Am I Crazy? and Other Year End Musings

It is hard to believe that is it the last day of the year today. I've been frantically trying to finish up a major project that I am SUPER excited about but can't share with you just yet. Teaser: stick around until February!! I've also been reading a lot of year end posts. Favourites round ups. Resolutions. New One Little Words. It's all got me thinkin' ...

For the past few weeks I have had this crazy idea rattling around in my head. Really crazy!

What if I tried to go for the whole year without buying a single (non-essential) scrapbooking supply?

Gasp!

What do you think? Want to join me?

Here's my reasoning: 1) Money is extremely tight for me right now. I was left a handsome inheritance that ALL came to me as soon as I turned 19 (our age of majority here in BC). I used that money to live comfortably, buy a car, go to University, move to Scotland to "discover myself", travel and generally have a fabulous 20's experience. Then once I was married (oh yeah, we had an awesome wedding!) Greg and I used it to buy a townhouse, buy a new family friendly car, stay at home with my girls, buy a new, bigger house, buy a minivan, buy a new roof for the new house and all the while staying at home with the girls. The market crash of 2008 was pretty devastating for me too. The long and the short of it is that I am now back at work because we need that second income now. So .... I need to cut my personal spending and since scrapbooking supplies are quite expensive, and since I have a lot of them, this seems like a great place to start my new budget conscious life. 2) As I mentioned, I have a LOT of supplies! So, like money in the bank, I'm going to "spend" them instead of adding to them. Okay, that analogy doesn't totally make sense but I think you get my gist! 3) I'm curious to see if how long I can go without buying new pretty paper! Simple as that. I know it's a weakness and I think in order to quit my paper addiction I need to go cold turkey for a while.

Quick, someone start a PPA near me!! (Patterned Paper Anonymous!!)

Still think I'm crazy? Want to join me yet?

In preparation, I am doing an inventory of sorts. I've sorted my card stock by colour and am in the process of counting it. Next is my patterned paper. That could take a week! Good thing I don't have any shifts until Saturday!! I have typically kept most of my patterned paper in my paper racks but there have been stashes of random papers in drawers here and there so my goal is to get it ALL on the paper racks. I'm also amalgamating my Stampin' Up papers with my regular papers. I've made the decision to give up my Stampin' Up Demonstrator-ship as it really wasn't a good fit for me. (I have other reasons too which I'll talk about in a bit.)

Last but not least on my preparation list is to sort out and reorganize my crafting room. It's no longer really working for me so it's time to re-jig it. I also made the purchase of a Silhouette Cameo during all the Black Friday sales so need to make room for it in here. That's actually another reason I think I can get away with this crazy scheme. With my Cameo I should be able to cut any title or embellishment I need rather than buying pack of Thickers and ending up with a drawer full of half used packs!

Now that I've shared the crazy, let me share my musings.

My OLW (One Little Word) for 2012 was FOCUS. It turned out to be a great word for me. Towards the end of 2011 I was feeling pulled in several directions and wanted a word that would pull me back. Back into focus so to speak. I had intended on picking an area which I felt could use some attention and focusing on it for a month at a time. What ended up happening was that I started focusing on my scrapbooking and really started seeing results. I haven't counted exactly how many layouts I did this year but I'd hazard a guess at close to 200. Seeing as my goal was 144 (for my Twelve class at BPC) I think I can call that a win! I was also successful at getting onto two different Design Teams. The first was with Practical Scrappers and the second with Let's Get Sketchy. I am pleased to say I will be continuing with both in 2013! 

I was also published! My ScrapHappy group got together and published an e-book called Your Story Matters - 25 Memories to Capture Now. Right now it is only being offered to new ScrapHappy members but in mid-January it is going to be for sale to the general public. I am SO excited! I contributed 2 layouts to it and it was a ton of fun to do. I will keep you apprised of when it goes on sale so you can be sure to snatch up a copy for yourself!! :)

To say that FOCUS was a good word for me in 2012 is quite the understatement! SO ... the question is, what to choose for a new word to guide me in 2013. I have really struggled to find a word. I've toyed with words like "fun", and "family" and "lighten" but nothing is ringing true to me. Until today that is. It came to me out of the blue. My word should be REFOCUS. Focus worked so well I was loathe to give it up but at the same time I did feel I needed a change. Choosing the word Refocus may seem like a cop out but that is truly how I have been feeling lately. 2012 was good to me personally and professionally (I went out to get a job and ended up with 2!!) and now I need to refocus my energies for a new year of challenges and experiences.  As part of my resolution not to spend money on non-essential scrapbook supplies, I will also not be spending money on classes this year. So I will not be joining in Ali's OLW journey through BPC or Cathy's Move More Eat Well 2.0 or even Shimelle's classes (sob!) but I will be continuing these journey's in my own way. Seeing as I really didn't participate in the MMEW class last year all the material in new to me so I may just work through it "for the first time" on my own!

