December Daily 2012

For the last three years, I have attempted to do a December Daily.  The first year, I was successful and I completed it.  The next two?  Well... let's just say there are two piles of red and green items still waiting for me in my craft room!  Terrible!

As we know, this year I attempted Project Life.  I did a great job the first half of the year, but then summer hit, pregnancy got the best of me, I had a baby, and it was abandoned.  I still sorted my photos into weekly folders in hope I could catch up, but it seemed such a daunting task it never happened.  I suck at this.

However, it's now December, and I'm faced with the question of whether to attempt the December Daily again or not.  Part of me says no - I have two years of unfinished dailies to do.  Part of me says it's the baby's first year here and it would be nice to document it.

So, my compromise is to pick up Project Life again and just do December.  If I can manage to go back and catch up on those lost months later, great.  Right now?  I'm going to give myself permission to not worry about it.  

What started out as something as simple as printing resized photos and adding typed journaling cards spiraled into detailed digital scrapping for each card that took way more time than I was able to devote.  It's time for back to basics, and that means I needed some fresh journaling cards.

That begs the question - what fun is making new journaling cards if I can't share them?

So, my gift to you this year for being a fan of my blog and liking my page on Facebook is this brand spanking new set of six printable journaling cards, perfect for a December Daily.  Just click on that link, "Like" the page if you have not yet done so, and get them for yourself!  Yes, I know the colors are Christmas themed, since that is what my family and I celebrate and therefore what I would use.  Unfortunately, like I mentioned before, I just don't have the time or energy to make Hannukah or non-denominational sets with a new baby in the house.  Primarily I make these for myself, and then share them.

Enjoy and Happy December!

Twelve of 12 - March 2011

The first thing I see in the morning is the disaster area we like to call Bubba's room.

To make myself feel better, I went out into the back yard to get a shot of all the weeds I've pulled already. See the tall weeds over to the left of the photo, and then again in the back right of the shot. My whole yard was covered in them!

The wildflower seeds we tossed into this pot have begun to sprout.

I began working on some Easter decor by changing out the words on one of my chalkboards.

Breakfast of champions! Amazing Grass chocolate powder pureed with a cup of milk, a banana, and a handful of ice. YUM. My sides are a fish oil pill, a calcium tablet with vitamin d, two cinnamon capsules for my triglycerides, and of course, mah Zoloft.

Someone was a grouchy pill all morning.
The best was to adjust his attitude is to change the background. Time for a road trip! I put on my new kicks. I got them an the Nordstrom shoe clearance. They didn't have my size in store, but they were able to find a pair in Colorado and shipped them to me for free. I like how they're comfortable but classic and not sloppy looking at all.

We hit a couple of Goodwills while we were out. We found another Ralph Lauren polo for the boy, two more bowls for my china set, a large wooden bowl that I loved, a vintage cookbook, a Junior League cookbook for the San Francisco area, A Clockwork Orange, and Crime and Punishment.
After that, we headed to Ikea. We got another tall bookshelf for the boy's room and some more hangers for his shirts. They have miniature wooden ones there that totally match the ones in our closets.

After we got our bookshelf home, we headed out to Lowes. I found a lampshade for my milkglass Goodwill lamp at the entry which I plan to cover in fabric. We also picked up several bags of compost to mix into the herb garden bed. I finally bought a peppermint plant. I had the hardest time finding a plant or seeds! I'll be keeping that one in a pot because I know better. Lowes had seed packets Buy One Get One Free. I picked up some tomato seeds and a little greenhouse kit so we'll see how that goes. I also got some oregano and thyme to plant in terra cotta pots. In the raised bed we'll have the tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, and onions. Finally, in another section of the curbed edge we're planting pumpkins. How much fun will that be come fall?

We made Chicken and Leek Stroganoff in the green baby for dinner. SO GOOD.

Leila relaxed under the side table. She was pretty much done for the night!

Actually, so am I.

Christmas in March

Guess who has two thumbs and FINALLY finished her December Daily? That's right - THIS GIRL!!!

Can I get a woo hoo?

