First Big Snowstorm of the year - from several perspectives!

We had our first big snowstorm of the year yesterday. It snowed literally all day long. It was absolutely beautiful (but the roads were treacherous)! We ended up with about 12 inches of snow. My daughter was completely thrilled and played outside a TON (as did our dog who loves the snow and rings the bell to go outside for a while, comes back in for a bit, rings the bell to go out ... repeat ... endlessly). My son also enjoys the snow but he didn't get the same joy out of it as my daughter did. He had other stuff going on and didn't go outside and play in the snow. Ah ... he's older. I can certainly see that. Once he gets out snowboarding he'll be thrilled! (As will my daughter when she gets out skiing.) The fact that my son didn't go out and play in the snow certainly didn't mean that he didn't spend his fair share of time outside (same with my husband). The snowstorm was certainly a great money making proposition for him. He snowblowed our driveway TWICE as well as a neighbor's driveway. Extra "funny money" is always nice! (I was outside some too ... taking pictures of course!)

Both kids had the same complaint about the snow. Their complaint: that it happened on a Sunday instead of a school day. Couldn't we just ONCE get a day off school for snow? Drives them crazy!

The snowstorm from my daughter's perspective:

The snowstorm from my son and husband's perspective:

Closeups of the pages:

I designed the pages from my daughter's perspective using:

Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template Class; Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays; Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas; Nancie Rowe Janitz: Colorwash Brushes; LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps; Karla Dudley: 25 Days (wordart); Becky Higgins: Turquoise Edition (ruler); Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel


I designed the pages from my son & husband's perspective using:

Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template Class; Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays; Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas; Nancie Rowe Janitz: Colorwash Brushes; LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps; Katie Pertiet: Holiday Word Strips; Crystal Wilkerson: Merry & Bright (snowflake button); Becky Higgins: Turquoise Edition (ruler); Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

P365+1: Week 49: December 2 - December 8, 2012

Time sure is flying by. It's getting time now already that I should start thinking about how I want to lay out my photo-a-day book for 2013!

Here's a recap of our week:

Sunday, December 2nd: A view of San Francisco as we drove over the Bay Bridge. 
Monday, December 3rd: Grant is 16! 
Tuesday, December 4th: Lauren in her new outfit before her class field trip to see A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie. 
Wednesday, December 5th: Oops. I hit a button on my iPhone while chatting in the car with Grant. We laughed when we saw this calendar entry. 

"Protocol doublecross ball ball when we get home I'm going to"

Thursday, December 6th: Grant registered to be a Salvation Army Bell Ringer. (He’s 16 & could register himself!) 
Friday, December 7th: The star on our tree. 
Saturday, December 8th: We had the Watrases over for dinner.

New Christmas Themed Timeline for Facebook

I made a quick new timeline image for my Facebook account. I seldom change my timeline so I thought it would be fun for a change to have a seasonal cover. Merry Christmas!

The digi supplies I used were:
Design by Dani: A Lot Like Christmas
Nancie Rowe Janitz: Holiday Magic
Karla Dudley: 25 Days of Christmas (wordart)

Love you. {a family photo]

I designed our Christmas card last night and I used this family photo for our Christmas card. When I did that I realized I hadn't scrapped a page using this photo, and I love this photo. So, here it is. I love these guys!

OK ... correction, as I clicked on the Blogger "Insert Image" button to insert this photo, I navigated to my web folder (which is sorted by date). Hmmm ... lo and behold what do I find? I was wrong. I HAD already scrapped this photo. Darn it! (OK, I'm wrong again. They're different photos ... but clearly photos taken the same day - moments apart.) I like BOTH pages. They're both really quite different styles, but really do I need TWO pages of the same photo? Now to decide ... Darn it. Darn it. Darn it! (Maybe I'll keep both since they're slightly different photos.)

For fun (since I just realized my mix-up moments ago) ... here's how I scrapped the similar photo a few weeks ago. Again ... darn it!

Digi Supplies I used (for the page I created this afternoon - the one with the circles):

Karla Dudley:
: Be You papers
: Remarkable elements (circle wordart)
: Ashbee (Love You wordart)
: Template Collection 006
: 2011 DHD Blog Hop (hello. you are loved.)

LivE Designs
: Needs+Wants Date Stamps

Proof: Grownups can go out sometimes too!

Yup. It's true. Grownups can go out sometimes too. Going out is not just for the kids anymore! Maybe not so much when the kids were little, but as they get older we go out sometimes. How weird is that?! Ha!

