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There are 3 fixed date stamps. One is square with days, months and years (2000-2009), another only has months and days and the third is a wheel (with years 2000-2010).
I also included the separate circles of days, months and years from the wheel so you can combine them how you please.
Enjoy.
[originally published Nov 7, 2008]
I’m still having some major creativity block. It’s taking days to do one layout (I’ve been known to do like 10-12 in just a day and a half).
But I got this one done this morning after starting it two days ago.
I did it for a challenge at digi-dare. The dare was to do a page about yourself and using only 7 words to describe what you are about. Fun. The title: Surviving Life One Day at a Time pretty much sums up my existance.
(click the pic for credits…takes you to my Flickr)
I need to get back into doing my page of the day. No real reason other then I need to show off my work, lol. I did this page the other day for the Feb. 10 daily challenge at Sweet Shoppe Designs. The challenge was to use the rule of thirds in a page. Well, I almost always use the rule of thirds so it wasn’t really much of a challenge, lol. I always keep the rule in mind when I’m creating (you’ll notice I use groupings of 3 a lot and divide my pages into 3, etc). It’s pretty natural to me.
This is my youngest daughter in January. She got a Fisher Price camera for Christmas and just LOVES that thing. She took over 300 pictures on Christmas alone, many of them were pretty good. She must have the photography gene. It runs in my family. I have been taking pictures since I got my first camera at 8. My dad was the real photographer of the family. He even had a dark room in our basement when I was a kid. And, from what I’ve heard, his mother liked taking pictures with her old Browning camera. He said she always had it with her. So my daughter is just one in a long line of photographers.
credits:
all from Sweet Shoppe Designs
papers: melissa bennett, heather roselli, libby weifenbach
ribbon, ric-rac, frame: scrapkitchen designs
flowers: heather roselli, melissa bennett
stamp: robin carlton
buttons: heather roselli, scrapkitchen designs
date bits: misty cato
fonts: blackadder, fg frederick, giggles
I have been having some serious creativity block lately. I think it is in part because of my ADD and the sudden onslaught of new kits that I “have” to scrap with for my CT’s. Too many choices cause my brain to overload.
And then I’m having a problem because I haven’t really been taking many pictures. I’ve used most of my favorites from the last year and I’m just having a hard time finding ones to scrap now.
So I decided to go through some old photos my sisters-in-law gave me and an old album that belonged to my grandmother. Wow…what a flashback. They gave me some inspiration.
So there’s my scrap of the past:
A picture I found in my Gramma’s album. I’m the baby in the middle so the picture was probably taken in 1977. The other people are my cousins and my Gramma.
using valorie brown’s kit familiar times and a paper by scrapkitchen designs
A picture of my mother and father in law taken on their 18th wedding anniversary in 1983. I thought this was just the sweetest photo. They were so in love. My father-in-law died in 2003 just weeks after their 38th anniversary and mother-in-law has never been the same. It tore the family apart.
using valorie brown’s new kit he LOVES me.
This one is a picture of my husband and his family from 1985. My husband is the little boy in the picture (8 years old). His one sister is to the left (12 years old) and his parents. His dad is holding his niece who was 8 months old at the time (his other sister’s daughter…she is now 24 and has 3 kids of her own who are 6, almost 5 and almost 2).
using a couple kids from valorie brown: he LOVES me and gift of love, ribbon from scrapkitchen designs, stitches from syrin, tags from corina nielsen
My latest page. I did this for a speed scrap. I always have problems doing speed scraps because they always pick elements I don’t normally use (like bows or frame wraps) but I was determined to step outside my comfort zone again. I went with the layering and leafy objects (what I’m now calling “natural” looking items). I’m also suddenly stuck on the jewel drops. Pretty much the page is just random. I just grabbed whatever worked colorwise and looked kind of rustic.
click on the pic to go to my Flicr and see the credits
I did this page last night. It was for the weekly scraplift challenge at thedigichick.com. The gallery we had to lift from was full of these kinds of pages and I’m not good at doing all the layering with these type of elements. I picked a simple layout and did all the element choosing and layering before I even had photos in mind. Once I had it the way I liked it I went to choose some pictures and realized I had no clue which ones to use. I tried several and finally settled on pictures of Nora just after she turned 1 because the colors went well (after I muted them). It took over an hour just to pick the photos, lol.
For the credits click on the pic (it takes you to my Flickr account where everything is listed…I’m kind of lazy today and don’t feel like typing it all out again).