So it's two and a half months late - the important part is that I finished it! There were some lessons learned along the way, such as "follow directions" - if Ali Edwards says to premake the whole thing before the month starts, there is probably a really good reason why! I think that was the biggest obstacle to getting this thing done on time. I was scrapbooking each individual day as it came and overthinking it all in the process.

It was nice to be able to use up some of the random old stuff that I had lying around. 97% complete tags? Poetry dog tags? Making Memories rub ons? Deluxe Designs chipboard shapes? Oh yeah. You can tell it's been a while since I scrapbooked from all the old product around here. I did go buy some new paper for this, but most of it was stuff that I already had as well.

If you have any questions on stuff I used, techniques, or journaling (I had a hard time taking photos of these as my camera was dying) just ask in the comments!

Clean room = Scrappiness!

I went to a crop a little over a month ago, and I sort of did three pages. I say sort of, because I started them, but since I tried to preplan and take the least amount of stuff possible, I ended up not having everything needed to finish the entire page. If that makes sense. Anywho, they've been sitting on my table in a neat little stack, just waiting for me to find them and give them some love.

Here's the first one... my little bag lady. I really like this dog!

I'm using all sorts of fun old stuff I found! Seriously, how flipping OLD is that license plate anyway? I think it's Art Warehouse from when I was working at Recollections like a million years ago! I kinda wish I had torn the patterned paper across the bottom instead of just cutting it, but it's too late now. Ah well.

My husband, being a dork when we were in Seattle last Christmas. We were driving around downtown and stopped at the Seahawk Stadium so he could get a jersey. The stadium is in an old industrial area, so there were all sorts of cool old brick walls and abandoned buildings to use as photo backdrops. We spent some time goofing off and just taking photos.

There's another couple of oldies but goodies in there... a Lil' Davis faux leather stitched frame and some Doodlebug letter stickers. Good stuff.

This is a photo from the Renaissance Faire. My buddy and I got some big old turkey legs to eat for lunch, and took pictures of ourselves with them. Some hippies were cracking up watching us with our cameras, but we didn't care, because after all, we smelled nicer than they did and stuff. You know.

I sketched out the letters for the title and cut them out with an X-acto knife. I haven't done that in a while!

I also printed a few photos today. I like to try and print a whole page's worth at once, so as not to waste the photo paper. I really just needed the small photo for my husband's "Pensive" layout, but I decided to try out the printer's edge to edge printing for the first time. Can I just say, FLIPPING AWESOME??? I'm so excited to scrap those photos. Maybe later this week.

The reason I tell you all that is because I had a little tiny space left on the page after putting the photos I needed on it, so I printed out a tiny picture of my now clean new scraproom and did a Daily. The last one I did was on April first. How sad is that?

The little silver flower was yet another old thing pulled from my stash. This time it was from when I worked at the bead store, BEFORE I WAS MARRIED!!! That thing is at least five years old!

Grouchy.

There is a strip of paper stuck across the top of my computer monitor at work. It says, "The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now." I keep looking at it, and telling myself to choose my attitude, and to choose to be happy.

But then, I think, **F*CK being happy.** I'm grouchy. I'm entitled to be grouchy. I just wanna smack people upside the head for being stupid. Seriously, THAT kind of grouchy.

Problem is, I work in the hospitality industry, and well, my smile is a part of my uniform. Gag, right? Fake it till ya make it. It's hard. I dont' want to be here. I want to punch a wall. Is this one of the stages of grief?

Yesterday, after I managed to pry myself out of bed and finally was able to stop crying, I puttered around on the Internet for a while. I thought to myself, Self, you feel like crap. What makes you feel better, what makes you forget other stuff, at least for a while?

So, I went into my scraproom, and looked at my table. It was pretty clear, as I made Zee a birthday card recently, but there was one corner where there was a little pile of papers and other odds and ends.

The Daily Pile.

Even though I haven't been doing them like I intended, I still find myself gathering bits of ephemera here and there to make the cards. I set them on the corner of my desk so that they are there when I get around to actually doing them. It doesn't matter if I forget the dates, because I can either check my date book or go back through my blog to find out the appropriate date to put on them. Pretty nifty huh? So, I made a bunch of dailies yesterday to cheer myself up.

