Holiday journal

I woke up today determined to get things done around here. And so that is what I have been doing. The girls room has move artwork on it. And the boys bullentin board is decorated and hung. I can't wait until my oldest gets home so that he can see it. But I also got to thinking about this holiday journal/scrapbook. I don't want to call it a daily because it isn't that at all but more about our new holiday season here in AZ.

I am planning on getting information on some places here so that we can get alot done while the kids are on Christmas break. It seems so weird and exciting to be thinking about Christmas and not have to think about snow. But then I also am feeling a little sad that we won't have a first snow...but what can I say. I am a midwest born and raised girl...eventually not having snow would have gotten to me. Right? But I know that it will pass once I start seeing snow photos and layouts of past family outtings.

Well I just wanted to show in pictures some of the progress that I have made so far on the Holiday journal. I think I might start mine from Thanksgiving break forward. It seems that it would fit my family and style better if I did especially since we usually put our tree up after dinner on Thanksgiving day.

First I started with a ceral box as a template of the size that I wanted the album to be. I know that I could have just added up the pieces and did the math...but this is the way I went. I just cut off the one side panel. And there was the beginning of the mini album!

Then I layed out my canvas that I had laying around and cut it about 2 inches around the entire cereal box. I then marked were the spine will be and traced around that. Then I measured 1 inch in on the front and back panels and drew lines were I wanted to add the stitching. I decided half way through the project that I wanted to add x's in the corners of the panels and so I did that also. I will most likely go back and add them so that they are larger.

And here is the finished stitched cover. I love it. I haven't decided if I will just cover the cereal box or use a heavier chipboard base. But if I go with the cereal box it will most likely be flexible enough for me to have some kind of elastic closure. And I haven't glued it down either because I am going to embellish the cover and that will mostly likely be with hand stitching and diecuts and paint also. I am super excited though.

Well I had this wonderful post all typed up and ready to edit...but then my littlest came along and deleted it while I was making lunch...and away it went!

But I do have some truly awesome news...I found our Christmas ornaments and stockings. They were hidden away. So I am glad that those aren't gone. And I keep telling myself not to keep mentioning all the things that are missing and the boxes that went to charity by accident, but it's hard not to now because I have unpacked all the boxes and now know what is missing.

I also have been thinking about doing an album for the month of December.
I think that I really want to do it mostly because I will be able to make some of the handmade journaling blocks and images that I have been wanting to for a long time. I just don't really know how I truly could fit that one thing into my daily life especially around the holiday. But it's becoming something that I would like to try just because I have wanted to do a daily photo for a month for over 10yrs after seeing one of my neighbors photo albums. He wasn't a scrapbooker he just woke up once while in college and decided that he wanted to take a photo of himself everyday. And he actually had the biggest photo albums that I have ever seen (and I am a scrapbooker lol) and he had been doing it for years. Taking a photo with someone, something or whatever he was doing at that time every single day of his life. I looked at it his album once and was truly impressed with the idea. And I thought that I would love to do that one day. So maybe next month I will do just that? I just don't know what I will do or if it is the fact that I haven't really gotten to craft like I did in our old house and that is starting to make me want to do something to get back into the groove...but we will see.

A quick update. I know I am off by a couple of days with my blogging schedule. But I have good reason. I have been a painting sista! But to be honest I am not even close to being done either. But I wanted to stop in and show off some of the projects because there is just so many things to share.

Ok, I have said it a bunch of times that this place is only temporary but I couldn't live here for a few months or so without having something that made it feel a little like home for us. And since I can't paint the walls or even buy all the furniture for the house that we are going to be living in until we get into it...I am going to make it a comfy as I can with what I can get for cheap.

So here is what the girls' room looks like was you are entering...

I got those curtains at Savers for $3.99 a panel. And I bought two other ones because when we move I want these to come with us. I am hoping that their room won't have more than 2 windows or I will be in some serious trouble lol. You can also see the dresser from the side. It has a ton of items that I got while hitting garage sells this last couple of weeks.

And here are the girls playing on their bed.

We actually have two beds but only put up one because we haven't purchased the mattress for the other one because I want then both to have springs instead of a box spring. Plus they sleep in the same bed together right now and I am ok with that.

The little table will be replaced with a nice night stand or side table that has a drawer that hopefully I will paint to make the dresser. And I have been looking all over the place for material that is really nice to match the colors of their room. The little baby bed thingie next to the bed was purchased at a garage sale as well for $3 and the head and foot boards were purchased at Savers for $10. I got the mattress new. And the wall art was created by the girls and me. It was fun. They wanted to put their hands in paint all day after that was done but it turned out great...here is a close up.

There are buttons, my own home made mists, acrylic paint, ribbons and stitching...all on one painting. But there are going to be other frames added and 2 8x10 canvases of the girls and some other photos. I just haven't gotten around to all that just yet. I have all the materials, just not all the time to get them done just yet.

