Tubing

The kids have been home all week and we've had a great week. The temperatures are so warm here right now...I can't believe we are at the very end of December and we don't have any snow. Today we went tubing with our dear friends and let's just say that the snow making machines at the hill have been in full force because they have a TON of snow. We had an absolute BLAST today. You can't beat snow tubing with temperatures in the high 30's. I will take that any winter day. Here are some of the photos from today's outing. I can't wait to scrap these.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Christmas Album

I hope you enjoyed the holidays! We had a wonderful Christmas! It was fun, it was relaxing, it was perfect.....well, I would have liked a little snow. I can't remember the last time that we had a Christmas without snow. The temperature was warm so that made up for the "no snow". I just completed our Christmas album. It feels so good to have it done so that I can move on to other things. The album is very long. On days that we had a lot going on, I created two pages. You can find a link to the album here if you would like to take a peek.




Here are some of my favorite pictures from this Christmas...

We went to my brother's house for Christmas Eve. We had so much fun. Quinn is obsessed with Star Wars. My brother got him a Chewbacca (Chewey) backpack and he was in HEAVEN. When I think of this Christmas, years from now, I know that I will have a visual of Quinn walking around with a wookie on his back. It made my heart melt.

A little note for Santa next to his cookies...

The gang on Christmas morning with you-know-who on Q's back...

Taking in Santa's inventory...

Getting our stocking down....still with a wookie on his back...

It was such a fun morning! We have so much to be grateful for.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

Christmas is such a special time but I will have to admit that I feel less stress already. I am excited to get back to "regular scrapping" again. We only have two weeks left until Creative Composites starts. I'm just getting everything finalized for class and I'm really excited for it to begin. I hope you are doing well. Thanks for stopping by!

Merry Christmas

On this very special day, I want to wish each of you a very blessed Christmas. I hope you are happy, healthy and surrounded by love! We are excited around here and looking forward to spending time with our families. It is such a magical time of year and it makes me so grateful for all of the blessings that God has given us....and of course Baby Jesus is on the very top of that list! Merry Christmas!

All products are from Designer Digitals.

Year in Review Journaling

As 2011 comes to a close, it is a perfect time to reflect on the year. I remember last year, I wanted to do a yearly recap and frankly I pushed it off until I couldn't remember what I wanted to say. This year I was bound and determined to do a recap of 2011. I completed this page for the 3 kits/ 3 ways challenge that is up on the Desinger Digitals blog. I love the kits that were selected for this challenge. I wanted to make this simple so I used my favorite journaling method...write as much as you can and don't worry about punctuation and grammer. I made a lenghty list of all of the points that I could remember for 2011. It took me no time to do this and I know that years down the road, I will need the reminder of what all transpired for our family in 2011.

With the holidays upon us, there is certainly a lot to do but I want to encourage you to take 15 minutes and jot down as many things that you can remember about the year. I think years down the road, you will appreciate reading all of the little details that summarized the year.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Life in December

Life is in full swing right now.....I thought I would give you a peek into our little world these days.

Quinn has been battling a cold and has not been himself lately. We have had a lot of snuggle time.

I'm in the middle of all of the recordings for Creative Composites. I decided that I am going to offer all six demonstrations in a prerecorded format. The live webinars will also be scheduled. I'm really looking forward to class!

We have had several church programs for the kids which has been so special.

Ellie had a few friends over last week to celebrate her birthday....they had a lot of fun and it made me so thankful that she has such nice friends....one birthday party down....

....one to go..... I'm trying to plan Mia's party...the invites are out....just trying to figure out the activities for the party.

Trying desperately to keep up with my December Daily album...

All products are from Designer Digitals.

I still have a little bit of shopping left to do, some baking and wrapping. Life is good but beyond busy right now. I'm really looking forward to spending Christmas with my family and relaxing!

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying this busy time of the year. Thanks for stopping by!