This is the postmark off something that came in the mail at work. I asked the recipient if I could have it, and they obliged. I'd love to visit London one day.

Super Bowl weekend, saw rapper Akon at the mall. Got accidentally caught up in the mob. It was very funny, but listening to the thirteen year olds gush about how now their lives were complete, I realized, MAN, am I old!

A little blurb about Super Bowl Sunday.

My dogs in the bath. I use the Lush soap on the little one, and she smells so good afterwards, for days! They're awful cute, even if they do look a little bit pathetic.

Ticket stub from the Renaissance Festival. I went with some coworkers and it was FUN. I ate a big old Turkey leg. Well, not the whole thing. It started to gross me out after a bit. We rode an elephant too.

Positive Pregnancy Test!!!

Marcella by Kay (Target brand) cupcake stuff. Too cute. I love those dang ancient Chatterbox alphabet stickers. My handwriting for the date.

Ultrasound pic. My handwriting and more ancient Chatterbox stickers.

My FIL gave us iTunes gift cards for Christmas, and I've been getting good use out of mine!!!

My final project for cake decorating class. New itty bitty teensy tiny Doodlebug rub ons.

My card to mark Monday's events. It's blue, cuz I was sad, and I'm cheesy that way.

So, after I did all those, and the little crap/ephemera pile was cleared away, I looked about and found the picture of the ultrasound that I enlarged and printed out. I haven't done an actual page in a while so I was like, what the heck?

Bubba's baby book is now up to date, with a grand total of two layouts. I rock.

Got the title off a tshirt I was going to buy but was too tight (and it was a MATERNITY shirt!!!). I ran out of "e" stickers, so I used my Crop A Dile to punch a hole in a "c" sticker...can you tell? The heart I cut freehand. I love that particular shade of red Bazzill. So pretty.

Here's the birthday card I made Zee. Her birthday was yesterday (Happy Belated Birthday! I suck!) but I was so wrapped up in ME and MY ISSUES that I forgot to post anything about it. Sorry. But I did mail a card BEFORE it happened, and that's pretty dang impressive for this slacker.

Long time, no scrap!

I suppose, technically, I didn't scrap this layout today, but I also didn't get around to scanning it until today, so here it is:

A actually posted this one already, but I was being lazy and I just snapped a picture of it on the desk instead of taking the time to scan it. My friend saw it and she said that the photo didn't do it justice, so here it is, all nice and pretty and scanned.

My desk was such a horrendous mess. I seem to be the opposite of many scrappers. When my desk is trashed, that means that I haven't been scrapping at all. For me, a clean desk is the sign that work and creativity has been happening there. That's because I work in a relatively clean manner, and I can NOT work when I'm surrounded by clutter, so I clean as I go. I'm weird like that I guess!

I started this page two weeks ago, and after sticking the edged paper on the grid background, and the bling on the photo, it just sat there. I actually dreamt the design, because I have nothing more interesting to dream about than scrapbook layouts apparently.

It's the first page for Bubba's baby book! Yay!

Anyone who's been reading my blog for a while, or who has gone through my galleries at 2Ps or SIStv knows, I scrap my dogs a LOT. In fact, since I got Leila when she was only nine weeks old, I've pretty much got an extremely thorough documentation of her puppyhood and into her first few years. All of those pages are neatly contained in a pink and white gingham scrapbook entitled "Leila's Baby Book".

That's right, my dog has a baby book.

Almost everyone who has seen this book has made the same comment, in one form or another: "Your human children's books better be TWICE as good as this, or you're in trouble! And that won't be easy!!!"

All I can do is promise to try and execute Bubba's book with as much honest love and time and effort as went into the dog's book, I guess, which really, shouldn't be hard. Right? I mean, this is my child, my firstborn, probably my only, and not only will I have that love for her, I'll be getting to do all the fun stuff like birthdays, holidays, school, and travel that you can't do with a dog.

So there you go!

I also got caught up in my gratitude album. I was doing really well, but then the last three Mondays I missed because of the severe lazies that have set in. I knew what I wanted to do for each page, I just didn't get around to actually doing it. Now I'm caught up, and I went ahead and did tomorrow's page too for good measure.

