Attempting to Create a Planner/Binder (or two) :)

Remember my "Word of the Year"?  BALANCE.
Yeah...I really DO need to work on that! I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off lately both physically and mentally.  I have so many things I want to get done and so many things I want to craft that my head is spinning in all kinds of directions and, as usual, I'm zoning in on ONE THING to the sake of all the other things. I really need some...well..balance!! :)

Today I'm on the pursuit of developing a planner/binder for myself.  I'm scouring Pinterest and saving links and graphics to my favorite things and brainstorming what I want to set up for ME.  I'm trying to keep in mind PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION :)

 

In my digging around and brainstorming, I've landed on a handful of really great blogs and web sites that have piqued my motivation to create my own planner or binder and some great downloads that I can tinker around with to form pages for my own needs.  Check them out:

Miss Allison's Art:  My Homemade Planner

Organizing Home Life:  31 Days of Home Management Binder Printables

My Agenda Desktop Day Planner

I'm sure I'll be adding more as I go along :)  If you want to see the links I've pinned in my brainstorming/research, check out my Pinterest Board for ideas:

Pinterest.com/safhire/Get Organized - Planners

I have no doubt that will be growing along with time as well :)

Do YOU have a favorite system that works for you?? If so, share it in my comments section!

My goal as of right now is to make a 

1.  combination planner/home management planner and 

2.  a blog planner (as you can see, I've been inconsistent here lately - sorry about that :) )

Stay tuned for my progress :)

I'm hoping to have it ready to bind on Friday (February 1st).  A month late for most planners, but December's crises really threw me a month behind!

When contemplating whether to even set up a planner for myself, at first I thought it would make me even more anal (in perfecting my planner/binder) which would be even more time consuming, but a counselor friend of mine told me it would be the opposite.  If I create a plan tailored exactly for me and have it as pretty and graphically crafty as I want it to be, I'm more than likely to follow it. Also, she said that having a schedule to try to stick myself to would keep me from flying around in all different directions (physically AND mentally!) and not getting done what I want done.  So...I'm going to try it ;)  

Say a prayer that this works for my family and I! :)

P.S.   For household chores (which I definitely need to improve on as I have a much more "Mary" frame of mind than a "Martha" and though Jesus praised Mary, there certainly is a need for Martha too!) I downloaded an ap for my android phone a few months ago (it's available for i-phones too) called MOTIVATED MOMS.  I downloaded it a few months ago, but haven't implemented it yet with all that's been going on.  I hope to begin it on Monday though (after a busy Friday and weekend coming up).  Check out that ap. I'll post a review as I use it and let you know how I like it. I love how it's laid out so far and it's customizable (which I definitely need).

Very Positive Dr.'s Appointment for my Son!

We had a regular follow-up appointment yesterday with my son, Evan's developmental neurologist. It was a very good and encouraging visit! The Dr. was with us for about half an hour. He talked to Evan a lot and examined him. He asked us about progress and whatnot. He said he is very encouraged by Evan's "constitution" and thinks its very possible Evan could speak eventually. He wants us to talk to his speech therapist about a program we can do at home. He also told us that the rates of autism have shot up from 1 in 110 to now its 1 in 88 :( He said in a couple of months there will no longer be a diagnosis of Aspberger's as it will all be changed to be under the umbrella of ASD (autism spectrum disorder). He said the fact that Evan showed such nice empathy to me the day the usher at our church was so hateful to us and had me so upset and that Evan has been sharing a lot more is great signs of progress. He was pleased with Evan's eye contact and how very present he was with him (not at all in a world all his own).  Daddy is supposed to take the lead with potty training now too. (Evan is 9 years old, but not too interested in potty training still...)

So all in all it was a super good appointment as far as Evan goes :) Thank you, Jesus!

I told the doctor (who is so very nice and very thorough) to be square with me.  I didn't want to be in denial or have false hope either. I wanted his honest opinion of what he sees with Evan.  He said, "No, really, I see a lot of hope here. He has a really good constitution, so there's a lot of hope for our Evan."  I'm assuming by "constitution" that he meant his presence of mind, eye contact, sharing skills that are just beginning, his empathy, etc..  

So at least for the time being, I'm thrilled to be able to breath a sigh of relief and hold on to the hope that I may hear my sweet boy's voice call me mommy one day after all :)  That would be the thrill of my life! :)

Filing, Filing, and more Filing :)

I've been quite the busy bee the past several days.  I've had boxes of paperwork that I've been putting off going through, tossing, filing, etc.  In an effort to get a handle on clutter and a messy house, I began with one of the biggest issues at my house (second only to toys):  paper.

