Hello!

I haven't been up to writing much lately.  I am still recovering from foot surgery and it has been more painful than expected.  I had surgery to relieve the plantar fascia and remove bone spurs on the heel.  The plantar fascia apparently wasn't as bad as they had thought but the bone spurs were worse, so it is tough to walk.  But every day it gets better.

I am excited to start the new session of Finding Photo Freedom (Library of Memories) over at Big Picture Classes today. I have been taking the class since 2008 and each year since as an alumni. Each year the refresher is good to help me evaluate my system and tweak where necessary.  I am looking forward to this as my summer project.

I haven't been scrapping much lately, but I have a huge backlog of things I haven't shared.  I played along in the Studio Calico National Scrapbook Day celebration and finished 8 layouts that week from their challenges.

This one with my mom is my personal favorite....

Hoping to get back into a regular blogging schedule, so I hope this is my fresh start. Happy Thursday!

This reminded me of something very important....

Last weekend Nicholas did something he often does.  Grabbed his mini book from our day at Disneyland in 2008.  A little while later Jackson was in the mix.  He isn't in the pictures (he was just about 3 months in my tummy).

What it reminded me is that I hadn't made a mini book in a while.  And it reminded me why my Library of Memories system is so worth the effort.

So when I stopped into one of my LSS this past Saturday and saw some older Cosmo Cricket blackboard photo boxes and cigar boxes for $5, I picked up a couple with an idea.

Saturday night I sat down with Basic Grey Oliver papers and embellishments and in 2 hours I put together this little mini photo box for Nicholas.  I covered the box with paper and embellishments and punched a hole for a ribbon handle.  The interior 16 pages used up 32-4x6 photo's from my 2009 & 2010 photo storage binders. I paired just 4 sheets of kraft cardstock with strips of patterned paper and coordinating embellishments. I kept the pages simple since they were going to be for frequent handling with little hands.

On Sunday morning I handed Nicholas the box and I got the sweetest "aahhh" I have ever heard.  Later I heard him call it "my book mommy made".  He kept looking at his pictures and talking about things we had done and the different family members in the pictures.

Now I need to come up with an idea for smaller hands, because it is time Jackson had his first book just for him.

How's that for Photo Freedom

And really loving your pictures so much you want to sleep with them. :)

I am repeating Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking, which is based on the book Photo Freedom (which is sadly out of print). This time around I decided to go back through the parts that I had previously completed to see how well I have been doing on keeping my library flow.  I went through all my chronological binders to move them to 3 ring binders, which was a result of my huge mistake in buying the wrong kind the first time around. I cleared out tons of pictures I just don't feel enthused to scrap anymore.

I ended up with piles of pictures on the floor by me.  Nicholas came over and started looking through them and naming everyone and everything in them.  So we took one of my old binders and made this for him...

He now has his own photo album that we can add to as I have pictures I have no use for.  He doesn't care if the shot isn't perfect, he just likes to look at his family and places we go and things we do.

It's a rainy Sunday here in what is usually sunny Arizona.  Last night I made this Marmalade French Toast Casserole I found at myrecipes.com. It was quick to cut up the bread and mix together the ingredients:

Pour the mixture on top and stick it in the refrigerator overnight.

Sleep in this morning and stick this in the oven for 45 minutes and we had this yummy stuffed with orange marmalade French Toast for breakfast.  We skipped the walnuts the recipe called for because Mike doesn't like nuts and I don't need the fat in them.  Next time though, I will sprinkle some cinnamon on top. The nutmeg wasn't quite enough for me.

While it was baking our impatient guys had to have breakfast, while Jackson ate pancakes and cereal....

Nicholas stood by the window and watched the raindrops hit the pool (pancake in hand):

And to leave you off with a little scrappy fun...last night I found this layout in the Studio Calico gallery by Stephanie Howell and I lifted it to make this one with a favorite photo of my dad and Nicholas at Christmas.

Hope you have a relaxing Sunday.

Layouts from this weekend

I am taking Library of Memories over at Big Picture Scrapbooking for a second time. The class started last week. I started using the system last year for the most part. There are some areas I didn't fully implement that I hope to do this time around. I do have to say that it definitely has improved my organization. It also cuts down a lot of time of searching for what I want to work on. We have got Jackson into a bedtime routine that has worked now for the past 3 nights. He even slept 10 hours last night. It was great, and Mike and I had a few hours for our hobbies. I made 5 layouts last night I haven't been that productive in a while.

I have not done a lot of layouts for Jackson yet. So I worked on that last night. I used the Making Memories Animal Crackers line for these 3 layouts. I added American Crafts Thickers and a couple of brads to the first one.

Our little guy turned 3 months old this past week. I love this picture I took of him last weekend. It is the look he gets on his face when he is chatting up a storm.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Mike and Jackson just minutes after Jackson was born.

Jackson is affectionately known as Peanut or Peanut Butter. Nicholas is Pumpkin Pie or Pumpkin for short. Pumpkin Pie and Peanut Butter are two of my favorite things. I can't believe how small he was. This was when he was 3 days old taken while we were waiting for me to be discharged from the hospital.

This layout was one I had started a while ago from a Basic Grey class I took at the CKC-Mesa convention last April. I never finished it, so I finished it up and found some pictures from the park that worked great with these BG Archiac papers.

This one was a page kit I picked up at the CKC Mesa convention last year. I never put it together. I loved the title that was on the sample from the kit since it went so well with these pictures. So I pretty much kept the layout the same as the sample.