This week, I'm hoping maybe to start doing dailies again. We'll see. Baby steps and all.

I'm behind!!!

Because I haven't posted any in a while, here are a few dailies:

This was in the junk mail... I can't remember if they were trying to sell me car insurance or just a new car, but I saw it and immediately thought, "MINE!!!", you know, like the seagulls in Finding Nemo? Kinda like that.

You remember my green roses! I used this cheap photo paper I got at the dollar store (I KNOW!!! My own stupid fault) and the printing just started to peel up when I cut it. Lame.

I found this card at Scrapbooks Etc. last time I went. That's a little jeweled brad marking my choice. I used the Heidi Swapp date stamp on this one, and I really kinda don't love it any more. "Super" was because of the Super Bowl preparations at work. They were hangin banners and balloons everywhere, and we kept telling each other they were "thuper". Dumb, I know, yet still highly entertaining.

New FAVORITE grocery store! Okay, well, maybe Whole Foods is still number one, but this one is close. Real close. Trader Joes isn't even a contender at this time. Don't get me started on Frys and Bashas! I really like how this card came out for some reason.

Another pic printed on that sheet of photo paper. I crammed a bunch of them on there. This one came out stripey, and I'm pretty dang sure it isn't the new Epson photo printer. Call it a hunch. I still love my wedding dress. Best dress EVAH!!! If it did fit, I'd wear it around once in a while with a tiara. *sigh*

Just so you know, that is a photo of the ACTUAL three dollars I found. One for me and one for each of the girls, without whom I would have never come upon this windfall. This card's base is a paint chip, and the stripe is this Making Memories fabric tape I picked up at Michaels.

This is the last one. That's right folks, that means I haven't done one in a week. I'm behind! I have stuff I want to document though, like Akon at the mall and little dogs getting a bath with Honey I Washed The Kids. I hat my handwriting on this one.

And for one final bit of scrappiness, I did a page last night. I'm too lazy to drag the computer over to the scanner, as it's past my bedtime already, and the camera was out, so I just took a pic. You get the idea.

My dog is weird.

Finally, tonight I did not want to play with paper. I wanted to play with SUGAR. It's a wonderful thing, truly. I whipped up a crapload of itsy bitsy vanilla cupcakes after dinner. I found this recipe for a marshmallow frosting in one of my cookbooks, but that stuff didn't work out. It was thin and runny... more like a glaze, actually.

I whipped up some buttercream at the last minute, but because that wasn't the original plan, I ran out of powdered sugar. That meant icing that was thinner than I prefer. I tried piping it to make them look like little roses or something, but some just plain melted! BLAH!

Guess what I'm feeding my coworkers tomorrow, since I'm not allowed to eat these bad boys? Okay, so I had ONE... maybe two. But they're TINY, like an inch and a half maybe across.

I've also discovered the white balance on my camera. DUH. I can't believe I've gone this long without messing with that setting. It makes such a huge difference, especially in the kitchen under that stupid California light fixture.

I know, right?

I present to you some dailies, for your viewing pleasure:

If you have iTunes, perhaps you have played with the store feature that recommends music for you based on what you own and what you have bought. I was going through those recommendations, and I find it all a bit scary how well it knew me. Seriously, half of what it was recommending I either already owned or I was all like, "oooh, I LOVE that song!!!" and then I'd promptly hit BUY SONG.

I mean, honestly, Peter Cetera? .38 Special? How old am I?

I did a print screen, cropped it, edited a bit, and printed the result out on cardstock for a quick snapshot of what I did that day. Practiced my D'nealian a little too.

I tried the Snowcake soap from Lush the other day. I didn't like it. I pawned it off on the husband. He's handy that way!

You can't tell very well in this photo, but the background cardstock is a metallic silver, and I stamped snowflakes on there and embossed them in a pale blue glittery embossing powder. I think I've had that stuff for almost two years and this is the first time I've used it. Shameful.