I cleared everything off the coffee table and sat for hours...and hours...going through paperwork and sorting. Pitching what didn't need kept and filing what I thought might ever come up in the future and be needed. Whew...what a job!!!

So this is what I wound up doing while going through and trying to locate papers I needed for a really important appointment last week.  Not fun!:

 So I went throughout the house and carried in all the boxes I could find that had papers in them and sat it next to the coffee table.  Then I took an empty box and went throughout the house and gathered stray papers and anything that was laying on counters and our kitchen island (which it seems is where the mail always winds up collecting).  I declared the couch and coffee table off limits to everyone else till it was all done :)

If a paper was in an envelope, it got laid flat (stapled together if more than one page) and the envelope pitched.  Once I had a big stack:

I sorted, pitched and filed.  When that stack was finished, I'd start the cycle all over again.  I worked 6 hours one day from morning till afternoon when my husband came home and was supposed to have brought me a new box of file folders (but didn't).  Off to Walmart we went where I bought TWO boxes of file folders.  I came home and worked another 6 hours.  I started all over the next day and finished up after another 6-7 hours. (Mind you, my husband is a major pack rat when it comes to papers so it was not a pretty sight!)

(I had two boxes this size...)

Yesterday, I thought all I would have to do was put all the file folders back in the file cabinet and call it a completed job at last.  Ok, that is what happened, but I forgot to take into account the files already in the file cabinets.  I had to go through those and merge most of them with the files I had just created in new folders, throw away really old files and re-organize them all and get it all straightened out.  That took several hours yesterday, but now I can honestly say the job is DONE.  If I need another paper for another meeting, etc. I can just go to the filing cabinet and pull it out and be done with it.  No more looking through piles or boxes of papers trying to find something. I certainly hope to keep up with the filing too and not let this ever get so out of hand again!

Oh...and I only went through the upstairs.  There are lot of papers here and there in the basement, but I know it's all my husband's stuff and nothing that pertains to the running of the household, so that's on him :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So that was all just normal paperwork.  I had to file scrapbook memorabilia I havent' gotten around to scrapbooking too. Fortunately, I HAVE been keeping up on that for the most part, so that was only a small part of the total job. This is my system for things I want to scrapbook (which I'm WAY behind on!):

I'ts a 13-month plastic file you would normally store documents in.  I buy one of these every year and when something comes up I want to save, I put it in the section of the file under the month it happened in. Then when I get around to scrapbooking it, it's right there along with things that happened in the same month. (As you can see this one is 2004 so I'm way way way behind).  (I may use the Project Life system to try to get caught up on back scrapbooking more quickly).

Maybe there is a different system that works better for you, but this has proven really handy for me.  I keep these plastic files in a box with the other years' files and when I want to work on a scrapbook for a particular year, I just pull out that one file instead of the whole box.

This is the back section of my messy living room. (I thought to take this picture in the middle of the project I'll be posting about next, so it's even messier than it would have been).You can see the little file room I have in the corner.  There are two big upright file cabinets in there left over from my husband's family's company.  The room was originally a little room built into the corner of our living room for our parrot to live in.  Sadly, our parrot died several years ago and as my husband has had a kidney transplant, he isn't supposed to have any more birds. So, I turned our bird's room into a file room.

See that super messy desk there? :)  That's the topic for my next post (probably tomorrow).  I'm tackling that too :) I actually redid that a few days ago, but need to organize a bit before I post a picture of the "after".

I bought a $15 bookcase from Walmart you put together yourself.  I put it together and then cut it in half with my jig saw and turned a bookcase into two hutches.  One hutch sits on top of my desk at the back and the other hutch sits on top of a bookcase I put to the left of my desk. In between the two hutches sits my new Cameo cutting machine.  I had originally put that downstairs in my craft room, but I quickly got tired of hauling my laptop down the stairs to the craft room every time I wanted to use my Cameo, so it's here on this desk now.  I'll use my craft room for every other crafty thing :)

More about that to come though...

