Off to grandmother's house HE goes!

Well, our Logan is off to visit grandma! His first time on a plane so of course I brought the camera!
His flight was delayed an hour so we sat in the airport waiting and waiting...




And the people at the airlines were so nice...they let me go on the plane with him to snap a few shots of him!




The pilot said that Logan looked very comfortable in the cockpit so he was going to take a seat in the back and let Logan handle the flight from there!

What a great experience he had today and I'm so glad I had the camera there to capture everything!

July Calendar

I'm not teaching very much in July! With the holiday, a family wedding and a long-overdue vacation...it only left me a week to do some classes! So here it is:

July 16th - Camping Sketch Layout - It's About Time Scrapbooks, Murrieta
July 17th - Aloha Sketch Layout - Pink Pineapple Scrapbooks, Vista
July 18th - Q & A Mini Album - Cool Scrapbook Stuff, Poway
July 19th - Q & A Mini Album - Once Upon A Memory, Huntington Beach
July 21st - Tinkerbell Accordion Album - Collective Journey, Redlands

I will give you a sneek peek at my August calendar as well:

August 16th - Q & A Mini Album - Kandy Scrappers, Corona
August 18th - Q & A Mini Album - Collective Journey, Redlands
August 20th - Q & A Mini Album - It's About Time Scrapbooks, Murrieta
August 27th - Sketch Layout TBA - It's About Time Scrapbooks, Murrieta

I will be adding a bunch more classes for August, but just wanted to give you a peek for now...
terina

Creative Juices Flowing - Pulling An All-Nighter!

I have told many of you before - sometimes when I get on a creative roll - I just can't sleep until I finish whatever it is that I'm creating. Well, last night was no exception! The house was quite, except for the radio playing country music in the background and I had the new "Q & A" products from my friend Kelly Panacci (who is an amazing designer for Sandylion)...and of course ooddles of May Art ribbons to choose from! Before I knew it, it was 4:30am and I had this great little envelope and tag book! I'm so excited to share it with you and to start teaching it! Here's a sneak peek:

Hope you like it?!? Look for classes with this book at your LSS starting in July!
I've got to go take a nap!

Scrappin' When You DON'T Have Pictures

I was looking around at some of my favorite sites this morning..and saw an interesting post on a blog from a MM magazine editor. She talked about scrapping when you don't have pictures. Well, that's not a new idea...basically, scrapping your memorabilia, journaling, etc. I've done this many times, but it's always nice to be reminded that scrapbooking is about many things; pictures being only one of them.

But this also got me thinking about something that I've been doing for years - in September it will be 12 years to be exact! What happens when you are caught up with your scrapbooking? Or just have a great idea for some awesome new paper, but no pictures to put on it? My answer: Pre-make your layouts! I even go one step further...I have been in a page exchange group for almost 12 years now. I started with a few ladies that lived on my street just after my third son was born. We were all relatively "green" to the NEW way of scrapbooking, but we really wanted to do it. We were all very busy moms with small children and not alot of time to devote to scrapbooking, but we knew that it was important to preserve our family's memories. We had all been involved in other "exchanges" (ie: recipe, family home evening kits, cards, etc) so we put that same idea to scrapbooking. The five of us met once a month to exchange our pages and to crop. It worked out great! And once word got out about what we were doing - our little group of 5 expanded into, at one time, a group of 30! Since that time, our group has dwindled into a smaller managible size...some ladies have come and some have gone, and then only to return again...now our group hovers around 12 to 15 ladies at any given time!

I make the same layout 15 times and then send it to my friend in Utah (where my exchange originated) and every month, she sends me 14 layouts (+ I keep one of my own) - that I didn't have to come up with - that are, by the way, AWESOME! It is amazing to get this package every month - it's like a Christmas present in my mailbox once a month! The themes and styles differ depending on the month and the person. It's so awesome to be able to develop pictures and then sit down and pop them on pages, journal and put them in the album! And when I don't have pictures for the pages right away, I have this pre-made page bin that I store my pages in by theme, until I do have pictures for them! FYI - I took over 50 pictures of my son's 8th grade graduation & dinner last Thursday, and those pictures are already on pages, ready to go into his book!




Here's the bin I store my pages in, until I use them.










Samples of some pre-made pages I haven't used yet!


If you don't want to go as far as doing a page exchange, but you have some great ideas for that new Elsie paper that just came out (just an example!) - then scrap it and save it! And if you're worried you'll never have pictures for a particular theme, then stick to themes you know you will have pictures for! Everyone has a birthday - there's six in my household every year - Christmas, Easter, Halloween, 4th of July, Summer, Water Fun, Thanksgiving...the list is endless! So don't let the fact that you don't have pictures, stop you from scrappin'!

Happy Scrappin'!

Summer is Officially Here!

