Merry Christmas!

Christmas is upon us at last, and it seems I finally have taken the time to sit down and post. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind, between tae kwon do testing, art shows, school plays, Cub Scouts. Amidst all this, I did get my knitting finished, gifts wrapped, and cookies baked. We've even managed to watch a few holiday movies and I did a few scrapbook pages.

This morning I am enjoying the calm before the storm, as it were. Christmas Eve in our family entails two church services. The boys perform their play at 5:00, and hubby sings in the choir at 7:00. Normally I would miss the second service to sing in my own contemporary service, but that isn't happening this year. I'll miss spending part of Christmas Eve with friends that I've sung with for ten years, but I admit it will be nice to do a little less running around.

The boys didn't wake up until 8:00 this morning, which is late for them. I know it is very much wishful thinking, but I would love a repeat performance tomorrow. How is it that kids innately know that it's Christmas morning? I'll just have to check before I go to bed to make sure they don't have alarms set to help them out.

We will spend Christmas Day with my husband's parents and then the next day my parents and sister will arrive from PA. There is no such thing as a relaxing holiday in our house.

I'll finish up with one of my five-minute layouts. This is our family's Christmas card from this year. Merry Christmas!

Knitting Instead of Scrapping

I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted. I guess it's because I haven't spent too much time scrapbooking lately. I've snuck in a page here and there to get my "fix" but I will definitely not end the year on a scrapping high note. I started 2010 like gangbusters, completing 40 pages in January alone! The numbers steadily dwindled, and I hope not to end the month with my current four pages (which I suppose isn't bad at all considering it is only the 7th).

As I'm sure is the case with many others, scrapbooking is not my only craft. I also knit, albeit not with the same passion as scrapbooking, but I do enjoy it. Currently I am in knitting mode. I knit dishcloths for teacher Christmas gifts and somehow I have extra teachers to knit for this year. My kindergartner has his teacher and a classroom aide. However, he now spends most of his morning in a first-grade classroom; this brings his teacher count to three. My fourth-grader has his regular classroom teacher, plus his gifted program teacher, which brings the grand total to five. I still have about two and a half cloths to knit. Then it's back to the baby blankets, but that's another story.

I think I will have to try and get some sanity-saving scrapbook time in the mornings over the next week and a half. My fourth-grader has our afternoons/evenings booked nearly solid until Christmas break starts on the 18th. When my boys were babies I had trouble understanding other parents who claimed they didn't have time for things because of their kids' activities (I always just brought my kids along to meetings, etc.). Now I get it. So in addition to being proud of all my son is doing, I am starting to mourn the loss of my own life. I have always strived to maintain my sense of self, especially as a stay-at-home mom. I never wanted to be one of those moms who was only about her kids, and I always thought I did pretty well at that.

On the up side, I think my Christmas shopping is finished, with the exception of taking my oldest out to choose a gift for his brother. With his schedule, though, this may prove to be a bigger challenge than finding a chance to scrapbook.

Here's one of my latest pages. I was dying to get into my new DCWV Christmas paper, so picked some photos from last year for my album (leaving the rest of 2009 woefully behind).

Duplicate Layouts

I've been on a self-imposed hiatus from scrapbooking the past week or two, simply because I've been distracted by other interests. I spent the better part of a week engrossed in reading the Twilight series, at the suggestion of my sister. Now that I've finished that, I am slowly working my way back toward my scrapbook area.

I wonder how many other scrappers out there make multiple layouts of the same event like I do. When my first son was born, I decided I wouldn't want to part with his scrapbooks when he was grown and on his own (at least I only hope he will move out someday; since he's still just nine I'm not in too big a hurry), so I decided to make pages for his album, and then pages for mine. Making duplicate layouts didn't bother me much. I generally did his album first, trying to stay fairly current. Then I had more time to go back and do mine, having the journaling from his pages to jog my memory when needed.

