Get Your Bridal Basketball On!!

Since I've been knee deep in wedding plans (Only 16 days until THE BIG DAY!!!!!!) I haven't had much time for blogging, new recipes, and barely enough time for reading.

But I did have time a couple weekends ago to spend some non wedding related quality time with my scrapbook room! Granted it wasn't completely un-wedding related because I worked on a layout of when Chuck and I went to the Brides & Basketball Event last March (2011)!

This layout was so fun. I mean aren't they all?? I just loved it because I had bought the paper and stickers a long time ago and finally got to use them!!

I ended up having to redo my journaling three times!!!!!!! As you can see I had a lot to say :) But it all finally fit!!

This was a lot of fun to work on and it was nice to work on something other than wedding DIYs. I can't wait until my Scrapbook Room goes back to being my normal scrapbooking/craft room and no wedding to dos :)

So excited!! 16 Days!!!

It's A Pirate's Life For Me!!

Last year for Father's Day we went to this AMAZING Pirate Festival that my Mom found online! We weren't sure what to expect but it was so much FUN!!!

Scrapbooking these pages were a little bit more difficult than I thought but I love how they turned out!!

I used parts of a Storyteller's Club layout and added my own embellishments!

 

That's the actual map/program from the event! It worked as a perfect background page!

I love the pirate stickers I found to add to these pages! Check the parrot on the left hand side :)

Since the paper didn't really go super great with theme I thought it'd be fun to add some color. I just took blue paper and then cut slices of paper off and reattached! Broke up the black which was great! And of course the red looked awesome on the black and blue!

More of the super cute Pirate stickers!

And last but not least gift time! We of course did gifts at the house since it would have been impossible to do them at the event! We are all super red in these pictures so maybe I shouldn't have used the red but overall I think the pages turned out great!

It felt nice to get in my scrapbook room and do some scrapbooking pages!! I know that I won't get too much time with all the wedding DIYs we are starting but that's okay. I'll just have to fit in regular scrapbooking every chance I can!!

2012 Goals

This year is going to be absolutely crazy, nuts, busy, and a whole lot of fun! To start this year off with a bang here are my 2012 Goals!

1. Read my 2012 book list! After my 2011 list I'm scaling back so it's less stressful! Stay tuned...it's coming soon!
2. Lose an additional 40lbs and meet my healthy weight range!
3. Run 4 days out of the week.
4. Complete my 5K race in May in under 30 minutes.
5. Participate in a 10K race.
6. Create and stay on track with a weekly chore list!
7. Scrapbook two layouts a month.
8. Celebrate our Anniversary - This is very important to us!
9. Complete my Hawaii, 2008 and 2009 Scrapbook Albums.
10. Leave more spare time to relax! Meaning scheduling in free time and weekends on my calendar!

There you have it folks! I think this year I'll print these out and tape them to my bathroom wall to keep me motivated! I am so excited to get started on my goals!

Who else has 2012 Goals or Resolutions!

2011 Wrap Up

Boy oh boy did the last couple weeks of December fly by! I couldn't even make time to post but I'm back and ready to start 2012 off with a bang! First things first - lets do a recap of my 2011 Goals.

1. Dress up for work 4 days out of the week. (We have a pretty lax dress code but I want to start dressing more business casual instead of jeans everyday) - FAILED! I tried but then I shrunk out of my pants and have been waiting to buy new work slacks. When you don't need them for work it's hard to justify spending the money on new work pants. Plus I realized I'm very lucky to get to go comfy to work so I am taking advantage. Point in fact - today I'm in sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt!


2. Work 40 hour workweeks!! I am sick of working extra hours so this year it's 40 hour work weeks (Overtime ONLY when absolutely NEEDED and NEVER on a Friday) - ACCOMPLISHED! This year I only worked a few hours of overtime when it was absolutely needed! I wish I could say I never did on a Friday but it turns out Fridays are the best times for me to work overtime. I accomplish way more and then I get to go home and veg with the honey!

3. Lose 2 dress sizes by Summer (3 by Christmas) - Somewhat Accomplish/Somewhat Failed - I lost 2 dress sizes but not until October. I am almost down one more but alas, I did not meet the goal by the end of the year. However - I lost 53 lbs this year and started excercising 3-4 days out of the week! That to me makes up for the dress size.

