Gotta Love Me Time

What's better than "me" time?  It feels like this has been a long time coming.  Dave gets it every Monday/Wednesday night or any day in-between.

Finally I had my chance a little more than a week ago, joining Drew's preschool teacher and members of her family for some great scrapbooking time.  I loved playing with some new cricut cartridges and finding some new gadgets - which I'm asking for for my birthday... (and I know Dave got them from me since I gave him the Michael's gift card and I received numerous texts with pictures trying to make sure they were the right ones).

Here is what I accomplished in the few hours I was there... (I removed the flash so there wasn't a glare - which is why the pictures appear a little grainy).

This first page I was really excited to play with the bigger cricut and use one of my new Mickey cartridges - I used a film sheet and cut pictures from Lisa's wedding in it.  I loved how it turned out!

Page two I used the cricut for the snow flake and then used blue paper, with a border and then matted the pictures.

My third page was fairly simple and I sued blue paper, with a cream colored mat/accent.  I founds some arrow rub-ons to finish off the page.  The letters were punch-outs I have on hand.

The final page of the day was the easiest layout I did this time around.  I had a zoo paper which was really busy, so I matted the photos with brown cardstock.  Voila!

At the end of the day I was slamming out a few cricut designs which I'll use on two upcoming pages I hope to do sooner rather than later.  Seeing as the last time I cropped was 6 months before this!  Oh how I miss it.

Scrapbook Saturday - Producing Friends

Digging up some old pictures a few months ago, I've really gone through the archives.  Here is a page I created recently of my News Producing Days.  This was a going away day for the anchor in Fresno (who is now on air here in the Bay Area).

I began with an orange piece of cardsock, then overlayed a beige piece and one with a pattern.  I matted two of the pictures with a blue paper, and then rounded the edges of all the photos.

I cut out some squares and clued on the two layers, and stamped in the station's letters and stamped in the channel.

The page finished off with some leather floral embellishments and some eyelets.  Simple yet nice.  Of course this page was interrupted multiple times by a two year old who wanted attention, wanted help going potty, wanted to help....

I thought my new scrapbook room was supposed to be my sanctuary.  Oh yeah I forget, there's no place for mommies to call off limits to everyone.

Scrapbook Saturday - Family

I christened my new scrapbook area a few weeks ago.  While there were enough sports on TV to make a fan happy, it leaves their wives looking for something to occupy their time. 

So I created this:

This was a page that I easily assembled with a sheet of green cardstock, and then a beige scrap and a maroon color scrap.  I matted the family photos with brown cardstock.  I then put on two flower embellishments that I never bring with me when I scrap at other locations - so it was sort of like I had new utensils and tools!

I then journaled with a tag from a new kit I found at peachycheap.

It was about this point that the husband was busy and the child decided to find something to do (aka tear up the office/scrapbook room). 

Scrapbook Saturday - Zoo Day

We've joined the Oakland Zoo, so I know I'm going to have an abundance of these types of pages.  But this particular one happens to be Drew's first trip to the zoo.

I have to say I was really  happy how this came out since I had NO IDEA what I was going to do when I started.  All I knew is I wanted to use the giraffe paper, but it was so busy I wasn't sure how I was going to tone it down.

So what I did was get a beige piece of cardstock and trim it down so that the giraffe paper looks more like a border.  It then used some tan paper as a border for things like the title and an area which ended up being used for embellishments and the date.

I cut the three photos on the right side down so they were about the same size and then spaced them apart and left the larger photo to be Drew and Daddy looking at the giraffe exhibit.

The title "Zoo Day" was some stickers from a random kit I had recently ordered on Peachycheap.com (which for those who aren't familiar with it - it's a great scrapbook resource of daily deals!).

By the way this completes all the scrapping I did with my Mom that weekend in May when we cropped until we dropped - as a Mother's Day gift to ourselves. I hope you've enjoyed the sneak peek at what  I managed to accomplish.

Scrapbook Saturday - Shake Your Booty

This next page is a tribute to Drew's Potty Training and his favorite undies - The Wiggles.

These pictures crack me up every time I see them.  But let's talk about how I created this page...

I started with a light blue cardstock background.  The top of this page is a border I cut out of a different 12x12 kit I picked up before I had Drew.  I matted the photos of Drew shaking his thing with complimentary colors and wrote a little something about this shot on another matching piece of cardstock.  In the corners of the journaling area I glued on a couple of buttons - making this a "cutesy" kind of page.

