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I've been scrapping away the last couple of days! Here's what's new:

I took Brenna and Sarah to the park for a picnic lunch on Monday as it was almost 80 degrees out. I figured we had better take advantage of the warm day since most likely that won't be happening again for quite a few months (it didn't get above freezing today and there is snow on the ground now!). The girls enjoyed playing on the playground and I followed them around with my camera. Sarah is quite the little climber now and I had to keep a pretty close eye on her so that she didn't fall off of something I didn't expect her to be on.
Here's one of my favorite pictures of Brenna from Monday. I scrapped this one for the PCLayers contest.

credits can be seen HERE

as the digital scrap stores are flooded with new holiday and Christmas kits, I've dug out some of the Christmas photos- old and new to use. I pulled out some really old ones for these next LOs- it's fun to scrap some of my own childhood photos for a change :)

credits can be seen HERE

the above picture was the one that was chosen for the 1977 christmas card, but there were lots of other photos from the same photoshoot in the album as well. I'm calling them the 'out-takes' and I scrapped a few of those too!

credits can be seen HERE

This is the first gingerbread house I can remember making. I found photos of it in the photo album too- isn't it cute?

credits can be seen HERE

I won a few prizes during the RAKabration celebration, and this kit by Jeannie Papai was one of the things I picked out to get.
credits can be seen HERE

That's it! It's late and I'm headed to bed. I've got more Thanksgiving cooking to do in the morning, but not a whole lot. We are headed to a friend's house, our annual tradition now. to spend the afternoon and evening with them and share a big turkey meal. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

LOs Galore

Wow, I've gotten behind in posting my new LOs here. So here's a marathon rundown of things I've scrapped this month so far with a couple from last month that I evidently missed.
The first couple are LOs done with recent SBG goodies:

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

This next quartet was done for the RAKabration celebration-

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

The above LO was done with new Corina Nielsen goodies, here are a few more LOs with more new stuff from Corina:

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

A couple of LOs with new Sophia Saruducci things:

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

a couple of LOs with new Dani Mogstad things:

credits can be seen HERE

credits can be seen HERE

and one last LO for the PCLayers contest I posted about a little earlier. I hope to get a few more done before the end of the month ;)

credits can be seen HERE

and we started baking Christmas cookies at the end of October. Mish has a cool set of 6x12inch templates she just came out with. Kind of fun to shake up your scrapping style a bit ;)

credits can be seen HERE

Whew! and I haven't even gotten to the hybrid projects I've finished either. I think that will wait for another time. I've got some more scrapping to do tonight. Trying to squeeze in some extra designing time for Scrapdish has put me in a time crunch to get all of my CT scrapping finished up on schedule this month.

Concert pictures

All of the kids had their music concerts on November 15th. They were actually scheduled at the same time, which made for some interesting juggling and arranging. Luckily the elementary school has a dress rehearsal in the afternoon were all of the other classes get to see the program and parents are invited to attend then too. So, we went to the dress rehearsal in the afternoon for the girls and to the middle school concert in the evening. I arranged for a friend's family to bring the girls home after their evening performance was over.

The fourth grade performance was a recorder musical. The story of magical tigers stolen by aliens and rescued by astronauts was told through narrators and music pieces played out on recorders with kids acting it out. The classes learned different songs and took turns playing them. Carissa's class played the first song- she is in the back row, middle.
Beth's class played the third song. She is in the back row, four from the right.
Beth even had a little solo in one song (it was about 2 measures long LOL)
After the 7th and 8th grade jazz band played a couple of songs, the 6th grade band got their turn on the 'stage'. Bryce is sitting in front of the speaker, next to the girl with the hat on.

This is the HMS drum corp. Having that many people playing the drums sure makes an impression! They are very good. It is hard to believe that they only started this program last year in the middle of the school year.
and last, all of the kids got to show off their marching band song they will be playing in the Festival of Lights parade on Dec 1. They had a little trouble staying together- probably because of the echos in the gym. They usually do better when they are outside and that isn't a concern. Mr. Lawrence said the have over 200 kids participating in the marching band this year between the band and drum corp. The parade is a contest and he is training them to be competitive against the high school bands that will be participating also. I heard him ask them one day at practice after school "How many high school bands are we going to beat? ALL of THEM!" I'd say they have a good chance, I'm impressed at their skill level considering a third to half of the band members are 6th graders and have only been playing their instruments for 4 months.

PCLayers contest this month

if you are a scrapper and looking to have a chance at winning some awesome prizes, go check out the PCLayers contest going on this month!

They are also having a fun blog scavenger hunt among a few of the their designers and CT members where you can pick up some freebies to use in the contest. You can start hunting HERE

Busy, as usual

and probably even more so than usual. It was the first Digital Scrapbooking Day on Saturday and just about every digiscrapping site was having some sort of celebration with special challenges and sales. I joined in a bit of the hoop-la over at scrapbookgraphics and did a bit of shopping for things that I had been wanting. We were busy doing lots of other things that day though too, so my participation was limited. I got a couple of challenge LOs done Saturday night and Sunday afternoon that I'm pretty happy with.

