what's been happening...

I've been neglecting the 'ol blogeroo for a few days. I know. But the weather here was so beautiful over the weekend that we just had to get outside and play!

We started the weekend off with some Jedi training

What? Your weekend doesn't start off that way??

Then on Saturday we headed outside to play

Yes, that's a girl feeding a guinea pig a carrot...with a leash on. That girl would be my daughter. That guinea pig would be Bugsy. His first "venture" outside since we got him in December. He didn't walk around much. But he seemed to enjoy the fresh air :) Oh, and he managed to poop and pee on my daughter's chalk walkway for him! hehe

I wish I would've had a camera when I burned our Christmas tree that's been sitting on the burn pile. Hooooleeee cow! That think went up super quick!! Makes me never want to let my tree get dried out during the holidays. Ever.

Yesterday I was working on cleaning up my craft room. I didn't bother to take a "before" shot of the room because I'm not even going to subject myself to that kind of humiliation. I did manage to recruit some cheap labor willing helpers to sort through all my buttons. I paid 'em, it's ok :)

I've always kept them in one big container but I'm going to try and sort them by color and see how that goes. Good organization is trial-by-error. I've reorganized my space at least 4 times since I've lived here. You gotta figure out what works best for you.

And yesterday in between cleaning (ok, before the cleaning even started!) I made a stop at a local fabric store and found these pretty Michael Miller fabrics that were on sale.

Aren't they yummy?! I'm thinking I'll make another rag quilt purse out of these.

Anyway, the craft room is almost clean and ready for some creativity to begin!

random Wednesday post

I haven't had much time to scrap the last few days :( But I have been getting my albums in order. Finishing up putting them all in chronological order. Man, it feels SO good to get them all in order and organized!!! Now I just have to figure out where to put them! Up until now, I had my family albums in my scrap room closet and all of the other albums (baby albums, 8x8, 6x6 albums, Disney albums) on a bookshelf in my kitchen. I want to put all of my family albums on that bookshelf so that they're all together but, as you can see, there's no room

You can also see that I have a HUGE old CD player that I'm thinking has to go. I can always go and buy a cheapie one that takes up much less room. I also need to reorganize my cookbooks cause they're just getting out of control. I think they multiply when I'm sleeping but I haven't caught them yet.

The front of my new albums has a window for a photo and I originally was just going to use die-cut numbers for the year. But then I decided to put a photo from that year and I stamped the date with black StazOn.

The year we had my daughter:

Trip to Disneyworld:

Sorry for the bad photos. I was running out of light yesterday. Today there's no good light cause it's raining. It's kinda hard to tell, but I added a sepia tone to the photos but there's still a little color left. I'm thinking one of Ali Edwards fun digital thingies would look good on these. But since I can't get photoshop til I get a new computer...and I can't get a new computer til I get my tax check...I'm just gonna have to wait a bit. So these will do for now!

And I mentioned before some old layouts...you know, before I kinda knew what I was doing!! So here goes. These layouts were my first EVER. Not too bad. Keep in mind, I did these nearly 7 years ago so go easy on me! Totally not my style anymore but I guess it's not AWFUL. Notice the hand cut letters?? Yep, didn't have die cutting machines back then!

Man I was so proud of myself when I finished this Star Trek layout. hee hee
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Don't you love the coloring on the title?? Oh, and the little doodle lines around the photos! I had just gone to a creative doodling class. Can you tell??

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My first instinct in seeing some of my older layouts is to redo them all. But then I think, it's fun to see the progression of this hobby of mine. However, when it comes to my kids' baby albums I've decided that something needs to be done! My son's album that I did about 4 years ago I still like. I followed Becky Higgins sketches for several layouts and I still really like them. My daughter's album is another story. I won't even show you some of them cause quite frankly I REALLY don't like them.

But here's one. I followed a Becky sketch but I still just don't like it at all

Now here's one from my son's album Much better. Not perfect but I still like it. For his album I didn't really use babyish papers. It just didn't feel right. So I stuck with more boyish thank baby papers. And I'm still happy with how his album turned out.

The problem with redoing my daughter's album? The pictures aren't digital. Ugh... We get so spoiled with digital cameras, don't we?? Well, I didn't get one til my son was about 10 mos. old. So, if I don't have enough of the photos them I'm going to have to take the negatives in and get copies. The good news? I usually got doubles (and even triples) of the baby photos so hopefully I'll have enough.

I think this is a long enough post for today. I'm off to get some scrappin' done before my son get's out of school!! Take care everyone!!

not much happenin' here

This is where I got to spend some time yesterday

Ben woke up around midnight Sat night/Sun morning saying his ear hurt. He was up off and on all night and by 6am he had a raging fever. So I waited til the pediatrics after hours opened at 1pm and when I got there the waiting room was already full. *sigh* But thankfully we were in and out withing 45 minutes. Turned out he had one *major* ear infection. The dr let me look in his ear. Ewww... So weird cause the day before there were *no* symptoms. And my kids are not ear infection kids. The flu, colds, viruses ~ yes. But not ear stuff.