I'm on a mission to get organized and de-cluttered, and after having not blogged for several days I realize I'm forgetting to work on my word of the year:  Balance.  I dove headfirst into the filing project and didn't stop for anything unless I absolutely had to instead of working on it a little at a time and moving on to something else and going back to it the next day.  BUT...it sure is nice having it all neatly filed and organized now :)  Gotta figure out that Balance thing still ;)

Freebies share - Project Life Quick Pages for Planning

I'm working on getting caught up on the past 2 weeks of my Project Life album.  The long-time digital scrapbooker in me is finding ways to merge the two and I've found it's really helpful in the planning stage. So far the only page protectors I have is the size A type, but hope to get a few other sizes as I go along.  I decided to make some quickpages so I can just plop my images into the layout so I can see it in one place before deciding on what pictures to have printed (or to print out myself).  I made three versions of the size A in three different resolutions.  71 dpi, 200 dpi, and 300 dpi.  I thought I would share them with you while I was at it :)  This will be my first time using a file sharing site, so I hope I do this right :)

This is an example.  This is how I planned my Intro pages.  (The empty squares is where I'm using a few Becky Higgins journaling cards):

I downloaded the graphics here other than the card on the left middle which I made and the right side of the far right bottom card (other than my pictures of course).  I wish I had remembered to keep track of where I'd gotten them from so I could give credit.  Sorry!  (I spread my son's big picture on the far right into 3 pockets (the 4x6 on top and two 3x4's under that).

Happy Scrapping!

It was such a busy week!

I got a few emails from a few of you asking if I was ok :) Aawww...that was so kind of you!! :)
I'm still here! It's just been SUCH a busy week I haven't had time to update my blog. I think things have calmed down a bit, so hopefully I can get back on track.

We had a SUPER important appointment we've been gathering paperwork and filling out forms and whatnot for weeks now:

Ugh...I HATE paperwork, don't you??  Well I should say I hate my OWN paperwork. I'm ok doing paperwork when I was a secretary, but my own financial paperwork makes me a nervous wreck. As you can see from my messy dining room (apart from all the papers!) I am badly in need of some home organization time and motivation too :)

Oh, and on the way to the appointment while we were still on the highway doing about 50-55 mph, this happened! :

My husband was driving and managed to keep the car under control.  We have a front-wheel drive car and it was a rear tire that blew, so that helped, but we had to hobble around till we found a tire place to get a new tire put on (as my husband procrastinated and didn't get the spare fixed forgot to fix the spare which was also flat).  We finally got a new tire and though they didn't have a brand new tire at the time to fit our car, they did have a really good used one (looks pretty close to new to me!) which they gave us installed and all for $31, including tax.  Score :)  The good Lord was certainly watching over us that day.  We did make it to our important appointment before hobbling to the tire store and I am just AMAZED the rim didn't get bent at all (my stubborn husband kept driving on it...ugh).  But it all worked out great by the end of the day.

I have Pinterest on my phone, so I've been pinning here and there when my husband is driving or I'm waiting for him when we're out and about, so if you follow me on Pinterest, you probably saw a ton of pins from me :)

Today I went on strike lol.  I spent a good bit of time in my craft room getting to know my new Silhouette Cameo cutting machine better and making some die cuts and cards for my Project Life scrapbook.  I'll post some pics from that as soon as I fix one of the pictures that's not aligned the way I want it to be.

I hope you all had a great week!!!

Lighthouse Window Done and Delivered!

I finally got the lighthouse window finished and delivered to my friend last night.  She had given me the window and the paints around Thanksgiving but then my husband got sick and was in the hospital for a week and all sorts of other things came up (Christmas being one of them) and I just finally got it done.  Here is the finished product:

I never claimed to be an artist mind, you (I wish!) and especially as it was my very first time painting with glass paint, this was quite a challenge for me.  The glass paint is really thin and the colors are deceiving.  I'd paint on a layer of light blue and it would dry dark blue. A finished color of black when on light grey.  I could go on and on :)  I had to blend so many colors to get what I thought the final result would be and then it would dry completely differently and I'd have to touch up (and usually scrape it off and start again) many times.

What I finally wound up doing was making sure that all the paint that was actually touching the glass was the glass paint (so it would stick well) and then going over it with some acrylic and glass paint blend.   Also, I painted white caps in the water, but it dried blending in with the blue apparently...  it was SO CONFUSING.

So anyway...my hope was that the glass paint being stuck to the glass and then the acrylic going on to the glass paint would all stick together well enough and not scrape off.  (I told my friend to tack on a piece of white cardboard or poster board to the bad side so nobody could accidentally scrape any paint off just to be on the safe side).

