Christmas Gifts

I know its March and a little late to be talking about Christmas gifts, but I never got around to sharing the gifts that I made for Riley's teachers. This year I decided to make cookies and cocoa. With Debbie's expert baking help, I was able to produce some decent tasting cookies, and with Doug's shrink wrap and bow tying skills, I was able to make the presentation look nice. Actually, Doug had no idea how to tie a bow, he watched a 5 minute You Tube video and was able to make these very cool bows all while I was still going.. "HUH????" He's good like that. I bought a big jar of Ghiradelli cocoa mix and separated it into smaller baggies which I placed into the mugs along with a candy cane to stir with. I hand wrote directions on how to make the hot chocolate on a tag which I tied to the hot chocolate baggie. I made up a quick tag that said "Cookies and Cocoa", listed out the types of cookies in the tin and put a few stickers on it. On the back side of the tag, I put the 4 photos of Riley that I used on my Christmas cards.

I waited until the last minute to make these, so I got the tins and mugs at 60% off at Joann's and I got the ornaments at 75% off at Kohls. I tried the best I could to match up the ornaments with something each teacher liked to do. Unfortunately, I don't know much about Julie, so I just gave her a standard bell. She was a student teacher at the time, but Riley absolutely loves her and insisted we give her a gift also.

I got a lot of compliments on the gifts, so I think the teachers liked them. By far the best cookies in there were the Oatmeal Butterscotch ones. I had never had them before, Debbie showed me how to make them in a bar shape and they came out super yummie. Just thinking about them makes me want to make some more!

Digital Layout #4: Favorite Show

Another digital layout. After I asked Riley the other day what her favorite shows is, I started thinking how I would answer that question. Thinking about that along with being frustrated over how many shows I like are on Mondays led me to this layout. I watch too much tv, yeah I said it. I like TV, I just do, but I have to say this fall tv season is a bit crazy. Like I said before thank god for DVR and internet tv. I can watch the shows on my own time and I really don't feel like I'm spending an insane amount of time in front of the TV. I'm pretty sure this is the most amount of shows I've watched in any tv season. Some of it is related to the writer's strike, like for example, Entourage is usually a summer series. Stargate is also usually on mid season break during fall season, but because this is the final season they decided to play it out straight through and not take a break. I only picked up three new series this season.

This was a fun layout to do digitally. I grabbed all the images off Google. I think this one will be a fun one to look back on years from now. It was a template that came with week 6 of the digital class. I rearranged the template a little. I chose all solid color papers since there's so much going on in the photos. I also added the text path around the outside just cause they came with the class and I wanted to play with them. I can't create text paths with Photoshop Elements, its one of the things that you can only get with the professional version, but I can edit text paths, so as part of this class we were given a pretty decent amount of precreated text paths. One of the many cool things about this class.

A week in my life: Monday

So I came across this blog post about documenting a week in your life and making a scrapbook about it. I thought it would be fun and figured I'd put it on my to-do someday list, but this blogger is doing it this week and I figured, I might as well play along. We'll see how long it lasts :) I just decided to do this at about 2:3pm today, so I didn't photograph any of my morning routine, but that is okay. I consider my life to be quite boring. My weekday routine is pretty much the same everyday. I spend most of my day at work, I also spend a lot of time during the fall season watching TV. I think it'll be interesting to see what the finished project looks like.

Thoughts in my head today:

• Thinking about another scrapbook page I'm considering doing about my excessive TV watching, I counted 16 TV shows that I'm currently invested in this Fall TV season, yeah I said that, 16. That doesn't even count the random things I watch, that's just the shows I'm invested in, and watch on a weekly basis. Thank god for DVR and internet TV though, best inventions ever. I can record and watch the shows on my own time which often means I'm watching a show that aired at 8pm at 11pm the next day. What wonderful things DVR and internet TV are.
• So my Monday is pretty typical so far. I woke up showered, made Riley's and my lunch, and then spent a few minutes eating my cereal and browsing the internet. Then it was time for Riley and Daddy to wake up and me to get ready and go to work. Every Monday morning I have a team meeting. It's about the only day during the week that I HAVE to be to work at a certain time. The rest of the week I take full advantage of my flex time.
• I spent some time this morning reading the blogs in my Google Reader as I always do and wound up off on a tangent looking at fitness related stuff. I wandered into a couple blogs about people training for marathons and a couple about people documenting their weight loss journey. That lead me to think about my own fitness and the weight loss journey I should start. I've been trying to add running back into my life, I loved it in high school. It's been a hard road so far. I am doing the couch to 5K program, and am repeating week 4 this week because I had an extremely hard time with it last week. I suffer from shin splits or I suppose weak shin muscles. I'm just hoping as the program goes on my legs get stronger and the pain goes away. I'm realizing to reach my goals, I'll need to do more than just running 3 times a week. I discover a few things on my blog reading journey today:

This fitness DVD which is supposed to be awesome.

