A New Avenue!

Hello and good evening.  I feel like I should say that in a really spooky voice but I won't since I'm typing it.  Yes, I'm finally back into my craft room after getting kicked out for the rest of the basement flooring to go in.  I'm happy to report that it is all in but unhappy to report that we are still waiting for them to come heat it up and roll it with a 100lb roller to make sure it stays stuck.  UGH!  I really just want it done!

Anyway, I know I totally forgot about Day 6 in my Clean & Simple class.  How I missed it, I'll never know.  Duh!  I have my card for that day and a few pics of something else I've gotten into lately!  Aren't you lucky?  Here's my card for Day 6 which was all about simple embellishments!

 
Kristina made a really cute flower to use as her embellishment and I decided to follow her lead and make an embellishment to use.  I used the Wplus9 Heartfelt Mix stamp set to create a layered heart design.  Then gussied it up with some Glossy Accents on the black heart.  I layered this along with my embossed bottom border (PTI white cardstock embossed with the woodgrain impression plate) on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock.  I finished the look off with some baker's twine from The Twinery and a sentiment from the Heartfelt Mix stamp set.

Next, I'm going to share a project I just decided to delve into.  I've been toying with the idea of trying out Project Life for awhile now.  Things have gotten so busy that I don't have the time to scrapbook that I used to have but I don't want to give up documenting our lives.  Photos are wonderful but what good are they if they never get off of my computer?  I needed something easier that I could do when I was in a hurry but also froof up if I had the time.  Project Life seemed like the answer so I ordered one of each of the colors available and I'm going to check to see how far behind I am...uh oh!  I have a feeling I'll be working on our book for 2010 - now since I try to do a yearly scrapbook for the whole family and I'm pretty sure the appearance of Micah in 2010 halted my family scrapbook progress at that point.  Lucky for me, it should be no problem with Project Life to get caught up!  However, that isn't what is most exciting to me.

My mom hounds me for pictures all the time and I share hundreds every year with her on Snapfish.  She orders them all and has cases of photos stowed away in her craft cabinet.  She tried to keep up scrapbooking for each grandchild but with 5 grandsons, it is pretty much impossible.  I know she is ordering pictures that aren't that great and I know she's keeping them because she can't bear to throw away a grandson!  So, what can I do to help?  It dawned on me that if I switched us both to using Shutterfly, I could still share pictures with her but instead of her ordering anything, I could take the best pictures of each occasion and build her a Project Life photo book right there on Shutterfly!  I can easily capture the whole year of memories for her in one lovely scrapbooky version of a photo book and she can relax and enjoy her grandsons' moments without all the excess photo clutter!  I think this is going to be awesome for both of us and I've already started with January pictures because it is just that easy!  Would you like to see a sneak of how I laid out my pages?

These are just a few snapshots from a gorgeous JANUARY day in Iowa!  We spent the morning at Kennedy Park and had a blast!

The left page is some pictures I took using Instagram on my iPod touch and I knew they needed to be part of our book!  The right page is from the boys' trip to Monster Jam with the cousins!  There are SO many ways to customize your pages and really make them your own.  I had a blast!

I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of what I'm up to!  Have a great day!