Robotics

Jessica Sprague has a new designer coming to the store soon. Its Designs by Dani. I have to tell you ... I absolutely ADORE all of her kits that I've seen so far.  They're absolutely fabulous - so much fun! Here's a page I made using her School Spirit Kit and Boy Crazy.

You can find full credits for this page here.

P365+1 - A Day at the Beach - Week 22 - May 27, 2012

Scott, the kids and I spent an awesome day at the lake with friends yesterday. I thought a fun event like that (with pics of the kids having such a great time!) warranted a couple pages of their own in my POTD book!
I think summer might just be here!

P365+1 - Week 21: May 20 - May 26, 2012

Here's this week's installment of P365+1. It was a good week.
I could have done without the "bat incident" Friday night. I think the bat followed us in the house when DH and I got back from picking up fabric samples. Yikes! I can't handle bugs ... imagine how wonderfully I handled having a bat repeatedly swoop by me repeatedly IN MY OWN HOME!
Maggie injured her neck (herniated disk?) last weekend when she was running and playing with Tucker so we've been doctoring her. Our poor pup is in such pain! :( No pictures of that though. Hmmm, maybe I'll take pics of some of her medicines this coming week.
DS seems to be in a silly mood lately. Love that! I got a pretty funny video of him messing around w/ the grocery cart at Cub - and then getting in the car to drive us home. I wish I could add videos to the POTD! Maybe some day!
I'm super excited to have gotten new living room chairs ordered today (and am so glad to be done choosing fabric!). The chairs and ottoman should be here in 3-4 weeks! I can't wait!
Have a great week!

Decorating cookies with Grandma

My DD sure loves baking and decorating cookies/cupcakes/cakes! On this particular day she decorated cookies with Grandma. What fun!
{This is what memories are made of!}

You can find the credits for this page here.

REDO: Volleyball

OK. Here's a re-do. A couple quick changes to my volleyball page from last night. I think this works better.

JO Volleyball - Angles of Photoshop Class

I'm taking my first class with Jana Morton at Creative Passions. It's called Blueprints: The Angles of Photoshop. I've been wanting to take her Blending and Beyond class for quite some time now, but I didn't have the full version of Photoshop so I couldn't take it. Well ... now I do (have full Photoshop that is)! Unfortunately, Blending and Beyond isn't being offered again yet (I hope will be soon!), but this class came up so I decided I was definitely IN. It's been fun!

FYI , switching from Elements to full Photoshop hasn't been difficult (thankfully). I got up and running pretty quickly. It has certainly been fun playing around with some of it's awesome features.

So, long story short, even though I'm not entirely sure I'm done with this page, I thought I'd post it anyway. It's uncharacteristic for me to not immediately send a page off to print, but I think I need to mull the page over for a bit before I print it. Unheard of.

Have a great Tuesday (almost Wednesday) and thanks for looking!

Barbara

(P.S. all the supplies on this page are from Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals and the inspiration came from Jana Morton at Creative Passions.)

P365 + 1: Week 20 (May 13-May 19, 2012) + Grad Party

It was a busy - awesome - weekend!

Graduation Party at the Resort! {Left Page}

Graduation Party at the Resort {Right Page}

In celebration of my niece's graduation

We're celebrating my darling niece's graduation from high school this weekend. I can't believe how time has flown. She's such a beautiful, smart, hard working young woman. Of course I knew she's be a beautiful young woman ... look at this photo of her as a little girl. Is she adorable or what? So ... to celebrate her achievement - I wanted to put together a little THEN & NOW photo of her. This is what I came up with. (FYI, it's an 8x10 photo.)

Happy graduation!

P365 + 1 - Week 19: May 6, 2012 Robotics Competition

Here's a one day page from a robotics banquet we attended last Sunday. DS really enjoyed the time he was able to spend on the robotics team so I wanted to be able to include some pics of the robot they built. It was interesting and sounded extremely challenging. I'm not a science and technology kinda gal so I'm pretty confident I wouldn't be much of a help on the team. It sure was interesting though!

I want to remember (a photo from this afternoon)

I took this photo of my DD after school this afternoon. She's been so happy in the afternoons when she can set out a blanket on the grass and do her homework or read a book. I want to remember her happy-ness! (And I do kind of like that I'm scrapping a photo from TODAY! Talk about timely!)

More happy-ness ... Again, I have to say, I am absolutely IN LOVE with all of the gorgeous painted papers Nancie Rowe Janitz has been coming out with. This paper is a part of a painted paper pack coming out at J*S soon. You can find full credits for this page here.

What I love about PS: Before & After

Did I tell you I love Photoshop? Here's a before and after. I'm a computer geek. I admit it.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

P365 + 1 - Week 19: May 6 - May 12, 2012

It was a good week for many reasons, but let me just say something FANTASTIC happened this week. I got Photoshop CS6 Extended this week. I'm in heaven!!! I'm having such fun playing and learning!! Happy. Happy. Happy.

Love (a heritage page)

I was looking through some of the gorgeous artsy papers I have that were created by Nancie Rowe Janitz (have I told you before that I love love love Nancie's painted papers?!) and I came across this beautiful Love Art paper. It had the poem and everything already on it. It's designed as wall art so I suppose it would be gorgeous as is. I thought it would be perfect to use to put together some heritage wedding photos of Martha and Butch and Laura and Joe and pair it with a wedding photo of Don and Marci. I love seeing photos from different times displayed together to show the significance of time and how families grow (wedding pics of parents and their kids ... fun!) This was a fun page to put together.