Middle of December Daily

I am happy that it is Friday and that we are coming down the home stretch for December Daily. I really am enjoying the project but I will be happy when it is complete and I can scrap something else....let's just say that I chomping at the bit to do some blending and more artistic pages right now. There is so much going on that I have just been focused on staying on top of this project. Here are my pages for the last two weeks...I have a couple that are still in the works. I'm really keeping the pages simple so that I stay on task.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

I hope you are all enjoying this Christmas season! Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Gift Idea - Coffee Tumbler

You are probably aware that I love to create digital art. I am always trying to look for unique ways to use the art that I create and I also love to give personal gifts to my loved ones. My father-in-law is one of my most favorite people in the world. He is always eager to help me out with the kids and I am so grateful for his presence in our lives. I created this page after our family vacation this summer. I wanted to use it for part of his gift. I found some coffee tumblers at Starbucks for $12.95. You can create your own collage with them. So I took this layout and made it into a coffee tumber. I thought I would show you how I did that.


The coffee tumbler contains an insert that people are supposed to decorate and insert it back in the tumbler. I took out the insert, scanned it into the computer. In photoshop, I extracted the black image to create a template for my tumbler. I took my original layout and moved pieces of it over from the psd file and it worked so well. Here it is how it looked after my additions...
Here is the finished product. It didn't take any time to put this together. I know a lot of us put so much work into our passion. It is so fun to find ways of using that passion beyond scrapbook pages. I'm excited to give this to him and I hope that he likes it.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Amy Kingsford's Blog

I have been lucky enough to get to know Amy Kingsford over the last couple of months while I was teaching at Get It Scrapped as well as through Masterful Scrapbook Designs. She is just a wonderful person who loves to share her passion for scrapbooking with others. She teaches courses at Get It Scrapped and will also be teaching at Creative Passion. Amy is very inspiring and has a lot of GREAT ideas. She just redesigned her blog and is now sponsoring the 12 days of Christmas which includes some opportunities to win products. I think you will find a lot of wonderful information there. Her blog can be found here.

Ellie's Birthday

December 12th is a big day around here. We have three birthdays to celebrate in our family including my beautiful Goddaughter, my brother-in-law and our daughter Ellie. She has had the countdown going for weeks it seems. While she is in a hurry to get to her birthday, I don't know that I am. Tonight I went back and took a little stroll down memory lane with some old photos. I'm not quite sure how it happened but she has gone from this...
to this in no time flat.

I look at these pictures and I can't quite grasp how this happened. Once again I feel like I am so very aware of time and how precious it is. Ellie has been such a blessing to us and this transformation only shows how changes occur before our eyes.

I apologize for the lack of blog posts lately. Let's just say there is certainly not a shortage of things to do right now but life is good...very, very good. I've been busy getting ready for Christmas, Ellie and Amelia's birthdays, in the middle of the recordings for Creative Composites, the kids Christmas programs, and trying to keep up with my December Daily album and wrap up Project 365.

I hope you enjoyed a wonderful weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

Visiting Santa

Yesterday I took the kids to see Santa. They were both so excited and crawled right up on his lap. It took me by surprise that they are no longer scared of him and there were no tears. We had such a fun morning.

I take a lot of photos in general because I enjoy working on my photography and love capturing/documenting life. When I am taking the photos, I just enjoy the process of it all and I always get caught up in what is going on around me. It is at night, after the kids go to bed, that I love to just look at the photos and reflect on the day without any distractions. Last night as I looked at these photos, it made me kind of sad. Who knows how long they will jump at the chance to sit on Santa's lap. This may have been the last...I hope not but it could have been. Time is so precious and I seem to want to hold onto every last minute....well, maybe not the moments when the kids are fighting but more often than not, I don't want time to slip away. Thank God for my camera and the ability to savor these precious moments a little bit longer.

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

December Daily Continues

December is in full swing now. I have been keeping up with my album even though I have a million other things that I should be doing...priorities...right? I absolutely LOVE doing this project. I just wish there were a few more hours in each day. I have stayed true to my plan of doing a large photo on the left and something simple on the right hand side. I have struggled with my photography during this project. I am not very good with the camera indoors and with poor lighting. Unfortunately in Minnesote in December most of my shots fall under that umbrella. I tend to be a perfectionist so I'm just trying to let go of some of that and move on. Here are a few more of my pages for this project.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the holiday season. Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!