1. Regular chronological albums. These started when Joel was born and there are already so many I’ve done and I can honestly see having about 100 of these by the time my kids are grown. These are the ones that are easy to tote around and work on when I’m visiting and the kids are playing.
2. Baby books. I’m done with Michael’s and Callie’s. Joel’s isn’t like the others, so I’m making him one like theirs, which will be a negative-finding, reprint-ordering nightmare, but I like a challenge.
3. Special albums. I’ve made one for our wedding (and the fun leading up to it), our honeymoon and one for our 2000 trip to New England.
4. ABC albums. I started these little 7x7 albums for the boys and put doubles and stickers on each page to correspond with a letter of the alphabet. Ask me how many times they look at them and if Callie’s is anywhere near done.
5. Tutu album. My mom bought a couple of albums from me when I was a Creative Memories consultant and now I’m filling them with pictures of her and her grandchildren. I should have the first one ready for her by her 97th birthday (she’s 58 now).
6. My favorites album. This came about when a friend gave me a top-loading album, which I don’t normally use. I didn’t want to waste it, and I had too many doubles that were too great to make into squares, so I tediously went through all my doubles and picked out my favorites. The challenge comes again with the advent of the digital camera in our house … now when I get things printed through CVS or Winkflash or whoever, I have to keep in mind: do I need an extra of this for the Tutu album? Eva’s baby album? For my dad’s fridge?
Yeah, I know, how many hours am I spending on something that could so easily go up in flames or be destroyed by a flood or that my kids may someday accidentally throw out of a moving car window. But I love looking back at these albums even if they don’t care much about it. But as I get caught up, I see them wanting to know when things happened, and I can show them not only the pictures but also journaling of things we said and how we felt at the time the pictures were taken. Not only am I LIVING life to the fullest and making memories worthy of lots of photos, but I’m carving out moments here and there to put them into albums I can enjoy for years to come (that’s the plan, anyway).
PLEASE comment … do you love scrapbooking? What projects are you working on? How far behind are you? If you are all caught up, know that I hate you, Bree Van de Kamp Hodge.
Or … do you despise scrapbooking? Dismiss it as a waste of time? Prefer to spend time LIVING life and MAKING memories rather than pasting them down and adding captions?
Anyone out there besides Sarah in England scrapbook?
Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Scrapbooking Squares
Merry Christmas and all that crap.
Thanks for being born, Sweet Baby Jesus, so I can have a day to be with my family (which includes my mom and step-dad this year). I get to watch them open presents and play and be happy. It’s also an excuse to eat cinnamon rolls and a bacon/egg/cheese bake and drink Starbuck’s Christmas Blend coffee. I think I’ll even attempt to make a turkey this year with some easy fixin’s.
It’s also a day I will be scrapbooking for relaxation (“relaxation” also means accomplishing something to me, but that will all change someday and I will “retire” and take naps and learn how to be still with myself and go for long walks and watch every movie ever made like my dad does)!
I discovered scrapbooking right after I got married in 1998, but I slacked off on it. If I had known that simply finding a way to pee alone and having to write “take a shower” in my planner would become issues, I would’ve worked my butt off back then on getting the backlog scrapbooked.
I used to always get doubles of photos so I could give a picture to someone else in the photo besides my kids. The problem was that I had WAY TOO MANY leftover doubles that were not great, were a little out of focus, etc. I had been happy to use them in my albums (those pictures are of my BABIES and I have trouble doing away with even ONE of them), but what to do with the doubles?
So I got out my Creative Memories square maker (like a punch), which has two sizes, and started punching out things like Joel’s little feet hanging out from his high chair, a cute side view of Michael’s face, Callie from behind picking up a pumpkin. You could also use a circle maker or any shape you want. I just like the way the squares all go together.
Someone gave me a top-loading album (which I don’t normally use), and I decided to make it a “My Favorites” album and used the squares to make some border pages to begin new sections:
Joel's section:
Michael's section:
Callie's section:
One problem with digitals is that, because I only get the photos printed that I need, Eva will only have a page like this at 12 cents per print! But you know I’ll have to find a way to make her one.
Chris is probably having a fit right now … I’m pretty sure she just pops in digital photos from her computer into a nice layout on the computer screen and then somehow prints it out or else takes it somewhere to be printed.
I seem to always make my crafting harder than it should be. This is evidenced by the number of projects I have going on right now, which we’ll go into tomorrow.
