BAM Color Challenge 2 Blog Train!

It's time! The Baby and Me Color Challenge 2 blog train is launching! Each month, we are challenged to make either a LO or a minikit consisting of 3 papers and 3 elements using a particular palette. This month, I got to choose our palette. I loved it so much that I kept going and made 4 expansions!! Many of the other girls have expansions coming as well, including glitter styles and sheets, so check out their blogs over the next few days! We're in various time zones, so please be patient if not all the minikits are up yet - keep checking, they will be!

This was our palette for the month of April:



Here's a preview of my part:



You can download it here.

BAM Color Challenge #2 Blog Train!
Kaelira's Digiscraps <--- you are here!
geniaBeana Scraps
Digital Designs by Me
Creatively Mom
Creativity Meets Girl
Scrap It Simply
Kimi's Kreations

Enjoy our blog train! And be sure to leave all the designers some love!

Template 36

Our blog train launches tonight!! Just a few more hours before it leaves the station. Be sure to check it out! There will be 7 minikits available, and over the next few days, many of us have expansions to share. I'll be out of town this weekend, but I'll still post my expansions while I'm gone. There will be one free expansion a day for 4 days! How cool is that? So be sure to come back!

I have a new template to share, as well as a couple LOs to post. First, we had a speed scrap on BAM yesterday. These were our instructions:

1. Go find your 1-2 photos.
2. Your background has to be WHITE. At least 2/3 of it does anyway. You may edge your paper or layer it so it's not completely white, or use a paper that is mostly white.
3. Choose one of these accent colors: pink red orange yellow green blue or purple. You may use this color and any other neutral color for your elements. Neutrals are brown, tan, cream/beige, black, gray, etc. I expect questions on this one. It was hard to explain.
4. Include a branch, leaf, vine, bark, tree trunk... a natural element.
5. Include a bug or animal somewhere in there. Paw prints and fur, animal spots and bug wings all count. Anything along those lines.
6. Journal. A lot. Down one side of the page.
7. Add some sparkles.

And this is what I did with them. I was super super rushed, since I had an appointment an hour and half into it and Emma woke up from her nap right after the speed scrap started. Considering how little time I had to pull it together, I think I did a great job;)



Credits:
Papers - Christie Lemmon Designs, Modern Neutrals addon
Glitterstyles - Kimi's Kreations, BCC2
Clips - Nini-lolo, Happy Birthday
Branch - Corinne, A Touch of Spring
Ladybug - Texas Chic Designs, Spring Has Sprung
Fonts - Tracy, Vaguely Repusive

Next, I did this week's weekly challenge on BAM. Our challenge was to scrap our favorite thing about summer. I don't have that many outdoor pics from last summer. I already scrapped some of them, but plan to redo the pages at some point. I didn't have the energy to do that right now though;) Anyway, here's my page:



Credits:
Paper - Tiramisu, Summer Breeze
Fonts - Tracy, Scriptina
Atomic Cupcake action - jelly

And today's template is from this LO! Template 36 is a 2 page template in PSD format. As always, I'd love to hear back from you and see your pages! Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

And now I need to go pack for our little weekend trip! All that's packed so far are Emma's clothes LOL. Gotta go do the rest now;) I'll be back in about 3 hours with our blog train!!

Sweet Snuggles QP

I made 2 adorable QPs for ValerieN Designs using her super-cute Sweet Snuggles kit! The full kit is $4.99 in her new Digital Candy store. These QPs are absolutely perfect for those brand new newborn pics. Check it out:



You can download the free QPs from the Digital Candy blog. Enjoy!!

I got on a CT!!

Yep, that's right! I am now on the Creative Team for ValerieN Designs. She specifically asked me to make quick pages for her, so that should be fun! I'll be making 2 QPs for 2 kits a month - that's 4 QPs a month! She just opened her shop at Digital Candy and is having an awesome opening sale! Be sure to check it out. Here's the flyer:



Be sure to check out her store here!! I just downloaded Sweet Snuggles and am super excited to work with it!

Template 35, Several Pages, and Lots of Rambling

Wow, it's been a crazy week. Sorry I haven't posted anything for several days! I didn't want to update without a template to share, and it's take a few days to get around to it, what with how crazy things have been this week. I've got lots to write now, so that should make up for it;) LOL, this is gonna be long, so bear with me. If you just want the template, feel free to scroll through my rambling;) It's at the end of the post. LOL, you know you're going to have a long post when you have to write out your topics on a sticky note so you don't forget anything;)

First of all, I want to address some issues my friends and I have seen out there in the digiscrapping world. On more than one occassion, people have been violating TOUs and giving other designer's stuff out as their own. In one case, someone even used the same PSD file to turn one of Kimi's templates into a 2-pager!! Thankfully, that blog has since been deleted (thank you Angie of IkeaGoddess!). Kimi posted about this as well, but I want to reiterate that using anyone else's graphics and claiming them to be your own is ILLEGAL and completely unfair to the real designer. I hope to never have this happen to me, but if it does, I WILL contact my lawyers (LOL, my brother and his wife) and see what my options are;) If any of you happen to see someone using my products in a way that violates my TOU, please let me know!! Just a friendly reminder to ALWAYS list the credits for everything you use!

