So Like You (shopping with Grandma) (Pixel's & Co's March Company Stash)

I took a peek at Pixels & Co's Company Stash for March (a set of coordinating kits) and I was in LOVE. The colors are fabulous! (The blues and greens are absolutely gorgeous!) I created this page Wednesday night to showcase this photo I took on my iPhone of my daughter and my mother-in-law when we were up north shopping one weekend late this summer. I wanted to document their shared shared love of shopping - something that I definitely do NOT share with them. I'm glad they have each other! Love it!

Here's a full list of credits for this page. Check out the Company Stash this month. It's amazing!

Pixels & Company's March Company Stash kits:
Lucky Bums template | Simply Tiffany Studios
Lucky elements | Robyn Meierotto
Lucky patterned papers | Robyn Meierotto
Dare to Dream elements | Karen Funk
Enchanted element set | Deena Rutter
Taylor page borders | Ardent Sparrow

Framed Essentials | Karla Dudley
Head Over Heels elements (string tie) | Creashens

My Daughter: A Pastry Chef in the Making

My daughter has had a love of baking and cake decorating for years now. She's really quite good at it. She makes such beautiful and delicious treats. Lately she's been focusing on cupcakes, but she makes pretty much anything. LOVE that! Whenever we go somewhere or when we have people over for dinner - the dessert is something that my daughter always takes care of. 

I thought it was funny, we went to a Superbowl party and the host of the party requested that Lauren make her Red Velvet cake (everyone loves that - it's amazing!). Of course we said YES ... she'll make that. Then we realized she was going to be out of town and was only going to get back an hour or so before the party. That meant that I would have to make the cake, so what did we do? We didn't make Red Velvet cake that's for sure. That's my daughter's job. She's awesome!

FYI ... my son and husband love to cook too. My husband can make anything (not so much desserts though) and my son ... he can cook too but he specializes in hot wings and jambalaya. 

I sure am lucky to have such good bakers in my house!

Credits (all Pixels & Co.):

Neutral Basics papers | Mye de Leon

Everyday Life Sentiments | Karla Dudley

Everyday Storyteller Templates | Karla Dudley

Chalkboard Quotes | Crystal Livesay

Ruby elements (string tie - recolored) | Ardent Sparrow

Green Lights Ahead (epoxy button) | Karla Dudley

An end to piano lessons ... scrapping the good and the not so good moments

Three and a half years ago my daughter decided that she really wanted to learn to play the piano. She was so excited about it. I loved listening to her play the piano! Well ... fast forward to this past November. My daughter is a teenager now and life seemed to be getting in the way. She was not enjoying practicing the piano at all and my husband and I were turning into nags. Well ... her piano teacher noticed as well and talked to her about it. My daughter thought about their conversation and decided it was time to quit. I was pretty disappointed but I understood where she was coming from. This was supposed to be something she was doing for fun - not a chore. Who knows, maybe she'll play again some day. (I hope!)

So ... I decided if I really want my scrapbooks to show our real life, I need to document the good and the not so good. (This doesn't really count as a bad moment, but it was a disappointing event.)

So, here we go ...

Credits:

Layered Template 4 | Scott Girl Design

Start the Music | Julia Makotinsky

Evidence Date Stamps | Splendid Fiins

Simple Stitches | Karen Funk

Rain (gems) | Amanda Dykan

I want to remember ... my son who loves Minecraft

My son is a typical teenage boy. He's pretty darn crazy about video games. I'm not a gamer so I don't totally get his obsession for video and computer games. I guess I do "get it" a bit ... I'm pretty attached to my Photoshop and my laptop. LOL! Nevertheless ... this is my son right now and I want to remember this!

I created this page using a variety of awesome digi products from Pixels & Co. Here's a full list of credits:

Torn Bits 3 (frames) | Creashens
Stamp Sheet By | Karla Dudley
Album Cards (rubon "Epic" wordart) | Karla Dudley
Kraft Essentials (paper) | Karla Dudley
Life 365 Buttons (everyday you button) | Karla Dudley
Clear Essentials (staples & stars) | Karla Dudley
Digi Basics Neutrals (papers) | Mye de Leon

November 2012 | Monthly Recap

This is it! This two page spread is the last I needed to complete for my 2012 album, now I need to glance through my photos and see if there are any more pages I want to scrap for the year and that's it. Then I can print my 2012 book. Yay!