I used my new Silhouette Cameo to cut out the black text from black vinyl and applied that to the GOOD side (the side you see and the opposite side from the side I painted on).  It was the first time I'd used my Cameo other than a few test runs with cardstock, so it was nice that that turned out so well.  I learned a lesson with that in that IF I ever paint on glass again and someone wants text overtop of it, to PUT THE TEXT ON FIRST :)  That way I can put a ruler on the other side of the glass to line it up better when I apply the letters. THEN paint it.  (Live and learn, right? )

This is an in-process picture.  See how I painted the white caps?

(This is the bad side...the side I painted on).  White caps with lots of light blue painted in with the darker blue to make the water look kind of stormy.  Well you can see from the finished picture above, it did not dry that way. It turned out all blue (ok...we all know blue is my absolute favorite color, but come on...).  I made sure the white was touching the window too, and not just painted overtop as you wouldn't see it from the other side if it wasn't touching the glass.  Apparently it dried transparent or something.  Weird..  This was huge lesson in painting on glass with glass paint for me. I have lots to learn if I attempt this again! :)

See the "black" lighthouse top when the paint was wet?:

Grey :)

And the bottom of the lighthouse that's made from light brown bricks separated by dark brown lines?

Wet Paint.  Two distinct colors:

Dried Paint.  Same color:

The browns were a lot MORE uniform before I painted a coat of light brown acrylic over them on the opposite side which brought some dimension out.

The two colors of brown were "Cocoa" and "Root Beer Frost".  You'd guess the Root Beer Frost would be the light brown right (Frost...)?  Nope...it was the dark brown.  The cocoa was the light brown (though both dried dark...ugh).  I don't get it!

And due to the weird brown colors issue, what's supposed to be rocks around the lighthouse looks more like sand (my husband said..."Oh that sand looks good!"  Sand? Arghh...

But...I guess with all the tinkering around I did with the acrylic paints and whatnot, people seem to like it :) I just wish the colors had been true to their names and the way the packaging made them look like they would be when dry and I hadn't had to tinker with mixing in acrylics to get the proper color.  Then it would have been a pretty translucent paint.  I will say however, that I really like the way the sky turned out. 

I also like the way the text looks sitting on TOP of the glass and how it casts a shadow onto the painted area below it. That was a happy accident :)

I'm glad the project is finally done and finally delivered to my sweet, patient friend who seems happy with it :)  I'm glad also, that I did tackle something new. I love learning and working through unexpected things that come up to try to solve a problem (with creative things anyway) to create a work around.  Thanks for helping me try something new, Wilma!

On to the next project and getting to know my Cameo better too!

Cutting Vinyl Text with Silhouette Cameo

So I got the Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting machine for Christmas.  There's been so much going on that I just got to unpack it the other day!

Anyway, I have this project I'm working on for a friend from church.  She brought me this window she wanted me to paint a lighthouse scene on (with glass paint which I'd never used before) with the words of the chorus to the gospel song, "The Lighthouse".  I was totally intimidated as I'd never painted on glass before. Ok...well never INTENTIONALLY painted on glass before :)  But I've been giving it my best shot.

After I got painting it, I knew there was no way I could paint the text on it with that thin (kind of watery) glass paint and have it look halfway decent, so I decided to paint the scene on the backside, and use my handy dandy new Cameo to cut the text out of black vinyl and attach it to the front of the window (which totally rocks because it casts a neat shadow onto the scene on the other side of the window glass!)

Anyhoo...I watch a few videos on how to use the Cameo and do a little research and I get busy unpacking the machine and getting it all set up.  That part was no problem. However, I'd never come across a video on how to cut text out of vinyl before so after a handful of rookie mistakes, I finally got it right and thought I'd post a tutorial here for other rookies so that maybe I can save them a few gray hairs that I got in the process :)  So here we go:

The first thing you need to do is create the text you want to use in the software (I have the designer edition so I hope all of this is the same in the standard edition).  Click on the text tool on the left (where I drew the red arrow below):

Don't choose a font that's really skinny or you'll just cause yourself some real headaches if you're still in the rookie phase, like me :)  This font is Ariel size 72. Now that I look at it, I realize I didn't use bold. That may have helped :)  Initially, I tried to copy and paste the text from a Word document into the Silhouette Studio software, but that didn't work (at least not for me...maybe there's a way to do it after I get more familiar, but I just typed it into the software all over again for the time being).

