One Little Word

When I signed up for Ali Edwards One Little Word class I had no idea what I was going to do or what it would involve. Back in December "my word" chose me. With all the craziness that has been going on in my life for the past few months the one word that kept coming to me over and over was the word "Peace". I didn't know exactly what I would be doing in Ali's class or if I would even like it but I knew I wanted more "peace" in my life so I thought I would go for it. The first prompt in January I read over but was still in the throws of finishing my December Daily album so I decided not to worry about it but to continue to participate on the closed Facebook page and see if things would come together. Then Ali posted the prompt for February we were to  make a vision board for our word. She suggested cutting words and pictures out of magazines and collage them on a poster board but of course it was up to us. I decided to go a little bit of a different route. I made a photo collage on the computer of pictures that brought me peace and then I scrapped it. I love the way it turned out and I felt accomplished. Then I remembered someone had posted on the Facebook page a photo of their word written in the sand. I thought I walk at the beach every week.....I will write my own word in the sand. So today I did. I found a random stick, walked off the asphalt path and on to the sand. I wandered down to the water and carefully wrote "Peace" in the sand. I took several shots until I had one that I liked and then decided to head back up to the path to finish my walk...it was at that moment I realized that I have become "attached" to my word. I didn't want to walk away and leave the "peace" in the sand. It was mine and I felt like if I walked away I was leaving my "peace" behind. I had no idea the profound impact it would have on me once I had written it. Of course I told myself that was silly but I stood there for an extra minute or two before I could finally convince myself to leave. After I had walked a short distance I thought "you just took half a dozen pictures of your word. You aren't leaving it behind. you are taking it with you",  so off I went back to my walk....feeling "peaceful" knowing that this is only February I have 10 more months to see where my word takes me.

Pockets

It's been a while since I have blogged. As much as I love reading others blogs I don't seem to be very good at writing on my own. Life has been interesting to say the very least lately. I'm continuing to work in the Hearing Aid dept at work which I enjoy. I have a wonderful new job at church. I am working with the Young Women. They are a great group of girls and I love being with them. I think they help to keep me young. =) Of course I am still playing with paper. It's a bit more difficult now a days as I don't always have that many pictures. So the "Project Life" style of scrapbooking has really appealed to me. I wasn't sure in the beginning if I would like it but the more I do it the more I am enjoying it. In the last few months I have managed to fill up almost a whole 12x12 album full of pocket pages. I have been using mostly Teresa Collins stuff with a smattering of Heidi Swapp and Echo Park thrown in the mix. I also have found some fun digital freebies online that have well worked too. Teresa Collins was here last month and I took her pocket page class. I love that lady. She is so sweet and down to earth. She really understands that scrapbooking is so much more than putting pictures on paper. I have had fun the last couple of weeks filling up pages from her class. I can almost feel like I could say that  I am "caught up" but honestly I really don't think that is possible since I am always taking more pictures. The cool thing about the pocket pages is that I am scrapping pictures that might otherwise have never been scrapped had it not been for the pocket page method. So a big thank you to Teresa Collins for getting me started on this way of scrapbooking. It's definitely helping me get more pictures off of my computer and into my scrapbooks. I don't think I will ever give up traditional scrapbooking but this just gives me another creative outlet. So here are a couple of pocket pages I have done from Teresa's class and then a layout I did with a picture from Jason's Birthday. I am going to try and blog more frequently.....so stay tuned and find out. haha.

HAPPY!

It has been a whirlwind month for sure. I started off the month with a weeks vacation and participating in the Color Run. I had a marvelous time doing both. My sister Linda came to visit and we had a blast just hanging out together and doing girl stuff. It turned out to be unseasonably HOT while she was here. One day after my car had been sitting in the sun for an hour or so I actually saw 112 on my cars thermometer....just WRONG in my book. At least it wasn't that warm for the Color Run or we would have wilted for sure. I will be doing a separate post about the Color Run later but I had a couple of layouts that I did while Linda was here that I wanted to post. I used "You are my Happy" and "Urban Market" both lines by Teresa Collins.

