Two things

First I want to give a shout out for Big Picture Classes and Stacy Julian. She's offering an new and revised version of her Library of Memories. And she's offering it FREE to alums of the previous LOM classes. That class revolutionized how I scrapbook, how I keep track of photos and how I organize my albums. So I'm a big fan and will be taking the new class which starts in June - just in time after my hip surgery.


Second, want to post this layout I did for a challenge at Cocoa Daisy, which is my favorite kit club. I've tried several over the years and it's the best around for me. The challenge was to do a layout of a visit to a theme park or a fair and use flags on the layout. Humm....I haven't been to either in many years, but I remembered these darling photos of Eliana from her first time skiing at Whistler. Found a sketch in my folder....sorry, but I didn't save the source. When I was sorting through patterned paper a month or so ago, I found this lovely snowflake pp and set it out for a snow layout. Perfect for these photos. The strip on the left is from my bits and pieces drawer and was the perfect blend of colors - I even punched the circle embellishment from that pp. Made the flags from some hatpins from a past CD kit and some leftover cardstock. None of the journaling cards I had would work, so I made my own by tracing around one from Making Memories. Really happy with how this turned out.

Want to encourage all you scrappers out there to make use of your scraps and older pp. It's a real money saver.

By the way, Eliana is only 22 months in the photos and LOVES the snow.

Design team

Poor neglected blog...sigh. Seems I have been too busy with other things, but a recent design team call for Cocoa Daisy - my favorite kit club - brought me back. I don't think I've ever applied for a design team and probably stand little chance of making it, but if I were ever on one, I would want it to be Cocoa Daisy. I love their kits and have since about 2007.



So, yesterday I got busy and made a layout of a recent telephone conversation with Eliana who is going to be 2 years old next month. She's fascinated with the phone and loves to talk. Her language skills are improving every day with new English and Spanish words. Yes, she's bilingual thanks to her mother who is a bilingual teacher in an elementary school. Eli's babysitter is also a Spanish speaker. I'm not, but I've learned quite a few words over the past year. But I digress.



I really wanted to document Eli's current pronounciations, especially of my name which has gone from Nana, to ammy, to gwammy now. She's the light of my life.



So here's the layout.

Smile

this layout was a response to a post on Write. Click. Scrapbook to go through an older stack of patterned paper and sort out what you wouldn't use. In the process I found this older pp by BoBunny that was perfect for the photo of Eli I took a couple weeks ago when Greg and I took her to the park up by them. The sketch is from another site, The Studio Challenges. The two tags I used to frame the photo are from K & Co and the sticker letters are from ADORN it. I have no idea where the other embellishments came from. So glad I found this pp and was able to scrap this sweet photo.

LOAD 211 Day 3

I'm loving this month's LOAD. There are wonderful layouts in the gallery to provide inspiration and the prompts are also interesting. Today's layout is a totally different type of design - not one I do very often. It has lots of embellishments - I had a kit from Basic Grey (Olivia) that had lots of fun chipboard and papers that I loved. So, here it is.

I love these photos of Greg, Sara and Eli that were taken when they traveled to Denver for a family gathering.

LOAD211

Started today. I love LOAD - love the prompts, the 'lessons', the work of the other participants, and the lovely comments that I sometimes get. I had a meeting this morning so didn't get started on this until after lunch. Very simple - two colors of cardstock, some buttons, and some letter stickers. I love this photo of one of the pelicans that wandered throughout Mykonos town. They were huge - at least 3 feet tall from feet to top of the head. This will be part of my Greece travel album.

New Paint Job

I've been planning on having my house painted this next summer. However, last Monday my interior designer friend called to let me know that one of the best painters in town was free to take on a new job on Wednesday. The weather was to be mostly clear with no rain until Sunday. So, I called and made arrangements to have the house painted much sooner than I had planned. Here is a shot of the back part of the house with the new paint colors. It's so much more cheery than the grey-blue with white trim that I had last weekend. I'm beyond thrilled with the result.

Christmas 2010

I'm trying to get some of the Christmas photos scrapped. This is Eli with her dollie that mama and dad-o gave her. She loves dollies, but seems to have a fetish about taking all the clothes off. This time she put them in the washer - and even knew the right buttons to push (not strong enough to close the door tightly enough yet). She then took her dollie in and wrapped her in a blanket. Such a good little mama.
There are lots of other photos to put on paper, but haven't gotten that far yet. Christmas was so much fun with this little one who didn't understand about the wrapped boxes until she had unwrapped, with some help, a couple. She kept getting distracted and played with each thing before looking for another. So, we had a leisurely morning. Next year may be a different story all together.