Less...and More.

Hey all! This year I've made the decision to sign up for Ali Edward's One Little Word workshop. It's a year long course that helps you focus and touch base with your guiding word for the year. (If you want more info on One Little Word, check it out and join in if you'd like!) 

In years past I've had Brave, Light, Happy, and Focus as my words. I think Achieve and Create have been in the mix as well. They've met with mixed levels of success. Light and Focus kind of sucked for me while Brave and Happy have been my favorites!

This year my word is Less. I want Less stuff in my home. I want Less pounds on my frame. I want Less doubt about my self worth because of too much of the two previous things. I want my relationships to be Less affected by my concerns. I want to procrastinate Less. I'm hoping Less of the things I don't want in my life will equal More of the things that I do.

I want More time to create. More time and desire and ability to hang out with my family and friends at a moment's notice. (Or at least 5 minutes notice.) I want More confidence in my appearance. I want to be More of a good roll model for my children.

So, here's to 2017 and hoping that Less equals More! 

(More blogging, too!)

~What's your word?~

~Are you taking Ali's workshop?~

~Do you miss blogs, too?~

Spring Break-Project Photo Rescue

Ah, Spring Break. How I love you!*

We didn't go anywhere for Spring Break this year, not that we really ever do anyways. Andrew's industry really starts picking up this time of year so it's short trips if any for us. I did however, have a lot of projects I wanted to get to. 

The main project for this week was to get my scrapbooks organized. I have a few themed albums and some Project Life albums, but the rest are just albums full of random layouts. Sorted mostly by the year I made them not when the photo on the layout was taken. So, if you wanted to see the evolution of my scrapbooking, it was perfect! However, 99% of the world would rather see the evolution of our lives. Heh! So, a sort of sorts was in order.

I had two sources of inspiration for this project. One, was Project Photo Rescue. A project that Becky Higgins created and I watched so many videos about and was so inspired by. Unfortunately, I was inspired right before our school carnival. And, as I was in charge of that this year, I had to focus on other things. I watched this, this, this, and this video and read this blog post as inspiration and motivation. My other source was a layout reorganization that Ali Edwards did a few years back. Here is her blog post on that project.

First, I gathered all my albums and put them on my bed. There's actually more than I thought which makes me pretty proud of all I have scrapped. :)

After I had them all together, I sat down and took notes on what I had and what was in each album.

Then, I moved onto my mini albums. I have quite a few random shaped/sized ones that I keep in a basket in our dining room. 

I sorted through them and repaired the ones that needed a little love and taking out the ones that needed finishing or were Christmas themed.

After all that, it was time for the bulk of the project. I placed sticky notes on my dining table with the years from 2006-2016 and went through each album and stacked each layout on their year. This took a while because I wasn't as good about dating my layouts as I am now.

I also had stacks in my scraproom for older layouts. 

While looking up some of the older photo ages on Lightroom, I was reminded that I had over a year's worth of photos that were completely undated. It happened when I backed them up and didn't set it up right and then I lost the original photos. So, I decided to reorganize these photos in monthly folders as best I could. That took forever!

Here's my completed stack of layouts in my dining room.

And, the older layouts in my scraproom.

I moved all my Project Life albums into a 2x2 Expedit in our living room and put my themed albums in there as well.

I took the older layouts from my scraproom and put them in albums and labeled them.

Then, I gathered all my empty albums and set them up in my scraproom.

I tried to estimate how many albums I would need for each year and matched them up so that I had coordinating albums for that year. Then, I started putting them all in their albums.

And, here they are! I have so many of those damask patterned ones because they were on sale for like $6 at Tuesday Morning and I hit every TM in the Portland-metro area to get them. (My dining room curtains are that pattern.)

I used the damask albums for odd years so that they didn't all run together. It's easy to see where the years are this way. Then I labeled the albums with this fancy punch and used some cute mini bulldog clips to attach them. This 4x4 Expedit is in my dining room.

It feels so good to have this project done and my family really enjoys being able to find specific years and events more easily.

*I know it's Summer Break right now but the school year gets so busy after Spring Break that I got halfway through this post and stopped. I finally got my act together today! :)

Bucket List Item-Blue Hair!

When I was a kid, I wanted mermaid hair. I had this dream of hair that ran the gamut of green to aqua to blue in gorgeous waves of color. Sadly, my mom didn't have the same dream for my hair.

Well, at the ripe old age of 39 I finally did it! I have blue hair! It's just the ends and it's only aqua to blue but I love it!

I also loved scrapping it! I grabbed some of my favorite new papers and went to town!