I also got my desk painted and it is sitting in the corner of my bedroom. I swore I'd never scrapbook in our bedroom again but hey I am glad to get that space cause I have been wanting to do more and not having a "space" was driving me nuts!!! Big time. I will most likely still scrapbook at the dinning room table but only while Vele is trying to get some sleep and I am working on something that I just gotta get done.

I don't know why but I keep forgetting the before and after photos but hey it all turned out nice in the end. But of course I still have a huge to do list for their room as well as the boys and also every other room in this place as well. I can't wait to move into the house so that we can put colors on the walls. I hate white walls! I really do. But if I can I will fill these rooms with so much color that I won't notice that the walls are white. LOL!

I gotta go the girls are screaming (this is how they play) and it is starting to get to me so I know that it has to be bothering someone else.

I have been thinking for awhile that I want to do several things with the girls' room but I couldn't narrow down the ton of things that were in my mind. So I have been collecting a list of things for I am going to think about more.

But I know that I am going to make them some canvas wall hanging or frames. This is something that I have planned for a while but never could find the time to do it. But it has be done because we have moved and they don't have anything for their walls. So I am going to do some creating and see what I can come up with.

Plus I have been looking around for old dressers and night stand/small side table. I need something old (and wood) that I can strip and paint the colors that works with their material.

So this last weekend I found a nice old dresser at a garage sale. They were asking $10 but we got it for $5. It has some really weird looking bar pull thing but I have sanded it, removed the bar pull, primed and painted it. I am just now trying to make the final decision on what I am going to do to it at this point. LeiLani wants butterflies and a flowers for her room. So I am thinking of painting on the front of it. But I am not sure what exactly yet.

My first thought was flowers just the buds (no stems), maybe daisies and the centers could be the new knobs that I paint white but I don't know. But I just don't know. I am thinking of sitting and doodling and seeing where that goes. Well I did it backwards when it comes to decorating this time. I didn't have a clue what colors I was going to use but I knew that they were going to be colorful. And so I don't have anything but one piece of material which I plan on getting a whole lot of different ones because I want to add them to the wall canvas, name frames (frames with material block backgrounds with each letter of their name in a solid color), and their lamp shade. So I need lots of different ones plus some for the quilt that I am going to start making next month at a local scrapbooking store.

But back to the dresser for a second. I painted it light pink (on the outside) and the drawers are a nice yellow. Both colors look great together. And since I am going to be drawing on something I bought turquoise, teal, lime &leaf green, 2yellows, 2 pinks, 2 purples, white, black and brown acrylic paints. I hated getting them because I had a huge selection in MN and that was also in that box that was accidently given away to charity. But I need them for this project. And the many others that I have got to get started. Which includes changing the birdhouses that I had for her too. I love redecorating. I am not planning on doing temporary decorating in the kids rooms but instead getting all the stuff that they will need or have in their rooms in the house.

And since I can't post anymore without a picture...here is one of us at the fair two weekends ago. I forgot to get a photo of the dresser so that I could do a before and after but oh well I will remember that for my desk when I start working on that.

I just had to come and upload some photos from my littlest one 1st birthday. I just realized (while editing the photos to print to make her scrapbook pages) that I never edited the photos and I also never shared them online.

Her birthday week was super busy for us all because Vele was off at training for the week before and was scheduled to come back home the day before my youngest son's birthday which was 3 days before the baby. And then add the fact that I still had to prepare for his birthday and I didn't want to make "big" day for him but it turned out that way anyway. We all headed off to Como Zoo and park and sent the entire day there! It was awesome. It was peaceful for me because we decided to make it a family day and we got to stay as long as we could and just enjoy the day.

But back to Nya, it is our family tradition to actually make the 1st cake and decorate it and have it so that the little one can make a mess. Well since we had a cake still from LaTrele's party we decided to do a small cake and cupcakes and we picked it up from Sams. I hadn't bought a store bought cake in years but it was so cute that I had to get it...but here are some photos from her day.

Well I guess blogger is preparing for a maintenance update and for some reason I am not able to upload some of the photos. So I am going to just upload this one until I can get the page done and the rest will be on there.

Also we went to the fair this last weekend. It was nothing like MN's state fair. It was actually a little more expensive and Vele was so disappointed because he wasn't able to get his bucket of cookies. But I plan on making chocolate chip cookies today so that he can get over that craving because he keeps hinting that he wants some but I just haven't gotten around to making them. Plus we just finally finished off the chocolate chip brownies a couple of days ago. And they were so good. How come no one told me it was so easy to make brownies from scratch. I will never buy another box brownie mix again. Sorry Betty Crocker!

But I wanted to share a recipe that I just got a few months ago. And it is awesome! It's called chicken waldorf salad. It is soooo good. We had ours with fried fish instead of the chips. I have been trying to come up with a collection of salads since it's always so warm all year round. But here is a photo of the salad (if it uploads?)

