Goodbye 2013

I've noticed a lot of people doing Top 13 posts for 2013, but I don't think I'm qualified to follow as that would be half of my posts for the year. Yep, this was a pretty lean post year. This is going to be my 28th and last post of 2013, albeit a small one.

The picture above is of our yearly and appropriately gifted ornaments from the Barefoot Contessa and Alison. Each year they manage to outdo themselves.

Can you tell what event these ornaments were inspired by?

Nailed it. Right down to the race numbers. Alison found an Etsy seller that handmade these ornaments based on this picture. Love them.

I love Peanut Head's sunglasses too. They look like tinted swim goggles.

We had a quiet Christmas in the Scott house. I was unfortunate enough to catch a chest cold on the eve of Christmas Eve, and I spent Christmas day on the couch reading and napping. Although it wasn't fun, I was so thankful that I didn't have to be at work or write sub plans in order to rest and recover. If I'm going to be sick, this is the time to do it. Sadly.

I think this is my favorite Christmas present. It's from Stinkerbell.

Number 3 is a little odd, isn't it? Since when is a kiss a chore? Well, the Stink loathes lip kisses. Especially after the giver has slept or eaten, as indicated by the addendum next to the check box.

I wonder if she'd notice if I erased her addendum and added fifty more check boxes instead.

Probably she would and then as a consequence declare the entire coupon null and void.

However, because I'm not beneath trickery, I'm going to collect on that lip kiss, and then I'm going to print out another coupon on account of I scanned the original for this post. I shall then approach the Stingy Kisser and attempt to collect on another kiss with my counterfeit coupon. Aaaaaand, don't tell the Stink, but before I collect on that kiss I'm going to eat a gigantic bowl of mashed potatoes (her nemesis) upon awaking from a long winter's nap.

I simply cannot wait.

This is the first Christmas vacation since I went back to work that we've had a two week long break. It has been awesome. I don't feel like I'm running out of time, although on Sunday I'm sure I will, and I've had a lot of time to do the things I want to do and relax.

One of the things I've been doing is working on my digital album. I'm up to 70 pages completed, and I now need just 30 before I'll be ready to print my next book. 

The layouts above are a new album I just started for myself and my siblings. I'm working on an actual album for my mom, and I decided that I may as well scan the pictures as I go and create albums for myself and my brother and sister.

Of course that meant I needed to buy a new digital kit. Since I'm using Becky Higgins' Digital Project Life and the templates, and my pictures are older, I chose the Heritage Edition.

This is just a glimpse of that kit, but you can see it better by following the link above. If you want to check out the other Project Life Digital Kits, go here.

Not that I'm advertising or anything. Becky Higgins has no idea who I even am. I just love the concept and I'm all about getting things done simply.

On that note, Happy New Year!

Winding Down and Gearing Up

Before I start my usual rambling, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge all the men and women who serve and have served our country so that we can continue to enjoy our freedom. Thank you for your service and your sacrifices.

This Memorial Day weekend I am acutely aware of those sacrifices because I'm thinking about my cousin, Dan Anders, who lost his son, Mabry Anders, in Afghanistan on August 24, 2012.

I can't seem to find the words to express my sadness and gratitude for the sacrifices that have been made that allow us to be free, so I'll just leave it at that, and say thank you.

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm happy to report that I've pulled out of my funk, and several weeks ago I started getting that itch to make a list of all the things I want to change for next year. I think it's called inspiration. I have so many ideas floating around in my head of all the things I'm going to accomplish this summer for next school year.

The first of which is going to be to PAINT MY CLASSROOM! So excited about that. My principal said yes. My first choice was purple but he vetoed that because it's one of the colors for our rival school. I can see his point, so TEAL it is!

Friday was the last day of school for the kids in our district, and I go back for a teacher work day after Memorial Day. Even though I go back for one day, this weekend pretty much marks the beginning of my summer vacation.