Thanksgiving. A family weekend. We had no plans Friday night (my sister and her family were coming Saturday) so we decided we, the Johnsons & Oma would go to a movie. Since the adults & kids couldn't agree on a movie the kids were happy to stay home and we adults went to see Life of Pi in 3D. We’d planned on going to a 6:30 show but could only get tickets for 9:30 so we had appetizers and drinks at Toby Keith’s then Oma, Michelle & I shopped until movie time. Sunday night Karen & Oma were staying over so they, along with Lauren, joined Scott & me for drinks at JJ’S Wine & Coffee Bar (our Sunday night tradition). What a great weekend!

My digi supplies:
Jessica Sprague: Template 9
Echo Park Hybrids: Orchard Lane paper packs
Katie Pertiet: Buttoned Up
Michelle Coleman: Cinco De Mayo

Merry Christmas! ... Our Christmas Card is ready to print!

I did it. Yay!  I designed our Christmas card tonight. Over Thanksgiving weekend I made a card for my in-laws to send out and then I designed a card for my Mom. It made me think ... hmmm, maybe I should get going and make one to send out for my family too. So I did!

FYI, I always print our cards at Costco. They're great - and quick! I'll  even be able to pick 'em up tomorrow and send 'em out. Awesome!

Another FYI, Dani Mogstad (Design by Dani) came out with an awesome Christmas kit this week. It's called "A Lot Like Christmas." It's in large part what I used for my card. Dani has actually got a several great Christmas kits if you want to check 'em out over at JessicaSprague.com.

Merry Christmas!

List of credits:
Design by Dani: A Lot Like Christmas
Lori Whitlock: Christmas Eve
Katie Pertiet: Loosely Labeled Dates
Karla Dudley: Digi Essentials (stitches); 25 Days Titles (Merry Christmas wordart)

Days of December - Weekend Getaway to San Francisco/Napa

I can tell already. I started Tiffany Tillman's Heart of the Holidays class at www.ReneePearson.com yesterday and I know I'm going to enjoy creating my "Days of December" album. I'm keeping the pages fairly simple and am sticking in large part to using the class kits and it's working for me ... plus it's fun!

My husband and I went away to San Francisco/Napa this past weekend to celebrate our anniversary. It was a great time and gets to be in my December album because the weekend took place in part in December and also because it was Christmas-y because of a tour of a bunch of bed and breakfast inns we took in Napa Saturday night. We visited, I believe, 10 B&Bs - each of which offered a beautifully decorated B&B, festive holiday cheer and of course lots of good food and tasty wine! We even sat on Santa's lap. If that doesn't put you in the Christmas spirit, what will?!

For you scrappers, for these pages I used:
Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template Class; Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays; Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas; LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps; Rhonna Farrer: Free Love word art; and Fonts: Century Gothic and Channel

Days of December (trimming the tree & my son's 16th birthday)

I'm taking Tiffany Tillman's Heart of the Holidays class again this December. I'm still working out the details but I don't think I'm going to specifically create a page a day every day of December. I'm still in the planning process, but what I'm thinking of doing this year is creating pages simply as the mood strikes me. Creating pages throughout the month of December of events that are important to me/my family (birthdays etc.) and pages about holiday traditions (trimming the tree) (whatever may strike me this month). I'm not sure if I'm going to print these pages as a specific Days of December album as I have in the past (click here if you'd like to see the Days of December book I created in 2009). I suppose that'll depend on how many pages I end up creating and what turn this book takes. Either way, I'll print these pages in my 2012 family album. (So these pages could in theory end up in two or even possibly three books if the pages also specifically relate to one of the kids, like my son's birthday!).

All I know for certain is that I'm going to have fun with it. I'm going to document my family's December/holiday traditions and see where it goes! I can tell you that I ALWAYS look forward to Tiffany's December class! BTW ... if you're interested in checking out Tiffany's class, click here to go to ReneePearson.com and read all about the class!

Another thing to mention is SIMPLE. I want this book to be SIMPLE and I want my pages to come together quickly. I don't like to get behind (I get stressed and put a lot of pressure on myself if I get behind) and I want a cohesive book that will be done and ready to print the first week of January (REALLY ... I will keep to that schedule!). Tiffany's class is perfect for this.

I really like the idea of using full sized (12x12) photos. My thought is that I'm always going to do 2 page layouts. I'll have the left page be a full sized 12x12 photo and the second page be the supporting page with the story and a collection of more photos. Hmmm ... it's early in the month. My plan may change a bit over time, but this is what I've come up with so far. No matter what, it's going to be a fun month!