On the top photo (with Drew looking at his booty shaking in the  mirror) I put a little sticker down that says "No Diapers".

The title "Shake your Booty" - I stamped the words "Shake" and "booty", and then wrote in the "your".  I finished that off with a few more buttons.  A pretty easily assembled page! I love it when that happens.

Scrapbook Saturday - New Millennium

Here's a page more than 10 years in the making!  This was the new Millennium.   When threw all the Y2K fears out the door and flew to Arizona to party with my college friends.

The background paper is a fun sheet I found in my Mom's Nursery Kit.  It thought it was more festive than childhood oriented.  Then I cut strip of light purple paper to go on the left side of the page, and used a darker purple for the matting and the 2-0-0-0.  The Cricut again assisted me with the font cut-out.

For the "journaling" I wrote - New Year, New Millennium, Old "Friends" - with the friends being a brass-like embellishment I had.  I finished it off with a cocktail embellishment I just picked up the day I put this page together and a few rhinestones to go on the left side of the page.

Scrapbook Saturday - The Big Easy

One of the joys of my job - I get to travel to places I've always wanted to see but haven't had the chance.  This page was from my work trip to New Orleans less than a year after Katrina hit.

Taking Mardi Gras colors - purple, green and yellow, I put this together.  I matted all the photos with black cardstock.  Then I used some New Orleans Embellishments I'd picked up when a local scrapbook store was going out of business.  So they were ridiculously inexpensive.

I added a few eyelets pertaining to boozing and some purple brads to hold down the date Lisa and I were in New Orleans.  For the record we were drinking after hours!

Scrapbook Saturday - First Christmas

What a great reminder of many things with this page.  One, our first Christmas in Vegas.  And Two, how much weight I've lost since 2005 (OK so I was playing Santa in the pictures I selected, other shots were less than flattering though - trust me).

For this page I did something creative - well I thought so anyway.  I began with some dark green 12x12 cardstock for the background.  Then the "Santas" on the left side of the page were part of a 12x12 paper. (the red plaid at the bottom was all one sheet).

I opted to cut out the Santas from it's original paper - I thought it was too busy with all the plaid.  When I was trying to place it on the green cardstock it seemed like it needed something.  So I ended up pasting on a portion of the red plaid afterall - and then put the "title" on over that in matting.  The "1st Christmas" was a shadowed font from the cricut.  "Vegas" is from some letter punch-outs.

To add some contrast I added another lighter layer of green paper to the right side of the page.  I then trimmed my photos down at the top - I believe they were 3x3 or very close to it.  Then I also put the skyline shot of Caesar's Palace (which was taken from our hotel room) and put that at the center of the page.  I had some bracket embellishments that I put over the Vegas photo to get if a little pizazz. 

To finish I put two brads on the right side of the page.

Scrapbook Saturday - Weekend Getaway

Oh, this spread makes me want to go back in time - to our weekend getaway last November.

This spread was inspired by an idea from a page someone posted to a website.  About the only thing that's the same, is the overlapping photos, and the layered papers.  The rest just came to be.

The paper on the right is technically the hot pink color, and the left page is a lighter purple color.  I then layered different shades of purple along the bottom of the spread.  Because the letters I'd cut out from the cricut were used in the same pink color as the background page, I had to add a dark purple layer to the upper left side of page one.

The photos on page one are matted in a light pink paper with "waves" across the paper.  On the right side, the pictures are matted with the same pink cardstock as the background on page one. 


The "You+Me" was an embellishment I picked up at Michael's.  And the "Together" embellishment underneath the sunset photo, is from that same kit.


I journaled on the hot pink and light pink matted paper - and added some brads to the corners.  The pink heart on the bottom of page one - was to hide the pen marks I made when I tried to add rhinestones in the shape of a heart. 


I had to remove the rhinestones because you couldn't tell it was supposed to be a heart.... so I free-handed a heart to cover up that mistake.  Shhhhhh

Personal Space

Oh man, what have I been craving for months and months?  Personal space.  My own little escape.  Somewhere I can shut out the whining.  The crying.  The nonstop sports that are plaguing our TV.

This past weekend while cleaning the house, I carved myself such a niche. 

Meet my new little personal haven.  Where I can scrapbook at my leisure, and not have to pick up after myself because we need to use the kitchen table... to well... eat.  I'm so excited to begin using it!!