The biggest goal that I have for this summer is to make a sizable dent in my picture backlog and get back to digiscrapping my photos. I stalled at the end of 2008, because WORK, so I'm a good four and half years behind. My goal is to complete two pages a day, which works out to be 168 pages total.

Yesterday I sat down and had a little binge session to kick off my summer and banged out 26 of those pages. I sat at my computer for so long, my butt actually cramped up and fell asleep. That's a big cramp, let me tell you.

In order to accomplish my goal I'm going to be using Digital Project Life. I've been incorporating my blog into my digital books because I tell so much of my family's stories through the blog, that it's super easy to just copy and paste those blog posts into my book. Any pictures that I have sitting in iPhoto that didn't make it onto the blog, I will put into Project Life templates.

This was my first Project Life page and it was super easy. Well, super easy after I went through the tutorial for beginners on JessicaSprague.com. I've never used a template before, so I felt like I needed to be walked through the process. I'm glad I did too, because I learned a lot and probably saved myself hours of bumbling around.

I love the Jessica Sprague tutorials because they make using Photoshop attainable for those of us that need to have it spelled out.

If you're not familiar, the cool thing about Project Life is that is simplifies the process so you can quickly get your pictures and journaling into your albums without having to buy and store a lot of expensive supplies. Not to mention the surface area scrapbooking requires.

So that's my big goal for this summer. I have lots of other little plans, and I'll be sure to share some of those with you. I should be posting more than what I have been this school year, but it probably won't start right away as I have some catching up to do with the fam. We need some bonding time. Some of that is going to involve camping, which isn't my favorite because DIRT. Yeah, I'll deal, but INDOOR PLUMBING. I super love indoor plumbing.

It isn't easy being an OCD Freak.

Doing Whatever I Want

The end of the year is fast approaching, and I keep thinking of things that I want to share with you, but I've been too lazy to get up and do something about it. I'm going to attempt to do a little of that in this post.

The first of those things is, at first glance, possibly a little boring. It's our 2011 Christmas ornaments from my Mother-in-Law, The Barefoot Contessa.

Every year, the BFC gets every single person in her extended family an ornament that is appropriate to the year they've had. Quite often the ornament makes light of a comical event in the person's year. My ornament this year is the cruise ship, and it is appropriate, although not comical, because Peanut Head and I went on a cruise for our 20th anniversary.

Stinkerbell's ornament, however, is a knee slapper.

The Stink's comical even for 2011 was the fact that she was assigned a mule at Girl Scouts Horse Camp. It's appropriate, it's ironic, and it's hysterical. The BFC gets extra points for this one.

Peanut Head's ornament had us all stumped until we asked The BFC about it. I had to slap my forehead, it was so appropriate and I had let it slip my mind.

His ornament makes light of this unfortunate event. I have to hand it to The BFC, she's good.

Zoe Bug's ornament was a horse, just because in her world it's horse, horse, horse, horse. I took a picture of it, but it was blurry so I left it out. I could retake it, but then I'd have to move. Not happening.

The BFC has a knack for finding the perfect ornament. She frequently procures her ornaments at  Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, just in case you need to know.

On another note, I'm on break from school this week and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. We don't have enough snow to play in and it's too cold to go outside just for the sake of getting fresh air, so we're hanging out inside. I'm not complaining either. I love being inside, in my sweat pants, doing whatever the heck I feel like, because I'm not constrained by any deadlines. It's pure bliss.

I'm taking advantage of the extra time by working through some Photoshop tutorials and learning how to use my new program. I've been staying up super late, and when I go to bed I dream about digi scrapping in Photoshop. It's awesome.

So I tapped into a bunch of tutorials over at JessicaSprague.com and there's so much great stuff there, that I'm going to be busy learning for a long time. Sadly, the tutorials aren't free, but the one that I've been working through has four complete lessons with five or six tasks within each lesson. I'm averaging about one lesson every other day. The lessons come with all the supplies you need to do each of the layouts too, so that's pretty nifty.