Ok, now on to other things. *sigh* It as has been one crazy week!! Tuesday afternoon, Emma started throwing up after her nap. She threw up 11 times in 6 hours!! She was perfectly fine the next day, so we assumed it was something she ate. But then on Thursday, she had at least 3 diarrhea blowouts. And ever since, she hasn't been eating well at all. But we think that's sickness-related. She did a bit better today, so that's encouraging. She DID have one diarrhea blow out today, and had another diarrhea diaper while we were at church (LOL, I'm sure when she's older she'll love that I talked about this stuff aaaall over the internet). I think she had some diarrhea on Friday, too. No poopies on Saturday, though. Hopefully she'll feel better soon!

Emma just turned 17 months old!! At 12:59 this morning, in fact. Where did the time go?! I'm majorly overdue for an update, so here it is. Emma is SO cute and smart, too. She's starting to say more words: Mommy, Daddy, Dad, ball, baby, happy, and she's said Emma a few times. She knows lots of signs: light, cookie, candy, please, thank you, kitty, cracker, love, more, fish, and all done/gone. She gives high fives and she can sometimes do the knuckles afterwards. Emma gives hugs and kisses when asked. She also knows how to fold her arms for prayers and she knows where her scriptures are (they're in picture-comic-book style and we read a couple of pages together every night before she goes to bed). Emma points at pictures all the time. She loves to point at pictures of Jesus:D She also points at pictures of herself and of us. When we ask her "where's Mommy," "where's Daddy," or "where's Emma," etc, she always points at the right person! She also knows where all her body parts are, and where they are on other people as well.

She knows where everything is, from the garbage, to her movies, to the fridge, to her toothbrush, to our car, to her goldfish. She absolutely LOVES her goldfish. She always wants to feed it and she signs fish several times a day. Emma always wants to help with everything - taking out garbage, doing dishes, doing laundry, sweeping, vacuuming, cooking, etc. She wants to stir every single thing I cook:D I think she's afraid of the vacuum when it's on unless we're holding her. (Shows how much we vacuum LOL - hey, our carpet hides everything!) Either that or it's because she wants to help. I think it might be a combo of the 2.

Emma LOVES to go outside. She gets mad if someone walks out the door without her Even if it's just someone who came to visit. She loves to go check the mail. She HAS to hold the mail key when we go! She loves keys and knows how they work. We put her monkey pack on when we check the mail because otherwise she tries to go in the street...she loves watching the cars go by. She knows which car is ours now, too.

She LOVES watching VeggieTales and Sesame Street. Her favorite characters are Larry the Cucumber and Elmo. She points at them aaaall the time. She's currently on a The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything (the movie) kick. We watch it every day. Emma also loves to color. She has learned how to tickle Mom and Dad...uh oh! When we ask her to smile, she crinkles up her nose, flashes a teeth-baring smile, and squints her eyes.

Oh, and just this week, her Elmo Live ran out of battery power and I told her he needed batteries. So she went into my bedroom, lifted up the bedskirt, and tried to pull out the toolbox!! When I opened the toolbox, she grabbed a screwdriver, went back to Elmo, and tried to unscrew the screws to open the battery compartment!! Wow, she is just TOO smart!!

Emma loves books. She prefers looking through them on her own most of the time. She also loves climbing up and down stairs - thankfully we don't have any in our apartment! There are a couple of stairs at church between the seating area and the podium, and she tries to climb up them in the middle of the meeting...and of course, throws a fit when I pick her up and take her away from them. Ah, the joys of toddlerhood. Nathan and Jessica sang today and she really wanted to go up with them!! She loves her aunt and uncle, and her little cousin, too.

She's been having issues eating lately, but we think it's because her tummy is a bit off from a virus. She did better today, at least with snacks like whole grain graham crackers and Cheerios, but she only ate a tiny bit of her dinner. It's been frustrating, but hopefully it will pass soon. She's also cutting a tooth, so she was super grouchy all day Saturday. And I've been grouchy lately, too, so it's been a hard weekend as far as that goes!

Oh, and we still haven't named her fish yet. We keep calling it a "him," so maybe we should pick a boy's name? I originally planned for it to be a girl fish LOL. I don't want to use a character name like Elmo because when it eventually dies, we'd have to tell her "Elmo died." Um, yeah, I don't want to do that.

And now for some digiscrap stuff!! Our BAM (Baby and Me, the mommy forum I frequent) blog train launches later this week!! There will be 7 minikits available, and many of us kept going and made addons! Kimi made some gorgeous seamless glitters for it, so be sure to pick those up after the train launches! I had WAY too much playing with her glitters. I went majorly overboard and made 4 separate addons, which will all be released one per day after the train launches. Since I got to pick the palette this month, our train starts here. Here's a sneak peek of our palette:



Isn't it pretty? Much better than the ugly April Fool's template I posted as a joke:



Ugh. I cringe looking at that. But it was a great gag on everyone!! The other girls were SO relieved to see I was playing them;)

Before I get to all the pages I've done since my last post, check out this cute LO Janae made using template 34: http://scrapsndoodle.blogspot.com/. How cool that she has a war hero in her family!! And on a random note, both my parents were born in that state;) Thanks for sharing!! I love seeing what others do with my templates.

And now for my pages!! First, I did the Altered Candy challenge at Digital Candy. We were to use all of this super cute minikit, but we had to alter at least one item to make our LO. I altered the color on the background paper and the color on the paper I used for the text and the flower.



