Deer Season is a GREAT time to scrap!

I've actually been doing some scrapping lately and it has felt pretty darn good. I've actually been doing a LOT of scrapping and playing with new toys from my birthday and even an early Christmas present. It's deer season in Missouri, so I've had the house to myself for the most part on the weekends and it has been oh sooo quiet....I'm loving it....deer season needs to last a couple more months LOL.

A two page Christmas layout for Jake's album. I don't tend to put a huge amount of photo's in their books anymore. I try to find the best of the best and leave it at that. I do love the Christmas buttons as the bottom of this layout though. Perfect embellishments without over powering the whole thing.

Jake's deer from last year.....I did a lot of doodling on this page. The orange circles are also embossed you just can't see it very well.

I used my Christmas present on this layout (THANK YOU LARRY). I found an amazing deal on a Gypsy and everybody gets 5 free downloadable cartridges with it. I"m loving it!! I"ve made a lot of files and I'm getting ready to play with making my own embossing folders using my old cricut mats. I welded the lettering on this layout and cut it all out in one fair swoop!! It was AWESOME.

My birthday money went towards the Itop and Irock......I used the Irock and pearl gems on this layout to spell out high school. This will be the opening page for Jake's high school album. I'm hoping to fit Freshmen, Sophomore and Junior year in one book. I will put one layout in this book for each sport each year and make a seperate album with all the newspaper articles etc.

I did this one quite a while ago and don't remember posting it. It is the picture of all the first cousins taken at Joni's graduation party in May 2009. Tried to makie it more masculine for Jake's album.

8th grade basketball layout and pocket page....I used the Itop and my cuttlebug embossing folders to make the brads to hold the pocket on a little better.

Check out the Imaginisce blog.

Check out the two videos on the Imaginisce blog. There is a link on the left side of my page. I just got the irock and itop with birthday money and I can't wait to try out some of the ideas they shared in the videos.

Been scrappin'

Riska Roo at a friend's lakehouse!

She's a mess!!!! I love this kid!!!!

truer words were never spoken about these two....LOL!

Feels good to sit down after supper of an evening and scrap. I got a lot organized and cleaned up Sunday afternoon and evening and it helped bring my mojo back to scrap the last couple of nights. Here are 3 layouts I kicked out for my nieces albums last night.......I actually did 5 pages last night but camera battery died so these are the 3 that were photographed and posted. If I can figure out the movie option on my camera....I'm going to do a virtual tour of my scraproom one evening since, yes, I changed it around some more, and did some cleaning and purging! Thanks for stopping by.

Friday Night Lights and Scrappin'...not enough time in the week for both!

Well, I've actually been doing some scrapping lately in between football games. I had a chance today to take some pics of a few I have done in the last 2 months and I'm trying to get all my layout kits organized so I know exactly where I am at. Most of these are pretty simple but I did get my sewing machine settings figured out last night to sew on cardstock (see Escape Artist layout) and I can forsee using it quite a bit more in the future....I loved the effect.

my new philosophy in life

In case you didn't know........Women are Angels.....and when someone breaks our wings, we continue to fly.....on a broomstick! We are flexible you know!

Wow, it's been a while

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted. I have several layouts to post but can't find the memory card for my camera at present. I think it is in the bottom of my purse somewhere but haven't managed to locate it so far.

I spent most of the weekend (after getting 45 quarts of corn put in the freezer) working on cataloging my stamp collection. Larry got me a rolodex on Saturday night to make my card file, I have everything but the alphabets unmounted, cleaned and repositionable glue on and dry. I brought 2 boxes of stamps with me today so I can work on them on my lunch hour. I'll be really happy to have that project completed. It is harder to catergorize stamps than I thought it would be so some are getting more than one card in the card file!

This week I will be focusing on the show I'm taping on the 10th for the local cable provider's station. I'm doing 4 layouts, all different styles so I HAVE to get them chosen and laid out this week so I can practice over the weekend. I also open to suggestions on an opening line for the show....I'm drawing a blank......feel free to offer quotes, jokes, or snippets of wisdom that I can use!!!

Scraproom tour.

I thought you might like a tour of my scraproom. It went a major overhaul over New Year's thanks to the Christmas gift from my Mom and Dad of new flooring and shelving. It still isn't perfect.......does a scraproom ever get there.....but I'm working on it slowly but surely.


My chipboard letters are all in the small sterilite drawers. I used a heavy chipboard to make dividers which makes it much much easier to tell if I have a certain type of each letter when making titles.