Thanks for being born, Sweet Baby Jesus, so I can have a day to be with my family (which includes my mom and step-dad this year). I get to watch them open presents and play and be happy. It’s also an excuse to eat cinnamon rolls and a bacon/egg/cheese bake and drink Starbuck’s Christmas Blend coffee. I think I’ll even attempt to make a turkey this year with some easy fixin’s.
It’s also a day I will be scrapbooking for relaxation (“relaxation” also means accomplishing something to me, but that will all change someday and I will “retire” and take naps and learn how to be still with myself and go for long walks and watch every movie ever made like my dad does)!
I discovered scrapbooking right after I got married in 1998, but I slacked off on it. If I had known that simply finding a way to pee alone and having to write “take a shower” in my planner would become issues, I would’ve worked my butt off back then on getting the backlog scrapbooked.
I used to always get doubles of photos so I could give a picture to someone else in the photo besides my kids. The problem was that I had WAY TOO MANY leftover doubles that were not great, were a little out of focus, etc. I had been happy to use them in my albums (those pictures are of my BABIES and I have trouble doing away with even ONE of them), but what to do with the doubles?
So I got out my Creative Memories square maker (like a punch), which has two sizes, and started punching out things like Joel’s little feet hanging out from his high chair, a cute side view of Michael’s face, Callie from behind picking up a pumpkin. You could also use a circle maker or any shape you want. I just like the way the squares all go together.
Someone gave me a top-loading album (which I don’t normally use), and I decided to make it a “My Favorites” album and used the squares to make some border pages to begin new sections:
Joel's section:
Michael's section:
Callie's section:
One problem with digitals is that, because I only get the photos printed that I need, Eva will only have a page like this at 12 cents per print! But you know I’ll have to find a way to make her one.
Chris is probably having a fit right now … I’m pretty sure she just pops in digital photos from her computer into a nice layout on the computer screen and then somehow prints it out or else takes it somewhere to be printed.
I seem to always make my crafting harder than it should be. This is evidenced by the number of projects I have going on right now, which we’ll go into tomorrow.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Aunt Cathy Recipes
Holy crap! I served you guys BAD yesterday! (that’s slang for “I verbally kicked your butts”). I apologize. But we’re friends, right? That’s why I know you’ll let me make it up to you by posting my Aunt Cathy’s Snicker Cake recipe.
You, too, can be “voluptuous” like me!!!!
Never mind. I can’t find it. It’s floating around somewhere “on my desk” (translation: it’s either on my computer desk or the kitchen desk or in a stack of papers and I’ll definitely find it AFTER this post has been published).
Alright, then. How about her Dilly Dip recipe? Let me say first of all that I so totally DIG my Aunt Cathy. She is always understanding when my kids melt down at her house. She is sweet and kind and I don’t give a crap that she is divorced from my dad’s brother. She will always be my aunt, and I will always love her. When I got married she gave me a bunch of recipes. Since she is arguably the best cook ever, I’ll share a couple here.
Dilly Dip
16 oz. sour cream
2 T fresh minced onion
2 T Beau Monde or Bon Appetit (a spice)
1 pint Hellman’s mayo
2 T dry parsley
2 T dill weed
Mix above and let set overnight. Serve in a hollowed-out round loaf of pumpernickel bread. Serve with broken pieces of pumpernickel.
Broccoli Salad
10-12 strips crumbled, cooked bacon
½ cup raisins
¼ cup red onion chopped
1 pkg. fresh broccoli flowers
Blend the following together before adding to the rest:
1 cup mayo
½ cup sugar
2 T vinegar
Marinate one hour, then serve.
Merry Christmas Eve!!! Now I gotta go wrap a buttload of gifts from "Santa."
If you have small kids, check this out: noradsanta.org.
You, too, can be “voluptuous” like me!!!!
Never mind. I can’t find it. It’s floating around somewhere “on my desk” (translation: it’s either on my computer desk or the kitchen desk or in a stack of papers and I’ll definitely find it AFTER this post has been published).
Alright, then. How about her Dilly Dip recipe? Let me say first of all that I so totally DIG my Aunt Cathy. She is always understanding when my kids melt down at her house. She is sweet and kind and I don’t give a crap that she is divorced from my dad’s brother. She will always be my aunt, and I will always love her. When I got married she gave me a bunch of recipes. Since she is arguably the best cook ever, I’ll share a couple here.
