Crop, er CHAT, till you drop ... and other fun news

I'm slowly sneaking back to the computer after more or less taking today off. Yesterday I woke at 5:45 a.m. with Jacques' hunting alarm and immediately realized that an all-day scrapbooking chat at Designer Digitals was set to start at 6 a.m. Do you think I could go back to sleep knowing that? Nope ... not a chance. So I settled in with a couple hot cups of coffee and chatted away, all the way until 10 p.m. last night.
The last time I did this, I could not figure out how people chatted AND scrapbooked at the same time. But this time, I took little mini breaks from the chat screen and in the process, completed five layouts in response to the various chat challenges. It was tons of fun, even though my eyeballs were sore, sore, sore by the end of the day. Here are the layouts I did for the challenges & a little info about the "rules" of each little contest...
First challenge: Use the word art provided in a layout. Here's what I came up with...



Next: Cassie's 30 Minute Masterpiece Challenge
The rules: 1) Use only one photo; 2) Use at least 3 of the items provided in the freebie download; 3) Use punctuation elements as part of the title; 4) Use a non-frame element as a frame; and 5) Tell a story about the photo ... all in under 30 minutes!!! Here's my result ...
 
Next challenge: Template challenge
The rules ... use the template provided in the freebie as a starting point for a layout. Here's mine...
 
Next challenge: Use the word art provided in conjunction with a photo of my hands. This took a little brainstorming first, but here's my page...
 
The last challenge I did was probably the one I was least excited about the result. The task was to take the template provided and use a scrapbook page by someone else that was based on that as inspiration for my own page. I think by this point in the day, I was too tired to feel very "inspired," ya know? This isn't my favorite layout, but it's okay ... and I do like the photos!!
 
All in all, it was a fun day and I'm already looking forward to the next all-day chat, which is scheduled for early November.
My other fun news is I have recently been given the opportunity to do something I've been wanting to do for a while now and that is be a member of a digital designer's Creative Team (CT). Even better, I have been asked by not just one, but THREE individual designers to serve on each of their CTs! That means I have full, free access to all of their digital scrapbooking products - including their newest releases before they are made public - in exchange for helping to promote their products by creating scrapbook pages featuring those products and then posting them in various online galleries.
Fun, fun!!! I have spent the last several days downloading lots and lots of goodies. Now I get to poke through my new wonderful stash and make lots of new scrapbook pages to share. I am already enjoying this immensely, as you can imagine. Here are the first couple layouts I did in this new role, creating almost entirely of products by "my" three designers ...
 
 
All three designers that I am a CT member for sell their products at Two Peas in a Bucket. Check out their individual products and/or blogs by clicking on their names below...
Mary Ann Wise
Jen Allyson
Carina Gardner
I'm excited about this new opportunity ... and you can expect to see lots more pages here and everywhere else I post as a result!! :)

Labor Day weekend wrap-up

This weekend ended up being a very productive one for me & a fun one for the campers, judging from just how dirty Skylar was upon their return!! Let's just say candy suckers & lots of dirt are not a great combination for a 3-year-old!!

The crew got home early this afternoon and got busy cleaning up, then it was time to get ready to return to "real" life. Karstin had x-country practice & Kody had flag football practice this evening, so they ended up going back to their dad's a little earlier than usual. Judging from how sleepy Jacques was all evening, there was not much sleeping done on the camping trip and he & the girls hit the sack soon after 9 p.m.

My weekend went well, too. Karstin & I had lots of time to hang out together with Danica. We ended up taking a couple nice walks, one of which was spent getting some nice local photos of the downtown area & the very ripe chokecherry bushes.
 

We also watched a movie (17 Again), as well as spent a fair amount of time on the computers chatting with friends & playing around online. With the relative calm in the house this weekend, I also managed to get several pages scrapped, as well as lots of progress on my business planning.
I was thrilled to discover this morning when I checked my inbox that a layout I did yesterday highlighting how Karstin likes to spend his free time was featured at Gallery Standouts. This website picks a handful of pages from around the virtual scrapbooking community to feature for various qualities they think are worthy of mention. Here's the page of mine that was featured (click on the image for a larger version) ...

And here's the link to the page & comments at Gallery Standouts.
I made another exciting decision today regarding my scrapbooking and an opportunity that recently presented itself, but I need to wait a day or two until the details have been worked out. More on that later... :)
Another page I did yesterday was one I've been planning in one way or another all summer. I made a concerted effort to take photos of each type of flower in our yard as they came into bloom. I then featured these photos in this two-page spread...