4. Read 2011 Book List - ACCOMPLISHED! Yes the side tracker says I didn't but if you notice my original 2011 Book List was 46 books and I read 49 this year!!

5. Clean the house top to bottom every week! - HAHAHAHA FAIL!! This was definitely a wishful thinking goal. We just got so darn busy that it didn't happen. I will say though we have a new cleaning goal for 2012 that is totally attainable! Stay tuned...

6. Take Buster to Camp Bow Wow twice a month - Half Fail/Half Accomplished! This one is half and half because we did take him twice a month and then I started excercising and started taking Buster 3 days outo f the week. The Camp Bow Wow was to give him some excercise but once I started walking him we stopped taking him twice a month. He still goes but since it's expensive we cut back!

7. Finish my bookkeeping certificate - ACCOMPLISHED!!

8. Finish up the Home Improvements (List coming soon) - With the wedding planning (and saving) we did very minimal work on the house, which I knew would happen. In case you forget I made my goals before our engagement, which definitely put a damper on some goals, but hey there's always this year right....or next year :)

9. Scrapbook 2 layouts a month - ACCOMPLISHED! I successfully scrapbooked at least 2 layouts a month!

10. Finish my Hawaii album - FAILED!! I completely forgot this was a goal until yesterday. Where I spent all afternoon working on it, with only one layout left to do I am positive it will be finished before the end of January.

11. Spend more time with friends - ACCOMPLISHED! In fact I overbooked myself too much in 2011 and started hating making plans. While I love spending time with friends I found myself overly stressed over life and committments so this year my friends - Yes we will spend oodles of time together but I'm going to say No a lot more to give myself some downtime!!

12. Date night EVERY week! - FAILED!! We were extremely good at this until Chuckle's got his new job, now it's like date night every single night and weekend!! Plus when the weather got cold we wanted to stay home! But we always make sure to do something on date night, whether its playing games at home or at least going out to eat.

13. Take a FUN vacation - like Hawaii, Vegas, Disneyland, or a Cruise - This got put on the back burner due to our engagement. But we PLANNED our Honeymoon for this year so I think it counts!!

14. Go camping at least 4 times - Again with the engagement we decided to cut back costs and we lost quite a few weekends, BUT we went 2 TIMES!! So I deem this an accomplishment! Once just us two for our big vacation and then once for the Annual Campfest! Both times were so much fun! 

15. Celebrate our Anniversay (we never do cause I am so not into those things) - ACCOMPLISHED! We went to the Melting Pot and had a great experience! So great we are going again this year! WOOHOO!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 2011, a Safe New Years, and most of all that you completed your goals you set out to complete!

For this year I am going a little more specific and probably a few less with the weddings (yup my Seester is getting married this year too) taking up all our time :)

Happy New Years Everyone!

Birthday Bash

Happy Birthday to Me! Happy Birthday to Me! Happy Birthday Dear Princess Kendall Who's so Amazing!!!!!!!!!! Happy Birthday to Me!

Nope not really my birthday but back in May it was! I just finished up this page and it's a Storyteller's Layout and it is SO AMAZING!! This page is so fun and so springy that not only did it work for a birthday but it worked for the time of year too!!

Even though it was my birthday I actually had brought a gift for my sister who had recently gotten engaged! I got her a wedding organizer and she loved it and I LOVED the cute picture we got of the two of us!

Aren't these colors super fun!!

So happy to have my birthday scrapped, but I have to admit with all my 2011 pages I've been scrappin lately I'm feelin like a bum! I definitely need to wrap up my 2008 album since I have 3 layouts left! Stay tuned for the completion of my 2008 album! Who knows maybe this week :)

Our Amazing Book Club - Year 1

I knew that when my Sister first started our book club back in 2010 that I knew I wanted to scrapbook it! Now how might one scrapbook a book club?

Simple, one our 1 year anniversary I made sure to get a group photo, kept the list of our books for our 2010-2011 year, and kept a magazine advertisement for one (of the many) books we read that were turned into movies!

Then I got to scrappin'

I was so happy to have a picture of our group, since one of our members decided to drop out this year. But we forever have her in our first year of book club! Since I didn't have enough room to post our entire schedule I simply folded it up, created a pocket and voila!

The Help was one of my favorite books from this year, too hard to pick just one, and since 3 of us went to see it in theaters I thought it was only fitting to include the movie advertisement!

I am in love with how this page turned out and I am so excited to have captured our first year (of many years I hope) of Book Club!

