Has it really been two years?

I cannot believe it's been over two years since I've posted to my blog. In fact, I haven't posted since just before our move to our (then) new house; the one about which I spoke last time. I also haven't scrapped in as long, though I have altered some journals. (I should locate those pictures, huh?)



This house has enough room for all of us, for a playroom, for a library (the extra bedroom), and for me to have a scrapbook room. My scraproom can be found on the far left of the above picture, in what is the original single car garage that was remodeled to be a real room. And really: it's perfect.
 

I also have a 6' long folding table (on the left in the above picture) that is in the center of the room. Ideally, the table would only be out if I needed it and would be put away when not in use. Unfortunately, due to my lack of scrapbooking, that table has become a catch-all, especially during the holidays. If I'm being honest, the entire room has become the place where things go when we don't want them in the living room. I've been trying to remedy that this week.

If anyone ever has the idea to keep things they may not ever need, please tell them to watch an episode of "Hoarders". As it turns out, I have some of the tendencies of a hoarder, so I'm trying to (finally) nip those in the bud. Thus far, it's been a fairly quick process, especially considering we've been in this house for more than two years, and some of these boxes, while peeked in, haven't been unpacked, and two of them haven't been untaped at all! We've one dumpster full and we plan to rent another one. The way I figure it, anything that's not useful to us, but may hold some memories, I can photograph. Virtual clutter isn't nearly as bad as physical clutter. Plus, I can scrapbook any of those things. Y'know...when I next scrapbook. *laugh*

What else? Well, my brother doesn't have kidney problems, but I don't really know what going on there. My nearest-in-age older brother received his Associate's from our local community college and is continuing at OSU. Joel walked with his OSU engineering class, and will officially graduate after Fall term. We've been fostering a niece for 367 days now. (The last is the main reason I haven't scrapped this past year; life is INSANELY busy!) I've finished four terms at LBCC (for writing), but have taken an indefinite break until life settles down. (That last term was just this side of a doozy.) I'm focusing on more important things, and hope to go back in a year or so.

I can't think of anything else that's significant at this time. Oh! Something that I am doing that's scrapbook-related is designing wedding invitations for a couple of friends of ours. First, let me say that I'm not, absolutely not, a digital scrapper. I loathe not having my hands physically on the items with which I'm working. That said, I've been using Adobe Photoshop to create these (after deciding that I didn't like the style of the other designs and figuring the invites will look more elegant this way). Grr. I still hate the program, and can't see myself using it for much else. Anyway. That's what I'm finishing this week. That must be finished this week, as they're to be mailed by the 1st.

And there you have it. That's my life for the past two years, summarized as concisely as possible.

Hope people are finding their summers to be exciting, or at least passably fun. ;)

What I've been doing...

So there are a few things that've been going on around the Wheeler household. One is that we're in the middle of buying a house. To be as brief as possible, on April 1st (yes, you read that correctly) we were told that we weren't going to be able to get the house because of the roof needing replaced and the seller not being able to afford it. And now... basically we're going almost-halvsies with him and our closing date is either the 30th or the 1st of May. Because they're also making an offer on a house, and just received their closing date of the 11th of May, we're going to let them stay in the house until the 15th, which should work out nicely with me feeling good because we're being nice, and also with Joel's mid-terms. (Three, possibly four, in one week, then a week skips--that's the move-in week--and then has one or two that next week. Bleh!)

Also in the life-front, my brother was found to have some liver problems, but we don't know what yet. He has an appointment this next Wednesday with his regular doctor to find out what the tests said and what is going to need to happen.

But our Easter weekend was filled with candy, kids, love, The Hunt, and hiking on Sunday. The latter would've sucked less if I hadn't felt like all of my body parts were going to fall off and leave me stranded somewhere. (Haha. I totally typed that as "stranged". Which while it wouldn't have fit in that part, totally describes me..."strange", at any rate.)

That said, I did manage to scrap 106 layouts in the month of March, which makes me really happy. That's almost a third my yearly goal! And to think that I only did 54 layouts in February. Thank you Scrapbook Bingo Yahoo Group! And more specifically the owner, Amanda, for holding a Virtual Crop for us! (And giving terrific prizes! The first place woman, Sue, bowed out so I was able to get the Around the Block Paper Gator. I hadn't been sure of it at first, but I realized that with the oodles of cards I've been making--128 last month!!--and that I broke my corner rounder... it looks like it'll be the perfect tool. I'll definitely post here when I know what I think of it.

