Life with Poot-n-Toots

December Daily, year 4...

It's been a little quiet on the blog in regards to the holiday season,but I assure you, we're in full swing 'round these parts.The Noah tree and mantle (stocking's and all) were done the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the big tree went up the weekend after.

This year I'm completing a December Daily Album again. It's really one of my favorite albums; A daily peek into all that is December. I waffled about doing one this year because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with life, it takes a bit of work to sit down each day and get the day documented.... I decided to 'just look' at a local store and see if any of the Christmas papers caught my eye. I saw a really pretty new line by Theresa Collins and it jumped into my cart (Thanks Nonnie, for the birthday money). What I find that's REALLY been helpful this year is that we have a new printer.

long story made not-so-short. The weekend after thanksgiving we headed to office max to buy a new printer cartridge, so I could send my Christmas cards through the printer- I'm lazy. Imagine my SHOCK when a combo pack of color/ink was 69.99 (WHAT!!!!!!). Apparently our 12 year old DINOSAUR printer is so out of date it's practically obsolete. The sales clerk said that they had printers cheaper than what the ink would cost me. He showed me an all-in-one printer (April finds it hilarious that I had NO IDEA what this meant..what? it can copy? scan? fax? it's wireless? AND a photo printer? Who knew- apparently I'm waaaay behind the times). Imagine my second shock that this printer was only 49.99. HOLY CRAP!!! No lie- I walked out of the store with a new fabu printer, 2 extra black and color ink cartridges AND 150 sheets of photo paper for 100 bucks. (thanks Bev and Tim for my birthday money!)

It's been fun to print out my photos each night and have the instant gratification of having it done *right now*. It's certainly not cheaper to print all my photos this way. But for small projects and non standardized sizes, it's fantastic.

Anyhoo, enough about my new toy. Here are the first 11 days of my album.

The cover. I'm lovin' my hand-made flowers (for the scrap-girls- the new glubers by cosmo cricket that we got at the Bakersfield store are SUPER- they are so easy to use)... I also love the vintage-y feel of the glitter letters.

 

An introduction and a quick little letter to the girls...

 

Since we had our tree up prior to december, I did a collage of these images on the left side of the layout.

Day 1. North Pole breakfast.

  

Day two. San Luis Christmas Parade.

 

Day 3. The story of Mike putting up our lights. We haven't done this for a few years, and I certainly missed my lights.

 

Day 4. Letters to Santa (or shall I say 'novels' to Santa)

 

I scanned the front and back of each letter and printed them out on 2'x3' inch cards, and them glued them together and strung them with a string before putting them in this pocket).

 

Day 5. Ally's Daisy Scout fieldtrip to J's station. Likely the last little tour he'll do.

 

Day 6. Paige's 3rd grade awards assembly.

Day 7. A little math worksheet of Ally's and a sarcastic quote about how calm and bright it was. Total sarcasm- my day sucked, and ended with Paige puking (all told in the journaling below).
 

Day 8. Jason's uber fun 24 hour trip to Fres-yes to see his man crush Adam Carolla.

  

Day 9. Random photo of my cell phone wallpaper. It's been the same for the past year. The girls with Santa. Still love it. Still makes me smile daily.

 

Tiny little rolled note from Paige's student teacher (it was her last day...Paige cried.... and then asked her for her phone number- too cute.)

 

Day 10. Holiday craft party at Natalie's. They made 101 scarves for the homeless shelter...and a few treats to keep for themselves (the card on the left was the invitation- journaling by Paige)

 

Day 11. The princess trees are up.

  

Day 12. Ally's Daisy Troop made 100 cards to hand out at the old folk's home next week while they do some caroling (I forgot my camera- the troop leader will be e-mailing me a photo from this evening)

and there ya have it. The first 12 days of December. I'm nearly half-way and excited to see how the rest of the month comes together.

a conversation with Jason...

 
I should have added another question: 'what are you not good at?' because the answer would have been 'answering questions for this interview'... I swear getting these answers was like pulling teeth :)

conversations with paige and ally....

  

(click on images to enlarge and read the text)

template

I've been meaning to do these interviews with the girls for some time and finally got around to it today. The template is from Cathy Zielske (see link above). I love the simplicity of it. Clean lines, not cluttered and nice fonts. I've printed them out on 8.5x11 card-stock and plan on putting them in my project life album. I think it would be fun to do one each summer and see how their answers change.

 No matter how well I think I know my girls, some of their anwers are pretty funny (and some, downright shocking)I don't know whether to be ashamed or embarrassed that Ally knows who Katy Perry is; of course I'd like to believe that it was the one time that she was a guest on Sesame Street, but that won't work since they claimed her outfit was too risque and the stations pulled her spot. anyhoo....

I love how the girls' came out, so I decided to have a little conversation with myself :) Clearly, I know theanswers, but I think the the 'scrapbooker' often gets left out of the documenting process. It's just as fun for the girls to read mine as for me to read theirs. Maybe when Jason's home, I can do one for him.

a special post for kirsten...

Tonight I made this sweet little digital page.

Cute, huh?

But you know what?

I don't think I'll ever be able to look at it without laughing, because I'll always be thinking this...

For those of you that are confused. Go back and read THIS post. But more importantly, read THESE comments.

Kirsten, I must say that you are wildly-funny and have an insane imagination.

I ♥ ya girl!

Seriously.

For those of you digi-scrappers out there, if you can get past the crazy titles, check out the the swirl sticker I made from a plain 'ol brush. This layout is from the Photoshop Friday Seriesover at Jessica Sprague. Each friday she has a special for a $1.00 (normally priced at $3.99).