Credits (all at Pixels & Co.):
Nillie | Karla Dudley
Clear Essentials (staples) | Karla Dudley
Digi Essentials (stitches) | Karla Dudley

President's Day Volleyball Tournament | Window System Collection Templates

Tiffany Tillman (Simply Tiffany Studios @ Pixels & Company) has got an AMAZING set of templates coming out on Friday. They're called the Window System templates - Collection One. WOW. I LOVE them. They are absolutely perfect for project life (or for any pages for that matter!) It's a perfect set for adding depth and windows to your pages. For me ... my first thought was that they're awesome for when you've got an event or something for which you have a ton of photos. For me, in particular, what came to mind was my daughter's volleyball tournament last weekend. I took about a zillion pictures of her and her team and these templates were, what I think, an awesome way to showcase the images while keeping the focus completely on the photos.

Check 'em out ... what do you think? I think I'm in love ... and will absolutely be using them for a lot more pages!

All products for this page came from Pixels & Company. Here's a full list of credits:

Window System Collection One | Simply Tiffany Studios
Kraft Essentials | Karla Dudley
Jumbo Sentiments | Karla Dudley
Card Love | Karla Dudley
Nellie | Karla Dudley
Layered Life cards | Deena Rutter
Oh Happy Day (epoxy button) | Erica Coombs
Going Places (epoxy button) | One Little Bird
Date Stamps 2 brushes | Scotty Girl Design

2013 Project Life | Week 8: February 17 - February 23

A normal week:
Sunday ... the last day of my daughter's two day President's Day volleyball tournament. What fun!
Monday ... the kids had the day off school for President's Day
Wednesday ... my daughter got her braces
Friday ... I had a girls night out. What fun! We went out to dinner at Biaggi's and the movie Identity Thief.
Saturday ... Busy, busy day! A friend of mine came over in the morning and we digi scrapped. Love that! - My son had his first day of 10th grade intramural basketball tournaments. They won both games and play for the championship today. - Then Saturday night my husband, daughter and I went to a friend's house for a party. A busy ... fun day!

Credits:
Project Life Cobalt and Clementine Editions | Becky Higgins
Layered Life cards | Deena Rutter (P&Co.)
Photo Journalers Vol. 1 | Gennifer Bursett (P&Co.)
Kraft Essentials | Karla Dudley (P&Co.)
Penelope (epoxy buttons) | Karla Dudley
Clear Essentials (staples) | Karla Dudley
Froyo (file label) | Scotty Girl Designs (P&Co.)
Chalkboard inspiration (blog screenshot) | Source unknown

You are Here| Germany (a new release from the Ardent Sparrow and One Little Bird)

The Ardent Sparrow (Pixels & Co.) and One Little Bird Designs released a collab kit today called Going Places. It was perfect for some photos I had from my husband's business trip to Germany last November. (Actually ... as I scrapped the page and typed the date I was reminded that sadly my husband spent our anniversary in Germany. Boo hoo! - Fun for him though.)

Credits:
Going Places | A collaboration of Ardent Sparrow and One Little Bird
Me & Mye Shadows | Action set by Mye de Leon

December 2012 | Monthly Recap

I just thought I'd share with you my December 2012 Month Recap pages. I'm not sure why I jumped ahead a month, but now I've just got November 2012 left! I really do love looking back at all these random photos!

