Did you know...?

My friend Melissa bestowed upon me the honest scrapper award. Yeah me I finally won an award!! (sorry just had to get that out)

So now the responsibility at hand is to share with all of you 10 honest things about myself. So here we go. . . did you know. . .

1. I am a huge Big Brother fan.

2. I hate to drive.

3. I cannot sleep with the bedroom door open.

4. I am allergic to bees.

5. I cry when I am frustrated or angry.

6. I collect teacups, piglet stuff, and stamps.

7. I love Starbucks mocha frapaccinos, but cannot stand coffee.

8. I am NOT a night owl, usually in bed by 11pm!

9. I am letting God write my Love Story.

10. I have a huge crush on Matt Marraccini. (who will probably show up in Emma's CJ)

So there you go 10 things you didn't know about me before but now do. Hopefully we can all still be friends :) I think I may just print out this post, this would be a great scrapbook page. One last thing I have to do is pass this on to three scrappers/friends who's blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design; or those who have encouraged me. I have to tell them they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP, and inform them of the guidelines. I'm going to pick Courtney, Kathi, and Lelia. Have fun and surprise us!!

Sign in for CJ

Yeah finally I was able to post my sign-in pictures from yesterday. thank you to my stupid computer for that!!! The purse is actually only 3x3, although these pictures make it look so huge! Maybe its just the way I photographed it. I hung them on the magnet board then took pics. Anyone have any ideas for better picture taking??

5 Reasons I love being a Woman

So I finally finished my CJ title page. I am so excited about this one too! It is the 5 reasons I love being a woman. I have come up with a huge list ranging from the important, obvious reasons right down to the simple frivolous girly reasons. (what can I say I love my pinks and my ribbons and bows!) Ask anyone I am such a girly girl and I LOVE it!!! I am excited to see the amazing pages all my extremely talented scrapper friends will put together. They are all so creative!

My sign-in page is going to be little purses. I thought that would be cute and fun and yeah a tad bit girly. (I already told ya I can't help it!) I think I have a cute idea on how to out it all together once I get everything back. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I have pictures but for now my computer is acting up so I'll try back later to upload them. For now I am off to create a page of why I love being a woman!

Something you can count on!

The next category in my That's Life album is Something you can count on. I decided to take a unique approach to this one. My subject (and title) is the "fifth" chair. There is only 4 in our family yet the backyard picnic table always has 4 chairs. I never took notice to this til one night I looked out my bedroom window and saw the 5 inviting chairs. Now that I think about it there is always someone over during the summer, a neighbour, a friend, a relative. . . No matter who shows up there is always laughter and good times. Whether it is for a meal, to talk, or even just to share a joke or a story there is always room for one more. It was that night, looking down from the window, I realized that is definitely something you can always count on at our house. . . the fifth chair.

So this weekend was my mom's party. Everything went really well. And while she didn't really want the party (or to be reminded in any way that she is turning 50) she really seemed to enjoy it. All of her siblings managed to show up for it! There aren't many occasions that they all get together for, so I was really surprised. One brother drove up from NC and another from VA. I was so excited that it all turned out really well. I had also thrown her a surprise card shower, so far she has received over 30 cards from family and friends!! Her actual birthday isn't until Tuesday so I think there will be more in the mail tomorrow. I just love seeing her excitemnet when she brings in the mail and there is a stack of 5-10 cards in it!! I guess its the little things in life. . . I sent one of the card shower invites to our pastor and he announced her birthday to the whole church! She about died of embarassment. Of course pastor "blamed" us :) It was so funny!!! Anyway she had a great weekend and in the end thats what matters!

That's Life (page 3)

Well I thought I would share some more of this album since pretty soon I will be starting a new swap!!! Yeah! It's swap season again!!! We will be doing another round of circle journals, I love doing cjs they are my absolute favorite. You get to learn so much about a person thru the pages they do :)

So page three is daily frustrations. I think that category is pretty self explanatory. For me it is these ugly nasty crickets that often find their way into my scraproom. There is nothing worse for me than finding one of these guys sitting under my chair or on the edge of the carpet. Grrrrr. And I am not a bug killer, no matter how much I dislike them I can't kill em. So then I have to waste my time to catch and release the stupid thing in the far corner of the yard. I know, i know its my own fault really, but still. . . .

Once I decided on my topic the layout was pretty simple. I cut the swirl freehand and then outlined it with eyelets. I used a stencil and chalk for the background swirls. Added a sticker title and some journaling and it was complete!

