad I have this layout to document the pieces of the day that I always want to remember.

Have you gone back and documented an important event years later?  Share your experience or your page with us by linking up in the comments!

Forgive me for a moment of mushiness...

To my amazing husband, I am still so grateful to be married to you.  You are a wonderful father and a loving husband.  Every year our life just gets better and better.  Thank you for the last 10 years and I look forward to many many more!

Comfort Food

As I've worked on my All About Me album I started reflecting on what I wanted to say about my Grandmother.  I mentioned a bit about her here on my Educated Women page.  And I know I have more of her story to tell.  But it occurred to me that all of my favorite foods tie back to her.  So I decided to create a page honoring that connection.

I wanted the layout to exude comfort so I used warm colors.  Forgive the missing picture!  :)  I knew what I wanted to go there but hadn't taken the pic yet.  I have taken it now, but not printed it or added it to the page.  I'll show it to you later.

My inspiration came from Ann Costen over at Write.Click.Scrapbook.  I just love their monthly galleries! So much inspiration over there!!!

So I made myself a little sketch turning Ann's 12x12 page into two 8.5x11 pages.

I thought it would be fun to include some hearts in the photos of this food I love.  So in both the egg salad and the popcorn pics I created hearts.  I wanted to show the love for my grandma and the food that has a special place in my heart.

I just love the combo of popcorn and cheese.  Mmmmmm...

On the left page I used one of the photo blocks for the title.  And by using some lined paper I was able to create a space for my journaling.  I also got to use some floral papers on this page.  Love making pages about me so that I can use some girly products!  :)

I wanted the title to use two types of letter stickers...check.  And I wanted the word Comfort to stand out...check.  I also wanted the title to form a block and have the edges line up...che...oh well, you can't win them all.  :)

To continue with the warm feel I chose a red Sharpie for my journaling. More handwriting...what is my world coming too?

Have you ever made a page about some of your favorite foods?  Link us up so we can see!

35 things I love at 35

Sometimes when you are attempting to do a layout a day you've gotta take things easy.  This layout was made on one of those days for me.

 One of the LOAD challenges was to create an all black and white layout.  And I did it!   Well, almost.  :)

I was looking for a white paper to use as a mat when I came across this lovely paper.  It has a subtle green pattern.  Which is where my "almost" comes in.  :)

My journaling consists of a simple list of 35 things I love at 35.  Hence the catchy title.  ;)

Have you ever made a page listing things you love?  Leave a link in the comments so we can all see!

Sticky Treats

I've spent this week talking a lot about my Dad.  So it seemed fitting to share a layout telling one of his favorite stories from my childhood.

One year in elementary school, on my birthday, I wanted to share a rice crispy treat with my principal.  My Dad was there that day and watched me switch the treat from hand to hand licking the stickiness off each time.  It became a story he told time and again over the years.

I decided to make this page after making a pan of rice crispy treats.  I thought of the story and decided it was time to document the story.  So I grabbed a camera and snapped a shot of me holding a rice crispy treat.  Who says you can't recreate a photo to tell a story!  :)

I used a fun bright border and ribbon to accent each of the photos.  The colors remind me of candy, but also of the 80s, which is when the story takes place.

I dug through my photos and found this one of me with my principal at 6th grade graduation.  It was fun to include a picture like this on a layout all about Mr. Miller.  :)

  

I made these color blocks in Photoshop Elements and printed them out.  All are from Crystal Wilkerson's Spring/Summer line.  Love her stuff!

The pink pen was a fun way for all this journaling.  Hand written again!  :)  It may be hard to see, but I tell the whole story and reflect on what I learned when I became a teacher myself.  I bet you can guess my lesson!  :)

Do you have a funny story from your childhood?  One your family tells time and again?  Have you scrapbooked about it?  Leave us a link in the comments so everyone can see!

I Hope You Dance

Do you ever start to feel like you just need to create something but you aren't sure what? That has been me all week.  Not interested in house work (but when am I ever?), feeling kinda tired and lazy, and having a hard time getting motivated to start something.  Then the other night I was sitting on the couch and thought, "maybe I could start a digi layout...then I won't have to move out of this spot!"  And that is exactly what I did.  :)  I pulled up my scrapbook to do list and chose an idea for my All About Me album.  I spent most of my life as a dancer and I decided that I was ready to tell that story.

I always start a layout by looking for design inspiration and I typically scraplift...must be why I named my blog what I did!  ;)  But starting a digi layout is so much more difficult for me.  With paper I start playing around with things and moving them around on my table.  With digi I have to search through my files to find something I want and I can't lay them next to each other to see if they will work.  I'm much more likely to make a carbon copy scraplift when I'm going digital.

So I was pretty lucky that Ella had just posted the second sketch for their Stretch Your Sketches challenge!

This sketch and page are both 12x12 and I was doing an 8.5x11 two page spread.  Donna Jannuzzi did make an 8.5x11 sketch as well but I liked this one better.  My photos ended up being 4x3 instead of 4x4 so that they would fit.