Now I can't take credit for anything beyond the photos. We are fortunate to have some great perennial gardens that basically came with the house when we bought it five years ago, plus a great flowering crabapple tree & lilac bushes. The few annuals we have were planted & cared for by Jacques, so if anyone gets credit, it would have to be him. I'm just glad I remembered to take photos this year, since I really hadn't done it any of the summers prior to now.
Now I'm thinking about calling it a night, so I can get some "real" work done tomorrow after sending Skylar on her way back to preschool and be ready for another busy week. Karstin has his school open house on Thursday, as well as his second team x-country dinner. Kody's first flag football game of the season is also on Thursday. Kody's busy taking hunter's education classes this week, too, and it's school & team photo time again already... then the annual Chokecherry Festival is next Saturday, as well as an all-day chat at Designer Digitals. Lots of fun on tap ... and lots of memories to scrap!! :)

Scrapbooking on the brain

I've been waking up ... or more accurately, not sleeping ... because of all the scrapbooking-related stuff buzzing through my brain these days. Maybe it's because school has started again and I have a little more time to scrap since our schedule is a bit more regular. Or maybe it's because I've recently given myself permission to venture outside my normal virtual hangouts to explore some new designers, both of pages and products. Perhaps it's because I just found out this week that one of my layouts has been chosen by Creating Keepsakes magazine for publication in their January 2010 issue (yay!!). It might be because the online class I signed up for a couple months ago in which we create an all-about-me type of scrapbook finally started this week. Or it could possibly be because I believe I have finally hit upon the right combination of scrapbooking, writing, web & other skills in my most recent business brainstorm. Whatever the reason - probably a combination of all of the above - I've been rather consumed lately with thinking, playing, shopping, wandering & designing in the scrapbook realm.
I plan to do more of this over this nice long weekend. Jacques, Kody, Skylar & our neighbor Kevin left this morning for Esther Lake for a weekend of hunting & fishing with Kody's brand new compound bow. That leaves Karstin, Danica & me home alone for a few days of relative peace & quiet. I've already had a chance to do a little scrapping this morning, finishing up a layout I started last night about Kody's transition from cute "little piggy" days to one filled with "big boy toys."
 
While I'm on the subject of recent scrapbooking, I've also done a handful of pages highlighting Skylar's venture into preschool. She is thrilled to be going to Head Start and has made the transition quite easily so far. She will get to attend for two years and then, believe it or not, it will be time for kindgergarten already! Hard to believe ...
 

The whole transition to preschool got me thinking about how grown up Skylar is getting, but at the same time how she refuses to let go of some of her more baby-like ways, such as insisting on keeping that dang binkie in her mouth. So I woke up Thursday thinking about how I could document the irony of it all, which led to this...
 
This type of layout is an example of my favorite type of scrapbooking - telling the stories of the lives of myself & my family. It is this type of scrapbooking that is the basis of my newest business plan. I'm not ready to share details, but I will say this - I do not plan to actually scrapbook for other people for pay or design digital supplies for scrapbookers. Instead, I plan to provide some unique resources that hopefully will help all types of scrapbookers share their stories and ideally, allow me to make a career of this hobby that I love. More details to follow, once I'm ready to launch... :)
I do occasionally do a layout just for the sake of making a pretty page, especially if I have a photo I particularly like. This is one of my recent examples...

I took that photo while Danica & I were in San Antonio last month. She was wandering around the rock courtyard in front of the Alamo in her bare feet. Isn't she a cutie??
I have tons of other pages on my mind right now that I'd like to get done ... Karstin just started high school, as well as his first year on the boys x-country team - both of which I plan to document. I also have the entire month of July to somehow record, though it's a bit overwhelming because I took over 1,000 photos that month and I'm not sure what I want to pull out and scrapbook. I did a 4th of July album highlighting the Rutten family reunion, which you can view here. We also spent a week at Pelican Lake, which accounts for about half of the photos for the month...
Part of the reason I didn't document much of July is I was so busy last month putting together my San Antonio album, which you can see here. I also realized one day about a week ago just GOOD things have been going lately. So I documented that with this...