Jillian Michael's Wii Fit game comes out in October.

• I'm thinking of getting both and starting up a stricter fitness routine. I was inspired by the blogs I read. I want to be one of the success stories.
• As I have been for quite some time now, I'm concerned about my job and what will happen now that my company has been bought out and specifically what will happen with the account I'm working on. Wondering if I'll be looking for a new job in the next few months or in the next year. Wondering if I'll find a job if it comes to that and will it be one I like. It's always better to change jobs on your own terms when you can be picky. Not so fun when it's urgent and you have to take what you can get. Very uncertain times for me and it stresses me out alot.
• I watched the HBO special, Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger over the weekend and it was hillarious. I highly recommend it.
• I really want to sign up for a scrapbooking class called Scrap your Travel and Vacation that starts today, but I have no more money in my scrapbooking budget for this month. October is almost here so maybe it'll be part of my October budget. Although the class is $25 and that is almost my entire monthly scrapbooking budget, so I'll have to think about it some more.
• A few weeks ago Doug and I for I think the first time ever developed and actual budget. I was motivated to do this when I realized that we EAT way to much of our income. My bank website has a reporting and budgeting feature that lets you categorize your spending and create a budget. We spent something like $500 eating out in August and then another $600 ish on groceries. I'm embarrased to even admit this. It's absolutely insane. Nobody needs to spend that much on food. So we sat down one night and categorized everything, made a very realistic budget, something that I know we can easily stick to with the least amount of lifestyle change. I mean hell if all we did was eat at home all the time think how much money we'd save. The budget is going well and we are staying within our limits for the most part. After a few months go by I'm sure we'll need to make adjustments in some areas, but one I know we won't be adjusting is our food budget. We're sticking to that, believe me!
• Doug doesn't believe I can stick to the budget.
• Someone commented on the My Jam scrapbook page I created and said that Riley has eclectic music tastes. I took that as a compliment on my music tastes. What she listens to is in direct relation to what I like. That felt good.
• I think we'll soon be adding In the Ayer by Flo Rida to Riley's playlist. I've been singing it alot lately and last night at dinner (All three of us sat at the kitchen table and ate, pretty cool huh?), she busts out with, "This is my jam. Don't understand. hands in the air" while waving her hands in the air. It was quite cute.
• I was in a really crappy mood on Friday and I'm thinking Deb might have noticed when we were talking on the phone Friday evening. I hope she knows that I was just in a crappy mood. I don't even know why. It had nothing to do with her.
• Need to get my camera and make sure to capture my boring week.
• This blog post killed a good amount of time, yeah! Just one more hour until the work day is over.

Digital page #3: My Jam

"Oh hot damn, this is my jam. Keep me partying till the AM. Ya'll don't understand, this is my jam." - Flo Rida (In the Ayer)

Here's my 3rd digital layout. I've been wanting to do a page about the Riley's music for awhile now. I took some photos of her listening to my Ipod to go along with the journalling. I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

When I paper scrap, it takes me forever to pick out the paper I want to use with a layout and I'm finding digital scrapping is no different for me. I think I went through about 4 paper/color combinations before I settled on this one. I'm still not 100% that I love it, but I got tired of staring at the layout. :) Cool thing about digital is I can mix and match a lot of different paper without worrying that I'm wasting paper.The bad thing is that if you don't find free paper that you like, it can get kind of expensive. This is the first digital paper that I didn't find free online somewhere or didn't come with the class I'm taking.

Digital Layout #2: GCH Meet & Greet

Well here it is, the GCH meet and greet scrapbook page. This is another all digital page. I really struggled with this one. I used a template provided as part of a digital scrapbooking class I'm taking. I put all the photos in the circle, added the title, and the circle journalling, and then quickly realized I had a huge journalling block that told the story and absolutely no place to put it. I loved the way the photos, title, and circle journalling looked so I didn't want to abandon the layout, but I also knew the layout wouldn't be right with out the story to go along with the photos. The story makes the photos. This is what I eventually ended up with. I'm happy with it for the most part although, I'm still wondering how to best add a large journalling block without it overtaking the entire page like mine does.

I blurred out the phone number in the final layout, didn't think it would be a good idea to plaster it all over the internet.
What do you think? Does the page work?