I'll share the detail pages as well:

FYI, for you scrappers out there, for these pages I used the following:

Tiffany Tillman: Heart of the Holidays Template Class

Karla Dudley: Heart of the Holidays (class kit)

Mye de Leon: Vintage Christmas (class kit)

Katie Pertiet: Defined Discs Holidays No. 2

Katie Pertiet: Santa's Trees

LivE Designs: Needs+Wants Date Stamps

Lori Whitlock: Birthday Masking Set

ScrapGirls: Birthday Paper

Fonts: Century Gothic & Channel

P365+1: Week 48: November 25 - December 1, 2012 + A Weekend Getaway to San Francisco/Napa, California

The tree is up and the house is decorated so it's officially the Christmas season! Merry early Christmas everyone!

I've got two POTD pages this week. One documents my family's regular week. The second documents a big weekend getaway my husband I took this past weekend to San Francisco/Napa, California to belatedly celebrate our anniversary. It was an awesome getaway!

Oma's Christmas card (only a couple of hours from an idea to printing!)

My mom was in town this past weekend for Thanksgiving. Sunday morning we were talking and we thought it would be great if she sent out a picture Christmas card this year. It was a completely spur of the moment kinda thing. She needed a picture of the family for the card and we hadn't taken a big group photo yet this year so - like I said, spur of the moment - we shuffled the furniture in my living room, set my camera on a tripod and everyone squeezed together for a casual family photo. It was fun. After we snapped a bunch of group photos the kids wanted to have a cousin picture so they decided they wanted a kid pyramid. What a fun idea. I LOVE that photo!

We of course had more spur of the moment fun. Mom and I checked out the Christmas cards Costco and Walmart had to offer (she wanted to order some place where she could pick up her cards easily) and none of their designs really fit the bill for the two photos we wanted to use. We decided to design our own card. In about 15 minutes time Mom and I sat on the couch and I designed this card. I love it. With the awesomeness of the internet and online ordering Mom had her cards printed and in her hands in about 2 hours time. You've gotta love it!

From the initial thought of sending out a Christmas card, to taking the pictures, to designing and printing the cards - not more than a couple of hours passed! No wasting time in our household!

So ... I wanted to share her card ... FYI, it's using papers, ribbons, overlays and a postage stamp frame from Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals.

Now ... I really need to put something together for my Christmas card one of these days!!

P365+1: Week 47: November 18 - November 24, 2012 + Thanksgiving + the family!

It was good to sit at the computer tonight and put these photos together. It was a great week and a fun long weekend spent with family!

These are pages 87, 88 and 89 of my 2012 photo-of-the-day book. The year is fast coming to a close. Now I need to be careful that I don't overdo my pages. I print at Shutterfly and the max number of pages my book can hold is 100 so I need to keep tabs on pages and not get carried away!

Family Pics / An Awesome Thanksgiving / Time for Christmas Prep!

It’s back to a normal routine today. Those of us in the US celebrated Thanksgiving this past weekend. We had such a fun and busy holiday. We spent lots of time with the extended and immediate family. We always enjoy that! Despite spending so much time with the family for some reason I didn’t take as many photos as I might have liked. I wonder how that happened! I did get some fun photos though!

My mother decided to send out Christmas picture cards this year (yay!) so as my family was getting ready to head out the door Sunday afternoon we all posed for a picture (yup, totally last minute!). I’m so glad we did that! Then afterwards the cousins wanted a fun picture of just them as well. I thought I’d share these photos cuz they’re so fun! I love these kids!

Unfortunately, we forgot to get a cousin photo on my husband’s side of the family. Christmas is right around the corner though so we can do that in just a month!

So, with Thanksgiving over it’s time to switch gears and begin Christmas prep. Tonight we're going to put up our Christmas decorations. I love that! Can't wait!

Happy holidays!

 I love these kids!

  What goes up must come down!

P365+1: Week 46: November 11 - November 17, 2012

I would have to say that the highlight this week for my son (and I say this with absolute certainty) was that Call of Duty Black Ops 2 came out on Tuesday. He was so excited. Needless to say he played a lot this week. As for me, I do not "game" at all, but on Wednesday he wanted to teach me and he showed me some of the ins and outs of the remote and how to play. (It was kind of hard.) He did a great job. We spent a 1/2 hour and he patiently sat beside me and instructed me what I should be doing. I was quite impressed. It was fun. I was a little hesitant to try because he tried to "teach me" one other time a few months back and that time he was NOT a good teacher. That time he supposedly was teaching me but at the same time he was teaching me he was playing against me. There was no learning on my part at all that time and I finally told him enough was enough. But ... this time was different. It was fun and I couldn't believe how quickly 1/2 hour went by. I'm really not interested in being a "gamer" (I've got my scrapping you know!), but what I am interested in is being able to play a game with my son that he loves.