Scrapbook Saturday - First Anniversary

It was nice to get to do a few pages that don't pertain to Drew.  This spread was from our First Anniversary trip to Florida.

I started the left page with a cream colored page, and then used some light green scraps to go along the left edge and then on the right edge on page two.  Then I used some pink paper to add some contrast.  On the second page I started with a wine colored paper, and then used the pink and green.  Some of the photos are matted with the "wine" colored paper.

On the first page, I made the 1st Anniversary words with the cricut.  It's hard to tell, but I gave the letters a shadow.  For anyone familiar with the cricut and fonts... this is a very lengthy and messy process to glue each of these pieces together.

I used various embellishments I had - including one that says Florida, Mickey's House, some flowers and hearts.

Scrapbook Saturday - Snow Much Fun

This was the very last page I did a few weeks ago when my Mom and I got together for our Scrapbook Getaway weekend.  At this point it was nearly midnight and I didn't want to end on only completing 11 pages - I needed to make it an even 12.

So I tried to come up with something cute, yet simple.  Here's what I came up with.

The pictures were from our trip in January to Tahoe and the first time Drew ever went sledding.  This page was designed to go in my book - not Drew's.

I started with a blue background matting, then a lighter blue foreground.  I rounded the corners of the foreground page, and all of the photos and title area.

The title words "Snow" and "Fun" were punch letters I got for Christmas, and the "much" was a stamp.

The snowflakes were from the Cricut - I think it was the new cartridge I picked up - Ashlyn's Alphabet.  The snowflake near the title even has a blue border taken from a scrap of blue I had lying around.

I have a border embellishment going across the bottom of the top two photos - and I'm sure you can't read it, but it says - "Let it Snow".

So not bad for a simple and quick final page.

Scrapbook Saturday - Rehearsal Dinner

Here's the second installment of pages I created a few weeks ago during my scrapbook retreat.  This one was from our Rehearsal Dinner - and the only known shot of Dave before his Bachelor Party.

The paper is one I had from a while ago, but I've not done much scrapbooking about anything other than Drew for... oh... nearly 3 years.  The title "Always and Forever" is a rub-on, there's a "brass" embellishment that's a heart right below it - and then 3 "gems".

The matting for the photos is a "wine"color - as our wedding them was Wine.  I then took a corner punch to trim the corners of the matting - and add a little design.

In the center I added a small journal section.  This was my next to last page after scrapping for nearly 12 hours.  I think my creative juices were starting to dwindle.

Scrapbook Saturday - My Gloves

Here's the start of 10 weeks of what I did while holed up in a hotel doing nothing but scrapbooking!  Oh such a rough life....

First up a page I called "My Gloves" which is what Drew called his bandages after he burned his hands in the fire pit while camping last August.

I have a "sandy" colored paper as the background and then layered it with the maroon-like paper - which happened to be a piece of scrap left over from a different project.

I picked out the four pictures taken at the campsite shortly after returning from the ER, and matted them with blue cardstock.  The three images in a row are measured about 3x4 inches. 

The hands I used for journaling are from a new cricut cartridge my Mom picked up - I think called "My Community".  I have a dark blue matting, and then a beige foreground.  The "My Gloves" heading is just the reverse matting color and the font is from a new cricut cartridge I picked up last week called Ashlyn's Alphabet (I was pretty excited about this - I got it online for under $30, including shipping).

This was one of my favorite pages I did last weekend.

We Cropped Until We Dropped

What a weekend - my Mom and I literally cropped until we dropped!  As a belated Mother's Day gift to ourselves we decided to hideaway and get some much needed scrapbooking done.

After we both got off work on Friday we headed over to a nearby Embassy Suites where we checked into our room, and then immediately headed down to the Manager's Reception - a.k.a free booze and appetizers.

Then we went back up to the room and opened another bottle of wine while we unpacked our plethora of scrapbooking supplies, and laid claim to where our crap tools would sit for the next two days.  We then sat up chatting for a few more hours then headed to bed.

Saturday morning we did the responsible thing and headed to the hotel gym.. where I again was met with a shortened run thanks to the hot air.  I think I'm destined to be an outdoor runner - not on treadmills.  After working out it was off to our free made to order breakfast and then down to business - 14 hours of non-stop scrapbooking.  OK we did take about a 2 hour break for the Manager's Reception again (more free booze!).

Here's a snippet of what we did all day...


