Welcome to Scrappy Friday #3

Hi everyone. Thanks for your comments last post - the WIFE of the guy IN that fire truck, commented - wow - Jodie, you are my hero. Your hubby too, but holy cow, YOU let him go out there and risk his life to help others, and he's YOURS. That's just really intense, but thanks for your comment - it made me think of all the wives around the country in that position. Amazing. I get worried when my husband is 5 minutes late home from work, which is in an office located 6 minutes up the road! I can't imagine what you go through. Like I said, heroic. By the way, to non-Aussie readers, it's cold here now. The temperature has HALVED in a week. I am sitting here in winter jammies and ugg boots. So so weird.

Well I have worked a bit this week, and scrapped, and had meals on the table, which MEANS the house is a big old MESS. Of those four areas of my life, something, each week, has gotta give, and this week, the house was it. If no scrapping gets done, or no work gets done, then the house looks pretty darn good, but I've got to pick what's going to win. Housework was the big loser this week. I am thinking I could actually save money by getting a house cleaner. It takes me 7 or 8 hours to do what a professional cleaner could do in 2 or 3. (It takes me that long because I am firstly, not a professional therefore I am slow and crappy at cleaning, and secondly, I get easily distracted by things like this computer...). SO, I figure, instead of losing a whole day trying to clean, I could actually work, which I enjoy, and pay someone else to clean, and I should, if all goes well, earn more than I would pay that cleaner, therefore, I would save (make) money!! Got to convince my hubby of that one, but I really think I'm onto something. Of course, I have to clean up, before I could even LET a cleaner in here!!!

Anyway, onto more important things (WAY more important) like scrapping. Firstly, I will address a couple of questions from last 'scrappy Friday' (Feb 6).
Robyn asked where I got that round stamp that I used on the layout with Lucy's painted face.

Well, I ordered it from a kit from USA put together by Ali Edwards - it sold out in lightning time, and basically, you would have to hunt down and kill in order to get your hands on one now. Maybe someone (who is a complete imbecile) has decided they don't want theirs any more and has put it on ebay?? I think the easiest alternative would be to check out some different circles stamps by Kaisercraft. They are VERY nice, very reasonably priced, and I have used one on my watermelon layout below. It comes from their 'circle set'.

Shannon asked "... when you do an 8.5 x 11 do you just put the one page in chronological order or do you put in another back to back in roughly the same time frame?"
Shannon, I am very relaxed about where my 8.5x11" pages go. Type A personality I am not (thank goodness - you people must drive yourself crazy!! No offense). I just chuck 'em all in the 12 x 12 album. That's why I have ring binder albums - they are so perfect, you can just chuck stuff in at random. I grabbed an album, and here's some pages from it, where the 8.5 x12's are mixed in with the 12 x 12's.

Sometimes, I'll group a bunch of the 8.5x11's in together in the album in front of the 12 x 12's. I'm not too fussed about exact chronology. Just beginning half of the year, goes into first half of the album, and second half of the year goes into the end half. They aren't in perfect order of when the photo was taken - just very approximate. You have to think about what the child is going to be concerned about when they grow up. Will love love reading stories about themselves written by you? Yes. Will they care if a page from March 2008 is sitting in font of a February 08 page? I don't think so. My system is that I give each child an album, each year. Each child is colour coded. Child number #1 has all pink albums, one for each year of her life. Child #2 has brown and child #3 has black. Child number one has decided to change to red albums as of this year, being sick to death of anything pink!

In addition to these albums I have two more general albums. One is for me and hubby, pages about us, individually or together. The other album is titled 'random thoughts' and is for more random stuff that isn't directly related to a child. Both these albums are 8.5 x 11 and too, live on the shelf. I pull them out a bit so that they line up with the spines on the 12 x 12 binders (though they are about 1cm shorter). If we have a family picture, I don't scrap it into a family album, because I don't want yet another album on my shelf, and I don't want them to fight over it when they go their separate ways. I scrap the photo three times, and put one in each child's album. Most of their albums live in each child's rooms, just the last couple of current years live on my lounge room shelves.

No non-scrapper-average-member-of-the-public wants to walk in to my house and see a million (or twenty something) albums. I don't want to freak anyone out. My aim is to convert people to this hobby, not have them running screaming. I stick some circle cardstock labels on the spines (idea from Cathy z) because it is VERY annoying to be constantly pulling out albums to see which one it is. Totally wish they came with some kind of label holder. Some are still waiting for this year's labels, as you can see in above pic.

So how did I get onto this? No idea. Lets get back onto real scrapping.

I did a few layouts this week - here's the two faves.
The first one 'best friends' uses photos that you've already seen from our Narooma holiday, so sorry about that. It's quite 'Cathy Z' like in it's blockiness, but I've softened it with a hand drawn black line. Love green and blue together, and I love combining black and white photos with coloured ones on a layout.

The next layout was inspired by Renee who blogged with me on Remember When. Renee suggested a mini album with photos that represent summer. I haven't gone the way of the mini album, but I definitely have some summer pages in mind. This was the first one. And this is my first layout from photos taken this year!

This photo of daughter #2 was taken a week ago today. A good friend bought her newly acquired Canon DSLR 40D to show me (not to show off, to show me!). I took this photo of Amelia while playing with it - I know the lighting isn't great, but oh yay, the background is blurry! Oh my. It was so SWEET. There was lots of deep breathing and lots of me turning green. I don't HAVE an SLR. I tell hubby that I think I'm the only one on the earth (well not the earth, but certainly in scrap/blog land!) I think I have cried enough that it might possibly happen for my birthday this year. There's not alot I want in this world...just a little SLR.... anyway, moving on, slowly, this layout was obviously VERY easy. A 6 x 8 photo next to a 4 x 6 photo, surrounded by three similar sized strips of paper. (pp from Stampin up).

See you next Friday for more scrappin', possibly earlier for other stuff. Any questions, ask away.