Downtown Egg Hunt

Layout: April 10, 2009 (originally blogged about here)

I finished this digital layout today. It's not the best but I got to play around with a lot of digital scrap supplies while creating it and discovered some digital kits I forgot I had. Isn't that always the way....too many supplies, too little time.

Happy 35

Layout: July 2, 2009

Yes! I did this digital layout start to finish in only a couple hours today. Suh-weet! I tried out some new digital tricks that I've discovered recently so that perhaps I can actually remember and use the stuff I've learned.

Most of the elements on this page are from the Happy Go Lucky kit I found for FREE at the Shabby Princess, although I did alter some of the pieces like the background and the 'happy' word tag. Lots of other cool free kits available there, too. Just click on {downloads} at the top left. I really like the Too Soon alpha, Moody Blues kit and Shabby Fall.

Day Off

Layout above: November 12, 2008
Photo and Video below: July 20, 2009

I have Wednesdays off and I usually plan to do something productive like clean the bathrooms but digital scrapbooking is always more fun. It's like knowing you should have a salad for lunch but just make a PB&J instead. {That may or may not have happened today as well.}

I did manage to get Jonas to Sports Camp this morning (more or less on time even). He goes for a couple hours every morning this week. He did a week in July, too. Jonas is liking it for the most part and learning a lot about soccer, basketball, baseball, and volleyball. They even get to do scooter board races. Below are some photos from the July session. Hopefully I can get some other photos and videos from this week to post soon.

Warming up with some passing with dad.

This is one of Jonas' many attempts to shoot the basketball. Even though he does a total granny-shot it is still one of the best simply because he didn't fall down after shooting. Baby steps, right?

Birthday Time

Photos: July 26, 2009

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long post...there's a lot to tell about birthday number five. Starting with the fact that we actually had a "friends" party this year instead of just a family party. If you click on the invitation above, you will see that I had (what I thought was) a very clever idea to take the focus off of gifts and onto fun and celebrating the day. Once again I was wrong in thinking I was clever as only two families participated. {Way to go Dotys and G&G for taking photos. Thanks!!} We will be getting the photos back soon and can't wait to see what they are like.

Tony did a great job BBQing hamburgers and hotdogs on his birthday present. He did a great job despite wanting to just keel over from heat exhaustion. It was a pretty hot day, to say the least.

Hotdogs and juice boxes seemed to keep all the kids happy.

Jonas really wanted to take pictures so I let him take one with my camera.....

...and it turned out pretty good. Malachi is always ready with a stunning smile.

There were plenty of presents to be had. I didn't get too many good photos of the actual presents, but this one was from Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Frank. It was a helmet and knee pads to go with the kick scooter they got him. Boy is he going to have fun on that!

This one is from Grandma Rose and Grandpa Jim.

Ooooh, aaawwwe, it's a personalized pillow made by Grandma Rose. Suh-weeeet!!!

AND a quilt made by Grandma Rose, too!!! Jonas also got the book that this quilt fabric is inspired by "The Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. I'm sure most of you are familiar with it. It's an awesome book that Jonas loves and he was soooooo excited about his quilt and pillow.

Next up is something special in this cool camo bag from Auntie and Big Uncle.....Percy from Thomas and Friends, and a promise that Annie and Clarabel (passenger cars) are on their way soon!!!

That fantastic gift earned Big Uncle a running-jump-power-thank-you-hug from Jonas. He gave Auntie a big hug too, I just did get it on film.

There were many other fabulous gifts that I missed getting photos of such as: A Giant-Box-of-Every-Craft-Imaginable from Michelle, Travis, McKenzie and Jace; awesome squirt guns and frisbee/ball from Uncle Pat and Aunt Connie; and a sweet car from the Troutman family. Thanks to everyone from Jonas for your fun gifts. He really does love them all and has been giving equal playtime to everything.


