March scrapbooking layouts for Simple Scrapper

Hello! I have about a month left in the term at my school, which means I'll be grading like crazy for a few weeks. As a result, I worked hard to scrapbook this past weekend, finishing my March pages for Simple Scrapper. Here they are:

In the dead of winter, I want to use a lot of color, and so I did, using new story starter and an old sketch to scrapbook about my son's changing dream job. Here's some details:

Then I used a new sketch and an old story starter to scrapbook a summer story of the boys enjoying the backyard fire last summer:

I love that picture of my husband in the middle! Nothing like a good grid design. I put some space in it so I could Here's a detail:

Thank you for visiting! Please visit Simple Scrapper to check out their fabulous inspiration. Right now there is a free class--a reboot!--called Photo Crush, where you work together to organize your digital photo library. Check it out!

Happy New Year at Write Click Scrapbook!

Hello! It's a new year and a new gallery at Write Click Scrapbook. The theme is "My On Trend," which is a chance for us to share what our personal trends are. Here's my page:

I had the piece of striped brown paper, which was from an old Studio Calico kit, lying around. I got the idea for the page when I printed the photo of my husband and thought to pair it with the mead photo I had already printed and not used for my favorite photos page. I tossed the two photos on top of this paper to get it out of the way, liked the way they looked together, and went from there. This is, by the way, a typical way of creating non-kit pages for me.

Here's some details:

So what makes this page typical for me and my style/trends?

1. Journaling strips (of course)
2. Sewing
3. Different sizes and fonts for the title
4. Patterned paper mixes, especially the 2/3 and 1/3 split
5. More than one photo
6. A circle

I am not the only one who does these things, but these trends make me happy, so I do them a lot without qualms. Scrapbooking should make you happy.

Thank you for visiting today! Please go check out the inspiring pages at Write Click Scrapbook, and start the new year out by creating!

Husband scrapbooking

My husband Derick has a birthday approaching. He's pretty hard to buy presents for. Like most guys--maybe most people--he loves getting super expensive technology, but I'm not getting him that. My older boy is getting braces this month. My husband also doesn't drop hints about what he likes. We went camping recently and he actually mentioned he wanted a bigger screen tent and a new camping chair. My ears perked up, and I've been thinking about getting him those for his birthday when his latest purchase came in the mail:

Yes, this is chain mail. A chain mail dish cloth with which to clean cast iron pans.

At that point I just gave up. What seemed to be a great present because he'd dropped a big hint would  pale next to chain mail. Near despair, I wondered what I could do.

And then my husband came home to tell me that he's found the perfect present for him. And it involved scrapbooking:

(Let's take a moment to appreciate that this woman got pictures with herself and Nathan Fillion and both Winchesters. Wow. Just wow.)

This image is from a Kickstarter for a scrapbook specific for people who go to gaming conventions and Comic Cons who want a place to put their memorabilia and photos. Here's the link: Con*Quest Adventure Journal. It's a pretty nice book with a variety of page types--pocket pages, photo pages, journaling/drawing pages--not unlike the pocket scrapbooks that are popular today, only this one is designed for convention geeks, just like my husband. For years he's gone to GenCon in Indianapolis (and before that Milwaukee) with his gaming buddies, and for years I've tried to persuade him to let me put the photos and memorabilia in a small scrapbook for him. He's refused, but it finally looks like I may have turned him to the dark side.

My present to my husband is not backing this journal--he already did that (typical). My present is blogging about this Kickstarter and pinning it to hopefully get the word out so that it will be made.

If you are interested or know a convention geek who might appreciate this as a gift, please back this Kickstarter and spread the word. I'm hoping that this woman will get the backing she needs so that my husband can join me in my hobby--at least once a year.

Write Click Scrapbook May sneak!

This has been a busy month. My husband traveled to Idaho to help his dad prepare to move to assisted living, and I've been a single mom for the past three weeks. That alone is stressful, but add on top of that snow on top of snow, including the snow day we got yesterday (It's April, Mother Nature! April!), and I am beat. Whoosh.