Summer Time Blues!

The other night I had one of my best friends come over to hang out and what did we do you might ask??

We scrapbooked!!! Of course we also went shopping before dinner, then ate yummy tacos, and rushed upstairs to get our Scrap On!!

I was able to get two layouts done! Well technically I "finished" this layout and then did a second one!

But for now here's my layout for the local fair we have around here where my Paps and I both entered some photos into the Photography Contests!

So proud of my Paps who earned a first place ribbon!!

And of course we had to include the Funnel Cakes and then Hog Races!

It was so much fun to spend a "date night" with Mom and Paps! And it was so cool to see the ribbons we earned from our photos!

Fa-La-La-La-La-La

Last weekend (the one before this last one) I got to sit down in my beautiful scrapbook room and do a layout. In fact my Sunday was damn near perfect (I know you are all waiting in suspense for my Peach Cobbler recipe) and I have to say this layout is damn near perfect as well! I mean it's Christmas and you just can't go wrong there!

This was our Christmas Eve from 2010! And it's so awesome to have my first of many layouts with all 6 of us!

I had gotten some cute Christmas rub ons awhile back and haven't used a single one! Nope not a one! Until now! My Paps always plays Santa Claus when it comes to handing out gifts... and it just seemed fitting to add a little rub on! Can you find it?

Also the title I have probably had for 5 or 6 years and have been "saving" it! Saving it for what? Well I guess for this layout! It worked perfectly!

I got to use up some more embellishments like the gift stickers below that I have had for at least 4 years if not more! It was so nice to use up some random stickers that I have been "Saving".

And of course it's 2 2-page layouts cause I can't cut out too many pictures!

Aren't we all so happy??? Happy and Super Spoiled!!!

This year My Sister and I finally got my Paps the one thing on his list that keeps repeating each year. 2 million dollars. Redeemable at the North Pole only! We actually found some cute 1 million dollar bucks with Santa's face on it and as you can tell from the Picture below my Paps LOVED them!

And I was happy to have one picture of my Mom for the page. Seriously ONE PICTURE!! I'm calling you out Mom - this year I need at least a few more so get ready to Smile Pretty :-)

This layout turned out just like Christmas - Perfect and Full of Love and Laughter! I could not be happier with these pages and I look forward to many more years of Scrapping Christmas Eve with our Family!!!

The Holidays Are Coming! The Holidays Are Coming!

My goodness has life gotten in the way of my blogging, but I promise I haven't gone anywhere! I've just been unmotivated to be on the computer when I'm not at work! Between a few bad weeks at work and our insanely busy schedule I haven't spent much time being crafty or becoming the next Julia Child but I did promise you some more holiday cards so here they are :-)

These two cards were actually super easy to make. I had some beautiful patterned paper that had squares of Christmas images so I simply cut out the squares and smacked those babies on a card :-)

For this one I wanted to add some embellishment so I dug into my ribbon stash and grabbed two that matched the color scheme. Pretty awesome match right? Just layered one on top of the other and glued it in place. Then added my beautiful reindeer over some simply background paper. This may come as a shock but I used ZERO glitter on this card! Yes a decision I'm rethinking as we speak, couldn't those snowflakes use some sparkles?

This card is one of my faves and it was really easy and fun to make. I just grabbed a couple different holiday patterned papers, another one of those squares I mentioned above, this one obviously being a tree instead of a Reindeer, and my red stickle. Super easy and fun to make!

I still have one or two more Christmas cards coming your way (hoping to craft more and have a bunch more coming your way) but I also have a couple ADORABLE Halloween cards I was able to work on.

As much as I don't make cards and feel that I'm horrible at making cards I've really enjoyed these ones I've made. In fact I hope tonight I can get into my scrapbook room and get my card making on.

Does anyone ever feel like everyone else makes these beautiful cards and yours seem to lack that pizzaz??

Peace on Earth

Did I promise a holiday card? Yes I did and now I am delivering. I actually have a few of these that I finished but lets keep you in suspense and show them to you one at a time :-)

This is one of my favorite cards I made, thus why it's first! It's pretty and simple. I used the Joys of the Season Cricut Cartridge to cut out the candle and the word "Peace". Then just added some glitter and as a final touch added the beautiful embellishment on the candle!

