cha is coming up on sunday and I am trying to get my list ready....

Pink Paislee is a new company and their stuff is super cute!! I will definitely be going to their booth at CHA to check out the make n takes.

American Crafts----yum!!! To die for--I love their whole new line. I am crossing my fingers some of my LSSs get it in cuz I wanna use it in a class or two for sure!!



more to follow...

Where to Find Me...

I have a few pics posted here of past classes (see the slideshows to he left <-------------------- and on the lower left) but what about all my OTHER scrapping? My personal pages?

I have links over on the left to that too but in case you didn't know, I have galleries on:

• Crop Addict
• Scrapbook.com
• Freckle Friends

So check them out if you have alot of spare time--LOL! The Scrapbook.com gallery has the MOST stuff in it--well over 1000 images!! I try to post everything there. Then I have special stuff in the Crop Addict gallery that I don't always post to the other galleries.

Have fun browsing--and please leave a comment on my pages if you can!

And Another Page Gets Scrapped...

Did this page at the SU Convention on Friday--added some extras to it, plus the cute pics of Matt. I played around with cropping the pics to include only pieces of him-I've been seeing alot of that lately. These two pics I really like but they did not make it on to the original pages where I used the bulk of these pics. I love his little fist in the air! LOL He always does that when he is excited.

And here's another page:

Katie at Take Your Child to Work Day with Xaver in April 2007. Katie STILL talks about this day and can't wait to go back this year. Used TLC paper and chipboard accents on this one--they are pretty cool. The diecuts fit perfectly over the chipboard pieces. I also freehand cut the swirls adn then tried to weave them together however they would fit. It resembles a little bit of what was in my head--the trick was that I wanted the stripes to be vertical so I had to maneuver within those confines--there were only like 2 ways things could end up. Entered this in to 2 challenges on sb.com this month. Why not?

An Imperfect Life...

Tara (toofclnr) on Scrapbook.com does this challenge every month to scrap your imperfect life--this month's topic is "truth or dare". Here is what I am doing for my truth page--on how I am so anal and crazy about being organized and not losing things that I will tear my house up to find some stuff. Here's the story--am actual scrap page will follow once I get this place cleaned up:

Before I had a family I was really organized. I never understood why when I was growing up a pair of scissors, a screwdriver, or anything else we needed from the "family" tools and such would go missing and no one seemed to know where it was. My dad used to mockingly say that elves must have taken them.

We also had a junk drawer which I never understood and still, to this day, fight Xaver on. The closest thing to a junk drawer I have is a pen and paper drawer that also has shipping tape in it. I am forever straightening it too.

When I had Katie and it was just she and I, I still was very organized. Things stayed where I put them and whatever I needed, I knew exactly where it was. Maybe part of it was she was too small to get into my stuff, I had less stuff, there was only one person moving stuff around...I don't know but it was bliss. Then Xaver and I got back together. Things started getting bad from there. Now with Matt I really can't find anything.

I get sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo frustrated when I can't find something, especially something I just bought. I can't totally blame my family but they don't do much to help the situation either--they are very messy people with or without me around. If I'm not nagging or doing something to pick stuff up, then they just won't do anything about it. On top of it, I am so busy and tired when I finally do have a minute to pay bills or whatever that I have piles of things laying around too. I can't stand stepping on things so my next best solution is to at least throw it all in a basket I can revisit when I have a minute. Problem is, it looks nice int he basket and then it piles up. I still have filing to do from all of last year. Now that it is tax time, I have to do all that filing to make sure I did not miss any receipts and such. Look what I got myself into!?!? They are rubbing off on me! LOL

So over the next few weeks I am embarking OPERATION CLEAN & ORGANIZED HOUSE. Stuff is GOING to be thrown away-I don't care anymore. Good stuff will be donated. And then there is another scrap yard sale coming up at the Lounge so I'll be pulling more stuff out for that as well.

One of the main and most important objectives of this operation is to find:

• My new Heidi Swapp Paper Piercer
• Two packs of EK Success black mini letter stickers I bought at Scrapbook Oasis.
• HOPEFULLY, Katie's Fiskateers Scissors (which I believe were left in a class/crop and perhaps taken home by a student but if I find them at home that would be just great).
• 2 packs of Sweetwater doodling templates I let Katie borrow and she swears she gave back to me.