As I wrap this up, I wanted to say thank you for sticking with me on this journey of mine. I appreciate every single person who takes the time to read and comment on what I have to say or what I have created. My creative projects will continue to be posted here but I will be refocusing (LOL!) on my blog with the intent to include more family updates and more regular features. I intend to grow my blog this year as well as my presence in the creative world. I hope you will continue to follow me as I do this.

Have a safe and happy New Year's celebration and may 2013 bring you joy, love and success in your endeavors. 

**All images courtesy of Pinterest. Click on each image for more information. Thanks**

OLW 2012 - Focus

In the interest of not boring my family with a million pictures of my scrapbook obsession, I am going to post a few pictures here and give you a link to my Flickr gallery where you can see them all.

I've been finding my focus (ha, ha! pun intended!!) falling on my scrapbooking lately. I am loving this! Let me tell you, the time I'm spending in my craft room has been fun and revealing. My 'homework' for Twelve (Big Picture Class with Stacey Julian) has had me delving into my old pictures (which are currently spread out all over the living room courtesy of 3 curious little girls) and thinking deep thoughts. It's kind of awesome! Greg and I were looking at old videos of Marley last night because I've reloaded old pictures onto my laptop. Gosh she was cute!!

Anyway, I've titled this post OLW so I'd better get to that!
Here are some pictures of my album so far - for more detailed shots please follow this link.

Ali asked us to use a different 4x6 photo pocket which has it's own adhesive strip along the long side but I don't have those (yet) so I made my own. It flips up to reveal the January photo. I'm okay with this. It's kind of fun. The only bummer is that you don't get a really good look at all the little cards all at once. But hey, that's a pretty minor thing!!

In my Flickr gallery I've included close ups of each little card so please head on over there and check it out.

And just to prove that I've been focusing (ha, ha! there it is again!!) and doing some homework for Twelve, here is my first official Twelve layout.

Yes, you've seen this picture before. 

Yes, I will be doing layouts of Paige and Christine's portraits too. 

No, you don't have a say in the matter! LOL!

I'm actually submitting this for publication so cross your fingers for me! The only difference is that I added the little yellow-green metal tag after I photographed it for submission! 

The tag is a reminder that this is part of my "People" file for Twelve. If you're taking the class you'll understand, if not, just know that I know it doesn't really fit but I don't care!

On a whim, I decided to climb on board the 12 on 12 band wagon. This is where you take 12 pictures from your day on the 12th of each month. Obviously the 12th isn't over yet so I'm not going to post any pictures but come back tomorrow (hopefully) and I'll show you what today looked like around here. Not too exciting as Paige is home with a fever today. Poor thing! Thank goodness for wonderful neighbours who can help with the school run for Marley!

Oh, and I've also been working on some fun Valentines cards for a card exchange with Lain Ehman's Scrap Happy group. I'll be posting them on my other blog so check them out here ... only not yet! Maybe later today but probably tomorrow!

That's it for now. Thanks for stopping by!

OLW July and MotherLOAD Week 4

I managed to convince Greg to take the girls to the drop-in at Delta Gymnastics (thanks Colleen!!) so while I have the house to myself I thought I'd better post about  the work that went on in my craft room this weekend. And today. But mostly over the weekend! :)

First up, was One Little Word. At the beginning of July I got caught up on the past few months of homework assignments (see this post here) and I've been working on July's assignment all month. Let me explain. The task was to pick 9 songs that comprise a soundtrack of our Word as it applies to us right now. This was tricky for me. I love music and music can generate such a wide range of feelings in me. Greg and I have mostly widely differing tastes in music! He likes the new, edgy Rock/Alternative stuff (with a healthy dose of the 80's and 90's in there too - gotta keep those highschool memories alive!) while I tend towards more Rock/Pop/Country genres. It may be jouvenile for me to rock out to Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears but it gets those happy hormones flowing and that's really what music is all about for me. Plus, the girls "get it" too so we can dance around the house together!