Dilly Dip
16 oz. sour cream
2 T fresh minced onion
2 T Beau Monde or Bon Appetit (a spice)
1 pint Hellman’s mayo
2 T dry parsley
2 T dill weed
Mix above and let set overnight. Serve in a hollowed-out round loaf of pumpernickel bread. Serve with broken pieces of pumpernickel.
Broccoli Salad
10-12 strips crumbled, cooked bacon
½ cup raisins
¼ cup red onion chopped
1 pkg. fresh broccoli flowers
Blend the following together before adding to the rest:
1 cup mayo
½ cup sugar
2 T vinegar
Marinate one hour, then serve.
Merry Christmas Eve!!! Now I gotta go wrap a buttload of gifts from "Santa."
If you have small kids, check this out: noradsanta.org.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
A Surprise, Unexpected, Accidental Mistake (Pregnancy)
Dad Warning: this post may not be a good one for you to read!
Women Warning: you’ll probably all be offended, too. I don’t want to get hate mail on this topic, so just know that I may make your blood boil today.
I loved the book Table for Eight by Meagan Francis (reviewed yesterday). My only problem with it is on page ix, where the sentence reads,
“Maybe you were surprised with a series of unexpected pregnancies.”
Then she talks about the author (Leslie Leyland Fields) of a book titled Surprise Child: Finding Hope In Unexpected Pregnancy saying how she “admits that her fifth and sixth pregnancies were the realization of one of her biggest fears. She writes that she was crushed to have to start again at the beginning …”
That’s funny. MY biggest fear is being too dense to realize that pregnancy is caused by sex, especially after I’ve done it FOUR times.
I’m trying to figure out how to NOT freak out here. Where do I begin? I guess some of you will be shocked to learn that I am pro-choice … the CHOICE being whether or not to have sex.
First of all, please do not EVER refer to an unplanned pregnancy as a “mistake” in my presence. A mistake is when I do something mindless like put salt instead of sugar in a recipe or when I call Joel by his brother’s name, NOT when I have sex and make a HUMAN BEING.
Secondly, what about this thing called Feminism? Didn’t we fight to be the hot shi* we are now? So why can’t we take responsibility when something happens in our lives? How is a pregnancy unexpected if you had some sex, ANY sex? This is an insult to all the women who are unable to get pregnant either on their own or with the help of science.
Third, never have I had a pregnancy be a SURPRISE. Um, I pretty much know when I’m having sex, unless I’m asleep for the whole thing, and I’m SURPRISED this hasn’t happened a few times being as how I’m exhausted every night at 9 p.m. So if I’m a big girl and know that the equation is “sex can equal a pregnancy” … then how is it a surprise? That being said, it WOULD be a surprise to me to become pregnant with, say, sextuplets without using fertility drugs.
Fourth, referring to a pregnancy as an accident is asinine. Here’s how I see it going down, and I’ll try not to be too graphic: I have just taken a shower and am naked. My husband walks in, only he TRIPS on his way in. He falls ON TOP OF me just the right way and … voila! He impregnates me! Stupid, right?
Bottom line: Even if you are using a titanium diaphragm, are breastfeeding day and night, your man is wearing the strongest condom ever made AND had a double vasectomy, and you are on 5 kinds of the Pill (including the ones where you don’t bleed for, like, a YEAR) …
Although there are many scientific ways to figure out when you are fertile, IF YOU HAVE SOME SEX, YOU MIGHT GET PREGNANT.
Class dismissed, and please NEVER ask me if I know what causes my large family!
I still love ya’ll, and tomorrow I’ll make it up to you for putting up with my yelling and ranting.
Girls, it’s like I always tell my husband (something stolen from Judge Judy):
Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.
Women Warning: you’ll probably all be offended, too. I don’t want to get hate mail on this topic, so just know that I may make your blood boil today.
I loved the book Table for Eight by Meagan Francis (reviewed yesterday). My only problem with it is on page ix, where the sentence reads,
“Maybe you were surprised with a series of unexpected pregnancies.”
Then she talks about the author (Leslie Leyland Fields) of a book titled Surprise Child: Finding Hope In Unexpected Pregnancy saying how she “admits that her fifth and sixth pregnancies were the realization of one of her biggest fears. She writes that she was crushed to have to start again at the beginning …”
That’s funny. MY biggest fear is being too dense to realize that pregnancy is caused by sex, especially after I’ve done it FOUR times.