So what are some of you're daily frustrations? :)

My weekend

So this weekend we were finally able to have our Christmas progressive dinner- the one that was cancelled due to the snow. it was so much fun! We only had 2 stops instead of the usual 4 due to the rescheduling, but it was neat having a change of pace. We also did a four part devotional, I was blessed to be able to be a part of that. At first I was really nervous, I am not the speak-in-front of people type! It never ceases to amaze me when I allow God to work through me what He can do. I just spoke from the heart and honestly forgot that I was standing in front of a group of people. The theme I was given to speak on was quiet times, something I have just recently worked thru in my own life. I have been struggling with prioritizing and making sure that I have enough time as opposed to squeezing it in whenever. I was reminded of an illustration I heard in high school and was able to share with my friends/peers. If you fill a jar with sand, that represents any activities I might do (ie. sports, computers, tv, reading, scrapping, ect.) then you add a golfball, that represents God, the golfball never fits inside the jar! But if you take that same jar and add the golfball first, then add the same amount of sand it will all fit into the jar. Every time! It's hard to believe until you actually see it done. But its a pretty cool illustration. And the truth behind it never fails.
The rest of my weekend was spent birthday shopping. My mom turns 50 next week! I am having a surprise card shower and a party for her. Its a lot of work but she definitely deserves it! She wants a new recliner so thats what we have been searching for. It has been so difficult to find one that she'll like that will match the living room and thats within our price range, but finally Sunday afternoon we found one!! I am excited to give it to her!! It'll be nice to when all this planning is over too. As fun as it is, it can be so exhausting! But well worth it all in the end!

The things people say (page 3)

Okay so this one was really easy for me. The things people say could literally be anything! I had a picture of all my coworkers together and decided to do a page of all the catch phrases I hear all day! I think every single person I work with has at least one, if not two or three phrases that we all know and love (or dislike) them for. I used tags to write down all their quotes and then added their names to the bottom. Our company is called Patwell and the title "Patwellisms" just came naturally. The picture isn't the greatest, I just noticed there is a bit of glare on it, so you can't see the various journaling. Some of our daily quotes include "you need to think outside the box", "that should be a lightbulb moment.", "turtle", "thats not how I roll." The thing that I love about this page is even as I type the various quotes I can just hear them being used in a plethora of situations. Obviously they are almost all quotes from the coworkers that I actually get along with:) Imagine that!!

That's Life; page 2

So here is another page in my that's life album. This one is for the category, My Innermost Thoughts. It kinda goes right along with my post from a few days ago about being single. The rings were inherited from my great-grandmother. As strange as it may sound I wear them as a reminder that I still have hope. They are a daily reminder to the fact that my lfe is not finished yet. Everytime I look at my hand and see the rings, I remember that God is writing my love story.


This second page is the cover page or introduction to the album. Something I don't usually do but thought it would be a nice touch. I summarized the various topics into five little categories. I really like the way it turned out. After looking through all the "topics" for this album I think I'll end up with about 20 pages when its complete. I am excited to share what I have done thus far with you, I haven't shared this album with anyone yet, it seemed so personal. And yet why create something if I am never gonna let anyone see. So welcome to my world as I not only share these pages but the pieces of myself and my life that each page represents.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! Can you believe its 2010?? So do you refer to that as twenty ten or two thousand and ten? Just curious! I personally say twenty ten, so much easier, but seriously they both sound odd to me!!

Anyway I uswed my surprise day off yesterday to get some new years cleaning done in my scrap room. I have sooooo many projects that I started and just never got back around to finishing!! I couldn't believe it! And now is not the time to start them because I have all my Christmas/New Years picture to scrap!! (which is TONS!) And I found all these cool tools and supplies that I forgot I had because they got put in a drawer when something new came along. Guess its time to try some "new" techniques on my pages with all my old supplies :)

One of the project that I have been working on for the last year and a half has been my "that's Life" album. It is an idea I got from one of the Memory Makers book called. . . you guessed it That's Life. Basically I just took each breakdown from the book and have been making pages for those topics. The lastest one I created was for 'things I would miss'. This category actually took me awhile to think of something. I wanted it to be creative. But finally inspiration struck and I set off to create my page. Thanks to my sister!





I based my page off the lyrics to trace adkins 'you're gonna miss this' song. Sharing the coach with my sister has always been a challenge, whether we are watching a movie or reading books, whatever. She likes to stretch out and take up at least 3/4 of the space. She doesn't mind jostling you a bit or tucking her cold feet underneath you. It has always been so annoying!! But lately she has been spending more and more time away from home. And as I sit on the coach alone I have come to miss that push-shove relationship we have always shared there. As silly as it sounds some days I wish I was squished onto 1/4 of the couch with a cold foot constantly jostling me! Funny how those little annoying things become part of our routines and oddly enough something we sometimes look forward to!

As I have time I wanna pull out the rest of my album and share it with you. It was definitely a challenging yet fun project. Or should I say is, since of course that is another work in progress!