Credits:
Kit - Christie Lemmons Designs, Modern Neutrals addon

Next, I did another speed scrap on BAM. This time, we were to do things we don't normally do or haven't done before. These were the instructions:

1. Pick two pictures
2. Make a stack. Pictures, elements, papers, whatever, but there needs to be at least three of whatever in your stack. DO SOMETHING YOU DON'T DO NORMALLY. If you tend to stack papers, do something else! Also, the stacked objects should be close to the same size and shape.
3. I want to see some photomasks. If you don't have any, go find one. If you can't use them, use a fuzzy eraser to blur the edges of what you'd put in. You don't have to fill the mask with a photo, if you want paper, go for it.
4. Pull out some brushes! (if this can't be done in GIMP PLEASE let me know and I'll change the step) There are lots of fun shapes, play with the scattering til you like it and put a few brush strokes on that page somewhere.
5. Find or make some word art to go with your LO.
6. Add a doodle
7. Edge your page with something. Can be the brushes, or if you used a pagemask that counts, or use a border, whatever you'd like. Date, do any journaling you'd like, and you're good!

And my page:



Credits:
Background paper - geniaBeana, Playtime
Blue and red papers, grass, sunglasses, flower - Chelle's Creations, Make a Splash (SM Design Star round 4)
Photo mask - Mimilou Designs
Grass brush - Obsidian Dawn
Stitches and rub-on - Atomic Cupcake
Fonts - Trace, Vaguely Repulsive, My Own Topher, Too Much Paper
Sun doodle - ?? I don't have the info on this one.

Then I made a new signature for BAM. I got sick of the other one already!! I really like this one, so I think I'll keep it for awhile;)



The paper is mine, the glitter is Kimi's, and I used Atomic Cupcake's colored chrome. Hm, these colors look familiar...;)

I made a super cute LO for our Mother's Day gift, but I can't post it here yet because my mom reads my digiscrap blog;) It's in my gallery at Digital Candy if you want to take a peek - unless you're my mom or mother-in-law, that is!! No peeking on your gift, Mom!

And last but not least, I did a page for the Recipe to Scrap challenge on BAM. These were our ingredients:

1. 2 photos
2. frame one photo
3. 3 papers
4. String
5. Glitter
6. 3 clips
7. word art
8. journaling



Credits:
Background paper - A Work in Progress, George and the Dragon
Journal paper - geniaBeana, Playtime
Pizza text paper - me, Rainbow Retro
Glitter - geniaBeana, Ocean Five glitter pack
Tomatoes and yummy word art - Ginger Scraps, Eat Your Veggies
String - Juno Designs, CU string sampler
Metal fastener - Shabby Princess, Happy Go Lucky
Clothespin - Amanda Kay, After the Rain
Fonts - Howser, Socially Awkward
Atomic Cupcake action - jelly

Phew!! Did you get through all that ok? LOL, I told you this was long;) And now for today's template!! Template 35 is my Homemade Pizza LO. It's a single page template in PSD format. I would love to see what you do with it!! Feel free to change it up to meet your needs - just be sure to give me credit;) Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

I also have some super exciting digiscrapping news, but I'm not allowed to tell yet;) It's cool, though. I'm excited:D

Aaand now that it's 3:30 in the morning, I think it's time for bed;) Night all!!

Template 34 and Emma's Goldfish

I participated in the speed scrap on ScrapMatters today. It's the first time I've done one over there. It was really fun! Britt made a cute alpha for the participation prize, and she did an awesome job hosting. It started at Emma's normal naptime, but since she slept in and didn't finish breakfast till 11, lunch and nap got delayed a bit. We went to the park in the interim. We got back 30 minutes into the speed scrap. I jumped right in and got my page done with time to spare! It was awesome. These were our instructions:

1) Pick your photos. Today we'll be scrapping happy photos. Any number you want, but they HAVE TO BE very happy photos!!
2) Pick your papers. I want to see you stack at least 3 papers. No less than 3. Solids, patterns, whatever you want. As long as your page base is at least 3 stacked papers.
3) Arrange your photos on the paper stack. Then, choose a small element (or shrink one down) and repeat it on your page at least 8 times, if not more. It can NOT be a staple!
4) Add some string or bows.
5) Add something that looks hand drawn. A borderline, a doodle, a font. Anything that looks hand drawn.
6) Time to title the page. Use 1 alpha for your entire title (you can use a font too if you really need to). Use an alpha that you've haven't used in a while, but that you HAVE used before.
7) Embellish however else you wish. Journal at least 2 sentences and date your page.

And here's what I did with them:



Credits:
Kit - Chelle's Creations, Make A Splash (Design Star round 4)
Alpha - A Work in Progress, Brit Pop
Goldfish - Paula Phillips Designs, Love My Pet

Today's template is my speed scrap LO. Template 34 is a single page LO in PSD format. Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

I love hearing back from you! I've been getting so many awesome comments lately - you girls rock:D Thank you!! Now I need to get started on my elements for our upcoming blog train. I know what I want to do, I just have to DO it;)

We still don't know what to name Emma's goldfish. Any suggestions are welcome (as long as they're appropriate of course).

Anyway, that's all for now!! Night all!

Template 33 and A New Desktop

No, not the computer;) A new desktop background for my desktop. I'm not a fan of laptops;) John has one, and I can't stand using it. Partially because it's a laptop, and partially because it's got Vista. YUCK. Give me XP any day!!

Wow. My neice Rachel turns 11 today. I feel so old!! I remember seeing her in the hospital when she was only an hour old, and now she's 11?! Wow. I can't believe so much time has gone by. Well, Rachel, if you read this, happy 11th birthday!