Next you want to change your settings and your blade depth so the blade cuts through the vinyl correctly. 

Next click on the "Page Tools Window" icon in the upper right hand corner.  It's the red square within a black square.  I circled it in red below:

Choose the width of your vinyl (I was using a sheet of 12 x 24, but only cutting within the 12 x 12 area, so I chose 12 x 12.

Then choose (and this is really important because it's where I screwed up the first time and was ready to pull my hair out because I couldn't figure out why my vinyl was sliding all over the place in the cutter!):  At the bottom is a "Cutting Mat" selection window.  Choose NONE.  (When you cut a full sheet of vinyl you won't use your cutting mat.  This I did learn from a video somewhere. If you have scraps, you can use those on the cutting mat later).  So...rookie mistake #1 for me corrected :)

Next click on the "SILHOUETTE CUT SETTINGS" icon in the upper right immediately to the left of the previous place you clicked.  This time it's a pencil you will click on. Again, I circled it in red below:

In the first window, scroll down and click on "Vinyl Silhouette Brand" (ok, I used Cricut brand, but only because I found it easily at Walmart while we were there shopping for groceries).  

For the cutting speed and thickness and blade setting, I referred to this chart I found on Pinterest:

And I discovered what they have listed there for vinyl is the same thing the Silhouette Cut Settings window said to use as well (I have to do things the hard way at times lol).  But it's a nice chart to keep on hand when you're trying to figure out settings for other mediums as well.  The pin linked to Classy Clutter but when I went there to try to find the actual link to share here, I couldn't find it.

Ok...back to cutting our vinyl text!

Make sure you have your blade set to 2 (and make sure you clamp the blade back down again unlike I did the first and second times!!) :)  Ugh :)

Once you have your settings adjusted and your vinyl loaded (WITHOUT THE MAT), you can click on the CUT button  on the bottom (where I...yep..you guessed it...circled it in red).

If you're still confused, check out Expressions Vinyl Blog for a little extra info (at least it helped me)

Once your vinyl is loaded correctly and your settings are adjusted, click that CUT button and let her rip (not literally, we hope!)

Once your cutting is done, unload your vinyl and you should see something similar to this:

Now here's what REALLY helped me and believe it or not, I didn't see a tutorial or read any info on it, but it just kind of dawned on me when I realized what this big roll of tape was that came with my vinyl kit  I got with my Cameo (and remembered reading something in passing in a Pinterest pin about using freezer paper for transfer tape.  TRANSFER TAPE...aha! So THAT's what that stuff is :)

  I forgot to take a picture of it, but mine looks like this picture which I borrowed from the web site of WM Plastics Inc. after doing a Google image search:

   You COULD just peel the letter off one letter at a time (like I did for the first few letters before realizing it's not as easy to line it up and get it to stick in just the right place as it seems), but just save yourself the frustration (and tons of time) and use the transfer tape method. 

  Here's what ya do:

  Cut off a piece of the transfer tape about the size of 2-3 words or so.  Lay the tape (sticky side down) over the text that's been cut in the vinyl. (See the picture below).  Press it down over the vinyl text really well so it picks up the letters that have been cut out (concentrating on the dots for the "i", etc.)  Then slowly pull the transfer tape away and you should have the black vinyl letters now "transferred" to the "transfer" tape (I'm such a clever girl..heh...)

You don't have to use the cutting mat with a big piece of vinyl because the vinyl is sticking to a backing already and the vinyl letters pull away from the backing which doesn't get cut.

You will be left with letters on the transfer tape like so:

Sorry the words are different. I was taking pictures along the way so I could share the information with a friend and some pictures turned out better than others as I was working and taking pictures at the same time...