journaling: He’s old, beat up and dirty... but there is something special about this bear. Sarah found him in the toy box at Grandmama’s house a week ago and she has hardly put him down since. It’s always been a bit puzzling as to why he is such a good friend to little girls, he after all is plastic and not warm and fuzzy in any way. But, he was my special bear as a child and I took him everywhere with me, hence his worn appearance. Grandaddy insisted over the years that my bear needed to stay around, that his usefulness wasn’t done yet. He knew there would be another child who would find that special something in his eyes and squeaky plastic body- he was right. ~Sarah and Teddy Nov. 3, 2007

credits: Autumn Breeze Dotted Solids and Is For Round Stickers by Meredith Fenwick; Hanging heart and Frame from Bittersweet by Sylvie Sausan; Paper hearts by Jessica Bolton- torn heart from In Memory of Miles collection, proverb heart from Home Life; Love label from Quirktionary Vol. 1 by Michelle Godin; heart buttons and stitches from Thankful for Love by Kim Jensen, Scrap-A-Faire ScrapDish Designer Sampler; fonts: Clarissa and TXT Abrasive

For the DSD Studio Starts challenge at SBG. The prompt was "Why do you scrapbook digitally?". journaling: I scrap digitally because I want to preserve our family memories, both past and present. In this format I can not only scrap them for myself, but also share them with the rest of my family too. There is no reason for someone to not know our family heritage and the wonderful people that came before who have helped shape what we are today.
credits: Autumn Breeze papers by Meredith Fenwick; elements from My Hearts Delight by Doris Castle; Folded Mattes by Jen Caputo; Old News alpha by Christina Renee; fonts: TXT Brush Script and FG Gabriella

Mish gave us a new set of templates to play with Saturday night- they are 6x12 inches. It's a different size than usual, and it was fun to whip up a quick LO of us starting the christmas cookie baking a couple of weekends ago. The templates will be available at PDW on the 9th.

journaling: We got started early on our Christmas cookie baking this year. It wasn’t even halloween yet, but we were sitting around after dinner with nothing to do. I pulled out the Cooky Book to make a list of the ones I wanted to make this year and then just decided to get started. I had all of the ingredients for Snickerdoodles, my favorite and I had lots of helpers to shape the balls of dough and roll them in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. With so many helping hands we were done in no time and enjoying our treat!
credits: Handmade Christmas and Northwest Casual Alpha by Misty Cato at SBE; Slick 6x12 layered templates by Mish Gasser at Plain Digital Wrapper (coming Nov 9); fonts: Arial, Arid ITC, and TXT SantaFont

DSD was also the kickoff of the RAKscraps 3rd anniversary celebration. We have lots of sponsors who have donated over 300 prizes we will be giving out over the next couple of weeks through challenges, RAKs, and random drawings. You can check out all of the fun in this forum. I'm the host of today's food fight, and I've asked people to show me some thing they are thankful for.

Today was my altered Tuesday for November on the Girl Talk blog too. I made a Blessing Box with Dani's new sampler products for the quarter.


I was finally talked into becoming an 'official' designer at Scrapdish two weekends ago. I've spent I don't know how many hours already this week trying to figure out what in the world I'm doing, redesigning my previews, etc. I have to update all of my files still- rename, add current TOU and new previews, etc. I promised DH that I wouldn't have to do much extra if I started this and so far that has not been the case Hopefully once I get everything set up that really will be true.

I've also been getting inquiries from people about working with them doing hybrid projects- for pay!- the last couple of weeks, which is cool and intimidating all at the same time It will be interesting to see how it all works out as I get more details about what exactly they want me to do and how much of a time commitment it will all be.

Well, I think those are the major happenings at my house since I last posted. I'm swamped with trying to get my RAKs monthly contributions done on top of everything else new that is going on. All of the kids are home today as it was a district-wide teacher development day of some sort. I was glad my mom was able to watch the older kids at her house this morning so that I could still attend my bible study at church. In the past I would have had to miss the week because there is only child-care for the younger kids. We need to get to the library still, and I have to get dinner prepared early so that Mark can eat before he heads to choir practice at our church tonight. The rehearsals for the Michael Card concert continue on Wednesday evenings, the kids are all enjoying the evening programs at the church while we practice.

Well, I had better get moving- there's lots to do still today!

Trick-or-Treat

Carissa, the pink devil
Beth, the blue flower fairy
Brenna, Cheer Bear (a Care Bear)
Bryce, a Bionicle. Since this is a repeat costume from last year, Bryce will be first on the list next year to get a new one if he wants to dress up.
Sarah, the fuzzy yellow duck. Once I got her costume on her she was ready to go out trick or treating and couldn't understand why we were waiting. The bear she is holding in this pic is my favorite bear from when I was little. My mom says I carried it around everywhere with me. He is made of plastic and squeaks when you squeeze him, and the dirt is so engrained in him that he is as clean as he gets. Sarah found it in the toy box at Grandmama's house Monday night and has hardly put it down since. I have to admit I don't get what the attraction is for her since she has a dozen other, softer bears and animals. There must be something special about him though since two generations now think he is a best friend. Sarah is definitely my daughter in many ways!

The crew ready to go out and collect candy. Sarah loved the glow stick we gave her, holding tightly to it, the bear and her treat bag the whole evening. It took her a while to figure out the trick-or-treating, but finally about half-way through she was yelling 'treat' with the other kids and saying 'thank you' when someone added candy to her bucket. Never mind that probably no one but Mama could hear her most of the time since we couldn't get near most of the doors with the stroller because of all of the stairs.