I mentioned in a previous post that we were fish sitting for our friends/neighbors. They came to pick up the surviving goldfish this morning. LOL, she was actually surprised that one of them was still alive - she didn't expect them to live very long (nothing to do with us;)). Well...when they took the fish away, Emma FREAKED out. She just started crying and crying! She wanted to keep the fish! The only thing that calmed her down was when we asked her if she wanted to get her own fish. And everytime we said, "do you want to go to Walmart and get a fish?" she got the biggest, cutest grin on her face! Soo...we went to Walmart and got her a fish. We got a tiny tank that came with a filter (only $10!), some rocks, fish food, a fake plant, and a castle bridge. $30 later, Emma has a goldfish. And she LOVES it. We don't feel like we gave in to her whim on this, since essentially we let her have a pet for a week and then took it away. So it's only fair, right? We feel good about it. It feels RIGHT for her to have a goldfish, as silly as that may sound. We can't decide if we want it to be a boy fish or a girl fish (since we don't know how to tell). We need a name for it, too. I took pictures of Emma with her new pet and I will scrap them at some point. It's not at the top of my list right now;)

I've been meaning to make John a new desktop for at least a couple of months now. The picture he had on there previously was from a roadtrip last April:



It's cute, but, Emma looks SOOOO different now. It was time for something up-to-date. But I entered this pic into the ABC photo contest on BAM. D is for driving, after all;)

Today, I finally got around to it. One of my friends made a desktop using Digital Candy's April desktop template, and it inspired me to get my butt in gear and do mine. I didn't want to use the template, though. It's cute, but I wanted more picture space. I have a HUUUUUGE screen - 22" widescreen^___^ And if I'm going to scrap my desktop, it's going to have larger pictures than that template provided. Soooo...I made my OWN desktop template:) Here's the desktop I put on my computer and John's:



Credits:
Kit - Kimi's Kreations, Ready for Sun (mini and addon)
Cloud Overlay - Delicious Scraps
Grass - Corinne, A Touch of Spring

And now for the template. Or rather, templateS. There are actually 3 PSD versions of this LO in the download: a 12x12 regular page, a widescreen desktop (1680x1050), and a regular screen desktop (1600x1200). Here are the previews:







You can download all 3 versions of template 33 here.

As always, I'd love to hear back from you and see your pages!! I need to go make a chocolate eclair cake (yes, at 2 AM - the prep only takes 5 minutes, then it just needs to sit in the fridge). The friends we'd invited over for Easter are coming over tomorrow (or rather, today) instead. Their kids were recovering from RSV last week, so we opted to delay our dinner party. We'll have homemade pizza - yum! Anyway, gotta go! Night!

Template 32 and My Little Goofball

Yet another template:) I posted 2 in a row tonight, so be sure to check the previous post for template 31;)

But first, a public announcement. I changed my TOU to allow S4O. This applies to all previous freebies as well:) However, S4H is NOT allowed. It's not fair for someone else to make a profit off what I give away for free, know what I mean? CU is also not allowed. So, personal and S4O is ok:D

I made another fit-as-many-pics-as-possible template. I won't be making another LO like this for awhile, since I did 2 in the last few days and they are way more time consuming than most other LOs. I do have another 2 pager in the works, but it'll have 8 pics (I already picked out the ones I'm going to use for mine).

This page is for the weekly challenge on BAM, which I got to host this round. LOL, I've done quite a bit of hosting this week. Anyway, the challenge was to scrap funny pictures. I did a fun collage of funny Emma pictures:) Here's my page:







Credits:
Papers - me, Retro Rainbow (BCC1 mini and expansion) - still available further down;)
Alpha - Kimi's Kreations, BCC1 Mix 'N Match alphas
Fonts - Too Much Paper, Tracy

LOL, I had some hilarious shots of Emma with clean panties on her head (she pulled them out of the clean laundry basket while I was in the bathroom), but decided they weren't really appropriate;) Especially for posting on the internet!

And we still haven't been able to get that golfball out of the nesting cup...*sigh* I guess we'll just have to order a replacement. Thankfully, it'll only be $1.

And here's the free template. Template 32 is a 2 page LO in PSD format. As always, I love hearing back from you and seeing your pages! Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

Aaaand I think that's it for tonight. I'll probably do some more scrapping, so be on the lookout for another template soon ish!

Template 31 and Another Easter Speed Scrap

I've got another template! Whee! But first, I need to apologize to my friend Shelley. She lives 2 doors down from us. They went out of town for Easter, and asked us to fish-sit for them. Well...one of the goldfish died last night :( John was going to change the water, but he fell asleep, and I was preoccuppied with hosting a speed scrap. I noticed that the kitchen smelled bad, but I assumed it was the dishes or the garbage. Nope, it was the dead fish :( We gave him a toilet-side funeral. I'm sorry, Shelley! The other one is doing great, though.

Thankfully, before she left she said she didn't care if they died while she was gone. She only had them because she was in the preschool lab last semester and taught a lesson on fish. We feel bad regardless:(

I got to host the speed scrap on BAM last night. It was SO fun hosting! These are the instructions I came up with:

1. Choose 3 different photos that go together.
2. Cluster 2 of your photos together and make the 3rd the focus of your page.
3. Choose (or make) a word art that coordinates with your photos. It can be your title, if you so desire, but it's not required.
4. Choose 3 papers - 1 solid and 2 patterned. You can do whatever you want with them and use them as much as you please.
5. Use some sort of bracket (frame, mat, single, etc) somewhere in your LO.
6. Choose 3 different elements and cluster them somewhere on your page. Duplicate your cluster, shrink it, and put it somewhere else.
7. Add whatever title and journaling you want.