Then I had another son, and suddenly I wondered if I was insane for scrapbooking events in triplicate! I do it anyway, since I had already started down this road. I don't duplicate every page, and I have taken to only hitting the major events for the boys' albums, saving the more "everyday moments" for mine. My older son also has his own Cub Scout album, which I don't duplicate for myself.

Sometimes I make it really easy on myself and make identical pages for each of the boys, even copying the journaling word for word. Other times I'll take the same basic design and just change the colors. That's what I did for this recent layout. Most of the photos are identical, and I used the same design, but managed to individualize them just a bit.

I even managed to use some papers that have been sitting in my stash for years, which is always a plus. The paper collection always grows faster than it is depleted.

I have a number of pages lined up for the boys' albums that will likely take this same route. Let's hope I can carve out some time to actually work on them. My general scrapbooking goal is to keep my boys' albums fairly current, and mine about a year behind. I'm not doing too bad on the boys'. I am up to this summer. However, with a few random exceptions, I haven't even started my 2009 album. I do have the photos printed (thanks to the last day of 99-cent shipping at winkflash), so at least that's a start.

Dad's Album

I finally seem to be getting back into scrapping mode. I finished the boys' Disney pages, so I'm trying to squash the vacation-planning beast, with a little, very little, success. I've completed five layouts in the past day and a half, so I could say that I am on a roll. I just received my giant print order from Winkflash, so I can get going on my 2009 album any time now.

The last two pages I've done, though, are for my dad's album. About six or seven years ago, I manged to get my hands on some photos from my grandparents, as well as some information on names and dates. I put the information into a spread sheet (and I have to say I'm glad I had a hard copy, as our computer crashed last year, and that was one of the casualties). The first year, I made my dad a couple of pages as a Christmas gift using some of the photos. He's one of these people who really means it when he says not to spend your money on him, so I stopped. Each year I make him two pages. Somewhere along the line we did purchase an album to put them in. It's become a tradition now, and I think he looks forward to seeing what part of his history he'll get a glimpse of next. Some of the photos date back to around 1915, before my grandparents were even born.

Here's something I want to throw out there: Is anyone out there like me when it comes to scrapbook-related gifts? I know that I am more critical of my work than most of my recipients would be, so I don't always put forth my best effort when I'm making gifts. Now, that's not to say I do a sloppy job or anything. I just may not use my absolute favorite or newest papers, or I'll keep my designs even simpler than usual. I'm guessing this may be the opposite of what most other crafters would do.

In any case, here's what I came up with for my dad this year. I like to get these done early, so I can tell myself that I've already started on my Christmas shopping!

That's my grandfather, probably around eighteen.

And that's my dad, at around the same age.

Hopefully I can ride this wave of momentum I seem to have created, although I'm afraid it may crash before I can make a dent in this new pile of photos. I will probably get hung up on whether I want to barrel on through and get the boys' albums current, or go ahead and start my 2009 photos. If I can't decide, there are always the Disney planning sites to distract me.

New Obession

I have really gotten out of scrapping mode, since I have acquired a new obsession--Fantasy Disney Vacation Planning! We just took our first family trip to Disney World in April of this year, but somehow I'm already pining for another. We would all love to go back, but don't know when it will be in the cards again, financially-speaking. However, this hasn't stopped me from trolling the planning sites and message boards, looking for deals and pricing out trips. The new-found obsession started barely a week ago, and I've already been pricing out trips for four different time periods. My initial thought was for spring break next April, having had such a great time at that time of year (and getting extremely lucky from a crowd standpoint). Next, I was thinking Christmas 2011. I know the time between Christmas and New Year's is insane, but I was thinking the week before Christmas and telling myself it wouldn't quite as crazy. My next fantasy was a sans-kids trip for hubby and me to celebrate my 40th birthday in February (no kids because I refuse to take them out of school for vacation). Finally, my latest hare-brained scheme was to go the week before Christmas THIS year, as in eight weeks from now. I got lured in by the possibility of a free dining plan. Having not looked at any message boards (yet!) today, I am coming to my senses, and realizing that another Disney trip this year is simply not feasible. So, I think I will try and hold out for Christmas next year, since we would love to see the parks decorated for the holidays.