Anyway, getting the prescription took just as long as the office visit. But today he's already feeling better. AND, today we also had an appt with the orthopedist and got the all clear for Ben to do sports, gymnastics, whatever. His x-rays looked great, so much better than just 4 weeks ago. YEY!!!

Today the hubster had to fix my shelves that hold all of my patterned paper & cardstock

I guess they were too heavy and the little brackets fell right out and my paper holders came a tumblin' down. Is that a sign that I have too much paper?? Nahhh!! Actually, I've been very good about not buying much of anything. I'm determined to use up what I have before getting anything new....namely, my *huge* reserves of patterned paper. I know I have a problem. I'm in a 12 step program.

Step 1 ~ DON'T BUY ANYMORE PAPER!!!

Anyway, hopefully these little braces will hold up

Although my installer said that there is no warranty with these ;-) Hmmm, gonna have to get another handyman!! lol

The rest of my albums came today (needed 3 more) so I'm gonna finish up my album reorganizing project and hopefully get my dining room table back to normal!

Oh, and have you heard the new Darius Rucker song?? LOVE it! It's the last song on my playlist, just scroll down and click on it. You have to pay attention to the words :)

One last thing, with all of my cleaning and organizing I've come across some things that I just don't need. So be on the lookout in the next week for a giveaway!

chicken soup weather

It's dreary out. No sun. The hubby's sick. Yep, it's chicken soup weather! I have chicken soup simmering on the stove (homemade of course!). And after, we're gonna make some treats in my daughter's Easy Bake oven. Mmmmm!!

Last weekend I worked on reorganizing my scrapbook pages into new albums. You may (or may not) remember quite a while back (like about 9 mos ago) I bought some new Making Memories albums from www.joann.com. These are what they look like:
Now, I *really* like these albums. But at $30 a pop that's just not in the budget. I like the Making Memories albums because they're leather, have a nice stitching around the edge, and the price is very nice ($12 each plus free shipping on www.joann.com). I changed over all of our family albums to the chocolate, my daughter's albums are meadow and my son's are navy. All matchy matchy!

I added the Snaploads to each album so I wouldn't have to mess with the posts (such a pain!). I found them on sale at Joann's this week for $3 each. I really would prefer the D-ring albums but I couldn't find any I really liked that were in the price I could afford (I had to buy10 albums).

I may at some point get a few of the red for family history albums, layouts of my hubby and me as kids, etc but I haven't gotten that far yet. And one other side note, I found that the Paper Studio page refills at Hobby Lobby fit my albums perfectly and they're $10 for 25. Or, if you're like me, you buy them when they're on sale like last week. I got them for $5 a pack!

By the way, you can find D-ring albums that are in a lower price range. But none of them are the nice leather (that I've found anyway). I knew I didn't want corduroy, linen or any similar material like that because my albums are used. My kids are always looking through them (which is exactly how I like it) so they need to hold up. I've found that the material albums tend to get marks on them...or crayon, marker, you name it!

So I started with arranging the layouts in piles by year. Then I took out the layouts that needed to go in my kids' albums (previously everything was in the family albums).

Don't you just love a big stack of layouts?? Makes me feel like I've accomplished a lot! That is, til I start putting them in the albums and realize there's months with no layouts. *sigh*

I put my layouts in chronological order, each album is a full year. And as I was going through my albums I came across some layouts that just made me laugh. Not cause the photos were funny, but I laughed at the layouts themselves. Boy, I sure have come a long way in the last 7 years!! Maybe I'll share some of those with you guys. Hey, I betcha you'd laugh just as hard at that as you did at my 80's hair!!!

But for now, I'll just share a couple more layouts I did last week

BTW, to everyone that has commented, emailed or called over the last few days ~ thank you! It's amazing what a few good thoughts can really do!!! They're MUCH appreciated :)

Scrap room organization ~ part 2

I'm back with more pics!! I've been meaning to share more but, you know, life happened! Anyway, you might remember this picture of my bookshelf

I snatched this bookshelf from my son's room since it wasn't being used effectively in there and basically was just taking up space. I found it at Sam's Club a few years ago for $199. The main function of it is for paper and stamp storage. The bottom shelves hold idea books, projects in progress, etc. I use one of those nuts & bolts holders from Lowes to hold most of my chipboard/alphabets. Originally I used to keep all of my alphabets together in their original packaging. That takes up a lot of room so I finally I organized them by letter and I love it this way.

