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!

Mixed Media Fun

                                                                                                                                                             

Kaden at 7 months and Jeremy at 6 months.

 We had a great visit with
 Jeremy's in-laws while they were in SoCal recently. Holly's Mom babysits Kaden while
 Holly is at work and since we are 6 hours away I am always all about getting a new photo of our sweet grandson...so while texting his other Gramma one day I asked for a picture. She sent this one along with another one that will be scrapped together at a later date. This particular photo of Kaden while he totally looks like both of them reminded me of a photo I had of Jeremy at about the same age so I decided to scrap them together on the same page....one photo from 2013 and one from 1989. The Sketchabilities Sketch #99 was perfect for them. Even though I am not much of a mixed media girl, I felt drawn to the sketch so I decided to get out some Heidi Swapp Color Shine along with some of her cool resist papers and see what I could come up with. I must say I am very pleased with the results.

Sketch #99

This layout was done by one of their design team, Maria Shakhova.
I used it in combination with the sketch for my design. I loved all the
layers she used.

Finally Some Layouts to Share

My last post is a hard act to follow .It was kind of like a year in review post...now it's been nearly a month since blogged last....I know bad blogger. I admire women like Julie Jacob who blogs every day. I just never seem to be able to blog on a regular basis. It's kind of the way my scrapbooking has been going lately. I start a page and it sits on my table for a week or more before I get it finished. Now finally I have a few pages to share. I think it's taken me nearly all summer to finish them. Be that as it may....without any further fanfare....here are my most recent layouts and some thoughts to go with the.

The first layout was fun to do. Photos are from our trip to the Orange County Fair when Jeremy and Holly came to visit. The October Afternoon "Farm Girl" was perfect for the fair photos. I had no idea what I was going to use that cute little chipboard farm girl on when I bought the paper but totally love the out come.

The next layout has a story behind it. I have always loved the photo of Jason and his friend David from back in 2005, we were at Disneyland on a school band trip. The boys have been friends since then. They both became Eagle Scouts and have still remained friends even now that they are out of school. I surprised Jason last week and invited David to come over and spend some time with him in honor of Jasson's Birthday....of course being the good Mom that I

am I had to snap a couple of photos...much to  their dismay...I think maybe I might have had the idea for this layout running around in my head when I took the photo last week. What do you think??? I love to see how they have gone from little boys to grown up young men.

The Instagram layout is one that I started back in May when I first signed up on Instagram. I thought it would be fun to do. I started it, printed out the collage of photos and it sat unfinished for a couple of months. Finally one day when I was talking to my sister I managed to finish it with the exception of the Instamatic chipboard camera at the bottom...you see we both bought the paper when I was up visiting her last March she bought the cute little chipboard cameras and we were planning on sharing them...then we got busy scrapping and she temporarily misplaced said

cameras...fortunately she finally found them and and mailed them to me....Thanks Linda for helping me get another layout completed. =)

The last layout is one of several I have done about my journey this year. I went to the Doctors office for my 3 month post op appointment a few weeks ago, I was feeling so grateful that things have turned out so well...they could have been so different. I was feeling so wonderful that I decided to take a little "selfie" in the Doctors office and scrap about how great I was feeling.

Well there you have it....my most recent finished layouts. I still have a couple that I need to finish up so hopefully with any luck there will be another blog post coming sooner than this one...so stay tuned.