Pumpkin Mess

This all happened today and while it was still fresh in my mind, I decided to document it. :)

 

Thanksgiving...2009

Oh boy. 2009. I am trying not to feel overwhelmed by how behind I am.

 

But I did get these pages done. I started them a few times and wasn't happy with them. I bought a new kit by Erica Zane called Counted and I really like it. Sometimes with the holidays, I get lost in how a page should look.

 

The kids and I had fun looking through these photos. They were so little then!

 

Leah really likes the photo of herself in the bottom row in the middle. Haha, too cute!

 

Frankenmuth 2009

It seems like it's been forever since I last scrapped. Today I decided to work on finishing up 2009. I still have a little from November and December and then 2009 will officially be done.

It was fun looking through these photos. My, how everyone has changed!

HIS&HERS

As I was washing dishes today, I was thinking about scrapbooking and then I remembered my goal! It must be completed by Thursday night if I'm to meet my goal (due to other commitments)! So during nap time, I was able to put this page together. There are probably still 2-3 more pages to do from her actual party, but this page was from a special double party with her cousin from Missouri.

I'm off to do some cleaning now, but I'm hoping to get some more scrapping done tonight or at least Wednesday or Thursday. Plus I have a little birthday project for this weekend that I need to work on.

Leah's so excited to be turning 5!

3rd Birthday

Well, I am half way to my goal! Remember my goal of scrapping her 3rd and 4th birthday photos before her 5th birthday this month? Here's the 3rd birthday!

I don't know how a person, a MOM, narrows down photos. I think it's just a given that my kids will have 2-3 pages for each birthday. My own birthday from this year had three pages! Whoa! And even though there are three pages below of Leah's birthday, I still left out a lot of photos. But I think the ones I chose tell a pretty good story of the day.

Almost all you see from these three pages is from the Erica Zane kit, With You. It's a fun kit!

 

 

 

Hello Berries

I had plans of working on other photos today but while scrolling through June 2010, I came across these and decided to scrap them instead! So summery!

The photos I was going to scrap was of Leah's 3rd or 4th birthday. Yes, I'm that far behind. And guess what? She'll be five in a couple weeks. So my goal is to get her last two birthdays scrapped before she turns five.

And then Titus is even worse. I think I'm three or four years behind on his birthdays! It's crazy! This is why I'm so thankful for my blog. So many times (if it's not recent photos) I go back to my blog to refresh my memory on events. It's helped a ton!

I think with birthday scrap pages, I "stress out" too much and think that the pages have to be perfect and I have to have the perfect papers and elements, etc. So that's why those pages get pushed back. But I am making a goal to get Leah's caught up by her fifth birthday. And then I will work on Titus's - the poor kid.

You Said It 2011

I'm super bummed that I only have nine documented "sayings" from Titus in 2011. Of course he said funny stuff all year long, but I forgot to write it down. Other moms out there, make sure you write things down right after something happens or is said. You'll be thankful later. :) So now I'm trying to be more observant and have asked Brandon to write things down when he hears them too.

You Said It

I have been working on getting all of the kids quotes gathered and separated into years. I haven't been as good lately with writing things down, so I'm trying to focus more on that. I even searched through Facebook to find any possible quotes I did have not have written down. I found a few so I was thankful for that!

I love looking back at what they said and how they said it. I also like adding a few pictures of them from that year. It's a fun little project!

Birthday, page 3

Birthday page number three!

Now I'm headed out for a walk while the sun is still out!

Birthday, page 2

This is the second page in my birthday trio. I created this probably a couple of weeks ago but had just a little more journal to write.

Now on to page 3...

I wonder what will happen when I turn 30. I just have a hard time not including pictures. As my style has always shown, I try to squeeze in as many pictures as possible. That's just me!

Birthday

I have been wanting to get back into scrapping so bad. I was doing good and getting a few pages done per week and then somehow fell off that wagon. But I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things.