One of the things hinted at on the above layouts warranted a page all its own ... my neighbor & I decided about a month ago that we wanted to get to know our neighbors a bit better, especially since several of them have young kids and are relatively new to our neighborhood. So, we planned a "Summer's End East Broadway BBQ" block party. It was a big hit and we've had several people thanking us afterward for putting it together. The moms on the block even went out for margaritas after the BBQ, which was tons of fun. Hopefully we'll continue to get together, now that the ice has been broken. Here's the page I did about the BBQ...
 
This past month I also did a page about Danica that I like ... I've gotten in the habit of calling her "doodlebug" for some reason. Not sure why, but it fits her...
 
I want to do another page about her soon, documenting all the cute new things she's learning & doing right now. For example, she now waves bye-bye, says "boo" when playing peek-a-boo while changing her diaper, points & says "that," can make a ride-on toy go forward by walking her feet along the ground, sleeps through the night all alone in a crib by herself, has finally started napping in a crib instead of the laundry basket, and lots of other adorable things like that.
Speaking of my sweet baby, she is now demanding my attention after playing very nicely while I've been writing this post. That's my cue to wrap it up... one last thing - a quick thank you to everyone who voted for my entry in the Designer Digitals "Summer's End" contest. I didn't win, but I think I had the 4th or 5th highest number of votes, which is cool. Here's the page I finally entered ...
 
More updates on all of the above coming soon ... I hope!! :)

Summer's End ... Take 3

So I just keep playing with potential contest entries for the Summer's End contest. I went out and took some photos Sunday of our crabapple tree, which is probably my favorite subject in our yard to photograph year-round. It's beautiful in all seasons ... my favorite, of course, is when it flowers. But right now, it really looks like the first sign of fall with its little apples.
Anyway, here's my current favorite ... what do you think?

Where did the summer go?

Wow... I fully intended to blog more about my trip to San Antonio while I was still there, but obviously since I've been home for over a week now, that didn't happen.
This last month has been a flurry of activity ... we spent 10 days at the family cabin at Pelican Lake, returning home on Sunday, Aug. 2. Then Monday, Aug. 3, my Uncle Lennie & cousin William from Texas came for a visit, as well as my Uncle Terry from Chester. They stayed until Wednesday afternoon. Then Thursday, Danica and I left for Texas, returning Sunday. On Monday, my uncle & cousin returned, this time with my Aunt Ceci and cousin Adelia. They left Tuesday morning.
It took me the rest of the week just to get back to some sense of "normal." Apparently, this did not include blogging. I did, however, manage to complete a 46-page scrapbook about our San Antonio experience. So instead of blogging about it, I will share the album below.
Now we are getting ready for school to start in about a week, as well as playing host to more company. Jacques' friend Wayne from Livingston showed up here tonight after calling this morning. Then Jacques' Uncle John & Aunt Mary will be here Thursday for a "few" nights. And hard to believe, but school starts next Monday ...
I hate to say it, but I think I'm actually looking forward to September and a more routine schedule!!
Anyway, here is the link to my San Antonio scrapbook.
I've also been playing around with a couple entries for the Summer's End contest at Designer Digitals. The only real requirement is that the page use a particular set of flourish brushes and/or paper letters. Here's what I've come up with so far ...


I may or may not use one of these. The deadline isn't until the 28th, so I have some time to play. Let me know what you think...

Destination: San Antonio

So the big weekend finally arrived - my trip to San Antonio for the Designer Digitals digi-crop! After dropping Skylar off at the neighbor's house around 8:30 a.m., Danica and I hopped in the van and headed for Billings. We arrived just before 11, which worked out great. Enough time to get through security unrushed, which went perfectly, and not so much time that we had to sit around and twiddle our thumbs for hours (that came later!!).

This was Dani's first time on an airplane and she did great, pretty much sleeping the entire flight from Billings to Denver. The ride was a bit choppy thanks to some cloudy skies, but otherwise all went as planned.

Things weren't quite as smooth for the second half of our trip. What was supposed to be about a 2 1/2 hour layover in Denver ended up being closer to 4 1/2 hours because of weather and mechanical issues. We did lots of wandering while we waited and ended up sitting with a young gal for a good deal of the time who did a great job of entertaining Danica.