I can't believe it is the first day of summer vacation! We're all kinda mulling around the house not quite sure what to do with ourselves yet. The kids are watchin' a little t.v. and I've been doin' a little work around the house - but it's summer and we're supposed to be doing something fun! Oh well...I guess we have to start off slow and work our way into a super busy fun summer! We've all got lots planned for summer: Logan is leaving for a trip to see grandma in Arizona (his first away from home - he's counting down the days! I can't forget the box of kleenex when we take him to the airport); Michael has football camp (our big high school freshmen); Trevor has allstars for baseball; Korey is going fishing with dad; and we're all going on vacation to Utah!

I guess we need a little rest to get over the super busy week we had last week! So here are some of the pictures that I've taken this past week:






Michael's 8th grade graduation - 608 promoting 8th graders!







Trevor found out in Friday's newspaper that he made all-stars! And we thought that baseball season was over!





Our grammy came to visit us for a couple days - here she is with Korey.






Didn't want to leave our sweet Logan out - so here he is, too!

Hope everyone has a fabulous summer! Take lots of pictures! I know I will!
terina

Be a Sketch Star!

Have you taken a sketch class with me in the past and have re-created that layout using different paper, embellishments, ribbon, etc? I would love to make you a "Sketch Star". Send me a jpeg picture of your layout and I will put it on my blog for everyone to see! I know there are several of you out there - because many of you have shown me your new layouts! AND THEY ARE AWESOME!

Can't wait to see what you've done and to share them!

More Cruisin' in 2007!

Well my friends over at my LSS "It's About Time" in Murrieta are also set for a fabulous weekend croppin' on the high seas! To celebrate their 1st Anniversary, Mel, Amy, Lisa and their pals will be packing their bags and hoppin' on board October 12th thru 15th, 2007. From what I hear, space is filling up fast - so if you've been wanting to go on a croppin' cruise, but haven't done it yet - now's your chance. Who knows...I may be going on 3 cruises this year! So get your sea legs, grab your stuff and join me on one!

Click on their link in "My Favorite Blogs" section in the upper left side of this page to get all the info!

June Classes

June 16 - Aloha! Sketch of the Month - Cool Scrapbook Stuff, Poway
June 18 - Travel Journal - It's About Time Scrapbooks, Murrieta
June 19 - Travel Journal - Cool Scrapbook Stuff, Poway
June 20 - Pirate Mini Album - Once Upon A Memory, Huntington Beach
June 21 - Graduation File Folder - Kandy Scrappers, Corona
June 23 - Fab 5 - Collective Journey, Redlands
June 25 - Sketch of the Month - It's About Time Scrapbooks, Murrieta
June 26 - Tinkerbell Book - Pink Pineapple Scrapbooks, Vista
June 27 - Giggle Sketch of the Month - Pink Pineapple Scrapbooks, Vista

If you have any questions, let me know -I hope to see you in a class soon!
terina

Michael's Growing Up!

It seems like just yesterday he was graduating from pre-school! He's growing up so fast...moving on to high school!

flowers

It makes me happy to walk outside in the morning when I am greated by so many beautiful colors...

Using Sketches to make other Layouts

Tonight in class we had a discussion on sketches - of course I'm a huge advocate of using sketches! I use them all the time! But some people still don't get it - how using the same basic layout can actually look different by just changing the paper and embellishments. Well - I have some samples! If you didn't know already - I am the mom of 4 boys! No girls for me - that's alright! My boys are awesome!

Some of my classes in the past have looked a little "girly" - If the product "speaks to me" I have to use it in layouts. For example: Last months GIGGLE layout



It's a great layout...I just can't use this particular layout for any of my boys' pictures. So, I used the same sketch and made the layout work for me...Here are some samples of what I did:

Essentially the same layout, I just changed it a bit to fit my pictures. Look at the upper right corner of the right pages. For the Giggle layout - I used a scalloped flowery thing that I made. When I changed it to make it a baseball page - I found a great pattern paper that had a huge baseball on it. I just tore around the entire baseball and adhered it to that corner (trimmed off the edges and voila!) I made the sketch fit the theme of my pictures! Most of the pictures are from a layout I did for my older son. I did the same layout for my three older boys, because they were on the same team this particular year - I did throw in a sample of what I did to one of my other boys' page...I had more pictures of him that I wanted to get in there - so I added a hinged picture.
Hope this helps to inspire you to take another look at sketches and use them to fit you and your pictures!

Sketch Planning Progress - Update

Just wanted to show you the layouts that I completed this last Friday...although I didn't get all 7 layouts that I planned - I did complete 6 PLUS I did a few more that I had ideas for...so here they are to show you my progress. It was really easy - because I had already done all the work beforehand planning where I wanted everything. I just picked out paper and embellishments that I wanted, and went to work putting them together! I even used the Cricut to make some titles! I'm excited to plan out some new layouts!