My word is Release and when I Googled "release" and "song titles" all I got was a huge long list of various artists album and/or song release dates. Which I kind of figured was going to be the case. So I went to plan B. I opened up iTunes and pulled up "most played" and went shopping for the tunes that spoke to me. Out of my list of 17 or so, I slowly worked on narrowing it down to 9. Then we were to make up little canvasses using our song titles and some lyrics from the song which spoke to our word.

Here's what I came up with ... initially.

And then in the divided protectors.

But imagine my horror to notice while editing my photos that I misspelt a word on my #7 tag!

Gasp!

I quickly redid it and here are the close ups.

1. Hung Up by Madonna

2. Don't Stop The Music by Rihanna

3. Come What May from the Moulin Rouge Sountrack

4. Raise Your Glass by P!nk

5. Don't Speak by No Doubt

6. F**kin' Perfect by P!nk

7. Uprising by Muse

8. Intervention by The Arcade Fire

9. Don't Stop Believin' by Journey

Ali asked us to burn our soundtrack to a CD and put it into the album. On my soundtrack are 2 bonus tunes. They are The Landlord's Walk and Nelson Mandela's Welcome to the City of Glasgow by Blair Douglas. Both of these are purely instrumental (rockin' bagpipes and drums mostly) so I figured it was safe to add them as I couldn't exactly do the lyrics part of the assignment! They speak to my Scottish roots and always bring a smile to my face and a skip to my step.

I found this transparency in my stash and love the words on it. They really evoke everything that I want to invite into my life right now.

And here is the finished spread.

Everyone is back now and bugging me to put them to bed so I will continue this shortly ...

Okay, girls are in bed, SYTYCD Canada is on the PVR, life is good.

For Week 4 of the MotherLOAD Marathon we are focussing on using what we love and loving what we use. Don't those two things go hand in hand? I haven't done the photo assignment yet which is to take a picture of our favourite ritual but I've done the other two assignments.

First up is the layout assignment. We were to dig out that paper or kit that we've been saving for a "special" layout and JUST USE IT!! I've been hording an entire set of Little Yellow Bicycle's Zinnia collection waiting for .... not sure what. So, as per instructions, I broke it out and got busy. Here's what I came up with.

I chose some pictures from our trip to Whistler for our 4th anniversary when Marley was 21/2 and Paige was 5 months old. See her there in the Snuggly? So cute!

But I digress.

When I pulled the papers and put them with the pictures I really wasn't sure how it was all going to come together. But in the end I love this!

Here are some close ups. First the left hand page. 

The 'Beautiful' is an acrylic accent (from one of the many embellishment packs I have for this collection) and the rest of the title was cut out on my Cricut.

The right hand page. 

The quote along the bottom was actually like that in the paper and I loved it, so I cut out that strip and used it to frame the pictures along the bottom. They call the green accent in the top right corner a photo mat but I used it for my journalling.

Some more close ups of the embellishments. 

 

At the last minute I added the 'love' and the number 4 (which is the only thing NOT from the Zinnia collection). I figured since it was our 4th anniversary and we were a family of 4 at that time it was fitting.

These are little fabric stickers and I originally just put them on the paper but it looked too flat and you could barely see the purple 'love' one. So (in one of those many embellishment collections) I found these acrylic flowers which I popped up with foam dots and voila! WAY better!

I created these little felt flowers from (you guessed it!) a kit! LOL! Then I added the acrylic leaves.

A closer look at the title work. I put it on top of two journalling stickers to which I added the dates of the weekend.

Okay, the final thing for this evening is the homework assignment. We were to put together 4 "snack packs" which we apparantly will be using later during the Marathon part of this class (yikes!)

Here they are!

Want to see them up close?

Some felt flowers, some little journalling tags ...

some bigger journalling tags ...

some buttons, some butterflies ...

and finally, a rosette.

Can't wait to break them out!

All right, now to focus on the dancers on my TV right now.

Thanks for checking out my little blog. Remember to leave some love, you never know when it may come back to you!!

OLW - Catch up!

I have let my One Little Word fade into the background a bit these past few months. That's not to say it hasn't popped into my head every now and then - especially when I'm boiling inside and just taking a deep breath and saying "Release" helps dissipate things somehow. But the assignments from Ali have been dutifully printed off, placed into my OLW duotang and then forgotten about until the next month's assignment lands in my in-box. 12 days ago I received July's assignment which got me thinking. "Exactly how many months behind am I now?"

4.

Yup, bad me!