The house is only so big so these things have to be somewhere!! It is driving me crazy just thinking about it. And it is only like $20 worth of stuff but still...

So I'm off to tackle my bedroom this afternoon. Tomorrow I'll do the scrap room Tues-Thursday. And then on to the living and dining rooms on Friday. Bathrooms will be done tonight when we get back from Girl Scouts because I know I don't make the kind of messes I've been finding in the bathroom and there is no way I am cleaning them up myself. Then on the weekend I'll tackle the garage and closets. Kitchen is ongoing. Off to clean--see you later!!!

A word about “submitting”

I love this page! I love this pic, it makes me laugh, it makes me smile, it makes me want to check on Katie to make sure she isn't dressing up Matt in some other crazy outfit and taking crazy pics ... this is real scrapbooking!!!

I love to get recognition as much as the next person—I may blush when I get a compliment but inside I am just eating up any praise I receive! I was working on my scrapbooking resume today and was like, “wow. I’ve done a lot of stuff”. It makes me feel pretty pumped up to see the stuff I’ve accomplished, albeit small in comparison to scrap celebrities, but big to me since this is a hobby that I am getting recognition for and that I really enjoy. It’s icing on the cake.

I am happy to say that most of the pages I have won something for have been what I call real pages. And by real I mean that I actually have them in my books and they are actually created to preserve a memory or event in my life.

There is a certain type of scrapper who will allow a publication call, contest, or other guideline to dictate their scrapping. They will buy products specifically to satisfy a call. They will take posed pictures of their family members to put on these pages—“oh I need a prom page so let’s get the daughter’s hair done up, throw a sheet over a ladder in the garage to make a backdrop, buy a photographer’s lamp, and take some pics.” Or they drive 3 hours to get some pics of the kids playing on the beach in January because one of the mags is doing a call for beach themed layouts for their July 2008 issue.

I think these things are travesties. Problem is that sometimes they get published. I do think it heightens the compliment to the scrapper who submits their real page and that gets picked up, next to the contrived page, based on talent alone, not someone’s ability to do an “assignment”. But the whole posed and contrived scrap submitters still are a problem—they cause these unrealistic crazy expectations that everyday scrappers, like you and me, start to put on themselves to have the perfect picture, the perfect products, the perfect everything—then it is not about memories anymore.

I was reminded of this occurrence and these kinds of “scrappers” when I read a post a new scrapper made to Scrapbook.com concerning her work earlier this week. She had submitted her pages to magazines and wanted someone to tell her why they were rejected. “Neighbor” (as they call fellow scrappers on that forum) after “neighbor” consoled her by saying she should ignore the mags and measure her own talent by the satisfaction she gets from scrapping and the adoration she receives from her family and friends. I quickly stated the same, encouraging her to stay true to her own style and remember why we all started scrapping—to preserve memories, not to get pub cred.

Why do we let these contrived, posed, and essentially fake pages mock us so? What kind of memory is that ladder with a sheet over it, all the make up on the teenage daughter, the kids covered in goosebumps to get the perfect “summer beach” pose in January, all the money spent to buy the specific products needed…what is that supposed to do?! What kind of memory is that supposed to preserve?

Honestly.

Well, honestly, in the past I have done some photos shoots, bought the paper, been guilty of this nonsense myself. And the few pages I have done in this manner, after getting caught up in this hype, really don’t mean a thing to me. They don’t bring a smile to my face like the ones of real events, of real moments, or of real memories in my life. It is easy to get caught up in the craziness.

In the next few months I’m thinking of submitting more of my work, something I’ve neglected to do for the last year. And we’ll see where it takes me. And just know if you take any of my classes, the pictures and memories captured on my pages and in my minibooks are real and those pages are the real pages that go into my actual scrapbooks, sitting on shelves in my living room.

Here’s to keeping it real! Keep your pages about the memories and true to your style. Everyone will love the memories and emotions those real pages conjure up inside--that's what it is all about!

So maybe that’s more than “a” word but hey, you gotta know by now that I am wordy!!