Of course this post would not be complete without my sharing a photo

of my adorable new Grandson . Ryker James Morgan arrived at 1:19 PM last Friday May 23. He's was 9 pounds and 22" long. I maybe somewhat biased but I think he is absolutely adorable. I can't wait to see him in person in a week or so!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Memorial Day holiday. I am enjoying just taking it easy and hanging out at home. Have a great week everyone!

Albums Made Easy

As many of you know I have been an avid scrapbooker for many years. I have always loved to take pictures and scrapbooking is just a creative way of displaying your photos AND telling your stories. It's not all about photos and pretty papers, you have to tell the stories too. Years ago when I was teaching scrapbook classes I always tried to get that point across to my students. Trust me, my parents died very young and I have lots of photos that belonged to them unfortunately, not many stories. So I have always tried to tell stories of some kind in my scrapbooks. True I have done plenty of pages without stories but when there is a story I want to tell it. So you would think I would have jumped on the Project Life bandwagon. I love scrapping everyday moments and I love telling stories but for some reason Project Life didn't seem to fit into my idea of scrapbooking...that is of course until my all time favorite scrapbook designer Teresa Collins partnered with We R Memory Keepers and made her own version of a pocket page album. She came to Scrapbook Daisies in Long Beach and taught a class and I just had to sign up. I told her she is about the only person who could get me to try the Albums Made Easy System. Since then I have done nearly 20 pages! They are so much fun. Every pocket is like a little mini scrapbook page. You can make them as simple or as elaborate as you want, whatever works to tell YOUR story. So when Teresa posted on her blog recently that she was looking for 3 new designers to join her team I got to thinking that maybe I should apply. Finally, one day while I was walking the whole idea came to me...I've been wanting to tell my story of the past year...Teresa has this cool new line of paper called "Hello My Name Is" that I already have a bunch of...I could tell the story of my losing weight and getting healthy and do it with the Albums Made Easy system. So without further fanfare here are my layouts for the Teresa Collins Design Team Call.

New Layouts

Hi everyone...Now that I have finished my December Daily I have been able to start working on layouts again. I honestly haven't done that many in the last few months. I counted up my layouts for last year and only came up with 52....that's about half of what I usually do in a year. Mind you I don't feel like I have been any less creative but rather I have had my focus elsewhere. So I guess we will see where my creative path takes me in 2014.

The other night I wanted to scrap but wasn't sure where to start
I decided to lift a layout of one of my sweet online friends,
Jean Marmo. I love the way it turned out. Of course it helps that
I totally adore this paper line from the awesome Teresa Collins.

 

I love this selfie of Cliff and I. We weren't all "colored up"
yet but were having so much fun with the family at the Color
Run in Tempe, AZ

A fun photo of Jason with his cream soda from "Jason's Deli"
in AZ.

Love how happy he is in these photos...just not sure
he was cut out to be a "blonde" lol

Hi Everyone and thanks for stopping by to see my December Daily. Yes I know it's January already but I never quite get my album done til now anyway. I have been a horrible blogger lately as I just realized my last post was in October! ***gasp*** maybe I will be better at it in 2014...of course time will tell. I tried something different when I photographed my pages this year. I did them inside at night ( I know probably not the best but they really seemed to look ok to me and I wanted to get them done) I took them all with my phone then I went and made collages with them....so if you should have any questions about any of my pages please feel free to ask me and I can fill you in. For my album this year I once again chose Teresa Collins beautiful papers. I just can't seem to get enough of her stuff. Her Santa's List line was perfect for my book. I also incorporated a few papers from Heidi Swapp's Believe line. I thought the colors complimented each other well and it changed it up just a little bit.
This year I wasn't into a lot of story telling, though there is plenty of journaling, but there's lots of photos and plenty of artwork to make everything fun. I originally had planned on stopping the book on December 25th but with Jeremy and Holly coming after Christmas it just didn't make sense so I included the entire month of December. My work holiday party was actually just last weekend but I included those photos as well.
I want to thank everyone out there who posted layouts using Teresa's Santa's List paper because the busier I got the more I needed inspiration. Your work is AMAZING and I appreciate that you share it out there for those of us who often need some help in thinking outside the box. So without any further rambling here are my pages from my 2013 December Daily. Thanks for letting me share it with all of you!

