Some Layouts

I carved out some time for myself this week to work on some of my layouts. Here are two of the pages I completed. I am very happy with the way they both came out. Unfortunately, the lack of sun and, therefore natural light, makes it hard to get a good photo. Hope these give you a good idea.

I saw this layout in CK - March 2009 and scraplifted it using CTMH's Emporium paper.

This is my favorite of the two layouts. I love the white dots the best. They were so easy to do. I used a piece of Knitting (?) material found at any craft store. The sheets are about $0.70 and I just cut out a small section of it. I dipped my pencil tip in acrylic paint and made a dot in every hole across the row. Love the effect it created.

Journaling reads, "It was tough for Mommy and Daddy to make the decision to put you in a cast or “sleeve” as you called it. You are an active little girl and with summer beginning, we didn’t want to slow you down. Once the cast was on, you never complained and went about your days as if nothing had changed.

One morning, a few weeks after your cast was removed, I was getting ready. You came to me and asked for masking tape, which I happily gave you. Later, I found you watching TV on my bed. You had wrapped your baby’s arm and leg in tape and were lovingly comforting her. You looked up at me sweetly and told me she had gotten hurt and needed a sleeve. ~ Picture taken July 9, 2007"

Baby Gifts

I have been preparing baby gifts for two dear friends of ours. As a mother of two, I have collected quite a libary of children's songs in iTunes. As part of the gifts I give, I often include a mix CD filled with our favorite songs (songs the children love and I can stand listening to over and over and over again). I recently found the most beautiful CD cases on etsy from a seller called QTCreations. I purchased two from her and filled them with mix CDs for our friends.


Here is one of the cases I purchased. Isn't is adorable?





The inside with CDs and playlists. Here are two of the playlists I created:








If you are looking for a baby gift, consider a CD case or one of these cute prints also found on etsy.


This one is from khamm75

Love this print from Penny People

Another sweet one from L.J ink

Enjoy these baby inspirations!

Ba's Tribute Album, part II

For some reason, blogger won't let me include text with the embedded object in the next post. Here is what I wanted to write in the post below.

This is another one of my "labor of loves" that has kept me from my scrapbooking pages. My grandfather, Ba, has always been a big part of my life. It has been hard to watch him deal with so many changes in his life...the loss of my grandmother, moving to assisted living and the loss of some of his memories.

We gave him a digital picture frame this fall and he loved it! I decided to make an album for him as a tribute. I did it through Shutterfly because the old pictures were too precious to me to tape to a page in a book. The album selections at Shutterfly are impressive as well. (I have often thought this one would be a neat gift for a young child because they love to look at pictures of themselves. It would be cool for a high school graduate going off to college as well.)

Scanning over 250 pictures into the computer and collecting family stories and histories has been time consuming, but well worth it. I can't wait to give him this album.

Ba Tribute Album

Click here to view this photo book larger

Fancy Nancy Birthday

(click on picture for a larger view)

Caitlin turned 4 on May 1st! She is growing so fast. As we started talking about her party, she was adamant it be an "Annie" party. I wasn't sure how I was going to pull off an Annie party. Having received a Fancy Nancy doll and many dress up items for her birthday, I was able to steer her in the direction of a Fancy Nancy party. Oh la la!

It was a perfect day! The girls turned plain, purple felt purses into fancy bags using feathers, jewels and sparkly butterflies. (Template from Martha Stewart) They played dress-up and the girls sung "Happy Birthday" to Caitlin from her stage.

After some playtime, we went in for lunch. Above the table hung paper lanterns covered in butterflies. At each place setting was a tiara. Paper butterflies surrounded the straws on each cup. The menu consisted of "tea" sandwiches cut in the shape of butterflies and flowers. There was cream cheese and berry preserves, turkey and cheese and ham and cheese. The fruit salad was fancy as well. Watermelon was cut out in the shape of flowers surrounded by strawberries, blueberries and melon balls. The cupcake cake was in the shape of a crown and read "Bon Anniversaire Caitlin". Fancy Nancy loves to speak in French.

The girls pulled strings on the Fancy Nancy pinata before heading home. Inside the pinata was candy and fancy bracelets. The girls took home a party bag. Inside was a pen with a plume, butterfly hair clips, CD with Fancy Nancy stories, tiara, candy, necklace and bracelet. It was an extraordinary day (that's fancy for great)!

Now that the party is over and I have cleared a few other items from my "To-Do" list, I hope to dedicate some time to scrapbooking. I have a lot of ideas circling my head.

Saving and Organizing Photos

Sorry I have been such a bag blogger lately. I have been working on a Fancy Nancy birthday party for my daughter. I will post pictures later. I think it would be fun to be a children's birthday party planner in another life...I just need a la carte budgets. ; )

I was asked a really two great questions the other day. What process do I use for downloading and saving my photos from my camera? And, what did I use to create the playlist on the layout I showed in this post.

Here are my answers:

1. My camera came with a program to download and organize photos. I LOVE how it automatically saves the files into folders by the date the pictures were taken. I create a new Windows folder for each month, inside a new folder for each year. I save the folders created by the camera's system into those month folders. Jessica Sprague, an expert in the technology side of scrapbooking, has another great organization system. She explains it well here.

I upload my pictures to scrapbookpictures.com and picassaweb.google.com. Both services allow me to keep them organized by folder. I order pictures from scrapbook pictures because they offer a HUGE variety of sizes and special services. Picassa is great because I can give a link directly to my site for my friends and family to visit It is great for the grandparents to view photos of the kids. It give me piece of mind to know I have my pictures backed up and protected.

For editing my pictures, I use Photoshop Elements. It is an AMAZING program, but can be complicated for a first time user. Jessica Sprague offers free video tutorials on her sites here and here. The latter also offers paid online classes in using Photoshop as well as photography. View a free online video because she does a great job with them.

2. I created the playlist on my layout using iTunes. I download music from iTunes and rip (copy) songs from my CDs as well. I have an extensive collection of music as a result. iTunes lets you easily set up a playlist. Once you have your playlist set up, you simply go to print and you get the image you saw on my layout - an array of album cover pictures and a list of the songs.

Hope this information helps you in organizing your scrapbook pictures.