Credits:
Chill Out | Design by Dani
I Love Snow | Design by Dani
Torn Bits No. 2 | Creashens
Frame Essentials Insta Love | Karla Dudley
@ the Office Supplies (staples) | Splendid Fiins
2012 Calendar Cards | Splendid Fiins
Digi Essentials (Stitches) | Karla Dudley

Digi friends: Spraguefest

Spraguefest - held at Open Book in Minneapolis this past September - was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet IRL (in real life) digi scrapping friends who I had gotten to know through Jessica Sprague! SpragueLand friends come from around the world and for this gathering came from around the U.S. It was a wonderful couple of days. Ann Marie and Lisa (in this photo) and others who I met at Open Book live very near me. How wonderful for me! Now we get together on occasion and scrap in real life!

Credits:

Muse paper packs and elements | Karla Dudley

Painted Edges | Karla Dudley

Photocentric v. 2 | Crystal Livesay

In Stitches Neutral Basics | Robyn Meierotto

A New Beginning (lace) | Gennifer Bursett

Date Night | Pixels & Company February Challenge

I created this page for the February challenge at Pixels and Company. P&Co is going to offer three different challenges at three different levels every month. (February is their first challenge ... and actually the first challenge I've ever taken part in.) It was really very fun.

I chose the Executive Level Design Challenge. What that meant was that on my page I needed to do three things: (1) I had to use the provided template (check!), (2) I had to use products from at least four different designers (check!), and (3) I had to use wood and at least two other textures on my layout (check) (I've got wood, metal, fabric and mesh). Cool! (Since my page had a "love" theme I also completed the Entry Level Photo Challenge.

Pixels & Co has got a really cool concept going for their challenges. Check 'em out! (FYI, by completing the challenges you earn points to the store which earns you discounts for purchases plus if you complete the CEO level you are put in the running for a chance to join their guest CT for a month. How cool is that?!)

Credits:

Sweet Life papers | Robyn Meierotto
MoAwesome papers and elements | Gennifer Bursett
Frame Essentials Rectangles | Karla Dudley
Hello Love elements and word stickers | Karla Dudley
Everyday Life Sentiments | Karla Dudley
Life 365 Buttons | Karla Dudley
Life Unscripted elements | Ardent Sparrow
Head Over Heels elements | Creashens
Euphoria paper pack | Creashens
Tear Set 4 | Simply Tiffany Studios
Template | February 2013 Pixels & Company Challenge

Click here to read more about how the P&Co. challenges work.

2013 Project Life: Week 7: February 10 - February 16

We're having a quiet Saturday night (after a full day of volleyball) watching tv (as the kids hang out with their friends) so I thought I'd use this time that we're sitting here to put my week 7 project life pages together. It was a great normal, everyday kind of week.

I've been checking out lots of project life pages in the gallery lately and I've decided to go back and make a minor change. (At least I'm not too far into the year!) I've decided that the dates that my pages relate to is what's important ... the particular week number doesn't matter to me much, so I'm not going to include that anymore. Not a big change ... but I think it'll allow me to maybe be a little more creative with my intro cards. (Of course it means I need to go back and change weeks 1 through 6, but that shouldn't take me too long. I'm going to get into a project life routine!

For these pages I used all product from Pixels and Company. I used the Simply Me kit (papers and journaling cards) from Mye de Leon as well as a bunch of stuff from Karla Dudley (whose designs I seem to be using on most of my pages lately). From Karla I used Karla's Life 365 stamp sheet and word stickers, Album cards and Clear Essentials. Beautiful stuff!

A great big thank you! ... and a new release from the Ardent Sparrow)

Happy Friday! Today is new release day at Pixels & Co. The Ardent Sparrow is releasing an adorable new paper and element set today called "The Ruby." I don't know why but right away I knew I wanted to scrap this photo of my son and daughter ... my daughter wanting a hug from her brother ... her brother saying NO WAY!

The story behind this photo is that my son had lost/misplaced his iPod Touch. (Really, it's my iPod Touch ... his was destroyed when it went through the washing machine so he then inherited my iPod Touch.) In any event, "his" iPod Touch had been gone for almost 2 weeks. We'd pretty much given up on any chance of finding it when this particular Friday evening my daughter went out to our vehicle to look for something she'd left in the back. Well ... what did she find? The missing iPod Touch. She really didn't want anything for finding it (of course not), but she really did want for her brother to give her a hug in thanks. You'd think she was asking for the moon. In the end he did give her (accept from her?) a hug ... and you know what? I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a photo of this rare and momentous occasion! I love it!