Tropical Paradise Sketch of the Month

ALOHA! This layout is the newest addition to my sketch of the month layouts...Bright, colorful, vibrant paper, stickers and ribbon. Check out my calendar to see when and where this class will be held. Hope to see you there!

RIBBON

Ribbon makes me happy...ribbon adds so much to a layout! Here is a picture of my ribbon wall in my scrapbookroom.

Sketch Planning Progress

Here's my progress with planning my pictures and sketches. I'm going tomorrow to scrapbook and I plan on at least getting these 7 layouts finished! I wanted to show you what I did in my sketch book...It took me a couple hours, but once I got the hang of it...it really flowed! I jotted down notes saying if I had paper or not... Most I don't so I'll have to get some tomorrow while I crop. I'll post pictures when I have them ready!

Multiple Sizes of Layouts in 1 Scrapbook!!! Update

Well I have been working steadily at getting stuff out of the file and into the scrapbook. I have finished my eldest...working on the youngest...and have done a few in the middle two's books. The two files are almost empty. Wanted to share a few pictures...They aren't anything fancy, but they are where they can be seen now! That's what I like!

I have only done the 8 1/2 x 11 (landscape and portrait) so far. I did buy some 8 x 8 page protectors as well, but I think once I've gotten the files emptied, I would go onto something a little more creative!

Hope you like them...let me know what you think!

Multiple Sizes of Layouts - Look What I've Done

Scrapbookin' On the High Seas!!!

I don't know about you, but I don't get alot of time to scrapbook for myself. Alot of times, I'm putting class kits together, but not much time to actually scrapbook. I love to try to get in a Friday or Saturday night crop once a month. They're fun, but I never seem to get more than a few layouts done in a 6 hour period. (Although, most of the time I go to socialize with my friends) About 4 years ago, a store that I was teaching classes at, offered a "scrapbook cruise". Well, I had been to retreats in the mountains, but I had never heard of a "scrapbook cruise" - what a novel idea. So myself and about 11 friends tried it out. You know I liked it so much, that I've gone every year since then!

Scrapbook Cruises are a little more common now...I know of several stores that offer
them. Two stores that I teach at are offering cruises that leave later this year, but you have to make your reservations now - spaces fill up fast. If you are interested, here is the contact info:

Collective Journey - Oct. 19 - 22 - www.collectivejourney.com
There is a link to a flyer with more information

Cool Scrapbook Stuff - Nov. 9 - 12 - www.coolscrapbookstuff.com/cruise.htm
You can also call the store directly at: (858) 679-9100

Both cruises offer lots of fun stuff...so check it out! I can't wait to go this year. Last time I completed over 50 pages in one weekend...and still had time to eat, see shows, eat, go to shore, eat, oh and did I mention...eat!

I will be going on both of these cruises! I can't believe it! Not one, but two cruises! I'm not sure that I'll have enough pictures to scrapbook...I guess I'll just have to take a bunch between now and October!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! I hope that you had a wonderful Mother's Day! I sure did! I got to relax! We went to church and then came home. Every year my husband and boys get me flowers...not the kind in a vase, but the kind that go in the garden. I love those kind, because they last alot longer! So I planted my flowers outside and then I came in to rest a few minutes...two hours later I woke up from my nap! That just doesn't happen very often!

I'm so grateful to be a mother...my boys are so precious to me! Each one of them brings something special to my life.

I'm also so grateful for my mother...she lives far away, but I get to talk to her almost everyday! She is such a great support to me - spiritually and emotionally! I love her very much and miss her terribly!

My grandmother is like a second mother to me...I think she always has! That's what happens I guess when you're the first grandchild. She is my shopping partner. My friend. The one who said yes - when mom said no. My retreat to escape to - away from my little sisters. She has sound advise. I'm so thankful she is able to watch my children grow up. I love my grammy for all she is and all she means to me.

There are several other women in my life who I am also grateful for! Friends, aunts and cousins...each one brings such joy to my life! I wouldn't be who I am without each of them.

I hope that you are blessed with special people around you, as I am!
Again, Happy Mother's Day!

Page Protectors

I just got back from Michael's...I can't wait to get started on my multi-sized pages for my scrapbook...I'm going to start with my older son and work my way down through the kids.

FYI - I found a bunch of different sizes of page protectors at Michael's...8 1/2" x 11", 6" x 6", 8" x 8". The only one I had a hard time finding was the 8 1/2" x 11" landscape...I did find them eventually, but they weren't with the others. They were with the new Martha Stewart stuff (I'll save my comments on Martha Stewart jumping on the scrapbooking bandwagon for another post!). And of course because they had her name on it, they were $4 more! At this time, I just wanted to get them and start working on my project, so I paid the $$$. I think I will check online to find them less expensive!

I'll try to have some pics to post in the next few days.