Scrapbooking stuff

#1: The December kit from My Scrap Shoppe is available to purchase tomorrow. It is a gorgeous kit, with lots of my favourite colour (lately)-- chocolate brown!

Here are the layouts that I created with the kit:
















#2: I got an email today from Scenic Route Paper Company, telling me that I won their November product challenge, which was to use their chipboard circles on a layout. This is the layout that they picked:


which you can see here on their site.


#3: Tomorrow is Super Scrap Day (SSD) at My Scrap Shoppe. My sister-in-law, Sally, and her family have agreed to watch my kids for most of the day, with my mother-in-law watching the kids for the evening. Which means I'll get to scrapbook for roughly 8 hours tomorrow, before going to Cameron's Christmas banquet in the evening. A day of scrapbooking followed by a meal that I don't have to cook-- sounds good to me!

Volunteer choir

Austin has such a great singing voice. And in grade three, he can join the volunteer choir at school. They practice on Tuesdays at lunch hour.

Last week, the choir, comprised of 92 third and fourth graders, went to Winnipeg to participate in ChoralFest. And I got to go along as a parent volunteer. (I love going along as a parent volunteer!)

Austin has such a great class. All of the kids are so nice and friendly and if you'd ask them, they would say that they are all friends. And they are!

The snow...

has arrived. We woke up this morning to a yard covered with fluffy white snow. The kids were thrilled, to say the least. After weeks of asking for snow, God finally answered Austin's prayer.

It would have been nice to have had it for the Morden Tree Lighting a few weekends ago. We had the cold, but no snow.






I was tagged, by Marcy by reading her blog.

1.If you could have $100 worth of scrapbook paper or assorted embellishments, which would you choose? Embellishments.

2. If you had to choose between using only stamps or rub-ons which would you choose? Rub-ons.

3. If you knew how to do both awesome cards and layouts, but could only do one for a year which would you do? Layouts.

4. Would you rather own a scrapbooking store or have your own scrapping room at home (can't have both, lol) ? My own room. (But I'm good with the space I have.)

5. And then last but not least, what is your current cardmaking or scrapping style? Not sure. I use to say clean & simple with straight lines. Now I find I'm still straight ( ;) ), but I like adding more embellishments in clusters & more stuff.

Well, thanks for reading. Happy Wednesday!

Slow but steady

I decided that this year I didn't have to do all of my Christmas decorating in one day.

Normally, I set up the tree and decorate the house all at once, sometime in one day, sometimes in two.

But this year, I thought I'd spread it out a little more.

So, on Friday, the kids and I put up the tree and put on the lights. A strand was out, so we put up the remaining lights that worked. And ended there with a little photo shoot:

Friday night, we watched Shrek the Third by our tree lit with 2/3 of its lights.

On Saturday, I added another string of lights. And Austin added four balls.

On Sunday, I made some new ornaments and added them to the tree:

(I still have a few more to finish up.)

But I'm enjoying having a more relaxed attitude about it this year, that's for sure.

Some cool things...

this weekend:

Got to crop with friends Friday night at my church.
Got to go to Holiday Hoopla at the the Shoppe and got some goodies there.
Participated in the online crop at MSS. I got 6 layouts done this weekend-- five with the upcoming December kit and this one, lifting Eva's leaf attack layout.



Found a new addiction here. Lots of fun for a good cause.
Took the kids to see Mr. Mark yesterday afternoon. It was a fundraiser for our Parent/Child Resource Centre, where we participate in their Stay & Play and Shake, Rattle & Roll programs.
Went as a family to the tree lighting uptown last night.
Got to relax this afternoon-- always nice!
Now, getting ready to head out to Alpha tonight, followed by coffee with a friend.

November online crop project

Here's my project for the November online crop at MSS-- Christmas tree ornaments, inspired by Martha Stewart Kids magazine.





Supplies needed:

• metal rimmed tags of different sizes,
• patterned paper
• wire (or jump/binder rings would work, too.)

Instructions:

• Cover the front and back of the tags with patterned paper,
• punch holes in them
• attach them together with wire.

Simple.

I used Basic Grey patterned paper and Making Memories tags that I had in my stash.

Double the pleasure...

Tonight, I am participating in not only one, but two scrapbooking crops.

One: is at my church. Anita called me a few weeks ago and suggested that we host monthly crops at Westside. We had a two day crop last January, but there's a lot more work involved with a two day crop. So, we decided on a low-key Friday night crop. Bring your own supplies. Bring your own snacks/beverages.