Classic Big Uncle antics.
And finally, ice cream cones!!!! Oh, wait....how are these ice cream cones not melting in the 90+ degree heat? Wha??? Because they are really frosting and cupcakes that just look like ice cream. Wow, tricky. The kids thought they were fabulous. Especially when they got to the surprise in the bottom: candy!!! What a delightful sugar-bomb. {Parents: you are welcome.} The downside to the faux ice cream cones is that you can only get a single candle to stick in there. That was probably for the best since we could hardly keep that one candle lit long enough to sing Happy Birthday.
You can see Jonas inspecting his cone to see if he is down to the "surprise" part yet.
Pretty sure Jace has a man-crush on Jonas...or maybe he's just eyeballing that cone.Everyone loved the faux ice cream cones. It was totally worth all the extra effort.

For those of you who are oh-so impressed by the birthday dessert, here is a close-up of the cones while I was making them. I discovered this idea several months ago on a food blog and researched it for Jonas' party. There are lots of different ways to do it but I found one that seemed the easiest and looked to have the highest "tastiness" potential. After seeing this video, I made the big ice cream and then realized that it was waaaay too big and waaaaay too time consuming to make 20 cones. I improvised and made the little one with just two mini-cupcakes which, while not as realistically ice-cream-shaped, is much more do-able for a crowd. If you're interested in making some yourself, just Google "ice cream cone cupcakes" and you'll find tons of recipes.

Here's a one-page layout that I did in PSE to try out some of my free digital scrapbooking supplies. I love how it came out.

100% Jonas

Photos: March 23, 2008
Layout: April 10, 2009

I'm so into this digital scrapbooking. Actually, I'm trying to justify collecting all the free digital stuff from the internet over the last month or so. I decided the best way was to do a layout of some of my all-time favorite photos of Jonas. These were taken on Easter morning last year. If you missed the original post, you can read all about it here.

I can't believe these photos were taken just over a year ago. It really doesn't seem like that long. Everyone tells me that your kids grow up so fast. I'm realizing that is so incredibly true.

Digital Layout

Photos: January 3, 2009

My new addiction, as alluded to in the previous post, is searching for free digital kits online. I have found another sweet blog that searches for freebies and posts them every day. And it's not just one or two, it's usually over 100 previews/links to free digital kits or elements. That is like an ark-load of free stuff. The blog is DigiFree. Check it out.

The layout above that I whipped up tonight doesn't have a title or journaling or any real fanciness, but I had to experiment with the postage stamp inspired frame that I found for free at MajorTiggerScraps blog. I altered the postage stamp somewhat to be able to use the three photos that I picked out. Then I searched my digital stash for a background that might be postage related. The postmark stamp at the bottom right is part of the background that I got in a 2Peas freebie kit a while back. You can download Traveling Papers digital kit here. I thought I was super-clever to do a little Photoshop magic to the postmark stamp by changing the date to reference when the photos were taken. {I had to point that out least my hard work slip by you unnoticed.}

Fancy Bribery

I just created this cute little sign/bribery note for Jonas. He's been having trouble obeying at school off and on for the last month or so and I thought some bribery might be in order. I think his FUN SURPRISE will be a family outing somewhere. Hopefully this will help him remember to be a good boy at school and not let his arm-breaking hugs (among other things) get him sent to the office.

On a crafty note, I made this fancy page with a digital kit that I got free at 2Peas in a Bucket. This kit is called Schoolin'. They have lots of other free kits there, as I think I mentioned a while back. I have been gathering free digital kits online as of late and came across an awesome blog. Raspberry Patch is dedicated to posting the latest free digital kits. This has lead me to some other awesome blogs that have freebies like Summertime Designs. Of course most of the sites only offer these freebies for a limited time and also have kits for sale. A digital kit can be very inexpensive but I'm strictly looking for freebies. At least for now.

your ever-changing mood

Photos: August 10, 2007
Journaling: February 4, 2008

Yet another digital layout. I really love these photos. You may recognize them from a previous post last August, More Cool Headgear. I really didn't like what was going on in the background of the original photos and had the idea to cut it out and then proceed from there. I think it came out kinda cool.

