New Year's Resolutions...

My New Year's Resolutions are pretty...unoriginal.  They include making the effort to lead a healthier lifestyle by eating more cooked-from-scratch meals, making sure we "eat a lot of colour" and continuing to do something active every day.  Not necessarily high-impact, but something...even if it's just my morning walk with Annie (who's become quite a challenge on her leash around other dogs) and the kids in the stroller (who have become quite a challenge to push in said stroller with every pound they gain...coughcoughOwencoughcough).

As for scrapbooking, my goals this year are to find a balance between creating an album for Pete and I and maintaing the albums for the kids.  This shouldn't be too hard, since I have only scrapped one page for us.  One.  Shameful.  Also, I have pretty much run out of photos of the kids to scrap.  Well, I probably could find a few of teeny, tiny, baby Owen that I should do (oh, and his first Christmas), but for the most part...my favourite site's sketches (www.scrapbooksteals.com) have been neglected because I have no photos of my little monkeys!

So, I started off this scrapping year with a bang and I've upped my "pages-of-us-scrapped" total by 3!!!  I'm actually feeling pretty great about it.

My second scrapbooking-related quest is to give myself a little more creative freedom with the sketches that I follow.  This one is tough for me.  When I see a sketch I like, I really want my layout to turn out exactly as sketched, but I realized that I was kind of losing the creative outlet that I loved...so I need to take that back.  I absolutely love working from sketches, so I can still do that...I just need to allow myself to incorporate my own twist!  That is what sketches are intended to do...get your creative juices flowing, but I just took them too literally...not anymore!  ;)

The first page (featuring Pete and I) is actually the very beginning.  Quite fitting, I think!  :)  Wow, it really seems like yesterday that Pete and I were living in two different cities attempting to form a relationship, but it's been five years...and a LOT has happened since then!  When I was looking back at our photos, I was a little disappointed in how few I actually have of the two of us!  Not to mention the poor quality of the photos compared to now (and it's not like it was 1950), but I'm trying to make the best of what I have.  Also, I wasn't a "scrapbooker" 5 years ago...I find I take photos more carefully now, fully aware that every photo I take might be my next best layout!

This layout was inspired by the great Kristy Lee at www.scrapbooksteals.com.  It's based on Mid-Week Mojo sketch #25.  Kristy's sketch was actually a two-page layout and I really like doing two-page layouts, but you have to have great photos, as they're usually showcasing full-sized photos as opposed to mini-prints.  With these photos, I need to print them as mini-prints in an attempt to disguise their terrible quality, but still preserve the memories in a layout!  :)

I really love the paper for this layout...it's got a lot going on with glitter and texture, but offset with muted colours...almost antique-y looking (My Mind's Eye Laundry Line - Natural, and some plain kraft card stock for the journaling tags).  Almost every layout of mine will have American Crafts Thickers for the title...love them.  Martha Stewart ink, Basic Grey buttons, Pebbles chips, Sew Easy Floss and some little pearls (love Dollarama...lol) round off the contents of this layout.  

My second layout is another sketch from Sketchy Thursdays.  I'm really liking this site...and it's nice to have a second sketch to work from because sometimes I do the Mid-Week Mojo on the day it's released, and then I'm itching to scrap, but need some more inspiration.  I decided to shift the journaling so that I could include my odd-shaped photos, instead of squaring them off.  

For this layout, I used Scenic Route Grafton line (love, love, love the gorgeous patterns and bold colours) and you also see American Crafts Thickers (outlined with black marker), Pebbles chips, Basic Grey buttons and Sew Easy floss.  I really want to get my hands on some coloured twine, but until I make the two-hour trip to my "local" scrapbooking store, my precious collection of floss will have to do!

My last layout uses Imaginisce Splash Dance.  This is just may be the cutest beachy-summery collection and I can't believe I'm just digging into it now!  I've had it sitting in my stash for about six months!  This is another Mid-Week Mojo (#22b) sketch from www.scrapbooksteals.com's blog.  You'll probably see me use quite a few of these sketches in the next few weeks...I have a lot to catch up on!  Another page featuring Pete and I during our first summer together actually living in the same city (Elliot Lake).  

American Crafts Thickers, Sew Easy floss (can you tell I'm really trying to master the Sew Easy...lol...it's pretty much been used in every layout since it arrived in my mailbox), sticker pearls, kraft card stock (Recollections) and some sticker embellishments that I found in my stash...I'm guessing they're probably Jolee's?  When I first started scrapbooking, that's what I thought it was all about.  Having coordinating stickers with the subject of your page...I've pretty much moved away from that, but these ones were just too perfect to leave out!

Thanks for stopping by!!!