And here's my page:



Credits:
Green and purple papers, branches - Corinne, A Touch of Spring
Blue dotted paper, butterfly, flower - Scrapmalin collab, Sweet Envy
Bracket - Scrappin Cop, CU brackets
Font - Tracy
Wordart - me (available a few posts down)

I made this page to match my previous Easter speed scrap page. They will face each other when I get around to printing them. I realized today that I stupidly saved the flattened version over the layered PSD. Poo. At least it's the full-sized flattened version. Let's just hope I don't need to edit it later on!

I made a template out of this LO, too. It was a bit inconvenient to remake it for templatizing, but it wasn't too bad. At least it wasn't one of my 2 pagers with tons of pictures! I have another one of those to post soon, too, so stay tuned!

Anyway, template 31 is a single page LO in PSD format. I love hearing back from you:) I've had lots of great comments lately, and I love it:D Thank you!! Here's the preview for template 31:



You can download it here. Bracket courtesy of Scrappin' Cop.

Template 32 coming up soon! (Like, in a few minutes or so after I convert it from page-to-template;))

Template 30 and Easter

Woohoo, I've made 30 templates! But first, a few other things - including a LO and our Easter story.

First of all, Kasie requested that I set up my download links so that they don't navigate away from my blog. LOL, I didn't remember how to do that, so I pulled out the textbook from the web design class I took 5 years ago;) My html skills are pretty rusty;) I couldn't find it in the book, though. Sooo...I hopped over to Kasie's blog and stole it from her source code^_^ Hope you don't mind, Kasie;) I did it JUST for you^_^

Barb made a gorgeous Vegas LO using template 27! Check it out on her blog. I've never been to Vegas, but looking at her page makes me want to go. I'm anti-gambling, but I know there are plenty of other non-gambling things to do there. Barb, thanks for sharing your page! It's beautiful. I LOVE seeing pages with my templates^_^ It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside:)

Barb also asked me a question about printing double page LOs. I haven't actually printed any yet, so I'm definitely not an expert on it. The only thing I've printed so far is Emma's ABC Book, and it's a 6x6 board book. But I think what most people do is crop them into 2 12x12 pages and THEN print them as 12x12s. I know Kimi of Kimi's Kreations printed several 2 page LOs in a book through Shutterfly, and I'm pretty sure that's what she did. She might have further tips for you:) She also has awesome templates up on her blog. And she just happens to be one of my closest IRL friends;) We were pretty much inseparable in high school.

Those of you who said the book in my self portrait is one of the Twilight books are right! And Kimi hit the head on the nail with it being Breaking Dawn. Ironically, she gave it to me;)

Now on to other things. I still need to write about our Easter this year. I know, I'm several days behind most everyone else. I'm also waaaay overdue for an Emma update. I like to post these things in multiple places because my reader list varies from place to place. Anyway, on to our Easter.

We had a great Easter. We woke up when Emma did and she got to see her Easter basket. She had soooo much stuff in it. I bought her some things, and then my Mom sent 2 different packages full of stuff for her. (Mom has a tendency to go overboard...guess that's where I get it from;)) Oo, and Emma's ABC Book was in it, too. And, of course, some candy. John and I had Easter baskets, too. I bought John an action figure and a CD. "He" got me picture frames that I picked out a few days before;) LOL, he didn't know what to get me, and I didn't know what to tell him (other than digiscrapping stuff), so when we saw the frames at Walmart I said, "hey, that can be my Easter present."

After we played with our Easter baskets, we started prepping a few things for dinner. I made a super yummy honey glaze for the ham and put the rolls out to rise. I'm sure we ate breakfast in there, too. Nothing fancy; just cereal. Then we got ready for church. Mom sent Emma a gorgeous pink eyelet dress. It's a 2T and Emma wears 12 month dresses (and 6-9 months in most everything else), so it was a little big on her, but it was sooo cute. The fact that it was too big wasn't noticeable with her cute white sweater on:)

Then we went to church and it was really nice. I had to take Emma out into the hall a couple of times, but it was fine. LOL, I brought my camera to church, so I snapped a few photos in the lobby;) I got some adorable shots of Emma looking and pointing at a painting of Jesus. I plan to scrap those soon:D I had to lead choir practice afterwards, since we're singing in church this week. Of course, there weren't very many people there. Thankfully, we're just singing a hymn from the hymnbook, so I'm going to ask people to join us from the pulpit right before we sing. It took us a looong time to go home after church.

It was a gorgeous day out, so after we got the ham cooking in the crock pot, we walked around outside a bit. We just walked around the grass median by our parking lot. When we went back inside, I decorated the cupcakes we made the night before. They turned out super cute! We got all the rest of the food ready and finally got to sit down and eat dinner. We watched The Lamb of God while we ate. And of course, dinner wouldn't be complete without dessert, right? We then ate our yummy cupcakes. Then we got Emma ready for bed and vegged the rest of the evening.