Block Cake

I've never been interested in trying digital scrapbooking before. I spend ALOT of time on the computer and the thought of sitting in front of the computer to create an entire layout made me cringe. Scrapbooking is a creative outlet for me and always something I've enjoyed away from the computer being able to physically touch all my supplies in the process. There are elements of digital scrapbooking that I really like and I could even go as far as calling myself a semi-hybrid scrapper. I often use the computer to create text, titles, and manipulate photos in photoshop for the layouts. I came across a beginner digital class being taught at Get it Scrapped and decided I'd see what its all about. I'm pretty good with Photoshop, so I figured there wouldn't be a huge learning curve. I've finished the first assignment from the class (which started two weeks ago, I'm slow), my very first ALL digital scrapbook page. I actually enjoyed it, still not as much as paper scrapping, but I enjoyed it. It's very easy to just sit in front of the computer for a few minutes at a time and work on a layout. I don't have to get out all my supplies, sort through everything, or clean up afterwords. And I can do it at work during my procrastination time which is a big plus. So without further ado, I present to you my very first ever all digital scrapbook page, Block Cake.

Riley's first ride

Thought I'd share another layout. This is from the day Riley got her first bike and it's using the Basic Grey scrapbooking paper line called Euphoria which I was extremely happy to have back in June when it first came out. This was my first time being on the cutting edge of scrapbook products. LOL!

Journaling reads: After four trips to the toy store and you telling me you didn't NEED a bike, I finally convinced you we should get one. Surprisingly, it's not been the first time it's been me thats really wanted you to have something. We got it home and you helped Daddy put it together. You took it for a spin and were so happy. You loved it!

Got Steam?

Here it is, my first scrapbook page based on something I blogged. Part of the plan when I switched to blogger was to use my blog to journal for potential future scrapbook pages. Finally, I got around to doing one. I love the way it came out.



Blog post its based off

Now I need to find a better way to digitize my scrapbook pages. I should play around with photo stitching I guesss since my scanner won't scan an entire 12x12 layout. I'll add that to my list of things that don't get done. Hope you enjoy this page as much as I do.

Making me so Smartie

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Originally uploaded by carinh.

Riley's current teachers are both taking the summer off from school and they told me tomorrow was their last day. They also told me that Riley would be moving to a new room by fall and that this week would be their last week with her and that they would miss her terribly. Usually I give her teachers a gift a Christmas time, but since she wasn't with these teachers then I thought it would be fun to give them a gift before they left for summer vacation. Unfortunately, I don't know these girls as well as I've been able to get to know some of Riley's previous teachers, but lately I've gotten to spend alittle more time with them. I decided to give them these jars filled with smarties with a tag that said "Thanks for making me so smartie!" I thought it was super cute and really reflected Riley's personality and the relationship she has with the girls. It was really fun to make. I struggled alot with the letters on the tags. First trying stickers then rubons, then handwritting, and they all looked like crap. Then at midnight a lightbulb went on. I should just use the computer, so that's what I did. I taped the tags to a piece of computer paper and printed the wording on it. It came out better then I even imagined. The printer did smudge some ink on both tags near the top. Instead of trying to print more I decided to get out my new toy that I learned about at the Scrapbook Convention, distressing ink, and I inked all around the edges and was able to cover the smudges and I think the tags look a lot nicer with the distressing ink. I searched all around for an apple I liked and ended up with some 8 1/2 x11 paper that had a school theme on it with the letters and apples. I cut them out and used them. The tags I got at Joann's super clearance sale for $.97 for a pack of 6, and the yarn I also got for $.97 each. The jars and butterfly rubons I got at Michaels. I bought plain white gift bags at Michaels and let Riley decorate them with marker and some heart foam stickers. They came out cute. I forgot to take a photo of the bags though.

Riley was super excited this morning to take the gifts in. We're in the car and she's insisting that she have some of the candy. I resist, but finally reach in one of the jars to get a piece and it breaks!!!!!!! I was so upset and so was Riley. I thought today would be the last day I got to see both teachers and Riley was less then pleased about not bringing the presents in, so we went to Michaels to get a replacement jar. I figured I could just buy another jar and another set of rubons and quickly rub the butterflies on the new jar. They went on pretty easy last time. Get to Michael's and they are out of butterfly rubons. Great, now we have to drive all the way home with the replacement jar and use the left over butterflies I already had, so there was no way I could recreate the jar as is. I got home and quickly put on yellow butterflies instead of the blue. It still looked very cute.

We were so late this morning.... We gave the gifts to the girls and they loved them alot. It was so nice to see someone so excited about something I handmade for them. It so much more pleasurable for me then a store bought gift. I never knew it could feel so good.

They thanked me and proceeded to tell me that they were actually going to be at school for another week, that NEXT Friday was their last day. Figures!!!! :)