Two digi layouts

Made with the kit I shared yesterday.
Template by Sabrina's Creations (Clean and Simple No. 1). Playful word art by Jennifer Barrette Designs.

Template by Scooty's Designs. I love reading her blog because it's in French and I have a degree in French. Of course, I graduated from college...oh, my...let's not talk about how many years ago (more than ten, fewer than twenty) and haven't really used the language in that time at all. So it's fun to challenge my brain. And I can read it. I was always much better with the language on paper than spoken.

Anyhow, reading her blog makes me feel smart and like I didn't waste four years and thousands of dollars getting a degree I don't use (at least not specifically - I'm much better for my four years at college, even if I don't technically use the knowledge I gained there for a job).

Christy's Kit of the Week

I've fallen in love...with this digital kit (and everything else from these designers):


I've been on a bit of a buying spree. I feel like I've discovered a whole new world of digital scrapbooking. I have loads of kits that I've never been happy with. These? These make my creative soul sing. This is one of the kits I've purchased this week. Simple, elegant, classic. I'm in love.

Today's Pet peeves...

• Digital designers who label elements, papers and templates with generic names like e1 and template. Forces me to go in and rename everything if I actually want to know what it is. It's worst with templates, because I keep my kits together, so it's not a huge hassle. But I put all templates in folders by how many photos they have spaces for and if I buy twice from the same designer, I have to rename every single time.
• Members of my household who know that the dishwasher is broken, know that I've bought a huge assortment of paper products to use when possible and still insist on using real dishes. This is all amplified by said members (funny, they're all male) not actually washing their dirty real dishes themselves. A lot could be forgiven with a little Dawn.
• Milk that was purchased on Sunday already tasting nasty. And it didn't start today. No, it tasted nasty on Tuesday. That's not right.
• Children who, when asked to pick up their toys, will a) literally only touch their own toys and only then if they were playing with them last and b) not get the toys that fell under the sofa (which is apparently a magnet for Barbie shoes).

Lessons learned...

A list of lessons learned upon receipt of my first printed digital scrapbook pages:

• Read the printing services FAQs. I used scrapbooksplease.com's value prints. Bargain, right? As I've learned before, you get what you pay for. The pages arrived this afternoon and all have a white border around the edge (which I was expecting, but it's still a bit wider than I thought it would be) and are basically color laser prints. For $.99 a page, I guess I shouldn't have been expecting more.
• Just because text looks small on the computer screen, doesn't mean it's going to be tiny when printed 12x12 (although this might have been good if I'd gone with 8x8).
• Printed pages really do make it all real. Just scrapping on the computer is a lot of fun (for me, at least. I know several people for whom it would be torture), but it's not a scrapbook until you can leaf through the pages.

So, in summary, I am not 100% satisfied with these pages, but I won't be going back and making the fonts smaller or even having them reprinted on nicer paper without borders (really, once I put them in page protectors, the border was hardly noticeable). But I will take these lessons with me for next time.

Digiscrap...simplified...

But maybe too simple? I can't decide. Maybe if I swapped out that red rectangle with a patterned paper, it would jazz it up enough to not be boring and still have the simplicity I'm embracing.

This pages results from a challenge from me to me. I always hem and haw over which pictures I want to scrap. I have lots I NEED to scrap, but I'm not married to scrapping chronologically or even all that evenly among my kids. I scrap what strikes me at any given Photoshop session. Sometimes, though, I want to scrap something, but I don't know what. So today I challenged myself to go to the oldest picture folder on my hard drive (which - since I got this computer in November - isn't that old) and scrap something from that folder.

Since my youngest doesn't even have a proper scrapbook yet with actual finished pages in it (my first ever digiscrap layout printing should arrive tomorrow), this ended up working perfectly.

My latest page...

I paid attention to which kit I was using! It's Family Ties by Jeni Hopewell from Scrapmatters.

Another week in review...

Well, no burst pipes. That's something, right? Oh, but no, our brand F-ING new dishwasher has just decided to completely not function. As in not a single light comes on. Nothing. Called Maytag and had a repairman out the next day. The thermostat is blown and it fried the control board. The parts will be in later this week.