It includes all the materials  (the template, the digi papers, elements, etc) as well as a video tutorial on how to complete the lesson. Each 'lesson' focuses on one thing. This page is #15. If you need some cheap hand-holding on how to get your digi feet wet, these are great. They stay in your courses page so you can review them as necessary.

Tonight I also did the photoshop friday #21. The skill in this one was making a banner from scratch. Impressed? I am.

 

This next layout was a free download template from EH studios. I made 2 versions of this page. This little cutie is king finn. I couldn't decide if I liked it better with the color photo or the black and white, what do you all think is better?

 

*just a reminder- all images and layouts on the blog can always be clicked to enlarge, so that you can see the details

digital therapy...

I hat a bit of a rough afternoon.

Work has been smooth sailing for the past few weeks, but this afternoon, I hit a few snags. Nothing big, just enough stress that it reminded me that I miss summer already.

So, after all the life stuff was done tonight (making dinner, packing lunches & reading bed-time stories), I self-medicated with a bit of digital therapy. Which started with some retail therapy.

I perused my favorite digi-scrapping sites and picked up a few templates. I bought 7 of the Sweet Summertime templates by Crystal Wilkenson over at Jessica Sprague. Thankfully my retail therapy was pretty cheap, these fantastic pages were only $1.00 each.

What's a better way to be reminded about what a great summer we had?  Why to scrap it of course.

These were some of the best moments. The real ones. The lazy ones. Staying in your jammies all afternoon, with ample time to wrestle with your sister. Pedicures by Ally, and feet-up watching a movie on the computer.

 

a few of my favorite snapshots of the summer...

 

remembering the welcome to summer party, and what a great time we had....

$7.00 and an hour and a half later, I feel better already.

celebrating the 4th, through the years....

 

Here are a few quick digital pages using the Boom Boom Clap templates by Libby W.
over at Sweet Shop Designs

wising you all a fantastic 4th!

Just for you April, a special way back Wednesday post. Can you believe it's been FIVE years????

*click the pages to view them larger*

 
 

*These pages are all digital and will be printed out at costco. Our scrapbook group has been slowly venturing out into the digital world. I'm still a little reluctant, since I LOVE the process of getting my hands covered in ink/glue and the 'community' of scrappers to chat/share with during the process of creating (since I rarely scrapbook alone). 

But, I am enticed by the speed of digital scrapping and the non-existent mess. Thank you Michele for the digi-goodness and the gentle push to try something new. It was easier than I thought, and quite satisfying to bring these pictures out after 5 years.  I've decided that the many 'holes' in my albums (mostly from 2005 and 2007) will be filled with quick digital pages. Thanks!!!1
   

Loooooooooooove it!

 
 
  
(the title of this post is from Dragon Tales and you have to imagine I'm saying "loooooooove it!" just like this - make sure your your speakers are on)

My Shutterfly book arrived tonight, and I REALLY REALLY love it! It turned out better than I expected. I'm really pleased with the quality of the printing and the colors. shutterfly was easy to use and the shipping was super fast. I officially give Shutterfly two enthusiastic thumbs-up.

It ended up costing more than I expected ($35.00- with tax and shipping it was $46.00) but it was still cheaper than printing out 31 8x8's at costco (1.49 per page), plus the cost of the album and page protectors. Overall, a good deal and most importantly, it's D.O.N.E no loose ends and nothing got left out.

The girls thought it was pretty nifty too. We 'read' it as a bed-time story. The whole time Ally kept touching the pages and asking 'how'd you make it Mom?'. It's hard to explain to a three year old that I didn't actually 'make' it myself.

*note to self- must, must, must remember to get batteries at the store tomorrow for my external flash, so that my pictures stop coming out so D.A.R.K. (is it bad that one of the main reasons I'd want to NOT have a job, is so that I could be home when there is good natural light? Taking photos of an album on the bathroom counter at 9:00 just doesn't cut it)

3 down, 28 to go....

I lied.

So I've decided that I will put my layouts within my posts. When they're in the album on the left the journaling is hard to read and since this is a December Daily album, and I write about what happened today, it seems silly (and more time consuming) to type 'em and upload them to two places.You can click on the picture and it will enlarge it enough so that you can read the journaling...

So for all you blog readers that don't scrapbook (gasp...what, some people don't scrapbook???) Hopefully ya'll can just bear with me for this month.

I will do regular posts for those things that aren't necessarily holiday related since I know not everyone loves the scrappy posts....

Charlene- Paige was SO, SO, SO, excited to see the pictures of her stocking...and you better believe she's already reminded me that tomorrow is 'cookie Friday'...

Getting faster...

Here's today's page for my December Daily album. I'm proud to say that I'm getting faster and navigating photoshop a little easier....today's layout took me less than 20 minutes to make.

Jason had to work late tonight, so the girls and I planned a mid-week movie night (as part of ABC's 25 Days of Christmas, ABC will be airing a holiday movie each night- click here for the schedule). Ally and I set about making 'real' hot chocolate while Paige did her homework...  By the time the hot chocolate was cool enough to drink, Paige had finished up. We headed into the living room with our mugs and some marshmallows and hunkered down to watch'Shrek the Halls' ( I DVR'd it last night, so we could skip over the commercials).

I love that even with our busy schedules, we're able to squeeze in some fun family time. What I love about doing the December Daily album, is that it makes me more mindful of how we spend our holidays. It encourages me to think of small things that we can do each day to make this sometimes hectic season a little less stressful.

*totally off topic, but don't forget, tonight's a new episode of Glee...yay!

I won't be posting my layout everyday, but I will be uploading them into the December Daily album in the left sidebar.