The start of my stamping reorganization. My inks and embossing stuff are all easily accessible now directly behind my desk. The photo storage boxes are the start to unmounting all my stamps and storing in cd cases. It's a start anyway.....that project is going to take a while to complete.

My small embellishment organizers are LOADED. I love having all my buttons, flowers, embroidary floss, brads, and eyelets of one color in one container. I also throw in some short pieces of ribbon. It certainly makes it very easy to find an embellishment that will match my pictures and paper after I have the basis of a layout complete.

My paper rack....yes, it's HUGE. It is actually an old carpet sample display that I found at a rummage sale. I've taken it down once because it was so big but put it back up....it is so much easier to find the paper in it. Larry is planning on making me a second base for it though so I can take the top down and make it two sets of two racks. I'm also going to make a dust cover for it.

The lidded drawers under my desk hold all my scraps sorted by color. I find if I keep them close to me, I use them more. I'm working on a "plan" for a desk base that will include these in it....just gotta break the news to Larry that he will be building the desk LOL. The small black tv stand holds my big red sizzix, all the dies for it, my stack of chipboard, and one set of current project drawers. This set of drawers holds finish pages that I haven't put in albums yet and any paper I bought specifically for one of the albums. I'm always afraid it's going to get lost in the big stack and I'll forget I have it so I store it where I will see it every time I add a page to the drawer.

One of my 6 chipboard drawers....yet, I have an addiction :sigh: I'm addicted to chipboard on clearance or on sale or at Big Lots or wherever!! The drawer dividers are made from very heavy chipboard that the local pharmacy gives to me free of charge. I'm still work through the first foot tall stack they gave me for a VBS project. It comes in the boxes of their prescription labels and one of the ladies that works their is a scrapper so she keeps a big stack handy all the time. Gotta love fellow scrappers that SHARE!

The sterilite drawers on the left I picked up at a rummage sale and hold all my fabric/craft paints, brushes, and trays. Love it.

The 2 1/2 gallon bags are page kits for my nieces album.....I'm using paper clips and binder clips right now but seen a great idea to use ID badge clips somewhere the other day. Next trip to walmart will include buying several packages. The other set of sterilite drawers hold my basic shape punches. All these drawers set directly behind my scrapdesk within arms reach.

Another set of layout kits...these are for my nephew's album. As soon as all the pictures I just ordered to catch up Jake's album arrive, there will be another 30 or so kit hung up here.....I'm finding that if I do the kits as soon as I get the pictures, it makes it easier to sit down of an evening and grab a layout or two and get them done....I plan on being caught up by Christmas come h@## or high water...........don't hold me to that though.

I have started sorting my stamps. I'm going to unmount all of them and put them in cd cases. I have a start on it but have used up all the cd cases I have so I'm getting some more from some friends to finish up the project. I'm then going to stamp everything on to a rolodex card and label the cd cases so I can find stamps at the flip of a card. This is my mess for now.......sorted by the category they will be filed under.

This is the closest I can get to a panoramic view of my scraproom. The entire room is 9' x 12' and looks directly into the living room of my home. There is also a shelf with my computer and printer in this room as well. All in all, everything is within arms reach.....a spin of my chair and VOILA.......if I can remember where it is, I can grab it.

Well there you have it....a basic overview of my scrap mess aka scraproom. It is still undergoing some changes but the basics are down pat....just some micro organizing here and there and final details to finish up. Kudos to my wonderful hubby, Larry, for helping me put the new flooring in and all the shelving up AND supporting me in my passion..........I did here him tell somebody the other day it seemed like a lot of money for a hobby until he realized exactly how priceless the scrapbooks and all the pictures are............a brutal lesson we learned after we lost Jeana. I don't think anybody understands how happy I was to "overhear" that comment come from him.

Working on Zane's scrapbook

I don't normally do a lot of one picture layouts....unless I'm working on my niece and nephew's albums. They usually have some cute single pictures that deserve a page all on their own. Keep in mind I don't do any of the journaling on these. Sharon does all the journaling (or she is supposed to anyway!) when she gets the albums.








I actually took this picture instead of his mom. Zane LOVES popcorn and Uncle Larry always gives in and pops him some when he is at our house. One night, Larry was a little later than normal getting it popped but Zane held on until he got his bowl full.....he zonked out the minute his bowl was empty.

I love these pictures!!! Zane fell out of his bed and got stuck under it. Sharon was thinking.......she grabbed the camera (since he wasn't freaking out) and took some pics before she dismantled the bed and got him out roflmbo!!!