Without further ado, let me share a few of my layouts/cards from last month. Hope you enjoy!

(BTW, I made an error. That should be 2007, not 2006. :P)

(Made the bug myself with my small-ish circle punch and looking at the fabric bugs. Thank you CJ for sending that very cute matted fabric to me. :D)



(That's my husband and me.)



(Caitlin getting dolled up at our friends' wedding. She was a flower girl and the groom's cousin did a wonderful job on Cat's hair. As you can see, our son had a delightful reaction to seeing her. P.S. I drew and then hand-cut out the flourish on the right.)


(The challenge was to scrap about a risk you took, so I did my current one: going through the process of attending college for the first time. Technically-speaking, I'll be going to LBCC, the local community college, first, but also technically-speaking, I'm dual-enrolled, so... yeah. Plus I like the OSU colors! :D I told Joel I saw the coolest orange plates at The Dollar Tree the other day and told him that if he didn't like my red/black/white kitchen color combination, I'd be more than willing to go orange/black. I totally love Halloween primarily because of that color combination and then you add to it both of us being students at a school that has them... it would be so totally effing awesome, I tell you! In fact, I might go buy those plates anyway. *grin* Also, there's a "little secret" peeking out of the bottom of the layout. I don't want Joel to read it now, if ever, so I'm sorry, but I'm not sharing it here either, in case he actually checks out my blog.)


(Not the best of layouts, I'll grant you, but it totally amuses me with its truthfulness. Joel didn't get it at first, which made me both boggle and laugh. I thought it was pretty blatant.)

(And I'm only posting one card right now because I have posted so many layouts. I'll post another card that I did later, and talk about the Soufflé and Glaze pens by Sakura.)

Through my kids' eyes...

You will see a couple of themes throughout this. 1. My girls obviously connect with my love of scrapbooking. Despite Chase's previous stints of pink dress shoes, lipstick, playing with Barbie dolls, and wearing earrings, he just doesn't have the same girlie tuning the girls do. :D 2. Room-cleaning has been a pretty big thing of late. Oh, and Caitlin keeps asking me if I have more questions for her. She was really eager to answer them. I'm going to ask them again these questions, but of their dad instead.

Paige will be 5 next month.
Chase will be 7 next month.
Caitlin just turned 8.

My comments, whether spoken aloud or not, are in []s.

1. What is something I always say to you?
Paige: To clean up my room.
Chase: "I love you."
Cat: You love me.

2. What makes me happy?
Paige: Cleaning. 'Cause you always hug me when I clean my room all the way.
Chase: Our rooms clean?
Cat: When I behave.

3. What makes me sad?
Paige: That I'm not hugging you.
Chase: Us not cleaning our room
Cat: Me not being nice to you.

4. How do I make you laugh?
Paige: By tickling.
Chase: You tickling me.
Cat: By making funny faces. By telling jokes.

5. What was I like as a child?
Paige: When you were born? You were born before you hatched. [I explain to her.] I don't know.
Chase: I wasn't even alive when you were a kid. [*grin*]
Cat: Um...I don't know. Um...you cleaned your room a lot? [HAHAHA! Not even close! *laugh*]

6. How old am I?
Paige: I don't know. [Take a guess.] I think you're 7. Or you're 8.
Chase: Uh...29? [He rocks. In August I'll be 29.]
Cat: Um...27? [Close.]

7. How tall am I?
Paige: Ahh! I don't know. You're not taller than Daddy.
Chase: Uh...10 feet tall? [And bulletproof. *grin*]
Cat: Uh...5 inches. *laugh* 5 feet 12 inches?

8. What is my favorite thing to do?
Paige: Scrapbooking. [Smart girl!]
Chase: Your Sudoku? [*laugh* I do love my Sudoku.]
Cat: Scrapbook! And sleep. [*more laughter* Kudos on the first, but sleep? I don't really like to do that.]

9. What do you think I do when you're not around?
Paige: I don't know. [Can you think of anything?] Read. What else would you do?
Chase: Give Paigie breakfast?
Cat: Watch Paige.

