Anticipation

LOAD 211 is coming up fast and I, for one, am so excited as I impatiently await the first of February. I almost feel like a kid again during that l-o-o-o-o-ong last few days before Christmas.

Layout A Day- February, 2011, or more simply, LOAD 211, has nothing to do with sunbathing in winter.

As LOAD founder Lain Ehmann says," Here's the scoop: You sign up. You join. You get a daily prompt and inspirational email, and you create a layout a day. Every day. Yes, 28 layouts in 28 days. Yes, EVERY DAY."

My first LOAD was in October of this past year (LOAD 10/10) and it was PHENOMENAL. I was inspired to push myself as a scrapper, to tell the stories that might otherwise be lost in the recesses of my fading memory, to try new products, to make some really cool pages, to be creative each and every day. By the end of October I had averaged MORE than one layout a day. I had enough layouts ready to be printed at the end of the month for my parents' Christmas album. That was TOTALLY  COOL.

But the LOAD experience isn't just about creativity. Its also about sharing your creativity via the online gallery at Flickr and sharing feedback with other creative people via the message boards. I was inspired by the many fabulous layouts posted by scrappers from all over the world. People just like me who love words, and photos, and sharing stories through the wonderful art form called scrapbooking.

If you want to know more about LOAD 211 and how to join in on the fun, check out Lain's site at http://www.layoutaday.com/

I will be posting my layouts from LOAD 211 here every few days throughout the month of February. For now I am getting my ideas together, making a list of kits I might like to use, and putting photo possibilities in a separate folder on my laptop. I am psyched and ready to go!

Challenges

I appreciate a good challenge. The challenge to better myself is one reason why I am working on getting in shape, why I am walking all those miles in weird ways. Walking while doing knee lifts, walking while doing hamstring curls, walking from side to side with bent knees. Now you see why I walk in my house, because if I walked like that outside people would really wonder about me. Not that they don't wonder already. But I digress.

I appreciate the challenge of teaching six children at home. The challenge of teaching six children who are on very different levels. One is taking two advanced sciences at once along with Pre-Calculus. One is gifted, but very auditory in learning style, two who would rather be doing anything else BUT schoolwork, one who is sweet and teachable, but gets tired of school before I am ready for him to quit. One who is just beginning to learn his letters and has yet to enter the wonderful world of reading.

All of whom are dealing with a teacher who is a little too laid back when it comes to school. But that is another challenge.

Right now I am appreciating a different kind of challenge. A creative challenge. A challenge in an art field I am obsessed with. A scrapping challenge.

Over at the ScrapOrchard there are different daily challenges 28 days a month. You have all month to complete any of the challenges you choose to, and depending on how many you complete in any given month there are coupons given for %off at the Scrap Orchard Market. How cool is that? I love doing something I really enjoy AND getting a deal in the bargain!

I have been thinking about dabbling in art journaling. It is outside of my comfort zone. It is a challenge. I made this layout in more of an arty style as my take on the Scrap That Tune challenge at the Orchard.

Granted it isn't art journaling, per se, but it's a first step, maybe.I love the colors, the torn papers, the elements that all have something to do with Mary-Saphrona. A good first step.

Another challenge that is new this month is the Anything Goes challenge. Which for this month meant scrap about yourself, about things you love or hate, about a part of who you are. As I read the challenge a song popped into my head that I haven't heard in probably 30 years or more, I Love by Tom T Hall. And it made me happy. So I used the lyrics for my journaling. I found some bright, cheery papers and elements to use with pictures of the people and places that I love. I put it all together on a template from Scrapping With Liz's Traditional Templates II set.

I had a totally different color scheme going up until it was time to hit save for the very last time (see above) when I thought,'I wonder how it would look if I did this?' And the layout changed. I used my NEW Intuos 4 tablet to make the word art for the title, which was a lot of fun.

 Now it reminds me of a quilt using 30's fabrics and I love those, too, so I kept this version of my page as the completed challenge.


Credits for True Colors : Studio Remnants collab by Tangie Baxter and SherrieJD; Found Treasures collab by Tracie Stroud and Studio Flergs; One Magic Night Glitters by Studio Flergs.

Credits for I Love : Beauty In The World by Tracie Stroud; Free Your Mind by Designs By Kat; Princess With Attitude by Eva Kipler; Pretty as a Peacock by MLE Card; Fancy Strips by Scrapping With Liz; Traditional Templates II by Scrapping With Liz.

Blah.

This past week has been kind of a bust. It was cold. Really cold. Icy cold. We had a big blazing bonfire before the winter weather came in, the weather that turned out to be a non-event.

Yeah, we got a little ice. And a smidgen of snow.

 But mainly we got frigid temperatures. And then, for some unknown reason, the power company decided it was a good time to replace an old rotting pole, which necessitated our electricity being turned off for the better part of two days and several hours of a third day.

It was 25 bloomin' degrees outside! Lemme tell ya, inside temps fall fast in those situations.
Tuesday evening my very sweet husband came home and put in gas logs so we could have some heat. We are very grateful, dear.