I'm just a little biased....but they are soooo stinkin' cute!

rofl!! Mariska has a phone and shoe fetish!! Aunt Melanie doesn't ag it on any at all :shrug: Sharon caught this cute picture of the kids "talking to each other" while they were playing one day!

I actually made it quite a ways on the kids books this weekend. I have all their "layouts" in 2 1/2 gallon bags with a sketch to go with them. All of Zane's already have the paper picked out as well with a few embellishments that I have been saving for specific events tossed in as well. I managed 3 one pagers Saturday night in about 3 hours....well a little more than that since the monster title is all stitching. Layout kits definately help........hopefully I can kick quite a few out in the next few weeks before school starts up full force again. I need to pull Jake's books out as well and see where I"m at so I can start making layout kits for those as well :sigh: Will I ever get all these to a manageable point again?

We survived...

the family float trip. We got tshirts for the float trip itself this year and I think we need tshirts that say I survived!!

I can't wait to scrap some of these pics.....here's hoping that since Larry is still on vacation he gets all the housework done today (he did laundry all day yesterday) and I get to spend the weekend being very very creative. I'm thinking this year's trip deserves an album all of it's own!!

I'm still here..................for now

I'm going to take some pictures of my newly organized and easy to find chipboard but life has been pretty hectic lately so it might be a week or so before I get everything posted. Between the funeral yesterday and trying to help my son and daughter deal with everything leading up to it and getting ready for the family float trip, my life has been crazy this week. I hope to be back in about a week and a half after we get back from the extended family float trip.

Every year, my 2 brothers, my sister, and our families along with a few close friends go on a trout fishing/campout/float trip about 3 hours from here. Mom and Dad come down for a couple of days just because they love the fireside chat that sometimes gets waaaaay out of hand!! We leave Saturday morning and I have not put one thing in the trailer.....oh yeah, we blow peoples minds when we pull in. Three of the 4 of us kids have horse trailers with living quarters so we pull those down to stay in. We clean out the back of ours with a steamer and the kids sleep there. We always catch people looking in the back as we go by to see if we brought the horses with us LOL.

Anyway, the next 2 nights I have to do all the grocery and supply shopping, check the air mattress for leaks, pack the trailer, and hope and pray I don't forget anything. I'm always in great need of the 5 day break the float trip gives us so with that I'll leave you with this thought that crossed my mind last night when I could not get to sleep!

Religion is like a bra.....find the right fit and it is the most important element of your wardrobe. Get the wrong fit and it will annoy the daylights out of you everytime you try to "wear" it!

All we can do is pray.....

It just seems so unfair......my son lost a classmate and friend today. He would have been 15 tomorrow (okay, it is almost today). His parents were friends of ours back in the day but seems like the busyness of life had pulled us in different directions. It doesn't make the heartache we feel for them any less though. We understand the road life has sent them down and the need for a deep abiding faith over the next few years....yes, years. The heartache doesn't subside in days, weeks, or months. It doesn't go away.....EVER. People think that after a few weeks your life should go back to normal....but it never does. You just come to accept the new "normal" that is your life. You realize, after losing a child, that you are never really in control of anything....God controls our lives and the only thing that gets us from day to day is belief in him and his plan. I'll never understand it. Some days I don't know if I'll ever truly accept it as there being a reason for his actions. But I do have faith that those days when I didn't think I could put one foot in front of the other, he was there, picking me up by my ankles and helping me to walk....to the bathroom, the closet for clothes, the vehicle to go to work, and to the refrigerator for food I knew I needed to eat. As I watch yet another family go through this in less than 7 months, I can only pray that God helps them put one foot in front of the other and make it from one spot to another, minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day.

Please keep Curtis's family in your thoughts and prayer for the coming days, weeks, months, and beyond as they adjust to the loss of one they loved so dearly. The heartache they will have to endure can be absolutely crushing at times and it will take prayer, faith, and trust in God to get through each and every moment.

I'm seriously not going to cry

We have a break for the month of July. Last night was Jake's last summer ballgame (baseball and basketball). I still have to spend some evenings working on getting the trailer cleaned out and ready for the float trip but at least we get to GO HOME most evenings, or go for a walk, or scrap, or ride horses........whatever. I love watching Jake play ball but it seems like we spent more nights away from home than there because of all the ballgames this summer. I'll be ready for football by August though.........love love love watching him play football!! I did take my camera last night and tried to get a few pictures of him playing basketball. Good pictures and basketball gyms usually don't go hand in hand but I gave it a try.