Taking time...

The last few mornings (while kids are in school) I have been taking time to work on crafty stuff. Since last week, though, crafty time has meant...working on their Valentines.

After last year's surplus of paper, store-bought Valentines ended up all over my house (stickers included), I decided this year I'd make them, using up some scrappy supplies in the process. Last year I bought (but didn't have a chance to use) this cool iPod candy bar wrapper for Tess. We hosted supper club at our house just prior to Valentines, and making dinner for 38 people preempted making cool Valentines. Not this year!

Just prior to February, I wrapped up a 6-month Stamp Club commitment with my Stampin' Up demonstrator (and fellow church mom), Angie. I made sure to order their Sizzix milk carton die, which, although tiny (those iPod wrappers are around regular-sized Hershey bars, for comparison), held an AMAZING amount of Jelly Bellies. Getting Ben to sign all the little cards was agonizing, but went quickly once I promised him any leftover jellies. I had to get a second (!) 2-pound bag (!!), so I wasn't sure there would be any leftovers, but made sure he had a handful for all his hard work.

Now to get back to work on my Hawaii mini-album, and the North Shore waves layout I started at home Friday night, with Graphic 45's Tropical Travelogue line (love!). That won't be too soon, as the kids have a 4-day weekend coming up, but I will try to get those finished up SOON.

Scrapping (and blogging) again

It's been so long since I've (a) dealt with Blogger and (2) used Photoshop Elements, that I'm overwhelmed by changes. So this is the new dashboard? (sorry, you can't see that, can you? Umm...it's...clean!) And I had to uninstall my "Inspiration Browser" (I didn't even know I had such a thing in PSE) and re-install the new one, then "launch" it from within PSE? (took me a minute..."Tips and Tricks," THERE it is!)

All this to show you two quite ancient layouts that I've FINALLY got around to finishing. Yes, 2010. Ancient. Right?

November 2010. I thought I had saved this turkey decoration, but couldn't find it in the disaster area that is our basement storage room (even shelving didn't help) to mine it for "things Tess was thankful for," so I simply zoomed in on the photo and found 2 things that were readable on the feathers: her family, and Silly Bandz (wow, how ancient is that?!) LOL

I thought I had written down the name of the baby reindeer the kids visited at our local library...so I had to find the date of the photo in my files (12/20/10), then *find* my 2010 diary, look up the entry, only to find...umm, no, I did not write it down (I think it was Bingo...no idea why...or why it matters). I sat down yesterday and finished the journaling without it. Imagine that! I still had room on my journaling card. Huh.

Now I am off to discover why Networked Blogs is not updating my Facebook page with these entries (there's another new one just under this one...try not to faint in amazement that I updated). But maybe that's all resolved now. Otherwise, you may get here by a self-serving link to my timeline. Hey, me updating this blog (and *scrapbooking!*) is NEWS.