Now that I got that out of my system, here is one of my latest pages for my oldest son's album.

I love using sketches from this blog I was so excited to find there are actually still people out there who scrap 4x6 photos consistently. There are some other wonderful sketch sites out there, but I would always have trouble making them work for my photos. So, thank you Amy, for providing such a great resource!

In other scrap-related news, I went to JoAnn's today to check for the new DCWV Christmas Stacks. I told myself I would refrain from buying the fall one this year and hold out for a new Christmas one. Yes, I know, there is no such thing as too much paper, but my budget, unfortunately, says otherwise. I held them in my hands, and they were even on sale, but somehow left the store empty-handed. I noticed that the sale was on until the 30th of the month, so I still have a little time to change my mind.

I got the house cleaned today and my baking done for the kids' school festival. Plus, I ordered almost 300 prints from Winkflash (before the 99-cent shipping deal went away), so as long as I can keep myself away from the Disney sites tomorrow morning, I think I will actually attempt another layout.

Cherry Pie and Disney Scrapbooks

Birthday Season is over for another year in our house. We now officially have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, with the six-year-old celebrating his birthday on 10-10-10. My family was in town for the weekend, so it was a whirlwind of activity. They actually left on Sunday morning, so my in-laws (who are local) took us out to dinner to celebrate. The birthday boy wanted to go to IHOP for dinner, so IHOP it was. Really, who can say no to breakfast for dinner anyway? What was more unusual is that he requested a cherry pie for his birthday "cake." He was so excited about the pie prospect, but admitted to me the next day that he really didn't like it much. As it turned out, it was the first time he had ever had cherry pie, which I suspected and was why I was surprised that's what he chose. I have to give him props for trying something new, though, and on his birthday no less.

With Birthday Season over, I am going to try and get back into scrapbooking mode. Recently, I've been working on my son's Disney World pages from our first trip this past April. Here's what I came up with for his Magic Kingdom layout:

Next I need to do my older son's pages. The trouble is, by working on this Disney stuff, I have caught the bug for another trip already. This morning, while the youngest was at school, I wasted what could have been valuable scrapbooking time researching 2011 rates for a repeat spring break Disney trip. My husband, who works at home on Tuesdays, was no doubt irritated at my research, getting excited for a trip that will likely not occur.

For now, I need to steer clear of vacation planning and simply get back to scrapping the vacation photos. And who knows? Maybe I'll need to clear the Disney 2010 photos out of the way to make room for the 2011 ones? I won't hold my breath...

First Layout Post

I'm still quite new to the blogging world and have a lot to learn. Mainly I created my own blog to be able to share scrapbook pages with family and friends, and to say a little more than I could in a tweet (which I'm also still learning) or facebook status update. If anyone else happens to see and be mildly amused, great.

I have to admit I'm a little nervous about posting layouts for the world to see. Although I've been scrapping for years, I don't think my techniques have improved much. In my opinion, my pages still look much like a beginner. I think that's part of the reason I'm interested in posting them, though, so people can see that it's okay to be a scrapbooker and not have magazine-worthy pages.

This is my latest page for my younger son's album (I do albums for each of my children, as well as myself, but that's a story for another day).

This is a fairly typical layout for me. I've always put the emphasis on the photos and the journaling; the embellishment is secondary.

Well, I've gone and done it, and it wasn't so bad. Now I just need to find the time to be able to get some more done to be able to post in the near future.

Birthday Party Successful!

This was the first time we had a birthday party for the kids outside the home, and I'm thinking it won't be the last. I called to make the reservation a few weeks ago, shopped for a few items for goody bags, and baked cupcakes last night. This morning we showed up at the laser tag place, gave them our name, and my work was done. The party coach did the rest. As a mom, I admit it felt a little strange to feel so detached from my children's celebration, but I think I got over it pretty well.