We finally boarded around 7:15 and arrived in San Antonio a couple hours later. Once again, my little angel slept for the entire flight!! By the time we got our luggage and traveled across town on the SATrans shuttle (great service, by the way!!) to the Hilton Palacio del Rio, which is right on the Riverwalk, it was almost 11:30 p.m. with the time change. Too dark to see much, but it was fun to look at the lights from our 19th story room, complete with balcony.


Arriving this late may have been a blessing, since even at that late hour, it was still over 90 degrees outside - and humid. Breaking us in gently, I suppose, since it was only about 70 degrees when we left Billings!!
The motel is great ... very comfortable and lots of nice touches, like the pewter-like finishes in the bathroom, eight fluffy pillows to choose from on the beds, sinks both inside and outside the bathroom, a coffee maker that can make two different cups of coffee at the same time, and details like that.


The staff also brought me a crib for Danica right away, assuming I'm sure that she'd be needing it soon. She had other plans, however, and at 1:20 a.m. was still wide awake. If only she'd call it a day ... we're both going to need our beauty sleep for our big day tomorrow.
More coming later ... Looking forward to meeting everyone at the crop tomorrow afternoon!!!

Taking a bit of a leap of faith...

I'm so excited tonight because I finally made a decision I've been weighing for over a month now. To make a long story short, I booked a flight to San Antonio during the first week in August, reserved a room at the Marriott for three nights and bought my ticket to the first ever Digi-Crop hosted by my favorite digital scrapbooking store, Designer Digitals.
Now this may not seem like a big deal to some people, but this was a big decision for me - for several reasons. First, I will be traveling alone with Danica, who will be just over 13 months old at that time and just recently learned how to walk. This means dealing single-handedly with a toddler in an airport, including switching planes on both legs of the trip, as well as juggling luggage, a carseat for use once we get there, a camera (a definite MUST!) and quite possibly my laptop computer. Not sure how I'm going to do it, so it's a good thing I have several weeks to figure it out. (Any tips on flying alone with a little one would be very much appreciated!!!) Fortunately, my new DD friends have already offered to lend a hand with Dani once I get there ... otherwise I don't know that I'd have the guts to give this a try.
Next, this isn't the cheapest way to spend a weekend, once you add up the cost of the flight, motel, food, transportation, etc., etc. I could find a million other ways to spend that money - including a lot of scrapbook-related items - but the idea of actually meeting all of these wonderful people I've been getting to know the last few months who share the same interests as I do was more than I could pass up. I know I would regret it if I there was a way I could go and I didn't follow through. It does feel a little odd (and guilt-inducing) to spend that money entirely on myself, though...
Finally, I've never really taken a purely recreational trip just for me, especially one where I will be hanging out with people I've yet to actually meet in person. Of all the things that make this trip feel a little risky, however, that's not really one of them ... through our sharing of scrapbook pages, comments, posts on Facebook, Thursday evening chats, and other messaging, I feel like I know many of these people better than a lot of others who I HAVE met face-to-face. There's something really special about the DD community that's hard to explain unless you are a part of it. For that, I'm very thankful ... and anticipate this will truly be a weekend to remember. Hopefully, it will simply cement the beginning of many wonderful friendships... :)
For now, it's time to pinch my remaining pennies to make sure I don't end up stranded and hungry somewhere in the middle of Texas in the August heat!!!

Celebrating Five Years

Jacques and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary yesterday. It started off rather humorously ... I had left him a card in his vehicle so he would find it on his way to work. In it, I had included a P.S. that we had 6:00 dinner reservations later that day at The Mint Bar & Grill. He found the card ... and came back into the house chuckling.
As it turns out, he too had left a card for me that morning. In it was the note ... "let's celebrate at The Mint at 6:30!"
Nice to know we're on the same page... :)