I loved the color scheme this year and that Santa is just adorable.

Every year the month always starts out slowly and I can keep up
and then everything get crazy.

This year I did tell a few stories.

I used a few of Shimelle Laine's Journal Your Christmas prompts
this year. Here I did the weather prompt and the gift wrap prompt.

Sometimes I will add 6x6 pages to add journaling and then I
have to find something to do with the back...I made my own
little tree this page.

Having our first grandson this past year made Christmas
extra fun, even if they didn't come til after the holiday.

After 39 years of crying every Christmas about missing my
Mom, this year I didn't cry....definitely a story to document.

Thanks to self portraits I actually have some cute photos
with Cliff and I...after all I have to document my 33 anniversary.

Some more artsy pages along with some silly photos
of me making cookies

Documenting Christmas Eve and Day

More Christmas Day and a great picture of Cliff and me
from the holiday party. Thanks to one of my co-workers.

Love the photo booth photos from my work party and
the one of Jeremy and Holly too.

The holidays are about family and we had a wonderful time
with Jeremy, Holly and Kaden at the Aquarium.

The first time in 6 years I have been able to spend with Jeremy
on his birthday....so much fun. By midnight on NYE I was
sound asleep...so that's the only photo I have.

The last photo in the book is my favorite from the whole season.
Kaden was being so silly and Jason was loving playing with him
the sheer JOY on their faces makes me smile every time I see it.

DAY #126

I decided I had way too much to say about my walk today to just post it on Facebook so I decided I would blog about it instead. Normally on Saturdays I drive down to the beach and walk there. It's always fun to get away from my normal routine and enjoy the sights and sounds down at the beach. It does wonders for my mind. It kind of clears the cobwebs out and gives me time to think. Unfortunately this weekend we had some car issues to deal with so I had no real way to get down to the beach so instead I decided I needed to improvise. So improvise is what I did. This morning it occurred to me that I have been saying since I transferred to the new warehouse that I lived so close I could walk there...but I never have...so that's what I decided to do this morning is walk to Costco and back. I knew it was about 2 miles over so I could get in the same amount of walking that I do at the beach. Ok, so I admit it wasn't the same as walking at the beach but it was still good. Now I can actually say I have walked to Costco...lol Once I got there I decided I would walk the perimeter of the building. We use to have to do that as part of our floor walks for the Member Service department. Costco has since said we no longer have to do that but I remember when I use to do them it would take me a good 10 minutes to walk all the way around the building...I am here to tell you...NO MORE!!! I walked the perimeter in 6 MINUTES!!! What a difference!!! I knew I had come a long way but to actually realize I had shaved 4 minutes off my time was HUGE to me. The few co-workers that I passed thought I was slightly crazy for "going to work" when I didn't have to but it made for a great walk.

On the way home as I was cutting through the neighborhood that we use to live in I decided to walk past our old apartment. It pretty much looks the same. So many memories there when my boys were so little. How did they grow up so fast? As I continued on my way I passed the boys elementary school and I truly was going to go into the Kindergarten playground and swing on the swings but the gate was locked so I decided jumping the fence was out of the question...lol So many memories in that neighborhood....I drive through there daily on my way to work but never really take the time to stop and think about it.  Life just goes by too quickly...I need to remember to enjoy EVERY moment!!

Cool pattern in the sidewalk at Bella Terra

Loved the Bird of Paradise with the pine behind it

I am off to get stuff done around here. We are going to a Halloween Party tonight and I have some treats to make. Have a great day everyone!