Here's my page:

Here are two previews of The Ruby paper and element set:

Hybrid Project - Christmas Card Book

I thought I'd share with you a hybrid project I created the other day. It's a "book" I created to store my Christmas cards. I'm posting this kind of late (it's Valentines Day after all!), but better late than never right?! I like to keep the Christmas cards we get every year (particularly the photo cards), but I always used to struggle with what to do with them so I can actually look at the pictures. I used to keep the photos in a folder in a drawer but that was really fairly pointless. I never looked at the pictures. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Then I saw something like this on Pinterest last year. (I created a book last year too) and decided this was the perfect solution to my picture card dilemma!

This is such an easy project to create! All I had to do was design a cover in Photoshop (I used a bracket shape) and then I printed it at Costco. I cut out the bracket shape page and adhered it to cardboard. (I used the cardboard I get when I print pictures/scrapbook pages at Costco. The cardboard they send with scrapbook pages is so useful for lots of stuff!). After that I just used another piece of cardboard to make a "template" of sorts for punching holes for the binder rings so I could keep the holes consistently spaced, and I used that template to punch the holes in the cover, photos, photo cards and envelope (that I used to house the Christmas letters we received).

Easy peasy, right?

Credits:

Heart of the Holidays kit by Karla Dudley
Vintage Christmas kit by Mye de Leon
Jumbo Number Cards by Karla Dudley
Artisan Label Templates by Crystal Wilkerson (the bracket shape)
Mixed Stamp Titles No. 2 by Katie Pertiet

October 2012 - Monthly Recap

Before work this morning I put together these quick pages of random un-scrapped October 2012 photos. OK ... to be honest I put the pages together this morning but I did spend about 45 minutes after work embellishing the pages. Either way, it went together very quickly - especially considering it does take a bit of time to simply choose and edit pictures - let alone putting the pages together! I love these pages with random photos!

I used a bunch of Pixels & Co. digi goodies to create these pages along with an altered base project life template from Becky Higgins. In large part I used the gorgeous So Happy Together kit by Karen Funk (along with a bunch of other random digi goodness). I'll post a full list of credits for you after the images.

Page credits:

So Happy Together papers, elements and cards by Karen Funk
Life 365 word stickers by Karla Dudley
Essential Stitches by Karla Dudley
Right Now elements by Karla Dudley
Clear Essentials (staples) by Karla Dudley
2013 Calendar Cards (altered for 2012) by Robyn Meierotto

Hanging out with family MEA weekend

I just finished scrapping my photos from MEA weekend - a weekend in the fall when my entire family rents a house somewhere and we all get together for a long weekend. It's always such a great time! This year we went to southern Minnesota - the New Ulm area. I'd previously scrapped a couple of other pages with individual photos, but I still had a bunch of other random photos that I wanted to remember so I put this collection of photos together.

For these pages I used Karla Dudley's Everyday Storyteller's template collection. I love the plastic pockets ... they're just too fun!

The full list of credits for this page is:
Karla Dudley: Everyday Storyteller Template Nos. 1 and 2
Karla Dudley: Clear Essentials (staples)
Scotty Girl Designs: Paper Pack 1 and 2, Element Pack
Karen Funk: So Happy Together Notecards

As long as I've now scrapped all my photos from this particular weekend I'll also share the previous pages I created. I posted them as I created the pages ... I thought it would be fun to post them all together to get a full idea of the fun of the family get-together!

2013 Project Life: Week 6: February 3 - February 9

It was another fun week of creating my Project Life pages! Sometimes (OK all the time) it's hard to decide what I do and don't want to add to these pages, but in the end I figure I'm getting an awful lot of my family's stories onto the pages, so if there are a couple little things here and there that don't get included it'll be fine.

I've found that I like to take screen shots of Social Media (Facebook) posts and include those on my pages. It takes the place of my journaling in spots and I think they in themselves are little tokens of "real life" right now.