 For this layout I chose pictures of myself throughout my childhood.  I studied dance from the age of 3 to 16 and yet I could not find a single dance picture above about age 10.  Not sure if we didn't take any or if they just got lost somewhere along the way.  So I just used two pics of me at a much younger age.  They are pretty cute (if I do say so myself) so I didn't mind that much.

For the title I used a popular song title.  I clipped some distressed yellow paper to a favorite font and placed it right on the pic.  I started with the title "So You Think You Can Dance" and while I liked it, it gave the layout a more playful feel.  This title gives the layout the more emotional feel I was going for.  It shows the love I have for dance.

To divide the pictures from the main section of patterned paper I added a strip of orange paper.  I felt that it needed a bit more decoration so I used two rows of stitching.  I think it makes the strip of paper look more like a ribbon.

On this layout I did something else I rarely do, all the products were from the same kit.  All papers, tape, and stitching came from Crystal Wilkerson.  I got the products here and here.  I'm so excited because everything Crystal creates during the spring and summer will be from the same color palette (which I LOVE by the way) so it will all coordinate!  Yay!  And there are so many more papers I want!  But I must pace myself.  :)

I love the look of these tape strips!  Not only do they bring some of the color to the top of the page, they also help the layout have a more cohesive feel.  Since the pics are from many different time periods and have lots of different colors the tape seems to help tie them together.

Even though I am a total introvert I have always been a performer.  Through dance, music, and theater I have always felt the call of the stage.  Even to this day, after years away, I miss dancing and theater (I still sing here and there).  I'm not convinced that this is all I have to say about the effect dance had on my life.  If I decide I need more I'll either go in and extend the tape strips to allow for more journaling or I'll add some hidden journaling behind the layout.  We'll see.  But since it's digital, and I haven't printed it yet, I can make that decision later.

Do you have an activity you participated in all through childhood?  Have you created a layout about it?  Leave us a link in the comments so we can all see!

Record your voice on a page...

Recently I've been enthralled with the idea of somehow recording your voice on a scrapbook layout.  I shared my first attempt with you here, using iMovie.  Something Izzy Hyman would call Motion Scrapping (for Paperclipping fans).  :)  But that is still separate from the actual page.  I've been brainstorming ideas of how to include my voice on my scrapbooking pages.  I could make a quick mini movie of each layout and upload it with my blog post.  I could wait until the end of an album and make a movie of all the pages with me reading the journaling.  I could even record some of my children’s thoughts about certain events and add it to the slide.  Then I could burn them to a DVD and slide it into the back of the album.  Or even store it on a mini flash drive and attach it to the album somehow, but what if there was a way to include it directly on the page?!?

Well then today I was listening to old episodes of Paperclipping Digi Show.  Which if you haven't heard that or the Paperclipping Roundtable podcasts you SOOOOO have to check them out!  Anyway I was listening to Episode 30 all about story.  At the end of each podcast the participants do picks of the week.  On that episode someone, Pamela (Donnis) Odd I think, chose this...

The Franklin AnyBook Reader

The reader comes with stickers.  You add a sticker to any page and record.  Then when someone runs the Reader over the sticker it will playback your recording for that page.

Can you imagine the possibilities?!?  You could put a sticker on each page of your album and with this Reader your children, or anyone, could hear the journaling in your voice.  Or you could have a grandparent read a layout about them.  Or ask different family members to give their perspective on a certain event.  How cool would that be!?!

With a $40 price tag it would definitely be an investment.  And probably not something I would do in every album.  But for my All About Me album?  I think it would be pretty cool.  Since my birthday is coming up maybe I can beg my way into one of these babies.  :)  We'll see.

Anyone else have any ideas about how to include sound with layouts?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

iScrap 2010

Recently I completed a class with Stacy Julian over at Big Picture Classes called "i.Scrap"  It was an amazing experience and if the class is ever offered again I highly recommend you take it!!  I'm not going to share the process of making this album with you because I hope you'll support BPC and take the class yourself someday!

I do want to share my final product with you.  I have yet to find the perfect album to put these in so I can't show you my cover, but I plan to do something similar to Stacy's only in orange.  Cause orange is my "happy" color!  You'll see glimpses of it all through this album.  To see the completed project I'm going to try something new.  I made a movie of the pages and I read the journaling aloud!  It's about 7 min total.  I'm excited to see how using a video works.  And it also seems like such a cool way to present an album like this to my kids.  I think I'm going to have to do this again!  (for more ideas visit here)

If you don't want to sit through the video that is just fine, I've attached pics of the pages as well.  The pics were taken before I completed the journaling however so to get that you'd have to watch the video.  Just FYI, I think the color quality in the pictures is better than in the video (which is scanned pics...maybe I need a new scanner).   :) 

i.Scrap an intro.spective of 2010

i.was...a teacher

i.went...online

i.once...picked up a camera

i.am...happy

i.know...my children

i.love...my life right now

i.believe...in the power of words

i.wonder...what the future holds

i.will...live one day at a time

It doesn't matter what challenged, surprised, or rewarded me in 2010, through i.Scrap I discovered that life taught me exactly what I needed to learn.