So the other day I got busy. I dug out my OLW binder and duotang, read through all the handouts - starting in January just to remind myself about the beginning - and sat down to do the work. It was good to remind myself of my word. Of my original intentions for my word. Of hopes I'd forgotten about. After I got caught up to June (July is still a work in progress), I took some pictures and I thought I'd share them with you now.

Title page - pre-class assignment.

January's assignment - self protrait and initial thought cards.

February's assignment - 9 images.

 

March's assigment - To Do list

This was as far as I got (except for the painting which you'll see in a bit).

April's assignment was to write a note to ourselves.

April's assignment part B - another self portrait. This photo was actually taken on July 2nd but since the assignment called for a current photo and I WAS 3 months late, I opted for this as opposed to digging out a picture of me in April (which may or may not exist to be honest!).

This is my note to myself.

While jotting down notes I realized I had more to say to myelf than would fit on the blank Ali sent so I made a card that would fit into the 5x7 pocket and then covered it in this fun Basic Grey paper.

Here is the inside of the note as well as my initial scribblings.

Here's that painting I was talking about. I originally posted about it here. It came about as a result of just having some fun with old guache paints I'd found during an organizational blitz in my scrap room.

On the backside of the painting is this layout I did for LOAD in May. I wasn't sure where to put it but it seems to fit within the parameters of my OLW personal journey.

May's assignment was to create task lists and/or write down things already accomplished and things still left to do with regard to our OLW journey. So far I have 5 and hope to add another 5 soon.

And now we arrive at June.

June's assigment was to first pick a colour and then get messy - no problem! Here's a look at the very beginning of my process.

And the finished results. 

Looking at all of them together like this makes me really happy. I wasn't sure where to begin or how to proceed but Ali encouraged us to relax and just let things evolve. I did and this is what came of it! It was so much fun to just create without any parameters beyond our chosen colour scheme and the number of little canvasses.

Here are some closeups.

Picking a colour was pretty easy as I'd already been using almost exclusively brown and pink for my embellishments.

I pulled out all my pink and brown inks, paints and glitters and then went hunting for interesting textures, stencils, stamps, you name it. The canvas on the right above was created by spraying 3 colours of mist over a laser cut piece of cardstock. Then I added round dollops of glue and sprinkled MS glitter in bronze over them. The butterfly on the left is stamped with Ranger distress ink - sorry can't remember the colour right now. 

The "me" canvas gave me a lot of problems. I initially tried to mist over the m-e to create a blocked out ME but I used too much mist and it bled under the letters. I put it aside and worked on the other canvasses while I tried to figure out what to do. The letters has so much spray on them that their original colours were completely obliterated and I liked the mottled look so I decided to paint over the card and then glue the letters to it. But the brown mists were bleeding through the pink paint and turned it a sort of sickly grey-pink colour. Ack! Then I got the idea of hiding it under strips of ribbon and tons of pink glitter and Voila!  It started off hugely disappointing but ended as one of my favourite canvasses. Go figure!

I started the "a" canvass with a similar idea to the ME one but using paint instead of mists. I really liked how the paint adhered the letter to the cardstock so I left it. Once it was dry I glued and glittered it. Simple but effective. The paint splatters are actually a stamp that I just stamped over and over with different colours. Then I stamped the "colour your world" part over top. It's not as noticable as I'd like but I have no plans to change it.

The butterflies were made by painting over a glitter butterfly die cut paper then adding a few mini butterflies I'd punched out earlier.

This pink one stumped me for the longest time. I just kept staring at this blank bit of pink painted paper and wondering what the heck to do with it! Then I was reminded that Ali had used her daughter's hand in one of hers and I went finger painting. A little flower was born and after adding a little journalling and a ribbon, it was finished. The other one is my favourite one. I used my trusty empty toilet paper holder to stamp the circles. I purposely put piles of paint on the end of the roll so the circles would have some texture to them. The circle of pattered paper I had laying out on my desk and it worked but needed something. Turns out that something was a button!

And last but not least I did more stamping. Using multiple colours again (I saw this done on a card with little birdies and now I can't remember where it was so sorry for not giving credit where it's due!) Once all the background was done I stamped the "be happy" - initially in pink but it didn't show up very well so I re-stamped it in black. Much better! And lastly I added a little butterfly and some bling.

July's assignment is to listen to our word and pick 9 songs that are our current soundtrack of our word. I must admit to being totally stumped with this one but I currently have my iTunes going so will hopefully soon be able to pick 9 songs that say "release" to me! Yikes!