I take very few videos, but I did take one video of my daughter's concert this week. I've been intrigued by the idea of including QR codes on my pages that link to a YouTube video, but I have yet to figure out how to do that. (OK, I haven't even looked into doing it yet. So far it's just a thought/concept.) I consider myself somewhat of a tech-y person, but I know absolutely nothing about QR codes and YouTube. (I'm one of the few people in this world who seldom watches YouTube and who has never uploaded a video.) I'm still thinking that maybe I'll look into how to do that. (If anyone has any tips for me I'd be thrilled to hear them!) I figure I'm not going to actually print my book until the end of the year so I can always go back and add my QR code before printing. So ... that's just a thought for me!

So ... onto scrappy mentions (the important stuff for us digi scrappers!). Everything from this page is from Karla Dudley at Pixels & Co. She's got two amazing new kits that I really enjoyed using - Life 365 Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. They were oh so fun. I love all the handwritten bits she included. I have a Wacom pen so in theory I could add my own handwriting to my pages but I seldom do it. I like Karla's handwriting so I'm using her handwriting instead of mine!

So ... that's it for now. Make it a good week!

Oh ... a full detailed list of credits for these pages follows:
Karla Dudley: (1) Life 365 Vol. 1, (2) Life 365 Vol. 2, (3) Frame Essentials, (4) Coded Love
The fonts I use on all my Project Life pages are Very Fine Serif and Cafe Rojo

September 2012 - Monthly Recap

I just put together my collection of "recap" photos for September of last year. Yup ... that means I'm pretty much through my September photos. I'm getting so close.

Since September is filled with the last hot days of summer I thought I'd use some really bright and cheerful papers and elements. This page was created using a variety of products from Pixels & Co. ... but the base kit was from Robyn Meierotto called "Sweet Life." I adored the bright colors!

Here's a full list of credits (all Pixels & Company):
Robyn Meierotto: Sweet Life
Robyn Meierotto: 2013 Calendar Cards (altered for 2012)
Karla Dudley: Life 365 Buttons
Karla Dudley: Digi Essentials (stitches)
Creashens: Euphoria papers

I've got news! I'm joining Pixels & Company's Guest Creative Team!

Happy Friday everyone. I have news to share!

My new digi home – Pixels & Company – made an announcement this week of their new Guest CTs (creative team members) and guess what? I get to be a part of that awesome group!

I don’t know what happened, but I somehow completely forgot to share this news on my blog. Well hey, better late than never, right? Shout it from the rooftops … I’m joining P&Co.’s creative team! To say I’m thrilled to be joining such a talented group of digi scrappers would be an understatement! I have to admit … I’m having a blast creating pages using their wonderful designs. What a treat for me!

Be on the lookout for lots of pages created using P&Co’s product. And remember … I’m still creating for Tiffany Tillman of Simply Tiffany Studios (she’s at P&Co. as well!) so I’ll be posting lots of stuff created with her designs as well.

So … if you’ve got a minute … head on over to Pixels & Company. It’s Friday and you know what that means … it’s New Release Day. There’s lots of awesome new digi goodness available today!

Enjoy your day!

Well, hello there weekend! {New Releases from Pixels & Co.}

I love scrapping pages that show pictures of us enjoying the beauty of summer weather. I wonder if I'm saying that because winter and oh so very cold. Oh how I miss the warm weather of summer!

There are a couple of awesome new things coming out tomorrow at Pixels & Co.  Simply Tiffany Studios has "Wicked Crooked" templates and The Ardent Sparrow has a couple of really great kits called Life Unscripted. There are paper, element, word phrases and cards kits. Check out the previews:

Here's the full list of credits for this page (ALL available at Pixels & Co.):

Simply Tiffany Studios: Wicked Crooked templates

The Ardent Sparrow: "Life Unscripted" Cards, Papers, Elements and phrases

Creashens "Euphoria"

Robyn Meierotta: "In Neutral Stitches"

Karla Dudley: "Essential Staples"