Play Park

Photos: March 30, 2007
Journaling: February 2, 2008

I'm on a roll this weekend with digital pages. It's fun and faster that traditional scrapbooking and I've spent $0.00 on these pages. Actually, all the elements (excluding the background on BFF) on these three layouts I've posted this weekend are FREE on 2 Peas. For those of you interested in going digital but want to experiment before buying, here is the link: 2 peas in a bucket. When you get to the 2Peas site, on the left side of the screen you'll see there's a sort-by-price list and you can click on FREE to see what they have. It's good stuff. I actually think their prices are quite reasonable especially since you can use the product over and over. It's cool that you can change the colors of anything and make it work with your color scheme. Digital is great for scrapbook pages and for cards. You can download Photoshop Elements (which is what I'm using for my digital work) for a free 30-day trial at the Adobe website. I actually got my PSE as a gift but I know it was purchased at Costco online and I think it was less expensive than on the Adobe site. Just an FYI for anyone interested.

BFF

Photos: December 31, 2007
Journaling: February 1, 2008

Jonas loves Monkey (who is actually a gorilla.) Monkey was a gift from Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Frank Christmas 2005, when Jonas was 17 months old. It was a really cool gift, but Jonas didn't realize until about a year later. Once he figured out that Monkey was super-cool, they became fast friends.

About a year or more into the friendship, Jonas was just learning the concept of being friends and that you could have a best friend. He knew that best friend had to applied to Monkey. Especially since Monkey never complains about being trampled, pummeled, drug through the house by one arm, dropped from great heights, slobbered on, sat on, thrown under the bed or ignored in a corner for days at a time. It's friendship at its best.

The journaling on the page is all manner of questions and exclamations from Jonas about Monkey or to Monkey. I wish I could get some video of Jonas and Monkey having a whisper- conversation (with Jonas speaking for both of them.) It's alway funny stuff to hear what a 3-year-old and his best friend have to talk about.

Be Merry

Photo: December 24, 2006
Journaling: February 1, 2008

I decided it had been too long since I had fun with digital scrapbooking so I got to work today. While searching through the many, many photos on my computer, I came across a group of shots from last Christmas. They were all very silly and at these crazy angles and I could tell that I was not behind the camera on this one. I remember that my sister-in-law, DeAnne, had taken over my camera for awhile that night and this has to be her work. With that big cheesy smile, this photo has Auntie's name written all over it.

Searching

Photos: October 2007
Here's my latest digital layout using this year's photos from the pumpkin patch. I messed around with the colors and I love how they came out.

This was the summer of...

Photos: June-July 2007

This is my first two-page digital layout. I got Photoshop Elements for my birthday and this is my first real project using it. I've done a few other one-page, one-photo layouts but those were more just playing around with it. Now it's time to get serious. At my current rate, I'm sure I'll get at least one more layout done before the end of the year!

I like the idea of digital because I just jump into it with the current photos on my computer. With traditional scrapbooking, I feel the need to stay chronological so I am somewhat behind...ok, honestly, I am almost exactly a year behind...constantly. But it's fun to do when I have time so....off I go.

MOMENTS

I posted this photo awhile back (see post: Current Photos in April) and have been playing around with my digital media trying to make a cool page with it. This is what I came up with after some tweaking.

dad's SWIM-STAR

Photo: May 21, 2007

I started this digital layout early last week and am just now getting around to finishing...just in time for Father's Day. Happy Father's day to Tony from Jonas. And Happy Father's Day to all the great dad's out there...hope you enjoy your special day doing something fun.

Digital Scrapbooking

Photo: April 2006

I am trying out digital scrapbooking. I just did this page today, my first one, as an experiment using Photoshop Elements and some free digital kits from 2Peas website. It's a lot faster, at least for me, than traditional scrapbooking...perhaps because I don't have a whole room full of supplies to choose from and it simplifies the whole process for me. I like the idea of doing everything on the computer but it's not the same as getting out all the paper and ribbon, tape and rub-ons and cutting and pasting it all together by hand.