Yes wine makes cropping all that much better!

This is just a little bit of my mess... the table is doing a great job hiding all the other crap that's on the floor, and if I'd have turned the camera around you could see all of Mom's crap.....

Here's a page from the book Mom's working on....

And then here's everything I did.  I'll have a detailed look at all of these pages over the upcoming Scrapbook Saturday posts...

We kept saying how great it was to have 100% uninterrupted time for scrapbooking.  Usually when we get together we're dealing with children/spouses/guests/phone calls/making dinner/getting home by a certain hour etc.  We really want to do this twice a year - and perhaps inviting others.  This hotel had adjoining rooms!  So we can all share our crap with each other! (Hint, hint to our MN family fellow scrappers....)

Scrapbook Saturday - Baptism

I'm awfully excited - right now I'm making more scrapbook pages with my Mom.  As a little Mother's Day present to ourselves we're holed up in a local hotel scrapping our heart away.

But to keep you satisfied until I can show off some of the pages I'm currently working on... here's one from Drew's first year album.  It's his Baptism.

I started with a paper I found and really liked - but it was awfully busy.  So I decided to cut out "mats" and slide the picture behind the background paper.  I then found a little piece of artwork and printed it off adding the date.  Simple enough, but also shows that I was a "rookie" when I created this page.

Scrapbook Saturday - First Halloween

OK so I've been on a two week hiatus with Scrapbook Saturdays - my apologies.  But I'm back with a few weeks lined up.  And what I'm most excited about - is the Mother's Day gift to ourselves.  My Mom and I are locking ourselves up in a hotel and scrapbooking the weekend away.  With a little R&R thrown in there too...

So here's another page from Drew's first year book - his first Halloween.

I started with an orange paper, with a black paper, and then another orange overlay.  I put some embellishments in the corners - and cut out a few of Drew's photos and placed them in the middle.  The part I really like is the squares I used for the letters. 

It was a tool from Creative Memories - the square punch.  It has two sizes, so it's perfect for this very effect.  The stamps were from a set my friend Lisa owns. 

Scrapbook Saturday - 10 Year Reunion

Obviously this one took me a few years to make... seeing as my 10 year reunion was before Dave and I got married.  Better late than never right?

Our reunion was a Hawaiian theme, so I was trying to create something fun and peppy.  I had a nice pink background and then used another paper through the center.  I rounded a few photos, gave a few of them a border, and tacked them down.

Then I used some kit materials for the phrases, flowers and tags.

Scrapbook Saturday - Ren Faire

I had a collection of photos from various Renaissance Faires we've been to over the years, and I've been meaning to put this page together for a while.  I finally got around to it a few weekends ago when I was scrapping with my friend Lisa.

I was sifting through a few scrapbook magazines to try and find a layout I liked.  I took an idea from one and created this.  I took one color background paper, and then liked up the photos to cut them down to 4x4 (except the 2 pictures on the bottom) and then placed them on the background to give it a border effect.

Then I tried to find a renaissance kind of style paper, and cut it down to fit the open space - which I intentionally left for such a purpose.  This was the part of the magazine layout I saw and "borrowed".  Unfortunately I cut the paper a bit too short, and my "border" effect no longer fit.

So I took a scrap from the same "renaissance faire" themed paper and cut out a little piece, and tacked it on to the left edge.  So you may have thought it was intentional had I not spilled the beans on my dirty little secret.

Finally I just stamped on the word Ren Faire.

However I felt like it was missing something, and Lisa mentioned I needed something journaled on there.  So I tried to find a piece of paper, and then got a stamp that looked like a Ren Faire era tag, and Journaled my notes.

Not bad.  It was the one page of the day that took the longest to make, despite it looking so simple.

Scrapbook Saturday - Adorable

I recently had a chance to get some scrapbooking done with my best friend Lisa last month - and for the next few weeks I'll showcase my accomplishments.

Today it's the page titled: Adorable.

This was a page I believe I started a few weeks earlier when I was scrapping with my Mom, but never finished.  All I'd done is select the photo and the blue paper and tore out the maroonish color side.  When I went back to it, I decided on the matting and found a cute little tag on Lisa's new Cricut (she has the big one, we have the little one).

I then stamped the words Adorable across the bottom of the page, and used Lisa's Cricut again to make the swirls.  I liked the reverse effect a lot too, so I threw one of those in there.  A very simple page, but yet cute!