I figure I'll wait a few months before I buy another lesson because I need to give myself time to process all the new information and get comfortable using my new skillz.

I found the Jessica Sprague site in connection with Becky Higgins' Digital Project Life. One of my New Year's resolutions for 2012 is to make progress towards getting caught up on my backlog. Notice I didn't say I was going to get caught up, but instead make progress.

I don't want to psyche myself out with the stress of another unattainable goal. Not that it's unattainable, but I like to play head games with myself and set myself up for failure. This is how I outsmart myself and work around my self inflicted obstacles.

Project Life is going to help me with that, by enabling me to focus on the story and not spend so much time on the creative layouts. I'll still do layouts like the one above, but they will be scattered throughout my albums and not stressing me out with the pressure of needing a fabulous layout for every ding dang picture.

Or stressing me out because I only have one or two pictures for an event and I don't want to waste a whole page on a one-photo layout. I hate that.

The last thing I want to share with you today is the Christmas gift I gave to my students this year. I had good intentions of getting these up earlier this month, but I ran out of time. I you like the idea, you can pin it for next year. You are pinning, right?

If you aren't and you want to, e-mail me and I'll send you an invite. You must start today. Trust me.

I got this great idea that I was going to give my kids water bottles for the classroom. They drive me crazy with their up and down to get a drink every ding dang minute. I knew I couldn't afford really nice water bottles for the whole class, but I was able to score some pretty decent ones at the dollar store. I bought every last one and I was able to get exactly the number I needed. I was crawling around, digging behind plastic containers to come up with 27 cups, 27 lids, and 27 straws to make a complete set. I really lucked out. 

I cut the names out of vinyl on my Cricut and they went together surprisingly fast. Then I stuffed them with a candy cane, an Airhead, and a mint and left them on their desks for them in the morning. The best part was that my kids loved them and they were very surprised that I personalized the cups for them. That made me feel all tingly and lovey dovey inside.

I heart their sweet little hearts.

And I miss them, but I do not want my vacation to end.

Did you hear that, Father Time? Slow the bus down, will ya?

2011 Christmas Card

I just finished our 2011 Christmas card, WHOO HOO! I've been pretty neglectful about sending out Christmas cards since I went back to work, and I am determined to get them out this year.

My goal today was to sit down and put together our Christmas card. My Creative Memories sbcStudio software for the Mac is STILL not working, and I decided that I am finished waiting for them to fix the stoooooooopid program. I bit the bullet and downloaded the newest version of Photoshop Elements, went through some tutorials, and bumbled around to come up with this card. It's pretty simple, but my PSE skills are limited, so I'm good with it.

I would love some tips about how to organize and access paper and embellishments from those of you who are PSE pros. School me, please.

I never got around to getting our family portraits taken (because I'm fat), so I went with pictures from this year. Of course our cruise portrait made it in there, and the highlight of the girls' year, Horse Camp. You know my Christmas letter is going to mention Stinkerbell's mule. I cannot wait for that.

How about you? Are you doing a photo Christmas card this year?

Crazy Eight

My baby turned eight today. She was so excited for this day, in spite of the fact that I kept begging her to stay little. The little snot doesn't listen to a word I say. There's a reason why we call her Stinkerbell.

I had one of my secretly proud, probably shouldn't be proud, parenting moments yesterday. On the way home from school she told me that a little boy in her class put her in a head lock, and she turned around and punched him in the stomach. I know I should have said "We don't solve our problems with violence, sweetie."

But I didn't.

I said, "I hope no one saw that." As in, I hope you didn't get caught because, You Go Girl! Tell that boy not to mess with you!

My Little Flower, she is not. That's Zoe Bug. She's a Delicate Flower. Stinkerbell . . . is a Scraggly Weed.