And two: My Scrap Shoppe is having a two day online crop starting tonight at 8pm. Come and check it out. There'll be lots of challenges (I love challenges-- they totally get me thinking about doing something different on a layout) and it's always a good time. (And I'll be posting my project tomorrow! ;) )


And so, to get in the mood, I created this layout this afternoon,



with new My Mind's Eye patterned paper, Scenic Route chipboard painted with Making Memories paint and Bazzill cardstock, which I'll post tonight as a challenge:

That was then, this is now: create a layout using pictures taken on different dates.
(I organized my pictures this week and founds these gems of Austin and Jonah, taken on September 2003-- look how cute they were!!-- and December 2006.)

Morden 125 Photography Challenge

In January, Tamara, a woman from my playgroup mentioned being a part of Morden's 125 Photography Challenge and explained it to me.

They asked 12 photographers from Morden to take photos on four days during the year (February 8, May 14, July 1 & September 24) and submit twelve of them for each day. Then from these 144 photos, they would chose their favourites and display them in the art gallery.

After I expressed interest in being a part of this, she told me that they were looking for more photographers, and I could participate if I wanted to.

So, I took pictures on these days and submitted them (only for winter and spring, because I wasn't very happy with my summer and fall ones.)

So last night was the opening night at the gallery. I hadn't heard if any of my pictures were chosen, so I was quite excited to see what they'd picked.

I was so thrilled to get there and see that out of the 35 or so pictures displayed, that they'd chosen three of mine:

I'd forgotten my camera (can you believe it?!), so Basil Holewka (one of the organizers of the challenge) took a couple of photos of me with the photo groupings, but I haven't gotten them from him yet.

Holiday preparations

Okay, I'm not quite ready to haul out the Christmas decorations yet, but I am starting to think about it.

With the redecorating of our living room this spring, I want to add some of the blue from my curtains into my decor:

*I found these ornaments at Kohl's when we were in Grand Forks a few weeks ago -- 50% off! (so, of course, I got two boxes!)



I have left over curtain material, that I want to use to make some new stockings for the kids, with white felt and brown trim that I found at Fabricland.

I bought some brown & white felt to make a new tree skirt that I want to trim with this.

I made some Christmas ornaments with Basic Grey's new Figgy Pudding line, but I can't post them until this weekend's Holiday Hoopla & online crop at MSS. (So, you'll have to come and check it out!)

And I want to make some more of these ornaments (from last year's Holiday Hoopla):



but with this paper & maybe some of the aforementioned Basic Grey Figgy Pudding.

And I'll make another set of these:



but again, with the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding. (Loving that paper!)

And then I saw this idea on Ali Edward's blog, which I absolutely loved. I described it to Austin at lunchtime, who wisely informed me that we already have an advent calendar. So, I might be shelving that idea (or tweaking it to update our existing calendar-- we'll see. ;) )

So, there's lots to do. But I feel like I made a good choice this morning, when I decided to go through the kids' rooms and get rid of stuff they don't play with/use anymore. I took four bags of stuff to the thrift (& our stroller-- Sage didn't want me to take the stroller (well, she didn't want me to take anything away, really) so I had to remind her that she's not a baby and doesn't need it anymore. That seemed to make it better. That and the fact that I let her take one stuffed animal back into the house. ;) )

And now, on to the basement.

Bad day turn around

I was having a bad day yesterday.

In the afternoon, Jonah and Sage wanted to write. Sage wrote on some post-it notes and Jonah took a 8.5x11" sheet of paper and drew extended "W"s all over the page and added a stick man at the end.

Then, he read it to me:

"I love you, Mom. You are beautiful and so pretty and so beautiful and you can cook and give me big hugs & kisses and wash dishes and do computer and scrapbook and pray with us in bed. You give us stories in our beds and you have a beautiful heart.”

Totally made my day!

Halloween & other stuff

Well, all in all, we had a good Halloween.

The day started off with the return of the cheetah.

Well, a cheetah with a twist. Jonah added a black cape and called himself Super Cheetah. I asked if he wanted me to make him more of a costume, so he'd have more fur and he said: "Mom, my fur is under my clothes!" LOL.

Then, Sage & I went for coffee at my friend, Val's house (well, she had milk and I had hot chocolate ;) ) to celebrate Anita's birthday. Just a nice morning spent visiting with friends (one of my favourite kinds!)

After lunch, we took Austin back to school and stayed for their costume parade.

(Austin is the handsome ninja in the middle.)

Sage was a mouse (and wanted me to address her as "Mousie.") She wore the costume that my mom made and that I wore when I was four. Love that!

Then, yesterday afternoon, I got an email from Scenic Route saying that they chose one of my layouts (again!) for their monthly contest. This time, for my prize, I picked some "goodies from their Roxbury line."

The October challenge was to create a layout with their Sumner line. I submitted three layouts and they chose this one:

And the kids wanted me to dress up this year to go trick or treating, so I picked a queen. Then, just for fun, I added some funky make-up and said that I was a Narnia warrior queen (but not a bad one!)