I also tried to use some of my older embellishments like the flair above and that flower below.

 The title is made using alterable Thickers. I used Luminarte Radiant Rain in Egyptian Gold and Mediterranean to color them.

There's a little pineapple tucked in the corner of this cluster of embellishments. Since pineapples are my thing, I've been buying all the pineapple scrappy product I can. And, I try to include on on every page that is about me. I'll be so sad when this little micro trend goes away.

So, that's my first bucket list item checked off this year! Do you have any bucket list items planned?

I've got another one that will get checked off this month!!!

Stay tuned! ;) 

Unauthorized Slumber Party

My sweet little heathens snuck a slumber party on a school night and I had to get a pic.

Since they were actually asleep, Andrew and I let them get away with it and didn't tell them we knew until later.

I am grateful everyday that they not only love each other so much, but they like each other, too!

Ensuring their friendship is my biggest parenting goal. 

Because I've learned that friends come and go in life but my brother is always there.

Hello, 2016!

Hello, 2016! This is my first layout for the year. I've been itching to scrap lately. I made a December Daily album but it was pocket based...just not the same!

I decided to take part in Bossy Scrapper, a scrapping challenge hosted by my favorite scrap store, Scrap Happy Deals. It's run by my friend, Kim. 

Bossy Scrapper is a game where you have to create a layout using the items that Bossy says. In a real crop situation, "Bossy" hollers out the items over a period of time and you have to add as you go. Online, you get the whole list at once. Both are loads of fun and very inspiring for me.

The list for this month's challenge is three photos, an arrow, square alphas, ink, gold foil or glitter, rubons, word stickers, and sequins. It worked out well for me because I'd just gotten this awesome sheet of gold glitter POW paper and really wanted to use it. 

I switched my photos to black and white because the book Audrey is reading is a Christmas book and I didn't want that to be the focus of the layout. I wanted her wanting to be with me to be the focus.

I cut the "make each moment count" out of a Project Life card. I also used three other PL cards on my page. One I cut in half for a color accent, one for the LOVE next to the biggest photo, and the other for my journaling. I have sooooo many PL cards are really need to use them more.

Journaling reads, "I'd love to say I said yes right away but I didn't. It took me a minute to realize that you wanting to always be with me won't last and that one day I'll miss this. 12-14-15"

Basically, I almost told my sweet girl that I didn't want to be around her. That I needed my bath time to be my little bit of solitude. Then I realized that in 12 short years, she may not even live in our house anymore and my need for privacy seemed a little less pressing. 

She did a great job reading to me. I'm always impressed by her and her reading skills. She doesn't get frustrated when she doesn't know a word and she always is up for more reading. It makes my little bookworm heart proud!

So, that's it for my first layout of 2016. Have you scrapped this year?

Fluoride Fun

I love this layout! This photo just cracks me up and I was so excited to scrap it.

I've always had a hard time working with papers like this, with a large overall design. I really like the design I came up with, it keeps your eye focused on the photo even though it is a crazy busy paper.

I used a Freckled Fawn kit for my embellishments. I bought a few of their kits because I realized that I was quite low on embellishments that would go with lots of different lines. I really like their kits and LOVE the cute bags they come in. They've been really handy in my scraproom.

The title was easy to place, I just set one word above the line of the "chevron" and one below. 

In this little cluster, the A is for Audrey, the 5 is because she's five in this picture, and the heart is because I adore her. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Hello Love

I'm back with another layout share! This layout was made because I really want to scrap myself more. I have been focusing on that quite a bit lately. Don't get me wrong, I still scrap my kids an insane amount of the time but I make it on to the page more often now.

Anyway, this layout was about a little shoe shopping splurge I did this spring. I had a list of shoes that I was wishing for over the previous summer and as soon as the summer shoes came out this year, I was on them!

I'd been binge watching Shimelle videos and I created my embellishment clusters using her technique of grounding them with a strip of washi tape in each area. It seems a little weird at first because I feel like the washi seems so random but once I add embellishments, it looks great!

I also dug out some rubons (!) and used them on this page. I hadn't used rubons in eons and had these Dear Lizzy gold ones just hanging out in my new stash area. I finally just made myself use them and I forgot how great they are! They really helped make this layout more interesting and more cohesive.

I also got to use one of my beloved pineapple embellishments because the insole of one of my shoes has pineapples on it!!! (That may or may not have had a little to do with my purchasing them.)

Has anyone else used rubons lately? Or am I the only one that kind of moved on from them for a while? I really don't think that I've even seen them offered as an option in product lines lately.

Thanks for stopping by!