It turned out to be a very enjoyable day - and date. Because this was the last week of school, we had the treat of attending the junior high school talent show during the afternoon. Karstin & buddies Jacob, Chad, and Dillon played a piece under their current band name, "Name Pending." It was very loud - and very well-received by their peers. Lots of high fives & cheering followed their performance ... a great way to end <gulp> Karstin's elementary school career!! By the way, you can view their performance here.
Then later in the evening was our turn to get out and celebrate a little, just the two of us. Doesn't happen very often, so it was very, very nice. We enjoyed a very leisurely (about two hours!) dinner at The Mint, including our new favorite appetizer - batter-fried shrimp with a special house jalapeno sauce - and drinks, tap beer for him, white zin for me.  We pretty much stuck to our favorite entree's too - I had chicken & artichokes (very, very good!) and he had the pork medallions. This was accompanied by fresh-baked bread, so by the time we were done, we were too full for dessert ... at least for the moment.
We had walked down to the restaurant, which is less than a mile from our house, so around 8:30 or so we started back toward home via Main Street. We didn't get far, though, before we were drawn into Lola's, where they were hosting open mic night. We listened at the door for a while and eventually decided to get a bit of ice cream and sit down and listen. It was great ... the musicians were very good, the atmosphere even better, and the break from our usual routine was probably the best. We stayed until they wrapped it up around 9:15 or so, then walked back home to where Karstin was holding down the forte.
I then managed to sneak onto the computer for an hour or so and catch the tail-end of my weekly chat with my friends from DesignerDigitals.com before calling it a day. All-in-all it was a very nice day and a great way to celebrate our first "milestone" anniversary...
Reflecting on our first five years also gave me the urge - finally - to start a scrapbook about "us" as a couple. Since we eloped, I didn't ever really do a wedding album and rarely do a page that doesn't involve the kids, or just me. So, I'm adding a "Story of Us" album to my project list ... Here's the first page I did...

Hopefully you will see pages toward that effort in the next few weeks. I need another project or two, right??? LOL. This should be a fun one, though... I already have a long list of topics I'd like to include.

For now, I'd better continue packing ... we decided at the last minute to head to Bozeman overnight tomorrow for a Rotary gathering where, we found out this week, Jacques will accept a "Club of the Year" award on behalf of his group, of which he has been President for the past year. He is also going to sit on some sort of panel while the kids & I hang out at the motel pool and maybe do a little shopping. I love Bozeman, so I'm looking forward to a fun weekend. Plus, the forecast this weekend includes SNOW, so we're not missing any big outdoor opportunities.
Here's to a great "official" beginning of summer vacation!!! :

Karstin's first digital scrapbook page

Since we gave Karstin his own digital camera for his birthday, I asked him if he'd also like to give digital scrapbooking a try. He responded with an enthusiastic yes ... and we used this rainy evening as an excuse for his first lesson. He did great, don't you think???

A few pictures worth a thousand words...

For once, I'm not feeling particularly wordy. (Pretty much got that out of my system yesterday!...) But here are several of my recent scrapbook pages, which will give you a pretty good idea what we've been up to lately, in case you haven't been following along ...

Three years old.

It's official. Skylar is now three years old. We celebrated with a fun little "girly-girl" party with her neighbor friend plus all 5 of her cousins on my side of the family, as well as Gramma & Aunt Sara, and of course, her sister and brothers. It was lots of fun ... jewelry making, fingernail painting, dress up ... and of course, lots and lots of presents and a cake made especially for the birthday girl. 
This year's cake was my first real attempt at fondant. It didn't turn out quite as I had envisioned it (Karstin kept saying it looked like a hat!), but it was cute anyway and tasted pretty good, too. I learn a little more every time I make one of these special cakes ... someday I'll have it down!! 

After the "party" was over, the kids all enjoyed playing outside on the tramp, in the sandbox and on the various riding toys. The bigger kids took a jaunt over to the park to play a little tennis with Jacques while the babies slept (and the mamas rested!) and then later we all filled up with pizza and more cake. 

The final special treat of Skylar's big day was a bit of a campout in our pop-up trailer, with Jacques serving as willing chaperone to five of the nine kids.



The day went fast but Skylar seemed to have fun and hopefully will have happy memories of her third birthday when she is older. To help that along, here are the scrapbook pages highlighting her celebration, which will go into her birthday album ...
 
 
 
 
Thanks to Nana & Pop, Skylar even managed to spread out the birthday celebration a couple days longer with the arrival today of her final birthday gift... a child-sized play kitchen. It was delivered while she was napping and I managed to get through all 10 pages of instructions and get it assembled in two hours, just in time for her to wake from her nap and discover her new toy. She was thrilled ... and I'm sure will enjoy many, many hours of pretend play in the days and weeks to come.

Now it's time to catch our breath, but not for long. This weekend is Mother's Day ... and as Karstin keeps reminding us, his 14th birthday is less than three weeks away, followed by Father's Day, Jacques' birthday in June ... and then Danica's first birthday. Whew... makes my head spin just thinking about it! 
 
Here they are ... all nine cousins on the Gunderson side of the family! :)