Happy almost Mother's Day!

You can see all the credits for this page at my J*S gallery here.

Relaxing with Maggie

I love these photos of DS relaxing with Maggie, so of course I had to scrap 'em. Notice how Maggie is perched on top of the couch cushions in both of these pictures? It's her favorite place in the house - in the sun, looking out the windows at the world outside. (Her next favorite place would have to be on the floor, squished between the couch and the ottoman next to whoever happens to be sitting there.) She's pretty cute - so is DS! Of course it is definitely NOT a good thing for our couch pillows, but, hey, such is life. She's a member of the family too so she can choose her favorite place to just sit and "be" too.

You can find the credits for this page over at my gallery at J*S here.

Happy Saturday!

Opa's tree

We always take a peek at the Eagle's nest in Opa's tree when we went for a boat ride on the lake up north. It's a tradition. Well, about a week ago my sister, who lives up on the lake, sent me this picture of Opa's tree. It had fallen in the lake (most likely in the storm that took out Mom's power for 4 or 5 days). It's sad the tree is gone. I want to make sure we remember Opa's tree so of course I scrapped the picture (and paired it with a picture I took a couple years back of an Eagle perched in the tree). Times have to change I guess, but we still have our memories.

You can find the credits for this page here. FYI, Tiffany Tillman is coming out with a couple of new template collections in the next day or two. The is created with the Sublime collection. Check 'em out over at Design House Digitals!

P365 + 1 - Week 18: April 29 - May 5, 2012

I've got to tell you ... I absolutely LOVE how quick and easy this photo-a-day project is. I think the key for me is that I designed a template to use so I don't have to put any thought into how I want to design the page every week. I like the consistency of the pages ... I love that look as I page through previous years POTD books. I feel like POTD is such a great system for memory keeping. I love all the "every-day" moments that are captured that otherwise wouldn't be. I love our life and I want to remember the little details. Silly, huh? It's the little moments that are really important, right?! For instance, Lauren sweeping the stairs. I'm pretty confident I wouldn't scrap that. Or that Lauren likes to do her homework in the yard ... I love that! Or the guys trying to get me to hurry up and take the picture before they drove off to school - also not gonna get its own scrapbook page. Their morning schedule is such a big part of our week days, so I want to remember it. {Hmmm ... makes me think ... maybe I should do a page about our routines!} Anyway ... I'm babbling!

Time to share this past week's photo-a-day page! Have a great Sunday! It's going to be a busy day in our household!

Having fun on the slopes

I found myself with a little bit of free time this afternoon. DH took DS out to get some practice driving. My DD was baking like a mad girl so I thought I'd use this time to scrap a quick page while I chatted with my DD. Oh, fun!

For the most part I used Echo Park Hybrid's Winter Park kit for this page. It was perfect for a ski page! You can find a full list of credits here.

Its the little things

I had fun playing on this page this morning. I'm kind of enjoying masking photos to more organic shapes. Digi is such fun!

You can find the credits here.

DD's piano recital

I scrapped a page this evening for my DS's basketball season so I thought I'd balance it out with a more feminine piano recital page for my DD!

Credits are here.

9th grade basketball

I got 9th grade basketball scrapped already. So weird. I'm patting myself on the back here. It usually takes me MONTHS to ever get to scrapping the kids sports pages. I just usually don't feel like scrapping sports pages. BUT ... Echo Park is coming out with a basketball (and football too!) themed mini kit in the next couple of weeks so it got me scrapping. Yay!

You can find all the credits here.

And, by the way, if you've been following my blog and saw my photo-a-day project a couple months ago, you might remember that these photos are amazingly - vividly - RED. I just absolutely could not take that bright color so I just converted 'em to black and white and added a slight sepia overlay and voila - a color that matches anything! The pictures are so much better this way!

Easter memories

Hmmm, weird, I actually created 3 - count 'em, 3 - pages for Easter this year. That's very unusual for me. In the past I haven't always even had one page for Easter and if I scrapped it, it was usually at the end of the year. (I'm not really sure why that is.) Not this year. I guess, maybe I just like the photos a lot this year.

Happy Spring!

You can find all the credits for this page here.

About a Boy - XBox 360

Once upon a time there was a boy. The boy loved playing video games. He loved playing his PS3 with all his on-line friends, but he wanted something new. He wanted an XBox 360. He had saved up enough money to buy a new gaming system, a few games and even had enough money left over to buy a year of XBox Live Gold Membership. Now he just needed time. He was in the middle of a very difficult term in school. He was doing very well, but his every free moment was spent studying. There was no time for gaming and he was sick of it. The light at the end of the tunnel was that as soon as the term was up he was going to buy his XBox! Well, time passed, the term ended, and the boy survived (and even got excellent grades!). As soon as he got home from school the last day of the term the boy went to the store and bought his XBox. He was so happy.

This was the first time I've had a chance to play with Tiffany Tillman's This Week Templates. What fun! Gotta love 'em! ... And then, what a find to have Echo Park's A Boy's Life papers and that awesome controller in the elements packs - what a find!

Click here for a full list of credits.

Best Friends

Mixing Splendid Fiins' cool and funky digi finds with these funky iPhone LemiCam camera images seemed like the perfect pairing for these fun pics.

For this page I used all Splendid Fiins products: (1) Teen Add on Paper Pack, (2) @ the Office Supplies (the masking tape); (3) Knockout Circle Explosion (notice the hint of circle pattern on the pink paper?) and (4) Template 3. I thought it made for a fun page!