imagine

After trying for over a week to upload photos, I finally got it to work! Yay! I guess I could try a different program, but I'm used to blogger at this point.




Anyhow, I give you a (semi) new layout (since I did it like 2 weeks ago!):

I used a bunch of leftover goodies from my Apr/May Green Tangerine's kit. I'm trying to purge a bunch of old/unused (hoarded!) scrapbook supplies right now...which is really hard when there's so much new stuff out there! But it is also such a great feeling to empty out boxes of supplies too!

flashback friday...10 years later

Yesterday was our tenth wedding anniversary (!).

This is our engagement picture, taken in the spring of 2000. The layout is the title page of our first "real" family album (since we were married at the end of 2000, the first half of that album isn't "us").

Project LIFE, 10/17 - 10/23

First "real" fall day (cold & rainy), so of course we needed hot chocolate...with marshmallow monsters!

Abbie is always so happy to see me when I pick her up from Moppets! It's so weird this year to only have one little one with me on Monday mornings.

I love being able to line dry Abbie's diapers.

David ripped out the vegetable garden today & put in fresh dirt. Hopefully next year something will grow!

Brandon's class took a field trip out to Bishop's Pumpkin Farm, and I got to chaperone :)

And the next day, Olivia's class went too! David chaperoned her trip since I was at work.

The kids love using my old scrapbook paper as drawing paper, and this rainy Saturday was the perfect day be little artists!

flashback friday...ugg

If I've shared this layout before, forgive me! Brandon used to love playing with David's nasty Uggs. As you can see, he'd put his arms IN them...I'm amazed he still has arms! Heck, I won't even touch the outsides :)

from fall 2006

Project LIFE, 10/3 - 10/16 (plus make-ups, again!)

Time to play catch-up! I've been slacking again...not at taking pics, but at going thru them & deciding what I want to use for each week. I have good plans: take pics all week, edit thru them on Sunday, get them uploaded & labeled on Monday (to go up on Tues). I think that's happened once! Oh well, I try...

(Yes, the date on there says June 12)

We go to Target all the time, and I needed a picture for this day. And I finally got a good one outside of Target!

Spooky letters I made so we could have some Halloween decorations...and I finally got our family pics from LAST fall framed & up on the wall :)

After picking Olivia up from preschool, she, Abbie, & I headed to the park behind her class with a few of her friends. It was a good time for the moms to catch up and I know the girls had a great time too.

(Yes, I shared this one already. But in a goofy "oops, I forgot to add the rest post" so I thought I'd put in where it belongs...with other PL photos!)

Reading time after snack at school. (Side note: I'm having so much fun setting the camera down on the ground to get pictures! A totally different perspective for a change.)

Pedicure day for the girls. Olivia insisted on alternating pink & blue on her nails. We had to do her fingers too, but they have 3 blues & 2 pinks (her request).

Brandon loves going over to G's house after school to play with his new best friend (and his brother).

Margarita Friday wouldn't be complete without some fun for the kids too: tonight we roasted marshamalows in our fire pit. So much fun!

Annual family trip out to Bishop's Pumpkin Farm.

Olivia helping make pumpkin waffles for breakfast.

Abbie has been really getting into building with the Duplo Legos. Usually she wants to build a choo-choo, but today she was happy to build a tower.

We took the kids to Target after dinner & treated them to a new toy. We've been slacking on giving them their allowance (whoops!), so this was to make up for it...and the last toy they can get before Christmas!

We've been BOO'd! Finally!

Olivia & Samantha (& sometimes Abbie too) love to put on shows for us. Lately, billboards have been showing up around the house :)

Tonight for Margarita Friday: caramel apples. So naturally, we made the kids peel the caramels ;-)

Abbie loves being read too!

hot summer nights

I don't know why this layout took me so long, but it did.

The photos are from this past July, when my mother-in-law & niece came up to visit. We all went to nearby Folsom Lake for a picnic dinner. I got some great photos that evening, and I couldn't wait to scrap them. I picked a sketch from Allison Davis (I don't remember which volume) and picked out some photos fairly quickly. Then it was time to choose the paper...and that's when my drama began :)

Nothing I grabbed worked like how I wanted it to. I finally (after about three tries!) settled on my papers, all leftover from my August '09 Green Tangerine's kit. The blue is from Basic Grey's Marrakech line. Unfortunately I'd already punced a circle out of it, in a spot I had no way to cover up. So I trimmed it down to about 10 1/2" wide (it was supposed to be 12" wide).

The striped paper is from Jillibean soup, and that was the last of it. I love that paper, so I may pick up another sheet!

Then I remembered I had picked up those cool flowers from Jillibean too...perfect! Just the spot of color I needed. Except I wasn't sure what to put on them. I found some buttons that did the trick, and tied them off with embroidery floss.

I used another flower from Jillibean here too. Except I added a chipboard button that I had covered with some more Jillibean paper (Pasta Fagioli collection). Topped off with a button from my stash.