The red silky shirt you see The Stink wearing is actually Zoe's shirt. Annika has been coveting it for two years. She begs and begs Zoe to let her wear it. Finally today, for the momentous occasion of her eighth birthday, Stinkerbell was permitted to wear the Coveted Silky Red Shirt.

She was so happy.

We had her birthday party after school at the movie theatre. You know what that means . . . I didn't have to clean my house.  Whoo hoo! I love me a good off-site b-day party.

We saw the movie "Hop" at the theatre, and let me tell you, it was silly. The animated characters were adorable and had cute personalities, but the main human character was a little hard to take at times. Peanut Head and I had to pause for mutual eye rolling and exaggerated pretend vomiting several times.

We were the adults in attendance.

The fun part for me was making the party favors. I found the cutest digital kit, Kate Hadfield's Movie Night, almost a year ago. That's when I decided that Annika's next birthday party was going to be a movie party.

I am quite experienced at creating the Kodak moment around the coordinating scrapbook sticker, and this was just another version of that.

"I have a Potty Training Sticker Sheet and we are going to potty train if it kills me. I don't care if you're only eighteen months old. I own the sticker sheet!"

I may or may not have done that.

I scored the popcorn containers at the Target Dollar Spot, two for $1.

I filled the popcorn containers with Hop-worthy items.

Then I stuffed the whole shebang in a clear goodie bag and tied the digitally created tag on with a piece of ribbon.

I love my digitally created artificial Kodak moments.

Digital Scrapbooking with sbcStudio for Mac

I've received several e-mails asking about the new sbcStudio software from Creative Memories. It's CM's first digital scrapbooking software for the Mac. I mentioned that I've been frustrated while learning to use the software, and that is still true.

It's not so much learning how to use the software, as that there are a lot of bugs in it, and I've spent a lot of time trying to get things to work that should be working, but aren't. The software was initially scheduled to come out on November 1st, but then was delayed until the 22nd. Within a month, the first patch was released to fix bugs, and another is scheduled for January 31st.

I've advised several people that are considering buying the software to wait until the bugs are worked out. That being said, some of you have it already and are seeking help in using it. I found a Facebook Group called How to Scrap on Mac that is just for the sbcStudio software, and it is pretty helpful.

I've also e-mailed CM's technical support for help, and they've been pretty good at getting back to me. If you have the software, and you need help, I encourage you to e-mail them. The e-mail address is sbcstudiosupport@creativememories.com. The more people that Creative Memories hears from about problems they are having, the faster the problems will get fixed. 

If you don't have a Mac and you're looking for digital scrapbooking software, then I highly recommend the StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software. It has been out for several years now, and has even gone through a couple upgrades. It isn't Mac compatible, although I've used it with success on my Mac, by using a Bootcamp partition which allows me to run Windows driven software. The only thing I don't like about going this route, is that I have to restart my computer in Windows whenever I want to use the software. I have to wait 45 seconds or so for the whole process, and I'm very impatient.

All that aside, the software is super easy to use, and there are lots of tutorials available on the web. One of my favorite places for help, is Cathie Owens' blog which is specifically geared towards using the StoryBook Creator Plus and the Memory Manager software. She also has some things for Mac software users.

I hope this answers some of the questions I've been getting about the digital scrapbooking software. Feel free to e-mail me (just click on "contact" in my menu bar) if you have other questions.

Reader Lori Stevens left a comment about Pixels 2 Pages, which is another great site for StoryBook Creator Plus tips. 

Holiday Paint Can Inserts . . . Finally

I'm sorry that these are so late in coming. I think I've mentioned that I'm learning a new digi scrapping software--the Creative Memories sbcStudio for macs. It's a lot different than StoryBook Creator Plus, and there are quite a few bugs still being worked out, which is causing a little crankiness on my part. And wasted time. Grrrr! It'll all work out in the end though.

At least that's what I keep telling myself in order to keep from jumping off a bridge. A bridge with icy cold water and ice beneath it. Actually, it's probably just the cold keeping me from taking the plunge. I dislike cold very much.

