A Month's Worth of Pages

First off, I need to say that after Aaron's rocky start to TKD testing on Saturday, he did pass (as did the rest of us). He even got the silver "awesome" stripe on his new belt, which you can't see in the photo. What you can see, though, is the bruise on his nose from when he fell and his glasses hit him. The swelling of his lip went down by then.

Earlier this week, I got a brief burst of scrapping energy and somehow did three pages in one day. Then I realized I had other pages waiting to be scanned, some I finished nearly a month ago. While I'm glad to have a stack of layouts to post today, since I finally sat down and scanned them all, it's a little discouraging to me. There was a time (and not all that long ago) when I would have this much to post after a week, rather than a month.

I'm also still putting off doing my 2010 Disney album. I still am completely intimidated by this project and now I'm starting to think about just getting a plain ol' photo album to put the pictures into. I'm not sure what this says about me as a scrapbooker. Is my passion for the craft dwindling? Do I want to get away from traditional scrapping and switch to digital? Who knows?

Instead of continuing to whine about not starting this project, I'll just let you see what I have been doing instead.

Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridges: Mickey Font, Alphalicious
Stickers: Disney

Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridges: Stretch Your Imagination, Mickey Font, Lyrical Letters
Border Punch: Fiskars

Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters
Stamp: Village Arts
Punch: EK Success
Other: Stickles

Papers: All really old stuff
Cricut Cartridge: Calligraphy Collection
Border punch: EK Success

Papers: DCWV
Stickers: K & Co., Paper Studio

Papers: DCWV, Paper Studio
Cricut Cartridge: Zoo Balloo
Rub-ons: Making Memories

Scrapbooking Goals 2011

Happy New Year! The holidays are drawing to a close, the decorations are being put away (the gifts are another story!), the kids are going back to school. Now it's time to jump back into scrapbooking.

Before I jump ahead, though, I did take a look back at my scrapbooking accomplishments for 2010. I've been keeping a tally of the pages I complete each month for probably five years now. I think it has something to do with my latent, undiagnosed OCD. In 2010 I completed a whopping 214 pages, with the highest percentage of them being done in the first three months of the year. After that is when our family's activity level seemed to increase exponentially, leaving less time for my own pursuits. With all these completed pages, you'd think I'd be somewhere near caught up, too. No such luck. I do have my boys' albums relatively current, i.e., I'm working on this past summer. My album is now officially two years behind!

I think 2009 could go down as "The Year Without a Scrapbook." I have the pictures printed, but just can't seem to get to them. I think they may go to an even further back burner, since I have, in my mind anyway, decided that one of my scrapbooking goals for 2011 is to complete my Disney album from our trip last April. My goal is to complete that album before our next Disney World vacation, which is tentatively scheduled for December 2011.

Before that vacation, however, is actually going to be a Disney Cruise in April! My in laws surprised us on Christmas by telling us that they were taking us all on this vacation ("us all" being my in laws, the four of us, and my husband's brother and his family, for a total of nine). My attentions are now torn, therefore, between wanting to catch up on scrapbooking and trolling the Disney planning sites. I know, not a bad situation to be in. We are truly blessed.

I'm hoping to catch a wave of January motivation and match my forty completed scrapbook pages from last January. If I find one, I'll try and send it your way.

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.