Your letters are now on the transfer tape.  Pull out the project you want to apply the letters to (in my case a window I'd painted on the other side of).  Line up the text overtop the surface you want to apply it to and stick the transfer tape with the letters onto the surface (again, sticky side down):

At this point I realized what I will do next time IF I ever do a painted glass project with text again.  Do the lettering FIRST, so I can put a ruler on the other side of the glass in order to line the text up better.  Live and learn, right? :)  

I forgot to take a picture of this, but your vinyl should come with a flat stick (like a tongue depressor) or you may have a tool that comes with a cutting kit that has a flat end (mine is a pair of tweezers that has a flat rounded end on the other end).  Take that stick or tool and rub over the letters to ensure they stick to the surface you want them to remain on.  Once they're on well, slowly peel away the transfer tape leaving the vinyl letters on the surface (in my case, glass):

Do it slowly as you'll want to carefully make sure the vinyl letters don't peel away with the transfer tape.  What I found is that rounded edges stayed on pretty well, but skinny things (like the letter I above) tended to want to pull off. Oh..and the dot in the letter i will try to pull away about half the time, so make sure you watch out for that.  You'll be left with something like this:

Next you'll need to use a pair of tweezers or something sharp like that (I started out with my fingernail...not a good idea...it tended to wrinkle the text I wanted to leave on the window) and remove the center of letters like the A's and the D in the picture above.

Then move on to the next set of words until you're done.  Here's how mine turned out:

Not bad for my first project, I think.  Again, next time the letters go on FIRST so I can use a ruler or straight edge on the other side to apply the words a little more straight.

That's it :)  I'll share more info on the window I painted once it's done.  I have to do some touch up and then I have to paint the window frame itself next.  I know normally you'd probably want to paint the frame first and then put the vinyl letters on and THEN paint your scene on the other side of the glass, but I was waiting on my friend to get back to me on what color she wanted me to paint the frame and I decided to get busy with the rest of it while I waited to hear back from her.

I learned a lot from this project.  Happy lettering!

One Word - My One Word for 2013

   I've been seeing posts from others about choosing and claiming ONE WORD to be your goal for yourself for 2013.  In honor of my first attempt at Project Life (and for something to create as I await my kit in the mail) I created this graphic to go on my first page of my album.

   I didn't have to think at all for what my word would be.  My word is BALANCE.

   I've always been an "All-or-Nothing" kinda girl and that's messed me up more times than I can count. If I could get my life in balance, it would be so much better!  If I could balance my interests, responsibilities, eating, spiritual life, online time, crafting (you name it!) I could be so much more productive and fulfilled, I think.

   So I guess you could call this my first freebie I'm sharing :)  This is a 4 x 6 printable that fits perfectly in the Project Life page protectors.  Feel free to use it, if you'd like. I just ask that you don't sell it or claim it as your own :) Just right click the image to save it.

   Once I begin my album (after it arrives), I plan to choose one day of the week to share my layouts and to focus on Project Life.  I hope to make some Project Life friends along the way as well!

Some of My Digital Scrapbooking Layouts

These are just a handful of my digital scrapbooking layouts I've done over the years. Ones I could find easily enough already saved in thumbnail form anyway :)  There are some that has a woman with her face smeared over. That's my sister. She didn't want her picture shared on Facebook at the time (where I shared the layouts of the images with her picture smeared out), but her face is still intact on the real full-size (12 x 12 300 dpi) layouts.

Some of the layouts have graphics collected here and there on the internet and a few digi scrapping yahoo groups that I used to be in (and which used to be active but have died out since then) (Sorry I lost track of who created the ones I didn't. Like I said, it's been years that I was collecting them).  However, quite a few of the graphics I created myself too.

This one of my son is my very favorite ever.  I made the template and the papers myself:

This is a layout of our dog, Rudy:

A Mother's Day layout:

A mini-vacation while searching for family history information:

8 screenshot thumbnails of Heritage layouts:

My mom's birthday

Some layouts for my recovery album that never got finished (see...told ya!) :) (I found these on TwoPeasinaBucket.com I'd posted in 2007):

More of my mom's birthday:

My son and his little basketball hoop:

I'm one of those mommies who just loves pictures of her little boy asleep ;)

My son and his cousin at Chuck e cheese

My husband's baptism:

My son's dedication:

My son and his swimming pool :)

A lazy Memorial Day:

My husband's aunt and uncle's 50th anniversary party:

My son and his Tickle Me Elmo and everyone else's reaction:

My family:

More Chuck e cheese:

Again, these are only a few of my digital layouts :) I have many of my layouts printed out and put into albums, but I have many that aren't printed out yet.  I have a wide-format printer that prints the 12 x 12 layouts, but it sure goes through the ink! (Which is why I haven't printed them out in a long time!)  I may look into getting the rest put into photo books.

So anyway...that gives you an idea of my passion for digital scrapbooking.  I love it, but I'm a little anal it can be so time consuming that I get really behind in my memory keeping. That's where I hope Project Life will come into play in 2013.  Wish me luck :)