I've managed to sneak some scrapping in a bit every day after the boys go to bed--it's how I maintain--but I had to relinquish jogging (I just couldn't bring myself to jog through snowwater at the side of the roads) and updating my blog or galleries. Here's a sneak of what I did these past few weeks:

This is a bit of a page that reflects on this past month. The page made me happy because of the colors, mostly, but also to relive the goofy, happy days of this past month. That said, I am SO happy that Derick is finally coming home this weekend. Even though we got almost a foot of snow yesterday and almost two feet of snow while he was gone, it feels like Spring is here. Complete and utter joy.

Male Patterned Paper

I've had these photos of Derick for a while, plus the page title, just waiting for inspiration. This week's sketch at Sketch Support gave me that inspiration. Here's the page:

I modified the sketch quite a bit, mainly because the star is incidental to the theme (he loves doing Star Wars role playing games). I used it to "fancy up" the replacement letter "e."

I had run out of "e's" from the wood letter set and almost got more, but my scrapping friend Janet stopped me from buying more wood letters, saying, "Use an 'e' from your supplies." That have me the idea for the embellishing. I punched a star from scrap paper, traced around it, punched holes every 1/4 inch, then stitched.

If you haven't gone to Sketch Support yet today, do so! There is a giveaway for two sketchbooks.

Barbeque star

My page for this week's Sketch Support is up. I made a layout, though the sketch is for a card. Here's what I did (click the images to see them larger):


I had two vertical photos of my husband barbequeing, so I decided to pair them with a journaling prompt from Ella's List It! Holiday Edition. I added the strips of paper and stars above and below the photos and journaling block.


I had fun pairing old and new with this layout. I used a lot of old scraps and some product from the stash--buttons, stickers, star punch--while also digging into the new--the Ella journaling spot and the October Afternoon big letter stickers. I was going for a color mix that reflected both summer and fourth of July.

I mentioned this on Sketch Support: After I had stitched the stars I realized they were not alligned. %#@*! I added the buttons to mask it a little.

Just in case you were wondering, my husband became a barbeque star after attending Kick Ass BBQ, a class he asked for one Father's Day. My boys can attest for how good he is now at making ribs: they're always suspicious of food that is unfamiliar, but both boys now love ribs thanks to Derick (and Kick Ass BBQ).

Welcome, summer!

We had a wonderful first week of summer break. Here's the evidence:


Rowan sent his first email this weekend to his friend spending the summer in China. He told him about going to see the Green Lantern. While typing, he asked me how to spell "guess," "usual," and "went." I only chided him about having to ask about "went," but after all the tricky words with u's in them, maybe he thought it could be spelled "wuent." English spelling is tough.

Derick got himself a brisket to BBQ at Osseo Meats. Apologies to Vegetarians, but for Derick, grilling something all day long while having a beer and watching baseball is life perfected.

While Rowan was at taekwondo, Dominic and I went to meet Scott Baker of the Twins. He's way taller IRL than he looks on TV. And he pitched an awesome game on Saturday a few hours after we met him!

(That's Dominic's new swim shirt, a la Target. He would wear it every day if I'd let him.)


On Father's Day, Derick played Go Fish with the boys. Old fashioned fun.

For Father's Day, we went to eat brunch at Famous Dave's in Calhoun Square. They have an AMAZING Sunday brunch. We hadn't been for years, and it was still good. Sadly, the hash browns didn't seem to have brisket in it anymore, but they still had the huge fruit tray, a variety of breakfast meats, and (my favorite) waffles with apple butter, praline sauce, and whipped cream. Mmmm...

We had a bit of a wait, so we went across the street to Magers and Quinn and got a couple books for the boys. The one that hyped them up was this one:

The Book With a Hole. That's the title. If you have boys, get this book. Girls would probably like it too, but boys definitely would.

Dominic got balloons at Byerly's, just because he was wearing a Twins shirt. Nice.

This was an almost dream for Lola. Look at the size of the bones she found! Sadly, Mom (me) didn't buy it for her.

We found out this weekend that she had worms--the only down part of the start of summer--so we had to take her to the vet, which is why we were in the Bone aisle. It took a few times for her to get the medicine down, but she's feeling better, as you can see:


Just a thought: If you haven't done a page about your life right now, maybe try doing a little recap: things that make you happy, things that went well, things that are driving you crazy right now, and so on. I could easily turn these photos into a grid and do a quick page on my life right now. What memories!