We'd planned to do an Easter egg hunt and decorate eggs, but we just didn't have time for it. Oh well. Maybe next year. I DID take a toooon of pictures, though. I took 374! I then narrowed that down to 90 with potential, which got narrowed down to 60 scrap-worthy photos. But I can't use AALL the pics! So I cut that down to 30, and that's STILL a lot! But, I made a really cute page using 19 of them;) I still have a few more pages to go till I'm satisfied with our Easter documentation. Here's the page:







Credits:
Paper - me
Glitter stylesheets - Kimi's Kreations, BCC2
Font - Scriptina

And that brings me to template 30, which is the above LO. Template 30 is a 2 page LO in PSD format. A word of warning on this one: a couple of the photos are on the seam, so be sure not to put anything you care about in those slots (like, your child's face or something). I put cupcake pictures in there on my LO. As always, I'd love to hear back from you and see your pages with any of my freebies. Feel free to leave a comment with a link:) Anyway, here's the preview:



You can download it here.

Template 29, Self Portrait, and Jessica's Senior Recital

I got my new hard drive installed!! Yay! I also moved all my digiscrap stuff and my photos over to the new drive. Oh does it feel good to free up all that space! I also installed CS4 today:D I LOVE it. I had to customize one of the settings (I HATE the default open-images-in-tabs setting - yuck!), and I'm learning my way around the interface, but I love it so far!! It's definitely different than the PS7 I've been using all these years;) But yet, still very much the same.

In the photography section on BAM, we had a challenge assignment to do a self portrait. I had a lot of fun playing with my camera and putting 2 photos together in Photoshop. Normally, I hate pictures of me, but some of them actually turned out halfway decent;) Here's my self portrait:



Bonus points if you can name the book;)

Many of you may know that we have a horrible internet connection. It comes with the apartment, so we have no control over it. It's supposedly high speed...ha. Anyway, we received a notice today that they're going to upgrade our internet! Yay! It will run 50% better than it does currently. Woohoo! The downside is that it will be off and on from now until Friday. And I scheduled the speed scrap I'm hosting for Thursday. I might move it to Saturday; it depends. I plan to talk to the managers and see what kind of downtime we're looking at. Hopefully it will just be during the workday. So if you don't see me for a couple of days, you'll know why. LOL, not that I have any sort of actual schedule for blogging (other than ridiculously late at night). But we'll have faster internet soon! Yay!

John's sister Jessica asked me to send her the photos I took of her senior recital. But the lighting was AWFUL - horrible noise, red-eye, and dark photos. Speaking of noise, have I mentioned I recently fell in love with the free program Noiseware? There's a link to it in the non-digiscrap links section on here. You should get it if you haven't already. Scroll down to the bottom of that page - you'll want the free community edition. It does amazing things to photos. I should post some before and after shots, just to give you an idea. But you can just download it yourself and play with it;)

Anyway, I digress. After I edited some of the pics (still have more to do), I decided to scrap a few. I sent her the page - I hope she likes it! LOL, she borrowed my flash drive and left her recital poster on it, so I plugged it into my page:) Their other sister Rebecca made the poster. I purposefully blurred out all the personal info for web posting. Here's the page:



Credits:
Kit - TrixieScraps, A Formal Affair
Glitter - Kimi's Kreations, BAM Color Challenge 2
Font - Scriptina

Which brings me to today's template. Template 29 is the LO above;) It's a 2 page LO in PSD format. This is the first LO and template I did in CS4^_^ As always, I'd love to hear from you and see your pages. Here's the preview for template 29:



You can download it here.

And it's time for bed. Night all!

Template 28, Easter, and Cleaning

I really need to keep up with my housework. So, to help me with this endeavor, I made a weekly cleaning chart. I purposefully used bright/bold colors so it will grab my attention. Hopefully that will help me to keep up with it^_^ I made it as an 8.5x11, printed it, stuck some magnetic tape on the back, and put it on the fridge. Crossing my fingers that this will work! Consequently, I'm currently running some laundry:D And only because I don't want to fall behind on the first day! FYI, Sunday isn't on there because it's our day off from housework:) Other than dishes from dinner, that is. Aaanyway, here's my new cleaning chart. Let's hope it works!!



Credits:
Kit - Chelle's Creations, Make A Splash (ScrapMatters Design Star round 4)
Swirls - Obsidian Dawn, Swirl Brushes
Fonts - Scriptina, Too Much Paper, Andy

We had another speed scrap on BAM today. I FINALLY won a speed scrap!! Yay! I also won the weekly challenge last week, so I get to host this week's challenge AND our next speed scrap. Feel free to join us on Thursday at 8:30 MST on BAM. You have to be a member of the forum to play, of course, since that's where it takes place. It's my favorite forum of all time. It's a mommy forum, but there is SOO much more than just typical mommy stuff. Our digiscrap section rocks:) LOL, I am the 17th top poster last I checked, so obviously I enjoy it;) Aaanyway, here are the steps for today's speed scrap:

1. Choose 2-3 photos that go together.
2. Choose only TWO papers. You may use them as many times as you like.
3. Frame your photos together. You may use a multi-photo frame, or simply a mat underneath them, but there should be no space between the frames. (Think of those photo-strips you get out of the photo-booths.) You MAY use a third paper to make a mat/frame, if you need to.
4. Decorate your frame or mat. Use as many elements as you like, but clustered around the frame. All or most of them should be touching, beneath, or overlapping the frame. Experiment with layering!
5. Pick a nice border to frame your page with. This can be made with ribbons, lace, stitches, anything -- just not your papers. It does not have to frame the entire page, but should border at least two sides.
6. Make sure you have at least one element that is WHITE, or as close to white as possible. Cream/khaki/light beige is okay too.
7. Do not title your page! You may add one line of journaling and the date, if you wish. The purpose of this is to make your photos speak for themselves, and really draw attention to them.