My daughter had a fun week. Sunday a friend invited her to the Vikings game. She doesn't know anything about football but she and her friend had a great time. They had awesome seats and enjoyed watching the game at the Dome without adults. Last night (which will be included in next week's POTD) she went to a friend's birthday party. Her friend's parents rented a stretch limo and she and 9 other girls drove around town. How fun is that? I never got to do that when I was a kid. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it too! Another day this week she was busy baking for our church. As I'm sure you know by now, she LOVES baking! She baked pumpkin bars for 100 people for a leadership event. It was so much fun for her. I'm glad they ask her to bake for their events sometimes.

That's about it. It was a good week. Have a great Sunday and Thanksgiving week!

Family Bowling outing

A fun family bowling outing this past spring:

I wanted to mention to you digi scrappers that LivE Designs recently came out with an amazing new element set filled with paper creases you can add to any digital paper. I've had 'em for about a week now and I've used them a few times already. They are so versatile. I love it.

A random thought ... I was looking at some scrapbook pages with my daughter today and talking about paper and digital scrapping. I told her that when I paper scrapped I really hated when my papers would get crumpled at all, I'd never use regular tape, and I'd hate when things would get grungy, messy stuff like that. It's funny ... the very things that bugged me when I paper scrapped are favorites when I'm digi scrapping. Kinda funny I think. (Yup ... totally random!)

Supplies I used:

Katie Pertiet: Digital Date Stamps No. 26, Photo Clusters No. 11 circle frames; LivE Designs: Bubbling Over Brushes, Creasers Vol. 1; Paula Kesselring: watercolor papers; Jessica Sprague: Home for the Holidays striped paper; Tiffany Tillman: stars; DeCrowe: square matte; Julie Makotinsky: Once Upon a Time sketched circle frames; BA Fixit staples; Fonts: Cafe Roji, Very Fine Serif

March 2012 Random Moments/Recap Pages

Checking out my photos I'm realizing that I've scrapped many of the individual pages/memories for the earlier part of this year. I didn't have any more pages for March that I was thinking I still wanted individual pages for, so I could put together my random photos for March. Yay! I feel like I'm getting lots accomplished!

A new idea ... For these pages I even used an iPhone screenshot I'd taken of a Facebook posting I made back in March. Facebook postings ... that's pretty "everyday life." You know ... I really like that. I think I'm going to make a point of taking more screenshots and perhaps including them more often!

So, to share ... here are the two pages together:

Left page detail:

Right page detail:

Evidence of a 13 year old girl with time on her hands

I went out for dinner with a friend last night and apparently my daughter was busy when I was gone. I didn't even notice all these post-it notes when I got home last night, and my daughter didn't mention them either, but it was fun to see these notes strewn about the desk this morning. I just had to scrap a page with all of 'em because ... well, just because. It's good to remember the normal, everyday happenings!

I love this kid!

To create this page I used:

Instagram!
Splendid Fiins: @ the Office Supplies (staples); Katie Pertiet: Hanging tags; Vinnie Pierce: Create Art Mini Kit (wordart); Paula Kesselring: Watercolor Papers (blue paper); Shabby Princess: Clementine (black paper); Fonts: Very Thin Serif; Cafe Rojo

A February recap - My process of "rounding out" my annual scrapbooks.

Last year I added something new to my scrapbooks. I added monthly recap pages. I think these recap pages really round out my yearly albums. As you can tell from this blog I scrap a lot of pages of individual stories throughout the year. Once I thought about it though - and what became really apparent when I viewed my starred photos in Picasa - is that there are a LOT, and I mean a LOT of photos that I enjoy throughout the year that don't make a scrapbook page of their own. These are photos that I enjoy just because I like them or that tell teeny tiny stories that don't warrant a full scrapbook page all on their own but that I want printed out and represented in the family album so they make their way off my computer. That's where my recap pages come in.

For every month of the year, once I feel I've finished scrapping all the individual pages of stories from that particular month, I go into Picasa (where I tag and catalog all my photos) and I check out my "starred" photos that haven't made it to a separate page in my album. "Starred" photos are photos that I've marked as my favorites for whatever reason. I then pull a bunch of 'em together for monthly recap pages.

I like all of my monthly recap pages to coordinate throughout the year. While these monthly pages aren't next to each other in my albums, I still want them to be a visual reminder that another month has come to a close. I'm going to use different kits every month, but I'm always going to do a basic Becky Higgins/Project Life style layout. I'm doing that so that I don't have to think about the layout every month and I don't have to spend time "reinventing the wheel" shall we say. Like my Photo-A-Day project, I want these pages to be somewhat fast to put together. OK, lets be real, "somewhat fast" isn't all that fast (which is ok!). With this quantity of photos, these pages still take a few hours to put together, but I'm not spending tons of time designing the pages at least. I like that!

