Scrapbooking 2014 Goal - Week 4

So I'm in Week 4 of my Scrapbooking Goal. So far, my posts have been in the early part of each week. We'll see if that continues! :)

This week was a bit harder. I didn't use any page kits! Be assured that if I had any page kits for these photos, I sure would have used them!

These pictures were from a 2008 trip to Williamsburg with my parents. My mom had purchased tons of themed stickers and papers for this trip, so I wasn't completely without.

This first layout is of Williamsburg. The 3-D stickers are Jolee's. The papers were purchased at a local (Williamsburg) Scrapbooking store.

The next layout is of Jamestown. I didn't use any additional embellishments here.

More Jamestown & the beginning of DC.

We went to DC for the day. We drove around the city a bit and let the kids out around the National Mall area. Short & sweet.

Goal Update: 27 pages/282 pages

Scrapbooking 2014 Goal - Week 3

Week 3 of Scrapbooking. This first layout uses a kit from Out on a Limb Scrapbooking.

These next 2 layouts use an older Dance page kit from Creative Memories.

I think this brings me up to date with Hannah's dance album! I am so excited! Of course she will have new photos this spring, but for now, we're all caught up!

Goal Update: 19 pages/282 pages

Scrapbooking 2014 Goal - Week 2

 

Second week in a row of scrapbooking! The first thing I did this week was to finish the dance page from last week that I wasn't satisfied with. I added the white & purple flowers (from Stampin' Up! punches). 

 

This is James' freshman year of high school. For James' portrait album, I have been using Creative Memories supplies. Many of the pages are preprinted & don't require anything extra. On some of the preprinted pages, the large 8x10 photos don't work well. So on this page, I covered it with a simple printed sheet of paper & added a few stickers.

This layout uses a Creative Memories preprinted page. I added the photo & the "grade 10" sticker. I got pretty emotional after I completed this page. James is only going to have 2 more pages in his portrait album!!! Yikes! Where has the time gone?

This layout is from a kit I purchased from Out on a Limb Scrapbooking. I thought it worked beautifully with Hannah's dance costume.

Hannah's 5th grade class picture. I used a printed paper from a stack pack of school themed papers.

 

Hannah's 6th grade picture on a Creative Memories preprinted page. 

 

 

Hannah's 7th grade picture is also on a Creative Memories preprinted page. This is one of the pages that I mentioned above that doesn't work for the larger 8x10 photos. 

 

Goal Update: 13 pages/282 pages

What am I Reading? January 2014

Here are the books that I read in January, 2014.


I was very excited to see a new Janet Evanovich book out. This is number 20 in her numbers series. The series started out strong, then somewhere in the teens, I felt that they lost something. The last couple that I had read reminded me of the earlier ones. This one did not. Don't get me wrong, it was entertaining. It just wasn't as good as some of her others. In fact, it was a bit silly in times. In the beginning, there's a giraffe running around New Jersey. He makes several appearances in the book.

The Rosie Project was such a cute book! It is a romantic comedy told from the male perspective. The male just happens to be very similar to the Big Bang Theory's Sheldon.

I read White Fire which is a new title in the Agent Pendergast series. This one takes place in a posh ski resort town in Colorado. Agent Pendergast didn't appear for the first couple of chapters, so I wasn't sure he was even going to be in it, but he did. Lots of suspense.

The Supermodel's Best Friend was a cute "chick lit". The main character happens to be best friends with a beautiful supermodel. The supermodel is getting married in a destination week-long wedding.

I enjoyed London Falling by Emma Carr. A cute story about a young American woman who gets stranded in London.

Doubting Abbey if you haven't guessed, is a play on "Downton Abby". It's about a young woman who is asked to pose as a her friend in a reality tv show about saving an English mansion. Very cute!

That's all for now.

Happy Reading!

Back to Scrapbooking - Week 1

Back in 2011, I made a personal goal of completing 8 pages a week in my scrapbooks. You can read about my original goal here. I was doing very well until the arrival of our two cats. I managed to do a few more pages, but by March, I had given up. Although I didn't meet my goal, I did complete 163 pages.

Here's the biggest reason for not scrapbooking anymore. Someone likes to be in the middle of things.

So today, I am setting a new goal. My goal is to complete 6 pages per week. There are 47 more weeks left in the calendar year. So if I complete my goal, I will have 282 pages finished by the end of the year.

Here are the pages that I have completed for week 1.

I chose to work on Hannah's dance album. This first 2 layouts use kits that I purchased from Out on a Limb scrapbooking.

And this last layout still needs a little something. I've set it aside for now, but will go back to it later with fresh eyes.

Goal Update: 6 pages/282 pages

What am I Reading? (2013)

2013 wasn't a year for reading! According to Shelfari, I only read 34 books last year. To compare, in 2012 I read 121 books. In 2011, I read 157.

I blame my lack of reading this past year to losing my mom, putting our house on the market, & moving. Those sound like reasonable excuses to me!

My last post of "What am I Reading" was in May. So here's the rest of my short list from 2013.


Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was a book club selection. I was absolutely fascinated with it. The author started with a bunch of old photos and wrote the story around them. There's a sequel that I need to read.

I chose this James Patterson book because of it's popularity. It was entertaining, but I really wasn't satisfied with the ending. It may have been intentional to get me to read the next one.

I actually read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was another book club read. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. I actually enjoyed it. My husband has been a fan of the Douglas Adams books. I do want to see the movie version, but I have no desire to read the others in the series.

A Grown Up Kind of Pretty was also for book club. Even though I didn't read much last year, I did read most of the book club selections! As I write this, I don't remember a whole lot about the book. I did enjoy it though.

Blind Dating was a romantic comedy about dating in the world of computers and such. It was an easy read.

Tuesdays at the Castle was one of the titles in the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl competition that my daughter participated in. I only read 2 of the titles this year, much to my daughter's disappointment. This one was so cute! I couldn't put it down. Very suspenseful.

And my last read in 2013 was Kristan Higgin's A Perfect Match. Her books are so fun! The setting is a vineyard, so lots of wine stuff going on.

That's it. I am quite embarrassed by my lack of reading this year!