Yes, this was my first time. I am no longer a bubble-wrap-as-a-stamp virgin. Every "artsy" scrapper out there has tried this at one time or another, or so it seems. The pink off to the left is the fab damask stamp I picked up at Impress in Seattle, with some more of that glittery embossing powder, in pink this time.

One of the things my doctor told me I needed to do was eat flax seeds. I know, like I'm a bird, right? She said to grind them up and mix them into everything. They don't really taste like anything, and they're full of fiber and Omega 3s, blah blah blah, so what the heck, right? At first, I was putting them into a Ziploc baggie and beating the crud out of them with my rolling pin, but it wasn't a particularly effective (although it was entertaining) method. I went out and bought a coffee grinder tonight and it worked like a charm!

The 'f's in my stupid Making Memories rub ons were ALL defective and wouldn't rub on, so I had to improvise. It's "artsy", right?

Speaking of my doctor and my diet...

Do you know what happens when you go from eating like a regular person to eating almost all meat and veggies? Let's just say, that bottle of Beano is like my best friend right now. Sorry Amber!

And many, many, many apologies to my poor husband.

Le Scanner,

Eet iz DEAD!!!

Dang it happened suddenly, too. I posted a layout last week that I had to photograph, because it was refusing to scan. It would scan to make a preview, just not scan to where I could save the image. Frustrating, but my husband fiddled with it and got it to work again.

Today, it started doing it again, but unfortunately, this time after the fiddling was done it would only scan a severely stripey, blue tinted image. Then the light stopped moving altogether, and well, I'm sad.

Guess what Miss M is getting with her share of the tax refund?

Here are some photos of the latest scrappiness:

Trying out some of the ridiculously long, and therefore ridiculously cool eyelashes with the hat from my Halloween costume. I took this in our hotel room in LA the night I bought these items.

Pictures of me getting my latest tattoo! Okay, so it's only my second, but technically, it's the latest one. My friend took these, since I was a bit indisposed! After I took the picture, I thought to add the name of the shop, and it's location (corner of Hollywood & Vine, how cool is that?).

This is an olllllddddddd picture of me, when I was a teacher's aide the first time around. We were on a field trip to Crow's dairy. The picture was bad, with pictures of children whose names I've forgotten, so I cropped them out. This page isn't about that anyway.

After I got my new stamps in the mail yesterday, I realized that I had other unmounted stamps, but I just had no freaking clue where they were. After some hunting, I found them neatly organized by theme in CD cases, in a box from Ikea, on a shelf. Well organized? Definitely. Easy to use? No way!

I went ahead and pulled them out and started making these little pocket pages for them. I even found my cool sets of the magnetic expressions and ornaments that Making Memories put out a few years back. Note to everyone - do NOT try to pull the magnets apart from the rubber. I don't know what those folks used to adhere them together, but holy crap is it strong. Three of the stamps are now in the trash. Oops.

Dailies. I am finding that these are a fabulous way to incorporate some of the ephemera of everyday life into my scrapbooking. I didn't set the camera on the macro (flower) setting so they're all blurry, but I don't care at this point. It's late!

This one is my favorite from this group:

I handpainted those flames on black damask patterned paper. I love the contrast of the super formal and the cheesy flames. The restaurant logo was torn from the tray liner at the restaurant. I had a chicken breast, no skin, with steamed veggies for BOTH my sides and water. How exciting.

The label from my stamps. I managed to get it off the little bag n which they were packed. I stippled some Distress Ink onto it so that it would stand out from the mini envelope.

Every Friday, at 4:00, it's Happy Hour at work. We take turns buying fancy root beer and just gather in the front office manager's office and hang out for about half an hour. We chat, we drink, we goof off. It's a great way to unwind after the week, and just chill and enjoy your coworkers. This label is from my favorite brand of root beer.

I wanted to go to the new scrapbook store that opened up near my house, but it was closed already(who closes at 5:00 on a Saturday???) so we wandered into Michaels instead. They had two carousels on the shelf, and now, they only have one! My husband was going to buy me one for Christmas, but he thought he would wait until we got back from vacation and of course then you couldn't find one to save your life.

Now I have one! Yay! Don'tcha love my ATG gun?