I decorated the fronts of the drawers with more Basic Grey Mellow paper. Makes that holder a bit more pretty :)

All of my paper is organized by manufacturer. I used to organize by theme but I've found that this way works much better for me. Paper organizers are all Stampin' Up!

All of my Stampin' Up! cardstock is organized by color.

I keep all of the scraps in these plastic holders. Not the prettiest but it works for me. If I keep the scraps in the paper holders with the rest of the paper I find that I don't use them up...and they grow and grow and grow!

When I was reorganizing everything I came across and index file and discovered that my Cuttlebug embossing folders fit perfectly in it

I keep all of my buttons in a plastic container that I found (I think) at Hobby Lobby for around $5. I don't organize them by color since I'm usually using several colors at a time. So I just dig around for what I need!

Just into my room I have this little wall that I keep all of my flowers and an old table (covered with some fabric) that holds my Sizzix stuff

My husband made me this shelf for my flowers with some scrap wood

My flowers are organized by color. Some are in Making Memories jars and others are in leftover Prima cans. I've also used some of those leftover cans for stamps

And finally, next to my table I have one of those Cropper Hopper carts that I got for a super deal years ago
On top I have one of those organizer totes from Hobby Lobby that holds adhesive, scissors, punches, etc. I keep it there so that when I go to a crop or something I can just grab the bag and go. Of course, I don't really go to crops anymore (except out of town) but I still like keeping it there.

Below I have 2-12x12 paper organizers, one holds cardstock scraps ~ organized by color (SO much more useful) and the other one holds patterned paper scraps.

I think that's about it. I could share more but then this post would have about 100 photos!!

welcome to my space!

It's done. I'm organized. And it feels REALLY good! I don't have a fancy room, you won't find any expensive or custom cabinets & furniture in here. Most of my stuff is pieces from other rooms of the house or things I found on clearance or at a really good price. Oh sure, I know how I would like to have my dream room. But that's all it is right now ~ a dream. But that's perfectly fine with me. I still love my room and like I've said before I'm thankful I have a room of my own. So here goes with all the reorganizing that happened in here last week!

It all started with paint. This room was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. Originally it was a light taupe color like most of the rest of the house. It lacked any and all inspiration and it just didn't feel "good" in here. Ya know what I mean? So I (um, my husband) painted the walls Gold 4 by Laura Ashley. I love, love, love her paint colors. Our living room is Gold 3, my son's room is Taupe 3 or 4 (can't remember) and the kids' bathroom is Navy 1. They're such nice colors. I won't bother showing you a before picture, cause well, that's just boring! Here's what my room looks like now:

One of my favorite parts of the room is the display of layouts on the main wall. I've seen several scrappers do this but most recently on Layle Koncar's blog. So I knew once I redid my room I wanted to do that, too. And it's really inexpensive. The curtain rod was less than $10 at Target and the layouts are hung in page protectors held by clip rings. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I made the "dream*create*inspire" with Provo Craft vinyl that I cut on my Silhouette. Man I love that thing!! I bought the vinyl at Hobby Lobby for $6 (after using my 40% off coupon) and it was enough to do the letters (along with a goof up or 2). It goes on pretty easy. They also have transfer tape to help you line things up but I was too cheap to buy that so needless to say I had to move the letters about 3 times. It's not perfect but I don't care! Oh, and the letters were cut in the CK Chemistry font.

I also cut out a few birds with the leftovers :) I wanted them bigger but I ran out of vinyl. This picture gives a better idea of what the wall color really looks like, too.

On the one wall I have this

which holds a hodge podge of stuff ~ ribbon spools, wooden stamps (that aren't Stampin' Up!), string, the white plastic basket holds journaling tags, paint, my small Xyron, and the metal basket on top holds more ribbon (the kind you buy on a piece of cardboard, like Making Memories, etc).

I bought this organizer at ACMoore on clearance but I originally wanted it to hold all of my Making Memories jars that I use for flowers. I didn't realize that there were 2 different types of these organizers ~ the one I bought and one from Making Memories sells. Keep that in mind if you're looking for one cause my MM jars won't fit on this one :( It's ok, I still put it to good use! I want to figure out a way to hang some of the kids' artwork below but for now they're just taped on the wall.

Along this wall I have two 4 foot folding tables that I bought at Lowes. I also have my Stampin' Up! stamp caddy, a basket with journaling books and tags that can't fit in that little white basket, my sewing machine (cover I bought on etsy here), and a basket of mini albums

And my computer, printers & stuff are to the left but you don't need to see that. Underneath the 2 tables I have plastic storage drawers

The one on the left holds my bigger Xyron, heat tool, Bind-it-all stuff, bigger stuff like that. The one on the right holds all my thickers, extra ribbon, etc. That little clear container with the blue lid I got from my Secret Santa at Wrappers Delight (thanks again!) and I use that for all those little ribbon spools (that are SO cute that I can't stop from buying them!) and extra fibers, ribbons, etc.
It really works out well. Under the other table I have more storage drawers
I decorated all the drawer fronts with patterned paper (Basic Grey Mellow). The basket to the left holds some of the really big punches that I use a lot. Some of the smaller punches that I use frequently are in one of the drawers. All of the others are in my closet (that I'm not going to show now because it's not quite as organized at the moment!) The file folder thing to the right holds all the monthly kits that I get. I keep them together til I use most of the kit and then I put the remaining things with everything else.