And here's my page:



Credits:
Paper, branches, grass, string, ribbon - Corinne, A Touch of Spring
Eggs - Snippets Inc, Spring Bliss (SM DS round 4)
Butterfly, bunny, flowers - Scrapmalin collab, Sweet Envy
Font - Tracy
Stitches - Atomic Cupcake

And today's template is the LO that won the speed scrap;) Template 28 is a single page LO in PSD format. As always, I'd love to hear back from you and see your pages:) Let me know if you'd like me to post them here - I love showcasing them:D Here's the preview for template 28:



You can download it here.

Now I'm going to go install my new hard drive, CS4, and transfer all my photos and digiscrap stuff over to the new slave drive:D Crossing my fingers it goes smoothly!!

Wordart - Christmas and Easter

I made a wordart out of one of my absolute favorite quotes about Easter. Here's the quote, in wordart form:



You can download it here.

Isn't that a beautiful quote? It's so true, too. If it weren't for Jesus' resurrection, we would have no reason to celebrate His birth. I love the man who said this, too. For those of you who don't know anything about him, he was the president of the LDS church until January 2008, when he passed away. Emma was exactly 2 months old the day he died. Gordon B. Hinckley was a wonderful man. He was very loving, knowledgeable, and a great example to all. I never got the chance to meet him, but I always wanted to. I DID get to be in the same room as him a few of times, but there were way too many people there for me to get to meet him.

Happy Easter to all!! And don't forget to grab the new template in the previous post;)

Template 27 and A Couple of Pages

I'm BAAACK! My house is clean! Ish...I DID clean it all the way, but life with a toddler makes it difficult to keep it clean LOL. As it turns out, the friends we'd invited over won't be able to make it, as their 2 year old and 10 month old twins are recovering from RSV. They're almost better, but we all agreed it was better not to risk it. I don't want Emma to go through that unnecessarily. So we'll be celebrating Easter with just the 3 of us. It should be nice, though. We have lots of fun things planned. Hopefully we'll be able to do all of them!

Ooo, Emma's ABC Book came in the mail on Wednesday! It turned out way cute!! LOL, ironically, the printer is only about 4 hours away from me! I didn't know that until I saw the address it shipped from. It's not perfect (it chopped off part of the edges), but I'm generally satisfied. It was definitely worth it. And Emma will LOVE it forever!

I have a new template for you! But first, a couple of pages:

First, we have the most recent speed scrap on BAM. These were the rules this round:

1 1 photo. You may frame it if you like.
2 Add 2 solid papers (these can be heavily textured just not an clearly visible pattern) Stack them.
3 Find 3 more papers. 2 of which should be patterend. cut into shapes and layered beneath your photo
4 Use 4 elements. cluster them to one side of your photo. These may be repeated as desired.
5. add a string, and some kind of fastener to the page
6. you may add up to 3 more elements as long as they are layered between your stacked papers
7. title, date, journal if you wish (if making your own alpha, the paper used does not have to be one from the LO)

And this is what I did:



Credits:
Papers - me
Glitter styles and elements - Kimi (BCC1 and BCC2)
Fastener string - Nini-lolo, Happy Birthday
Fonts - Too Much Paper, Tracy

I also just finished my weekly challenge page - just in time!! Our challenge this week was to use one of the ScrapMatters Design Star round 4 kits (you have to check these out if you haven't already - awesome freebies:D) and recent pictures. LOL, our lovely hostess Kimi wanted to see current pics of our kids/us. Naturally, I only used Emma pictures;) I hate photos of me. But I'll be posting a self portrait shot soonish, since we have a self portrait photography assignment. I have an idea what my final self portrait will look like, but I have yet to put it together. Aaaanyway, I digress (I have a tendency to do that, if you haven't noticed - especially late at night like this). Here's my page for the weekly challenge:







Credits:
Kit - Man in the Moon Designs, Carousel Ride (Scrap Matters Design Star round 4)
Fonts - Scriptina, Too Much Paper, Tracy

I haven't done as many pages this week because 1. I was cleaning, 2. I've been sorting through my digiscrap stash and disposing of all the ugly kits, and 3. I have hardly any room left on this drive and need to install my new slave drive before I can really do a lot. I needed a little break, too. As much as I love digiscrapping, sometimes I just need to set it aside for a bit. I also got dragged into other projects by various family members. And we were celebrating the end of the semester for John. Woooohooo! No more school till September:D But I'm back now, and with a new template for you to play with. I have a wordart to share, too, but that will get it's own post:)

Template 27 is my LO for the weekly challenge:) It's a 2-page LO in PSD format. Wow, I've now made as many templates as I am old;) As always, I'd love to hear back from you and see your pages with my templates. Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

I'll be back in a few minutes with a wordart:D

Template 26 and Soon to be MIA

I've got template 26 up and ready! But first, a public service announcement: I'm going to be MIA for a few days to clean my disgusting house (at least, that's the plan - please kick my butt if I'm online). I've been neglecting my housework lately, and it's gotten out of hand. Sooo...I need to take a few days to clean everything up. Especially since we're having one of John's best friends and his family over for Easter! They have a 2 year old and 10 month old twins. I'll have 4 little kids and 4 adults in my tiny apartment! So yeah, I definitely need to clean! I was going to take time away from the computer to clean regardless, though.