It may seem early to almost anyone that I'm working on Holiday cards but it's just not. I need the time to make them and even though we already bought the generic ones I just felt like I wanted to make some cards! Since I love holidays what better type of cards to make? :-)

Anyone else starting their holiday card making?

Cookie Monsters!!!

I was so excited to scrapbook my great friend Alycia and I's baking day from last year - 1. Because it was Christmas themed and 2. I had super cute paper to use :-)

We had a blast making cookies that day and I think these pages show my love for baking!!

Okay so I went a little sticker crazy.....not a bad thing right?

See that cookie in the top right corner?? Yeah while those look amazingly delish they were DISGUSTING!! But because the picture is so pretty I had to put it in there :-)

Get ready to see some holiday cards in my upcoming posts as I've been in the Christmas Spirit ("when are you not?" you may ask, yes it's true I am ALWAYS in the Christmas Spirit!) and I've been busying crafting up some cutesy cards!!

Musical Magic

Remember back when we spent A Night in Berlin in the 1920s? Chuck and I spent a wonderful evening enjoying very fun music from Max Raab and the Palast Orchestra!

Well Storytellers just happened to release a beautiful layout that could not have been more perfect!! Here it is ladies and gents:

The title seems to get lost when looking at it here but it is titled: For the Love of Music.

I am just loving pockets haha!! I almost alwasy keep ticket stubs, it's rare for me not to. Luckily I kept the ones from that night to have as a souveniar forever, just like the program as well.

This layout was really fun to work on, suprisingly I thought I wouldn't get so into it because of the dark colors but I had a blast!! Super fun night and I think my layout is very well fitted for the event!!

Vacation Magic!

Remember awhile back I posted about our vacation? Yes of course you do, well my impatient got the best of me and I have now already scrapbooked the entire vacation! And it was so much fun doing these pages! This post is very picture heavy but it is all worth it I promise!!

I did use some Storyteller's stuff but I also incorporated a lot of extra misc embellishments since you can never have to many. Lets just jump right in shall we?

Layout #1

Of course I kept our little car hanging sign! I love being able to incorporate actual items from our trip rather than just pictures and stickers.

I had to do a layout of our "home away from home"!

The map is the actual one they gave us and then I even kept the little tag from the complimentary wine they give you! Yup I make sure to save everything!

Working on these pages made me excited for our next camping trip wherever that may be!

Day 1 of Relaxation!!

Dog Park!!!

Fun Games and Good Food!!

Our last full day and our drive home along the beautiful HWY 1 coastline!

Of course I had to include Roxy while she's sunbathing!!

Sad to be leaving, but Happy to go home!!

Can you see why I was impatient and wanted to scrap them right away? Those pictures were just too damn cute!!!

Birthday Bash-Tastic!!

Another layout done for the 2008 Album! The closer I am getting the more exciting it is! I can't believe I will have finished an entire years album! It's C-R-A-Z-Y!!!!

This layout is for Chuck and Jenny's birthday bash at one of our local downtown Mexican restaurants (Sadly no longer open). Since their birthdays are only a few days apart we decided to do a joint celebration and we had a blast!

I've been holding on to this paper ever since I got it from my Mom to do something that was fun and sort of "boyish". It is just some fun swirlies in "manly" colors LOL!

Of course we did pre-party pictures before we headed out to meet everyone! These pictures were actually taken at our old apartment, which is crazy to think we haven't lived there in three years!!

Just a bunch of different shots! We all had a blast!!

I'll be honest this page was super easy to scrapbook cause I wanted it to be simple and easy. I mean how many pages can I scrapbook of us going out right? Well you'd be suprised haha, we used to go out quite a bit but no longer so I gotta scrap all that I can!!

All About Chuck!

I've been slowly getting my 2008 album finished and I can now add one more page to the done list! I actually was able to finish up two 1-page layouts all about my honey Chuck!

This one is when his nephew Chris came up to spend the night. The boys played Guitar Hero all night long but it was one of those moments that I wanted Chuck to have pictures of cause Chris is growing like a weed!!

This is actually a 2009 layout but I had these adorable stickers and I wanted to make sure I had pictures to use. Chuck is our BBQ King (well until recently when I learned how to BBQ) but I just thought it'd be fun to scrapbook him!

I am finding that I'm having some difficulty scrapbooking guy pages cause I'm so used to all my girlie pretty papers and stickers. I'm hoping with time I get better but I will say that I do love the Guitar Hero page, it was actually a lot of fun to do!!