On the wall to the left of my tables I have this big bookcase that I snatched from my son's room. It wasn't being utilized very well in there and I knew I could put it to better use!

This things holds all my patterned papers, cardstock, Stampin' Up! stamps, chipboard letters, idea books, etc. I will save the paper & letter storage for a separate post as this one is getting pretty long! The white storage drawers hold more of the "office" type stuff ~ ink refills, cds, printer stuff, etc. On top is one of my other favorite things ~ a Clip-it-up.

I've had this thing for a couple years now and I *love* it. It's not the prettiest to look at but sometimes you have to opt for functionality. When I organized mine I found that I had many duplicates of things. Now when I need something I can see exactly what I have and don't have. Well, as you can see I have *lot* on this thing!

Well, I think this is a long enough post! I'll share more with you tomorrow. Need to get some sleep or I'll be falling asleep in church tomorrow!

work in progress

Still working on my scrap room. The room has been painted and most of my stuff is moved back in and getting organized. Just a few things here and there to finish up. Didn't get a whole lot done today since it was the last day of Christmas vacation. So I took the kids out for the afternoon. Then after they went to bed I was planted in front of the tv for the new season of The Bachelor. Yes, I admit it, I watch. But come on, who can't watch this season? Jason's such a cutie. Then again, I'm a sucker for a good looking guy with dark hair...if you've seen my husband then you already know that :) Should be an interesting season. There's always a few characters on that show!

Back to my room, I'm almost done. I'm hoping to finish up some stuff over the next day or 2 and share pics with you. I'm very excited! It's so nice to have a freshly painted room, don't ya think?? Makes me want to stay in here all day (not that I need a reason to stay in here all day!! lol) I'm getting everything organized and in it's place ~ FOR GOOD this time! It's so hard for me to stay organized in here. Not because I'm not an organized person, but because I don't have enough places to put my things. I mean, I'm organizing my room on a budget of, umm, $0. Not to mention my room is small. So I have to use what I have including snatching a bookshelf from my son's room or using an old table my husband made years ago. Hey, it works. We can't all have a dream room. But it's mine and I love it!

I'll share one thing with you. This is what I'm working on right now....

I'll share more pics/details of my room when it's all finished :)

As usual, I've stayed up way too late. And with the kids going back to school tomorrow 6:30am is going to come way too fast!

where have I been?

I know, it's been over a week since I posted anything...which is unusual for me! Well, let's see, I wasn't feeling all that great last week, my husband was out of town and I've been working a little more than normal. Let's see I've spent lots of time organizing my room and I have it almost straightened up enough to share pics. I will share an AWESOME deal that my friend Kellie found for me {big smiles!} Our ACMoore is going out of business and she found these Sizzix towers for.........about $3 a piece!!!! YES, I said 3 DOLLARS!!!! They're used but who cares??!!

She lives much closer to ACMoore than I do so she can go in there and peek at what they have for sale much more often than me!! Thanks Kellie!!! She also picked up some Sizzix dies for me, too {more big smiles!}

I also spent some time organizing my scrap paper. I have 2 12x12 containers that I keep paper scraps and cardstock scraps in. It was SO messy that I couldn't find anything. This is just the cardstock scraps...


So I organized all the patterned paper in one, got rid of the paper that I knew I wouldn't use for the next yard sale at the Shoppe. I did the same thing with the cardstock and I sorted it all into colors. Boy, this makes it SO much easier to find the scraps that I need!!! (and I'm more likely to dig into my scraps instead of cutting up a brand new sheet of cardstock for a project)

And let's see, we also spent last week making this:

and this:

My kids are such cheeseballs!!! The cake was a sprite cake that I got from the fabulous Bakerella. You can find the recipe here. I made mine with a funfetti cake cause that's all I had in the pantry. The other treat we made which is one of my kids' favorites (and mine, too!) is Monkey Munch (otherwise known as puppy chow). You can find the recipe here. My kids call it monkey munch cause that's what they call it on Jon and Kate plus 8 (one of our favorite shows!!) My daughter is still amazed that she had 6 babies in her belly!! Anyway, if you haven't tried it yet it's super yummy. Ours was gone in less than 2 days!!!

I also made a few scrapbook creations that I'll share in a separate post. This one's getting pretty big already!!