I’m trying to figure out how to NOT freak out here. Where do I begin? I guess some of you will be shocked to learn that I am pro-choice … the CHOICE being whether or not to have sex.
First of all, please do not EVER refer to an unplanned pregnancy as a “mistake” in my presence. A mistake is when I do something mindless like put salt instead of sugar in a recipe or when I call Joel by his brother’s name, NOT when I have sex and make a HUMAN BEING.
Secondly, what about this thing called Feminism? Didn’t we fight to be the hot shi* we are now? So why can’t we take responsibility when something happens in our lives? How is a pregnancy unexpected if you had some sex, ANY sex? This is an insult to all the women who are unable to get pregnant either on their own or with the help of science.
Third, never have I had a pregnancy be a SURPRISE. Um, I pretty much know when I’m having sex, unless I’m asleep for the whole thing, and I’m SURPRISED this hasn’t happened a few times being as how I’m exhausted every night at 9 p.m. So if I’m a big girl and know that the equation is “sex can equal a pregnancy” … then how is it a surprise? That being said, it WOULD be a surprise to me to become pregnant with, say, sextuplets without using fertility drugs.
Fourth, referring to a pregnancy as an accident is asinine. Here’s how I see it going down, and I’ll try not to be too graphic: I have just taken a shower and am naked. My husband walks in, only he TRIPS on his way in. He falls ON TOP OF me just the right way and … voila! He impregnates me! Stupid, right?
Bottom line: Even if you are using a titanium diaphragm, are breastfeeding day and night, your man is wearing the strongest condom ever made AND had a double vasectomy, and you are on 5 kinds of the Pill (including the ones where you don’t bleed for, like, a YEAR) …
Although there are many scientific ways to figure out when you are fertile, IF YOU HAVE SOME SEX, YOU MIGHT GET PREGNANT.
Class dismissed, and please NEVER ask me if I know what causes my large family!
I still love ya’ll, and tomorrow I’ll make it up to you for putting up with my yelling and ranting.
Girls, it’s like I always tell my husband (something stolen from Judge Judy):
Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Googlebot Searches That Lead to My Blog
Dawn over at Because I Said So does this, so I’m gonna copy her.
Consider this an early Christmas present from me: the gift of you knowing you are normal!
Here are some interesting Internet (Google and otherwise) searches that landed readers here:
“freaky things to do in bed”
What’s possibly more disturbing is that either more than one person is searching this or the same person keeps coming back over and over.
“NFP and the wedding night”
Glad to be of service on the Natural Family Planning front. Use it. Love it. It works.
“Nighttime wetting”
Yep, we’ve all done it and probably will again someday.
“Primerica IRA”
Hate them. No secret.
“Deep questions for online friends”
Sorry to disappoint on this one. I really just want to know why Caillou has no hair. Anyone?
“Where can I hide my diapers from my friends?”
Tresa wrote a comment once about me hiding money in my diaper pail, but otherwise I don’t need to hide my diapers from my friends. I’m not TOO worried that they will steal them.
“Extra breasts”
Shouldn’t you be searching for “plastic surgery” instead?
“spanking and Roman Catholic confession”
Sounds like a personal issue in need of therapy to me. I was just writing a clean Thanksgiving post.
Consider this an early Christmas present from me: the gift of you knowing you are normal!
Here are some interesting Internet (Google and otherwise) searches that landed readers here:
“freaky things to do in bed”
What’s possibly more disturbing is that either more than one person is searching this or the same person keeps coming back over and over.
“NFP and the wedding night”
Glad to be of service on the Natural Family Planning front. Use it. Love it. It works.
“Nighttime wetting”
Yep, we’ve all done it and probably will again someday.
“Primerica IRA”
Hate them. No secret.
“Deep questions for online friends”
Sorry to disappoint on this one. I really just want to know why Caillou has no hair. Anyone?
“Where can I hide my diapers from my friends?”
Tresa wrote a comment once about me hiding money in my diaper pail, but otherwise I don’t need to hide my diapers from my friends. I’m not TOO worried that they will steal them.
“Extra breasts”
Shouldn’t you be searching for “plastic surgery” instead?
“spanking and Roman Catholic confession”
Sounds like a personal issue in need of therapy to me. I was just writing a clean Thanksgiving post.
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