I really had fun with this layout and got to use a bunch of elements that I normally wouldn’t (in fact I think the only things I have used before are the little orange flowers and the hanging hearts) use and I got to try a new technique. And I liked it so much I might try it again.
Ever since Shen tapped me to be on her CT (a huge honor that pretty much knocked me off my feet and made November like the best month EVER…that and winning NaNo) I have put in some apps to different designers doing calls. I sometimes wonder why I never thought to do that before.
Well, earlier this week I got accepted to a new CT. I’m so excited. I’m now working for Laura Burger, too. You can find her stuff at gottapixel.com and acherryontop.com. Again, I feel totally honored to join the group. I can’t wait to start creating.
But just as when Shen offered me the position on her CT I find I’m totally lacking in time to actually start something new right now, lol. When Shen contacted me NaNo had just started, Brenna’s birthday was in a few days and Thanksgiving was coming up. Everything was going full speed and I wasn’t sure how I would fit her into my schedule. Then my computer crashed…ugh. But somehow the computer is holding together enough to scrap (yay!) and with the kids back in school I am wanting to scrap again.
But now I find I have 2 weeks worth of cleaning to do. I did nothing over winter break since the kids were here to mess it all up again. Now that school is back in I’m looking around the house and going “holy crap, what a mess!”.
I cleaned the kitchen on Thursday and did most of the living/dining room on Friday. I almost had it done when my dad came down and we started chatting. Crap. That always happens and then I get nothing done. I still have to get the dang tree in the basement (although, I finally got all the lights off). Today besides finishing the living room I have to clean my room (because everything just gets tossed in there). Then tomorrow I’m cleaning Nora’s room. Then Monday the upstairs hall and bathroom and then Tuesday the big challenge: the kids’ room.
Plus I’m trying to keep up with my exercising. My head was spinning this morning trying to figure out when to do everything.
Anyway, my point was I’m going to try and ease into this new CT spot. There’s a lot more work with this one with participating in forums and stuff. I’m going to have to make up a schedule and I HATE schedules but otherwise I’m going to lost track of everything I have to do.
I’m feeling pretty good today. The kitchen is pretty clean (dishes are going but the floor still needs to be swept and mopped). I have the living room to finish, my room to clean (I’m optimistic that both will get done). The laundry is going. The tree will get put away today. I’ve already done 2 strength training videos (total of like 16 minutes or so so my arms and abs are pretty sore but it feels good). When the living room is done I’m going to pop in the new country line dance video and have some fun (and burn some calories). Oh, I might actually get to eat lunch in there somewhere, lol.
And then tonight it will all be done and I can relax and work on putting my new kits I’ve bought into the PSE organizer so I can actually use them. Not to mention back everything up. Or I might just watch Angel and have a bowl of popcorn.
It’s my birthday today. I’m the big 3-2. And in honor of my birthday (since it has been the crappiest day ever and I wish I could crawl back into bed and wake up next year…or just die) I made a mini kit. And it’s free.
So, Happy Birthday to Me and here’s a present for all of you. I got none, unless you consider dishes and several rooms to clean a gift.
Enjoy.
Haven’t been updating or doing much scrapbooking this month. My computer is slowly dying on me. It crashed just after Thanksgiving (in the middle of finishing my NaNo novel). I finally got it running outside of safe mode but when I tried to install a game last week it crashed again. It took me almost four days to get it out of safe mode.
I can run PSE6 so I can scrap but I just haven’t been inspired since the computer problems. But I have gotten a few pages done. This one I did yesterday.
This is my youngest daughter. She’s a hoot. I mean a real riot. Every day she surprises me with the things she thinks up. She’s only 2 1/2 but is so mature that I sometimes forget she is still a baby.
Yesterday she came into my room and said, “look, Mommy, flower fingers,” and held up her hand. On each finger she had a plastic flower from her block set. She thought up this all on her own and then posed for the camera.
Today she comes up to my door and I hear, “Mommy, look at me,” and when I looked over she pulled her pants down to moon me and started dancing around singing, “shake my booty, shake my booty.” She thinks mooning people is the funniest thing in the world. Can’t say I raise ladies around here.
credits:
kit: when lena smiles by creashens available at twolittlepixels and catscrap
font: poor richard
So, I really thought I would use this blog to work on my NaNo entry this year. Previously I utilized my NaNo blog a lot, keeping track of ideas and plot twists and just generally working out kinks by brainstorming online. But this year…I didn’t need it.