And this isn't a great picture, but you get the gist. I didn't feel like pulling it out of my album for a retake :)

I inked the edges of the yellow paper to jazz it up a bit.

flashback friday...leaves

When Brandon & Olivia were only "that" big, and Brandon still hated being put in the leaves so I could take a picture!

Fall 2006, our house in Folsom.

bishop's pumpkin farm

We've gone to Bishop's every fall since 2006, usually more than once (because of school field trips). This year is no exception; we went last Saturday as a family, then on the 21st with Brandon's class (me) and on the 22nd with Olivia's (David & Abbie will go then too). Glad we love it there!

For this layout I used Alison Davis' sketch from August, seen here. You can download a copy easily from her blog. I really didn't make any changes, but it's a very versatile layout.

I used papers from a new company called Echo Park...I just love these colors! As much as I love fall, I always have the hardest time finding paper to use on layouts like this. It's not a "Halloween" layout, bu tthe colors are so bright & beautiful that I don't want the more muted "Thanksgiving" prints either...I'm in Northern California where the leaves barely start turning in November! Everything is still quite green when we go to the pumpkin patch! So anyhow...these papers from Echo Park's "A Walk in the Park" line were perfect! And double sided :)

These vertical strips on the side were cut from a sheet of border strips; the yellow & flower were the border strips, and the blue dots was on the reverse. The flower accent is actually from a sheet of "cards". I cut out the card with a flower on it, trimmed it down a bit & rounded the edges. Something was still missing, so I decided to do a little handstitching with my embroidery floss. The faux stitching was there already, so I just punched holes along that & started stitching.

I added stitching on these accents as well, and then popped them up with foam adhesive. The journal card is from the same sheet of paper as the accents. I didn't even grab that paper for the accents; I got it for the yellow print on the reverse (which I didn't even use!). Glad I grabbed it!

You can see my journaling here, if you care :)

I measure out the size of the journaling card (or strips if I'm using those) when I handwrite my journaling. Then I "sketch it" on a sheet of binder paper. Then I don't have pencil lines to erase on my layout. And, at least for me, I write a little differently with a pencil than a pen.

And last, but not least, my title block. I'm so pleased with how it came out. Again I used one of the cards from the Echo Park paper and added some real stitching on top of the faux stitching. It's a journaling card with a tree. I inked up some chipboard thickers with my Purely Pomegranite ink pad from Stampin' Up (an in color from 2008? it might be in their new color palette as well). Anyhow, I love that color! It's great for fall, and as I inked my letters I remembered that I used the same color on my letters for a Bishop's layout from 2007 :) I wanted to add a subtitle, so I took out some mini-letters from My Little Shoebox. I like the "ransom note" mismatched letter look, so I mix it up a bit. There's enough of each font you could probably match them all if you wanted to.

september

I used a sketch from Scrapbook & Cards Today Project 12. I missed the submission deadline last month due to a few snafu's on my end. This month, I'm on time :)

I used a bunch of goodies from Basic Grey. For my journaling, I copied Brenda's layout here & used these fun "basic" labels...super versatile! I wrote about one event per label.

For the rest of this layout, I used items from Basic Grey's Wander collection. I really had fun with these new prints & colors! Below are some of the woolies I used for accents:

Project LIFE 10/3 - 10/9

10/3

After picking Olivia up from preschool, she, Abbie, & I headed to the park behind her class with a few of her friends. It was a good time for the moms to catch up and I know the girls had a great time too.

flashback friday...october 2006

I just realized this didn't publish on Friday...whoops!

So here you go...flashback friday, on sunday :)

From Olivia's first October.

August MIR

I created this month in review layout as for Project 12 on the Scrapbook Cards & Today blog. You can check out the sketch & a few other interpretations here.

I used some new papers from Jillibean Soup's Pasta Fagioli collection. I won all the paper from a Jillibean Soup drawing Facebook...score! So I was thrilled to use some on a layout.

Originally my plan was to have this layout done by Sept 20 to enter it into a contest. The sketch showed a tree on the right hand page (where the soccer photo is). So I had this great idea in my head to make some cool funky tree with paper circles of patterned paper, etc., and it looked awful when I tried to get it to work. Absolutely awful. So this layout sat on my desk for a few extra days while I tried to figure out what to do with it. Finally I decided on just adding another photo to fill up the space, and I like how it worked.

The other snafu I ran into was the stitching. I ended up handstitching around the photo block. I had planned on using my sewing machine. But my machine has been doing wacko things, like locking up & making one big huge knot. I tested it on some scratch paper ahead of time (thank goodness!) to make sure I had fixed it...and it turns out, I hadn't. I'm so glad I didn't try the machine on here, I'd be really ticked off if I had messed up this layout!

I used journaling strips again (Gill Sans MT font). I love those. I know I overuse them, and someday I'll look back & laugh that every layout has them on it (like how I used to enlarge the font of a few words on EVERY. SINGLE. LAYOUT.). But for now it works for me :)

I cut the camera out of the patterned paper, popped it up, and slapped it onto one of the journaling sprouts.