I have had this dishwasher for SIX WEEKS. The fact that a single thing has broken on it has me really annoyed. If these parts don't fix it, I'm going to be more than annoyed.

I had to chase down three Girl Scout parents to get them to turn in their cookie order. Two of them never did - they both said they'd wait until the second wave of cookies comes out. I can't WAIT for the deadline for money.

I'm designing templates in my own style for digital scrapbooking, just for my own personal use. I like clipping papers to the shape below them. I love to use templates, but most of them are too fussy for my tastes. I don't like embellishments in general, so that's how I'm making my templates. I'd post more of my layouts online, but I'm horrible about keeping track of what I've used and where it came from. I was worse when I paper-scrapped, because at least with digital, I can go to the files and figure it out if I really want to.

2010 so far...

So far my 2010 has been a little crazy. Some bad, some good.

• Burst pipe in upstairs bathroom
• Selling Girl Scout cookies - I'm the cookie mom for #2's Daisy troop.
  
• Using motivated moms to get my house in order (well, better, at any rate)
• Tried to get back to Couch to 5K, but hurt again. Will seek professional advice.
• Trying out a pedometer as alternative to keep me active
• Keeping up with my goals so far (minus the shin splints)
• Staging a coup of the Cub Scout pack (well, nothing that dramatic hopefully, but getting a little control in the form of knowledge about what's going on)

I can't believe we're only two weeks into this year.

Dear 2010...

I will forgive you for your inauspicious start, especially if at any time you want to change course and brighten up. I realize this is a long shot, but I'm open to it if you are. Thanks.

Yeah. Great start to my new year. I had my motivated moms list all printed out, put on my cleaning clothes yesterday (yoga pants indicate that I'm staying home and cleaning, jeans mean I might leave the house) and was ready to go. I had a tough time getting back into the school routine yesterday after two weeks off, but I was planning to get to it.

I picked up #3 from preschool and came home to a dripping ceiling. Nothing like a burst pipe in the middle of winter. So yesterday was spent in chaos with no water, no power (because we didn't know how wet the wires might have been) and absolutely nothing got done.

So now I'm on my second attempt at the Motivated Moms list. I'm making a much better showing today. I've checked several things off and I can see where this might keep me motivated throughout the year, not just this first week. My kitchen looks...well, better, since I only cleaned one counter, not the side counter yet. My bathroom is neat and tidy. Looking forward to tomorrow.

And a quick product review from Christmas. Santa brought my kids one of their most requested items - a Touch and Brush, so that our bathroom wouldn't get toothpaste all over it, just like in the commercial. Yeah, not so much. It might even be messier than before since the Touch and Brush has to go on the mirror and increases the area toothpaste can be spread across.

Resolved...

I've fallen off a lot of my 2009 habits that I was so proud of. I hurt my leg running so I chose to give that up so that it might heal without my constantly reinjuring it. I was eating so well, until I began my holiday baking and the kids got out of school (they had 16 days off - many habits fell to this). My laundry/cleaning routine is a nightmare.

So for 2010 I am resolved to get back on track. I never make resolutions - at least no more for the new year than I would at any point in my life. I don't see why the new year should mean anything different than the previous day. Every day is a fresh start, not just January 1.

At any rate, I will post my resolutions here and check to see how I'm doing (did I do this last year too and then never check it? Possibly. Okay, fine, probably).

1. Run a 5K. I was all set to run the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, until I pushed myself and ended up barely able to walk for a couple of days. Right now my tentative 5K is the St. Patricks' Day 5K on March 13.
2. Clean and maintain order in my home. Big thing here. I am not a naturally organized person, so this is very difficult for me. I bought the motivated moms planner and I'm hoping that the nature of the check lists and having a plan laid out for me will work and most of all, last beyond my initial interest.
3. Spend more quality time with my kids. It struck me during this break yet again how very quickly their childhoods are passing by. Maybe it was all the newborns in my family, but something made me feel very nostagic. Included in this resolution are to read more often to all the kids and keep better control of my temper (mainly while PMSing).