Thanks for checking in. I'm hoping to get my latest Project 12 layout posted today too so stay tuned for that. Right now I must get LC up from her nap. Her escapades is "what can I paint myself in today" continue. Earlier I found her standing on top of her change table holding an open bottle of conditioner in one hand and a wipe in the other. Needless to say the "guest room goodies" basket has been permanently removed from her room!!

I am NOT going to survuve her two's!!!

5 on Friday - April 1st (No Foolin'!)

I've been working on another post that I hope to finish today too so this post is going to be a Spring Break Recap type post. It's gone by pretty quickly. 2 weeks. 3 kids. 24/7. Yup, there were a few not so stellar moments in the Mommy department. But all in all, I think we survived.

Here are some highlights from this past week.

1. Decorating LC's cake.

We had the family over on Sunday to celebrate LC's 2nd birthday and Marley and Paige got to help decorate the cake. I didn't get a picture of Paige putting the sprinkles on - mostly because I was too busy trying to keep her from a) dipping the sprinkle shaker in the icing and b) putting the entire contents of said sprinkle shaker onto one spot of the cake (namely the Happy Birthday Christine bit!) Here's Marley adding her own special touches to the cake!

2. Still Celebrating LC.

As I said, we had the family over to celebrate LC's 2nd birthday. She had lots of help opening her presents but managed to blow out the candles on her own!

Here's a close up of the cake - sorry, I know it's a bit blurry but I wanted to show you the load of sprinkles that obscures the word "Christine" (just behind the '2' candle.) Oh well. Nobody cared - least of all LC!

3. OLW Painting 

I was cleaning up my craft table after the birthday layout I did for LC and I suddenly felt like painting. So I grabbed my paints, a piece of white, 8.5 x 11" cardstock and got to it. I didn't have a plan. I just started painting.  After it dried I scanned it, edited it a bit in Picasa and then added some text.

Here's the final product.

This was a ton of fun and I will definitely do this again. I printed this full size and it's in my OLW album.

Paige saw it and wanted to do her own painting. Since LC was napping I decided the older two could paint. They had a ton of fun too. Here are some pictures.

 

In case you're wondering, the black trays they're using are old Costco food platters trays. I started keeping them after our first Open House and they are perfect for doing crafts on. It corrals the mess enough to make it palatable for me to let them do messy things like this in the house. I know, I'm a crafty mess Nazi!

This is Paige's finished canvas (I found a 2-pack in the cupboard that I've been hoarding for awhile.) 

And Marley's.  

Next came the hand prints! 

This was so successful that I even went out and purchased more, larger canvasses for them. We are just waiting for an afternoon when LC's napping to break them out.

4. Abbotsford Day Out

On Tuesday we went out to Abbotsford to spend some time with Ammee and Poppa. I brought Paige's bike and Marley's scooter. The little road down to their house has a steep enough grade to allow the girls to fly down it. AND cause some serious heart failure on the part of Ina and myself! Lucky for us, they managed to avoid any wipeouts!

Even though it was threatening rain (and we eventually did  get wet), we went up to the local park.

Ina gave underducks. 

When we got back Ina found this ride on toy for LC. She immediately started walking up the hill with it! She wants to be just like her big sisters!!! I convinced her to start her descent at a much lower spot and we were all happy.

5. Chuck E Cheese!

Yesterday we met up with my sister-in-law Ileana and her kids at Chuck E. Cheese. I've never been there before and I must say it was not as bad as I thought it'd be. I could even do it again sometime! They do not force you to buy their food which was an unexpected bonus. We brought our lunch (saving serious $$) and used a coupon Ileana gave us to get extra tokens for the games. The kids had a blast! Marley and Jenna (aged 6) immediately joined forces and spent the whole time working together to earn tickets. In the end they had 366 tickets and picked out their prizes in such a friendly way. It was so lovely to see!

LC and Paige did what they could. Here is LC whacking the sharks! 

Paige liked the toddler rides! 

The 3 hours we spent there went by in a flash. By the time we left LC had stripped down to her diaper and was NOT about to get dressed to leave. I had to do what is becoming frighteningly frequent - haul her out to the van shoeless, jacketless and, in this case, skirtless too. She is 2 and not afraid to assert herself. It's going to be a long year!!

Well, that's all for now. I am off to get showered and dressed and figure out what to do with this yucky, rainy day. Hope the weather's better where you are! Have a great weekend!