Check out these little knobber jobbers. Don't you just love them? I found them at Porter's, and it was all I could do not to slap my forehead.

Why didn't I think of this? These paint cans can be a pain to open, especially when you are in a hurry and there's chocolate inside. As an example.

Some genius at Porter's came up with this idea, and I can't even tell you how in love with it I am. I didn't buy them right away. I thought that maybe I could find some even cuter ones, maybe even cheaper at a hardware store. I looked though, at only one place because I loathe shopping around, and I'm happy to say that I feel good about paying $8.99 for three CEEEEE-UTE little knobs in all their knobbity cuteness.

Of course installation requires a small hole be drilled. No problemo.

Cute little screw poking through the bottom.

CEEEEE-UTE little knob. Try not to faint from the cuteness of it.

I know, weird things excite me.

So much that I can't even handle it.

I only wish it were my idea.

I'm a copy cat though. I guess I can live with that.

Without torturing you further, here are the templates. Get them printed as 11 x 14 inch enlargements. I did mine at Sam's Club.

Be sure to click on the image first, before saving it to your desktop. Otherwise the image will be blurry. Enjoy!

P.S. What do you think of my new design? Tonya at Lucky Girl Design Studio hooked me up. I love it.

Christmas Bookmarks

I made a couple new holiday bookmarks. I love the Santa and Mrs. Claus heads, so I couldn't resist.

If you weren't around here last year, you missed these holiday bookmarks. They're still up though, so you can go here and grab them if you'd like them.

And here's the new one. Enjoy!

By the way, I'll be working on the holiday paint can inserts this week, so stay tuned. I've just switched over to the new sbcStudio software for the Mac, so I'm doing a bit of stumbling around, and I'm not very fast with it. Plus, there were some problems with the software initially, that have now been resolved.

I promise I haven't forgotten about you.

Halloween Treats--CHEEEEEEEEAAP!

So the girls and I got their treat bags put together for their school Halloween parties. The parties which I will not be able to attend this year since I'll be working.  Sniff, sniff.

Anyway, I made these little tags for their treat bags, but I really wanted to post something that might help you make your Halloween a little more special. Last year I posted these treat toppers, that you can still use if you want.

But, I've been racking my brain, trying to come up with something new and cute for you, and it finally came to me tonight.

This is what I came up with.

Do you want to know what they are?

They're BOO!k marks. Ha, ha, ha

I kill myself.

Seriously though. I designed these things to be printed out as 4x6 prints (hello photo center of the cheap prints), and then you can just cut them vertically into 2" x 6" bookmarks.

You can leave them like this . . . the old fashioned way, functional, old school.

Whatever.

Or you can fold them in half so they are short and cute like this.

I just looooooooove the spider.

I actually detest spiders in real life. All spiders must DIE. But this one I could hug.

I like the cute little ghostie guy too.

Eeek! They're killing me.

So, as I was saying. The cute little short bookmarks actually are not done. They need to be magnetized.

Do you have any of these freebie magnets still lying around? Or is it laying around? Cripes, I'm supposed to know this stuff.

So, as I was saying . . . . Geez, do I keep saying that? I'm sorry. As I was saying, go find your freebie magnets and cut them up. You need two pieces for the bottoms of each bookmark.

Adhere the magnets to the inside of the bookmarks with double sided adhesive. By the way, that is a roll of magnet tape that you see there, and I didn't use any of it. It was there just in case I ran out of the free stuff.

Once you get your magnets on . . .

SHA-ZAM! You have a bookmark.

Does anyone else remember that 70s dude, Shazam, or am I crazy?

I mean, besides me being crazy, am I alone here?

Never mind. Forget I said anything.

Here are some bookmarks for you to give it a go yourself. Don't forget to click on the picture before you save it to your computer, so that you get the highest resolution. If you forget that step, you might get blurry bookmarks.

Have fun! I'm going to bed.