I had been looking around for some new kits but just hadn't found what I was looking for. I don't really know what I was looking for, I just know I wasn't finding it. Then I came across The Lily Pad and found this kit called Grandma's Dresser. I loved it! Right away I knew I wanted to use it for my birthday pictures.

This is the first page of probably three from my birthday. Instead of cramming in a bunch of pictures, I decided to spread it out a little.

Scraplifted

I saw a layout on Pinterest that I liked and rather scrap-lifted it for this page today. I really liked how the photos were arranged. It's nice having a layout you like (which should be all the time, haha) when your pictures aren't what you had hoped for. I think it helps make the pictures look better too. I opted for black and white photos because of all the crazy colors going on. I'm thankful for having that option!

Now it's time for some exercise while the broccoli cheese soup cooks. Then I think it'll be time for a little trim painting. It can be rather therapeutic.

What? Did I just say that?

November 2009

Somehow I was able to pretty much skip over October 2009. There weren't a whole ton of pictures taken. The bulk of them was for "A Week in the Life" and I scrapped those the week the pictures were taken (if I'm remembering correctly). So I moved right along to November.

A year or two ago, I freed myself from scrapping chronologically, however that's how I've been scrapping lately so that I know where I've left off and also so that I can print off my pages. I save my pages by quarters (for example, Oct-Dec 2009) and only want to print the pages from those quarters if the whole quarter has been scrapped. So right now, printing is on hold until that is done.

It was nice to scrap today although I always seem torn in what to do during nap time. Lately it's been between scrapping, looking for decorating ideas on Pinterest, or painting. Some days more than one of those gets done. I'm working on finishing up some over due trim painting. Once that is done, I'm painting all of the living area (living room, dining room, halls). I'm super excited! It's all going to be a light gray and the living room will have a mustard-ish yellow wall. When we painted the house back in 2009, I never liked the brown color. It seemed stale to me - as weird as that might sound. The laundry room is the same as the living areas, but I'm thinking of painting that a color other than gray - like a vintage blue/green.

We first painted Leah's room turquoise. It was a pretty color, but the room didn't have the "feel" that I was going for (soft, girly, Pottery Barn-ish). So a while later I painted it a light yellow. It's pretty and I do like it, but her favorite color is pink. She said she liked pink when I painted it yellow and I've felt bad since then that I painted it what I wanted. So she and I were just talking the other day about painting it pink. It would be a light pink. When I chose the yellow color, Home Depot matched the color from a Pottery Barn magazine (I wasn't going to pay $60+ for a gallon of Benjamin Moore). I'll probably do the same with the light pink. The nice thing about paint is that it's relatively inexpensive yet makes a huge difference. I'm really excited to see how it will all look once completed!

Now back to that trim...

Special Note

Titus made this note for me yesterday. The actual note was about a 3x3 piece of paper, but scanning it and working in Photoshop allows me to enlarge it to see everything better. The ink he used was reddish but I changed that to black. Oh technology!

I have a folder of papers the kids have drawn on, things they've said, ect so that they can be scrapbooked. Not always do they get turned into a page so quickly.

I love my son!

Back to Scrap

Wow, it's been since October that I posted on this blog! Once the holidays hit, I was enjoying that time and did scrap by making the parent's yearly calendars. Since then, I've been getting back in the groove and getting some scrapping done.

These three pages are from September 2009. I've finally finished September 2009 and am now moving on to October. Like I've said before, I've scrapped a lot between then and now (not in order), so it's not like I'm that far behind, but I'm still behind where I'd like to be. Ideally, I don't want to be more than six months behind. I hope I can catch up! I'll just keep plugging away and enjoying it in the mean time!

I don't want this to sound vain or prideful: I really am thankful that I scrapbook. I'm thankful that I have a way of preserving our family memories - big and small. Even the small ones aren't small to me. They are all big and precious. I love looking back over the years and seeing what we've done, how we've grown, and all that we have to be thankful for. I love my family!