I learned a lot doing NaNo this year and it is by far the best of my attempts. I’m sitting at 45514 right now with the end in sight. I’m actually going to win, barring a major catastrophy in my life. The story is a shambles, though. I finally learned how to just write to get it done and worrying about the quality after the fact. So there are huge chunks of plot missing. Some scenes just end abruptly because I realized I was getting bogged down in the details so I would skip to something I could write. The night before last I did that twice because I was so tired I couldn’t concentrate on the scene I was working on.
I also ended the story that night. I knew it was running long. I had originally worried I wouldn’t be able to get the story to 50k. Now it’s going to go way, way over which is good. But Chris Baty (in one of his email pep talks) talked about ending the story just to be done with it. In other words: skip ahead and write the last chapter because there is some psychological advantage of actually having a “finished” story. You are more likely to actually finish it for real if you have the ending already down. I believe he is 100% correct. I have a lot of editing to do, though. I don’t think I’m going to do that in December, though. In fact, I think I’m going to stash this thing in the proverbial drawer for a few months because I’m ready to pull my hair out, lol. I never wanted to be finished with something more then this story. I’m so ready for November to be over because I am beyond stressed which leads into Thanksgiving.
Great segue, huh?. Thanksgiving…my favorite holiday. Why? Because it’s a beautiful celebration of family togetherness and… Oh, who am I kidding. I love the holiday because of the food. It has always been my favorite and because of that I go all out even though it is just us-me, hubby, the kids and my dad, just like any other meal.
The problem is we all have this romantacized version of reality in our memories. When I look back on my childhood I remember things through rose colored glasses and Thanksgiving…it was always perfect. The food was always ready and hot and delicious and we were all happy. I know, intellectually, that isn’t true. Stuff was never done on time, something was always burnt and my mom was so frazzled that she couldn’t eat and would just pick at her food.
So what do I do? Get myself all worked up trying to put on this “perfect” ideal Thanksgiving meal, just like my mom and I end up in tears. Yes, I was crying today. Not just once but twice I broke down into tears. Which leads me to missing mom.
It wasn’t only Thanksgiving but it was also my mom’s birthday. She would have been 60 years old. Unfortunetely she died 8 years ago, a few months before turning 52. I was only 23 and I don’t think I ever really mourned. I was in shock for a long time, just going through the motions. My dad was a mess, my brother was a wreck and I had a newborn to take care of. My emotions pretty much shut down and I was on auto pilot for weeks afterwards, trying to take care of everyone else.
I remember those first holidays being tought but I got through because I just turned it all off. I stopped feeling anything and tried not to think about what was missing. As I get older I realize I can’t keep doing that and I have to deal with the sadness eventually so every year, with every holiday I let a little more out. I started scrapping about her and how much I miss her. Every year on Mother’s Day and her birthday I make some pages about her. It really does help.
But this year, with her birthday falling on a major holiday, it just overwhelmed me. I couldn’t put a finger on why I felt so anxious and ill at the beginning of the week and then it hit me on Wednesday why. It was because of her birthday. It was because it was blatently obvious that she wasn’t here this Thanksgiving and suddenly I felt all this pressure to make this perfect dinner for everyone in her honor. I felt that if it didn’t turn out perfect I was letting her down, even though, at the same time, I knew that none of her dinners ever turned out perfect and yet I still enjoyed them.
At one point my husband, as his habit, started teasing me about something. I just couldn’t take it any more. I yelled at him and tried to continue cooking but it was too much. I just turned and walked into my room, shut the door and climbed into bed. I thought he would come after me like he normally does but he just went back to playing video games. That was fine with me because I didn’t want to hear how I was putting all this on myself. I cried into my pillow for a good 10 minutes until I calmed down.
Then, just as we were getting ready to serve dinner, I broke down again. This time right in front of him. It just all came crashing down. And the crazy thing was…dinner turned out nearly perfect. Almost all of the food was hot, the turkey was perfect, the mashed potatoes extra buttery, the rolls hot and on the table. I’d say it was 90% perfect. Yet I couldn’t shake the uneasy, sad feeling. I haven’t felt this down in months. I just miss her so much right now.
And that leads me to the last portion of this entry. A layout.
Technically I’m not supposed to post this yet. The products I used won’t be in the store until later tonight I think but I need to put it up. Hopefully they will forgive me.
It’s a pretty simple page. I wanted to keep the focus on my mom. The picture was taken in the early 70s after my parents started dating. They were on a camping trip. My mom was about 23/24 in the picture.
The kit I used is called “El-naturelle” by Opal Scraps which you should be able to find at twolittlepixels.com tonight or tomorrow (sorry Sharon but I needed some therapy tonight).