Yes, this was more expensive than having a party at home, which is why we decided to do a joint effort (an advantage of the boys having birthdays two weeks apart), but I'm thinking that the lack of stress involved was worth the cost. I think the boys all had a good time, and I was able to come home and not clean up after them. Well, of course I have to clean up after mine, but I didn't have ten boys to clean up after. This was a definite plus, especially after they seemed to decide making as much mess of their cupcake as possible was more fun than laser tag.

 The six-year-old (well, he'll be six next week)

The nine-year-old just has to be different

Thus completes round two of Birthday Season. It will conclude next Sunday, after my out-of-town family leaves and the youngest has his "official" birthday dinner.

Kid's Parties and No Time to Scrapbook

We are still in the midst of "birthday season." My oldest turned nine last Saturday. We went to the museum with family and then out to eat to celebrate. Tomorrow will be the boys' combined "friend party" at the laser tag place. I just hope my youngest isn't disappointed when he actually sees that it's mostly his brother's friends in attendance, and only one or two of his. I think it's hard being a kindergartner with a birthday fairly early in the school year. Maybe it's just harder on the parents. You don't know who your kid's friends are yet or any of the parents, so determining who to invite to a party is tough. Add to that the rule that kids aren't allowed to distribute invitations at school, and this gets to be an even more stressful undertaking. I hope they'll just be having so much fun playing laser tag that the youngest won't notice until after we get home, if at all, that there were fewer presents with his name on them. I seriously considered trying the "no gifts, please" route, but didn't think it would be fair to ask a six year old to make that sacrifice. Instead I will listen to him cry that his brother got six presents and he only got two, so it sounds like the sacrifice it mine.

Life sure has seemed to have gotten in the way of my scrapbooking lately, too. I started out this year like gangbusters, getting up to thirty pages completed in a month. September's total was eight. I know, I shouldn't complain since that's still more than some people do. What is making me a little sad, though, is I'm not missing it as much as I have during other "dry" spells.  Usually after a week of not being able to play with my toys, I start to experience something akin to withdrawal. That hasn't been happening lately. I think I need to make a point to get some scrapping in next week before I need to admit that I am no longer addicted.

Home Improvements

I've turned our living room into my scrapbook area, getting rid of the couches and adding storage cubes and a large Ikea bookcase to hold my completed albums. This really is an upgrade from my previous setup at the dining room table (which has now completely turned into my husband's home office). My completed albums were on a shelf in the spare bedroom closet. I had been itching for a way to get them out of there. I mean, what's the point of putting all the time, not to mention expense, of making them if no one can see them? I finally found a bookcase that was deep enough to hold a 12x12 album. Now I, or anyone else I subject to them, can easily peruse my 20 (and counting) scrapbooks.

We are now in the process of finally upgrading from the builder grade flat paint that's been on the walls since we moved in six years ago. By "we" I mean my husband. My contribution to this process ends when colors are decided. The next room to be painted is my scrapbook room, so I will soon be "taking one for the team" and surrendering my crafting space. My workspace will be covered in drop cloths in the middle of the room, so I am not holding much hope for getting any layouts done in the near future.

It will all be for the best, since I don't know how much time I'd be able to devote to scrapbooking anyway. We've reached the "birthday season" in our house. Our boys' birthdays are two weeks apart, so we generally spend several weekends in a row celebrating with the kids' friends and out-of-town family visits.

I'm guessing my next post will center around birthdays.

I did it!

I've been talking for awhile about starting a blog, and I've finally gone ahead and done it. Whether anyone besides me decides to read it remains to be seen.

A brief introduction...I am a mom of two boys, who are about to turn six and nine. I've been a stay-at-home-mom since my oldest was born and wouldn't have had it any other way, even on the days when I've wanted to sell one or both children.

I've been scrapbooking since before they were born and try to convince my husband that it is what helps keep me sane (still not sure he's buying it). My pages aren't going to end up in any magazines, and I'm okay with that. I'll probably still post some of them anyway.

Of course, if I end up devoting any amount of time to blogging, I'll be cutting into my scrapbooking time. Life is just one big balancing act anyway, I suppose, and I will find a way to make it all work. Don't we always?