I also need to install my 500 gig hard drive and CS4. I have NO room left (ok, 21 gigs free...but that's not much, especially in the digiscrap world) on my master drive - need to get the slave plugged in! I got internal, since they're cheaper and I have a toddler;) I don't want her to have breaking access to something like that. I would have installed it sooner, but it didn't come with mounting screws, so I had to wait for those to arrive first. But I'm not going to let myself play computer surgeon until my house is clean. Hopefully it won't take long!

Anyway, template 26 is a 2-page LO in PSD format. There's a nice white space section on there, which you are free to add an extraction or photo to, but be careful: don't put anything you care about on the crease, or you will lose part of your image. The awesome brackets are courtesy of Scrappin Cop. She has some awesome CU stuff! Have fun with it, and I can't wait to see what you do! Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

I'm going to be good and go to bed soon! I need to stop staying up till 4 AM...night!

Template 25!!

Template 25 is here! Wow, I've made 25 templates. How cool is that? And I'll keep making more! This is the first time I've experimented with making paper strips, so it should be fun to use. Template 25 is a single page LO in PSD format. And, of course, I'd LOVE to hear back from you and see your pages:) Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

I think that's enough templates for tonight;) I think 26 will be another 2-pager. Then, I'll have 13 1 page templates and 13 2 page templates:) Yes, I'm a nerd - I've counted. Anyway, I think that's it for tonight. Night all!

Template 24, Eating Cake, and New Siggy

We had another speed scrap tonight, and I turned my LO into template 24 for you to enjoy:) I also made a new signature, using some papers I made. I still need to do the elements, but the papers are done:D I really like using my own stuff to make pages these days.

Ooo, some awesome news!! I bought CS4 today!!! YAY! John is a student, so we were able to get the full extended version for $189!!! It's normally $1000. Sweeeet! It's the student license, since that's all they had at the school bookstore, but that's not going to be an issue. From what I read on Adobe's site about it, we just have to install it ONLY on ONE personal computer and not resell the program (why would we?!). Of course, it's going on MY comp;) John doesn't know how to do anything with graphics, and if he needs something, he asks me to do it anyway. I'm excited!! I haven't installed yet, since I didn't want to have to re-learn where things are during a speed scrap! Plus, I'll need to import all my brushes, actions, and layer styles. I'll probably install it tomorrow:D

I made a new signature for BAM. I made everything in it, too:) I had issues editing the middle photo, and I don't think I'll ever be able to get it JUST right. Ah well. I still think it's cute. Here's my new sig:



And now for the speed scrap. These were the rules:

1. Use an even number of photos, all photos need to be in color.
2. Use at least 5 pieces of paper, at least one must be a square.
3. Use at least 2 frames.
4. Use a fastening element.
5. Add a ribbon.
6. Add something white.
7. Add three more elements
8. Use at least one font and one alpha in your title.

And here's my page:



Credits:
Almost everything - me, BAM color challenge 2
Fastener - NewLife Dreams, Happy Birthday
Glitter styles - Kimi's Kreations, BAM color challenge 2
Atomic Cupcake action - colored chrome

I think I'm in the running this round, though I didn't get many comments on it, which generally implies ambivalance. So who knows. I think it's one of the better pages this round;) But I don't think I can vote for myself;)

Aaaanyway, I made a template out of my LO to share. Template 24 is a single page LO in PSD format. I would LOVE to hear back from you and see your pages with my templates or kits! Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

Template 25 is in the works, so be on the lookout! I may or may not get to it tonight; we'll see. Anyway, that's it for now!

Template 23 and Happy Family

Notice anything different around here? Yep, I changed my blog LO! And I used stuff I made myself! Well, I used CU overlays, Atomic Cupcake's tearing, Kimi's glitter styles, and Obsidian Dawn's swirl brushes...but I put it all together;) And I photographed, extracted, and recolored the ribbon. LOL, it's the drawstring of my favorite PJ bottoms!! I have a real blog header now, too!

Template 23 is here! But first, a new LO! This week's weekly challenge on BAM has us browsing galleries around the digiscrap world for scraplifting. The challenge is to scraplift a LO we really like. This was the first time I've done a scraplift. It was really fun! I saw this gorgeous LO and had to lift it:



And this is my version:



Credits:
Scraplifted from Leila at ScrapMatters: http://www.scrapmatters.com/gallery3/showp...t/all/limit/all
Papers - me, BCC2 (not released yet)
Glitter styles - Kimi's Kreations, BCC2 (not released yet)
Obsidian Dawn - swirl brushes
Atomic Cupcake - colored chrome

Be sure to head over to ScrapMatters and leave Leila some love for her gorgeous LO!

And now for the template. Template 23 is a 2 page LO in PSD format. Please feel free to send me your pages with my templates or kits! I'd LOVE to see them, and to post them here with your permission:) Here's the preview for template 23:



You can download it here.

LOL, I WAS going to go to bed earlier tonight...ahahaha, right...it's nearly 3 AM. I really need to force myself to go to bed earlier. But...it doesn't really work, because I can't sleep. I just lay there TRYING to sleep. If I'm going to be awake at this hour, I might as well be productive, right? ;) Anyway, I'm going to TRY to get some sleep now. Night all!