I've certainly scrapped lots and lots of pages for 2012 already. I just took a peek at the Finder on my Mac where I save my completed pages and it looks like I'm at about 140 pages for my 2012 so far. Geez. That's a lot of pages. Love it!

In any event ... I just put together my February 2012 "recap" pages and I wanted to share them with you. First off are the side-by-side views:

And the detail views:

gooey. greasy. grimey. pumpkin guts.

The carving of a 52 pound monster pumpkin ... 

This is by far the largest pumpkin we've ever gotten. It was the day before Halloween and we had yet to carve a pumpkin or put up any Halloween decorations. (We were - I should probably say I was - kind of a dud this year I'm sorry to say.) We did buy candy though! It's a tradition that my husband carves pumpkins with the kids every year. My son wasn't interested in carving a pumpkin this year but my daughter definitely was. She's the one who picked out this giant pumpkin. I thought the pumpkin was a bit large, but I told her that as long as she was strong enough to carry it we'd get it. She could barely carry it, but she did manage. {She was pretty excited about it.}

It was funny ... when we got home she was going to carry the pumpkin in the house, but since her brother came out to check it out she let him carry it in. He carried it with ease - didn't struggle even the slightest bit - the way she did. I think she was pretty impressed with him (or else it might have just made her feel weak). I choose to think that she was impressed with her big brother! LOL!

To create this page I used:
Design by Dani's That Old Black Magic kit
Katie Pertiet's Photo Clusters No. 31, Fine Lines Borders 8, Worth Repeating Fall & Stitched Border
Nancie Rowe Janitz's Oct 31 Brush Set
and finally the fonts Very Fine Serif and Marketing Script

Oh ... I said we were duds. That's not completely true. When my daughter got home from school on Halloween she grabbed my husband's roll of "Caution" tape and essentially wrapped up our entire yard with it. It was kind of fun actually. I'll show you a picture of our yard (and the kids). I think all we were missing was a CSI-style outline of a body in the yard. Maybe next year!! LOL!

Halloween - A Randomly Awesome Person

My daughter wasn't planning on going out trick or treating this year. She wanted to hand out candy to the neighbor kids. The night before Halloween she had a change in plans. A friend texted her and asked her to trick or treat with her in her neighborhood. So, last minute, she threw together this fun mish mash outfit and went as (and I quote!) “a randomly awesome person.” What fun!

Here's what I used to create this page:

Nancie Rowe Janitz: Oct 31 Brushset & Paperset; Vintage Hallowe-en; Dreamy Photos & Cowgirl Textures
Jodi Lee: Vintage Photo Textures
Carina Gardner: Spiders Web Stamps
Queen of Quirk: Jeepers Accents (tree)
Michelle Coleman: Halloween Brushes
Katie Pertiet: Halloween wordart freebie 10-31-10
Traci Murphy Designs: Mask Your Pics 1
Gina Cabrera: Wave Stitching
Font: Texas Hero

Spring Break Vacation to the Wisconsin Dells

I've finally done it. I scrapped the pictures from our spring break vacation to the Wisconsin Dells this past March/April. It was an awesome mini vacation ... so very much fun ... but for some reason I had a mental block or something about scrapbooking them. I put the photos together for my photo-a-day project really quickly, but for the regular scrapbook the photos have just been sitting in my computer hard drive all year. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I had so many pictures so I wanted to make a bunch of pages and with a bunch of pages from the same event I wanted the pages to coordinate. Come to think of it, that's probably the reason. I like to make a bunch of randomly designed pages. Anyway ... I did it and the pages do kind of go together (which I think is important because the pages are in amongst my entire family scrapbook). I think I even remembered the highlights of our trip. Yay!

Family spring break vacation memories scrapped. Check!

I think, for the most part, I remembered the supplies I used to scrap these pages. Here's my list:


Echo Park Hybrids: Splash; Winter Park
Katie Pertiet: Basic Twills Summertime; Buttoned Up (Ice Cream & Car)
Splendid Fiins: @ the Office Supplies 1 (staples)
Design by Dan: Boy Crazy (robot & race car)
LivE Designs: Needs + Wants Date Stamps
ScrapGirls: Tickets
Cosmo Cricket: Joy Ride (arrow sticker); Boyfriend (moose)
Crystal Wilkerson: Rounded Corner Templates; Playground Collection (lips button)
Lori Whitlock: Spring Collection (banner)
Samantha Walker: Retro Roadtrip (family vacation sticker)