10. If I become famous, for what will it be?
Paige: 'Cause your name's "Mom".
Chase: I don't know. [He kept getting all embarrassed that I was asking him questions. There were lots of I don't
knows but I kept asking on some of the questions 'cause I knew he'd had a thought. This one, he didn't.
Cat: Scrapbooking! [Smart answer. :D]

11. What am I really good at?
Paige: Scrapbooking. [Again, smart girl.]
Chase: Uh, Sudoku? [One track mind?]
Cat: Scrapbooking. And watching us. Kids, anyway. And Kiely. [There is now commentary from her about how
Kiely isn't a "kid" and is a "baby".]

12. What am I not very good at?
Paige: Stepping on toys.
Chase: Physics? [OMWord! That boy makes me laugh! I laughed so hard, and then told him I'd have to share that
one with his dad when he got home. Too effing funny!! I've never taken a single physics class, but so funny
for him to think of it. And Joel laughed aloud, too. :D]
Cat: Not scrapbooking.

13. What do I do for my job?
Paige: Folding clothes. Taking our toys? [She then explains about the time I took all of their toys away because
they didn't clean their rooms.]
Chase: You teach us something. To watch Caitlin and me and Paige.
Cat: You watch Kiely and watch us. Kids.

14. What is my favorite food?
Paige: Chicken. Chicken's good for kids. And adults.
Chase: Fettuccine.
Cat: Bagel!

15. What makes you proud of me?
Paige: Reading. 'Cause you read to me.
Chase: All I can think of is that you do Sudoku pages.
Cat: You make me laugh. With your scrapbooking pages, how they look so cute. [Note, those are two separate
ideas. Not that I make her laugh with my pages. *grin*]

16. If I were a cartoon character, who would I be?
Paige: Umm...Link?
Chase: Uh...Zelda?
Cat: You'll get mad at me if I say it. [No, I won't. Just say it.] That one on Paige's watch. [Betty Boop?] Yeah.
Betty Boop. [*boggle*] Or Cat in the Hat. [Oh, thanks!] But you're funny!

17. What do we do together?
Paige: Play.
Chase: I don't know.
Cat: Eat. Play. Watch movies together sometimes. We might scrapbook together tomorrow.

18. How are we the same?
Paige: 'Cause we're both girls. But I don't have red hair.
Chase: We're both human? [That is courtesy of his father who was trying to guide him into thinking about some ways
in which we're similar. Heh.]
Cat: We have crooked teeth. We have brown eyes.

19. How are we different?
Paige: You're wearing a black shirt, and I'm wearing an Eve one.
Chase: That you have glasses and I don't.
Cat: Um...You have glasses and I don't. You have red hair and I don't.

20. How do you know I love you?
Paige: 'Cause you read books to me.
Chase: Because you always say 'I love you'.
Cat: Um...You make me laugh. You gave me scrapbooking stuff on my birthday. And you made a day that, um, for
my birthday we went swimming. [Which was really a combined effort of Joel and me.]

21. Where is my favorite place to go?
Paige: McDonald's! [Um, no. I don't like McDonald's.] To Burger King? [I laughed. I've only been once in the last
month and a half. She's so funny.] To the store?
Chase: Uh...your friend's house? [Joel said, "Mommy doesn't have any friends." and then laughed.]
Cat: Aunt Crystal's house? [Oh yeah, definitely. Perhaps that was what Chase was thinking.] The scrapbooking
store!! I can't believe I forgot that!

22. What do I like about Daddy?
Paige: 'Cause he kisses you. [Her follow-up:] Mommy, when were you and Daddy married? [Before Cat was born.]
Chase: That he's funny?
Cat: You think he's handsome. He gets us money. Daddy got you a ring.
After comments later about how he let me sleep in yesterday morning, Joel: The real reason Mommy loves Daddy.

Page Kits

Well, I'm nearly to the big 5-0. Pages, that is. (Psha! I'm nowhere near fifty years old. Okay, more than halfway. And not that there's anything wrong with being fifty, it's just that I'm not there. Yet.) I also need to add that all of these pages have been scrapped in the past week. I realize that I have quite a bit of time on my hands for scrapbooking, but I also have been caring for my niece (8ish months old) and my nearly-five-year old, as well as basic chores, and tackling an extremely cluttered garage, spending quite a bit of time there. And the afternoons bring my older two kids home, so... life is busy, too. :) The following is how I've managed to create this many pages in a week.