And the recipe
ingredients (I double to make enough for my family but the recipe if for 4 people)
2 cups of cubed deli rotisserie chicken (I just use chicken breast that I saute)
2 medium unpeeled apples cubed
2 stalks of celery sliced thinly
1 cup red seedless grapes cut in half (I use black and cut at an angle)
1 tablespoon thinly sliced chives
1/3 cup almonds (since we have an tree nut allergy, I use sunflower seeds)
1/4 cup refrigerated coleslaw dressing (I use Litehouse)
4 leaves of lettuce

directions
In a large bowl mix all ingredients except lettuce and chives.
On each of 4 serving plates, place 1 lettuce leaf and spoon salad onto the lettuce, sprinkle with chives.

The kidos love it! And always ask for seconds. But also while I am able to get some of the other photos uploaded that I wanted...I will show some of the recent decorations that I had bought for the apartment. It feels so weird saying apartment, but I am looking for pieces that I might want to bring to the house and so I haven't rushed out and bought anything new. But I have been a thrifty shopper...oh I did splurge and spent a whole $10 on this rooster to add to my collection since my collection no longer exists lol. He is so purrrty!

Another page to share

After completing the two page layout this weekend, I decided that I needed to get caught up on my scrapbooks. Not that I am really worried about getting caught up but I just really wanted to get the kids' birthdays and Christmas pages done. Although I had all the details of most of the picture written down, I just really wanted to get the pages done.

So I began working on birthday pages. So here is the first of several that I want to get done this week.

Supply list (as I can remember)

Cosmo Cricket & Little Yellow Bicycle papers

American Crafts & Doodle Bug- stickers and rub-ons

Spellbinder- pinking circle and star

Quickutz- label, balloon, #8, embossing stars folder

Fiskars- border & triangle punch

Pinking scissors

Misc-Happy Birthday rub-on greeting

So I am really hoping to be able to get more pages done. The only problem is that everytime the family needs the table to eat, I have to load up everything and put it away. That truly is a reason that I had my own space in MN. But this is a temporary location so I gotta try to deal with it. It is so hard, because I have been to a couple of local scrapbooking stores and thought I really gotta make some items and bring them in to show. Maybe then I could teach some classes here, but I also found another store (just driving around) that I am totally in love with.

In MN we had several Archivers stores and then a few local stores that sold items. I never really had a hard time getting items but none of the places that I could go had fabrics that I just loved. Well this store has tons of fabrics! I mean tons and they are absolutely amazing. The store is so my style too. I was in there and just stood there looking at all the bright and cheery colors.

If you don't know from most of my work, I am a bright colors kinda girl. I love them. And so I use them alot of my pages and cards. And not so much for classes that I teach but I do use them.

But onto another topic. I while at the local thrift store I found some items that seem like they would be awesome to use to hold my stamp pads. It spins too which is also amazing. I just have to figure out how to alter it so that it fits my needs better. And I also noticed while looking through my stash, I gave up and tossed some of the best items in my stash. I don't know how but somehow during the moving process I left all my chipboard behind, and also all my coordinations whitewash cardstock and all my white chipboard.

I think that somehow during the move one of the boxes that I was loading with the family to take to Savers someone grabbed one of the boxes of the items that I wanted to take along. And I knew that my favorite cutting mat was gone but now I am working with my Fiskars one and since my WRMK one has gouges I don't have a cutting mat. And that is truly another thing that slow down my crafting. Cause I use a paper trimmer but nothing does the job like the good old craft knife and a cutting mat.

But I am still able to craft and get pages done so I gotta just find the time to get to work.

It was a Christmas kinda night!

Well that is what it felt like looking at our Christmas photos from 2009. I was sitting on the couch last night and just out of no where I had to scrapbook those photos. I was planning on putting one of them in the wall frame that I picked up from Ross but I couldn't decide which one was the best one so all of them needed to be used. And then I decided that I would rather just keep them together on the printed pages and use them on a layout. Which was the original plan.

So of course since I don't have a space (won't have one for a few more months-until our house is ready) I had to open some boxes that are sitting in my closet and try to use whatever I could instead of searching through boxes all night.

And this is the end result. It isn't exactly what I had in mind but it surely will make it's way into the family Christmas album.

Most of the patterned papers came in a pack of papers from Tuesday Morning. I have never used this much patterned paper on a layout but I really am ok with it. I used the word patterned paper as the title. Dies used are QK chocolate chip and a label die. I used pre-made diecuts (the tree at the top of the first page)and the joy label. Both of these also were in a pack of items from Tuesday Morning. Those are made by Making Memories. I wanted to stamp the 2009 but I can't find any of my wood mounted letter stamps.

But after I completed the page I realized that I wanted to make a Christmas page for the wall calendar using several Christmas photos over the years and the theme of the page would be no more Christmases in MN. So now I have to find the box with our memory cards/CDs so that I can start that page.