I haven't felt like scrapping this week. I had to save the computer battery somewhat so the kids could do a little schoolwork. But I did put in a little time organizing my photos into folders by year and month. 2006-2011 are all in year folders and 2010-2011 are also in monthly folders. I also printed out previews of all my digital kits and put them in a notebook for easy access. I hope this will help me find the right papers, elements, and alphas quickly, thus streamlining my work flow.

Maybe once we get back into our regular routine I will begin to feel those creative juices start to flow again. Until then this layout is on my desk making me happy.

Inspiration

Colors, photos, words. Any of these can be the inspiration that gets those creative juices flowing. I wanted to do a layout with a new kit from Anna BVDesigns called Time And Time Again because it has such a striking combination of blacks and reds (red, of course, being my all-time favorite color.)  I used a new template by Nanie's Designs and modified it a bit, because that is what I generally do with templates, modify. They are another source I go to when I am looking to be inspired. Finally, I used the lyrics to an old song from my high school days for the journaling, and wa-lah, a layout about me and my guy that just makes me happy on so many levels.

It has red. It has glitter. It has lyrics I love. And it has pictures of me and my sweetie. *happy sigh*

Other sources of inspiration for me include 2 new books I picked up this week at Sam's Club:

I want to explore what I can do with my fab camera. Lots of cool pictures are just waiting to be taken.
My son and daughter-in-law gave me this gem for Christmas to help in my quest for picture taking prowess:

And today I am also inspired in a different way. I am inspired by Leslie Sansone's Walk Club at WalkAtHome.com to get up and move. Today I logged five miles for the first time in months. I am pumped. This is the year I am getting the weight off. Me and my workout buddy are gonna do it:

Have a great weekend!

Move More in 2011

Its that time of year again and, like so many others, I am jumping on the 'get fit and firm' bandwagon. Hello to rabbit food and receding numbers on Ye Olde Scale. Bring on the sweaty workouts and svelte new me in size 4 jeans. Hmmm. Apparently the mere thought of upcoming food deprivation has brought on a bout of delirium for me to think I will ever come close to svelte again after having eight children. Actually, whether I ever could lay claim to that moniker in the past is also in serious doubt, but let's not go down tht road.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yes. Fit and firm. Cathy Zielski has a mantra going - Move More and Eat Less - and I am officially buying in to it. Well, I am embracing the Move More aspect anyway. As for Eating Less, I think I will just settle for making healthier food choices than I have in the past. Its easier on the psyche that way.

In the interest of ramping up my activity level I joined Leslie Sansone's Walk Club at www. WalkAtHome.com. I have been using her DVDs for the past five weeks and think the support from the walk club will be beneficial. I tend to get bored easily so the variety of workouts via internet streaming is appealing to me.

So far using these I have avoided gaining any weight over the holidays AND I even lost a couple of pounds. If my joints and ligaments hold out maybe, just maybe, I will manage to come close to svelte. But I am gonna have to give up these

Mint Truffle Chocolate Kisses. sigh. I will miss these lovelies. Thankfully they are only in the stores around Christmas so once they are gone, they are GONE.

I did make a page about my goal of moving more and eating better for a Scrap Orchard challenge

 For now I am mostly walking, but once the new NCIS shows start airing again I will be adding the bike (I watch shows on the laptop while pumping out the miles) and when warmer weather returns I hope to add laps in the pool.

So come join me on this wellness journey, but first, let's bid adieu to one last little beauty

I really hate to see that one go.

Saying Goodbye...

...to 2010 and Hello 2011.

But before I completely move on to this new year I want to wrap up 2010 with a few 'year in review' layouts to recap and close out the year.

For 2009 I did these layouts to document the year for each of my kids:

And another:

(Well, in the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I have only done these for about half of my children, BUT I am gonna get to the rest of them. Hopefully before I forget what was memorable about 2009 for each kid.)

On to 2010...For this year's layouts I am going through all of my Facebook statuses (19 single-spaced pages of statuses) and using the things I have posted about each child for the journaling.

This is Elijah's 2010 doings recorded on a 2 page layout:

 For this layout I used the collaborative kit, A Year In Review, by SuzyQ Scraps and Captivated Visions.

For Matthew's layout I went with a photoless template from Captivated Visions and the kit It's About Him also from Captivated Visions.

I will probably make a second page with a photo collage of pictures of Matt from 2010 to complement  the journal-heavy page here. But even if I don't get around to it, I still have a nice page of memories documented from his past year.

So let's all get busy and say goodbye to 2010 with a few Year in Review layouts!

Jumping in ...

Okay, here goes. I am officially entering the world of blogging.

Why?

Because it will make my children happy (they have been pestering me to do this for over a year now.)

And because it will make me happy. It will give me a place to ramble, and occasionally rant and rave. And post my layouts. Layouts? Yes. Layouts. Words+Pictures. Like this one:

This layout is from a Scrapping With Liz blog challenge using my word for this year (a la Ali Edwards).

My word is 'Engage' as in "to carry out or participate in an activity; be involved in." Not in the betrothal sense of the word because, for one thing, my husband might not like that too much. He's kinda funny that way.

So, for now, I will sign off on this, my very FIRST blog post! I am gonna hit the publish button and see what happens. If it doesn't post I will do a rant and rave post, and maybe cry a bit. That one will probably publish no problem.