Anyway. 48 pages and counting. I've no idea if I'm going to make my page total goal this year, and I know I didn't last year, which was something of a bummer. On the other hand, I still did well, and I'm still wondering exactly where I'm putting all of these layouts. *laugh* Granted a huge chunk of the layouts I did were 8x8s for the kids, and when you see the albums (two of which are utilizing the Snapload system), you can easily see how I managed 400-some-odd pages two years ago. (Boy, was I ever on a roll that year!) Even if I don't make it to 365 pages, I'm scrapping in a smart way right now, and that's by making page kits first.

Page kits are simple to make and even better to have. How does one make a page kit?, one might wonder. Well, as I said, they're simple. Start with photos/subject or paper and then add the elements you'll be using on the page. Include photos and paper, but don't forget to add embellishments, and I'd highly recommend, for further time saving, journaling on scratch paper so that you just have to copy it as you go. (Or you could even have it printed out and ready to slap on the pages.) Slide it all into a large plastic bag (2-gallon bags will fit 12x12 paper, I believe). Voila! You're ready to put that page together.

Seriously. It saves oodles of time. Many people only have a short period of time during which they can actively scrap. If you can take a half an hour or an hour to put together some pages kits, then when you have that half hour or hour, you won't be spending the vast majority (or all) of it trying to decide on papers and embellishments; you'll have it all at your fingertips.

I think the only downside for me is that when I scrap this way, I forget to use all of my non-paper embellishments. Since part of my goal this year is to use as much of my hoard as possible, obviously a large chunk of my stash is still (figuratively) collecting dust. So my goal for the next set of page kits I make (coming up on Wednesday, I suspect) will be to include some of these embellishments.

Tomorrow I'll try to remember to update this post with a photo of a page kit and its pieces.

P.S. I'll also try to upload some photos of recent pages.

Blog-Crazy

Yes, I am. I admit it. I mean, I suppose I'm not as blog-crazy as some people out there, but for someone who rarely remembers to blog, hasn't been blogging for very long, and tries to not spend too much time online (hah!--what a joke, right?), I sure have collected quite an amount of blogs. I'd like to pare the list on the right (over there somewhere, see?--->), but I just can't. Why? Because this is how I keep track of whether I've looked at them recently or not. I just can't keep track otherwise. Please don't think that I value each of these blogs and bloggers less for not being able to always remember who is who (except in certain cases, like my fellow Yahoo Group members, or non-scrapping blogs), because I really do cherish each and every one of them. And to you bloggers, the ones who actually peek at my blog now and again, even when I post nothing of real interest, know that even if I'm not commenting, I'm trying to check all of the blogs on a somewhat regular basis. I try to comment, but don't always find the time.

As some of the younger crowd have taken to doing: MUAH! As I'd do instead *kiss* Love you all!

Most recent swap items

Figured I'd post them now before I bag them all and prepare them for sending (Tuesday). It's going to be a fairly briefly-worded posting, 'cause I'm pretty tired.

First we have the Dragons group items: photo box, journal box (and a close photo), and handmade surprise.

Then the Unicorns group topper:

The Mermaids group topper:

The Wizards group topper and handmade surprise:

I apologize for any badly placed flashes and for blurry photos. I've been taking these at night in my living room, and there just isn't very good lighting for photos. Anyway, I hope you all like these; I had fun making them. :)

Create a font from your own handwriting

While my husband browsed his usual websites, he found a post about this great site, YourFonts.com, which creates a font from your handwriting, for free if you use their online version. Not only is it awesome that they make it for you, but it's incredibly simple to do as well!

You go to their website, print the template(s) (one if you just want basic letters and numbers, and the second if you want special characters), and then use a black pen (I used a Sharpie ultrafine point, I believe) to write each of the letters within the boxes. I did have to redo each template page once, because I'm usually really bad with my handwriting, especially when I can't make any errors and am using a pen.

And now... a sample of my font. :) I hope you all enjoy this terrific program!
Thank you, YourFont!

Blog Sweeties, anyone?

Going Buggy has some blog candy up! Wonderful blog and work that she does. So... if you're going there, be sure to check out the rest of her blog, 'cause it rocks!