Scrap Girl

I mentioned I’m doing a vacation scrapbook for my in-laws.  When doing a vacation scrapbook you can choose really general titles or titles more specific to your trip location.  For this gift, my titles were more specific, but some general vacation titles could be:  Got to Get Away, The Great Escape, Weekend Getaway, Road Trip, Map Quest, Vacation or Bust, Fun in the Sun, A Little R & R, WINK(Weekend including no kids), Road Adventures, and On the Road Again.  The list could go on and on, but maybe these titles could give you some new inspiration to get some of those vacation pictures done.  Good Luck!   

If you are a die-hard scrapper like me, you probably have scrapbook papers and cardstock overflow.  Go ahead and make use of what you already have to make a great keepsake gift.  I’m making a mini-vacation book for my in-laws.  We went to Texas this summer and their pictures turned out terribly for the most part, so I’m using the pictures that turned out plus my good pictures so they can have a nice remembrance our our trip.  I think it will be especially nice because we went to visit Galveston before it was wiped out by Hurricane Ike and that is a little moment in history.  I have most of the actual scrapbooking done, but now need to go back and do some journaling to go with the pictures.  I’ll include some pictures of the scrapbook in some upcoming posts as well as other vacation scrapping ideas.

For the first time in many years I didn’t go out on Black Friday.  I guess I didn’t think it was worth it this year.  I only wanted one or two things at a few places and waiting in line for a half hour or more to get a couple of things is just a time waster and frustration maker.  It looks like there will still be good deals to be had as I already received flyers for Saturday sales tomorrow.  I should have gotten up earlier though to get the online deal for a Cricut at Joann online.  I tried putting one in my shopping cart last night so it would be in there today, but it didn’t stay in my cart overnight so I missed the deal.  Oh, man that makes me wish I was an early bird and got up early.  I think the stores need to have midnight madness deals for us night owls.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow scrapbookers.  Hopefully your Thanksgiving dinner was later in the day.  Our family gathering we went to was at noon, so now at 6:00 my kids are saying, “What are we having for supper?”  Ugh.  I’m still full from eating earlier today.  My husband’s family always goes way overboard and there is enough food for 50 instead of the 35 that are there. Do you really need all kinds of appetizers and snacks when you are having a huge meal?  I guess I’m just a healthier eater, and don’t want to eat all day long.  I start to feel sick if my stomach is too full.  I don’t know how some people do it.  Now to look for something for the kids to eat for supper… 

Do you take photos at Thanksgiving get-togethers?  I used to but have stopped now that I have so many other photos.  Last year I actually did a digital layout of my two girls of a picture I took on Thanksgiving.  I ended up using the picture for my Christmas photo card last year.  I’ll attach the layout to this post.  Some ideas for Thanksgiving titles would be:  So Thankful For You, Give Thanks, All in the Family, The Thankful Feast, Turkey Fest, We Gather Together, and Thankfully Blessed.  Maybe now that I came up with these titles I’ll do more pictures for this occasion.  The digital supplies I used below for the layout are from the Scrap Girls Refresh Collection(free on their website, scrapgirls.com) and the Stylize Collection Biggie from Brandy Mackman(also from scrapgirls.com).

I just got my Joann Fabrics & Crafts flyer and they will be having Cricuts on sale for only $99.  They are usually $199 in the retail stores so this is an amazing deal.  I don’t currently have one, but I have used them a number of times and am thinking maybe I should get my tail over to this sale on Friday at 6am.  Hopefully they are not like Wal-mart and just carry two of them and then announce that they are sold out.  I went quite a few years ago to try and get a video camera at Wal-mart and they want to get you into the store so they can say those are gone, but we have these other great ones(for $100 more, of course).  How annoying can you get?  So I’m wondering if Michael’s will up the ante, and have their own great Cricut sale too?  We’ll have to be checking out their ad on Thanksgiving to see.

If you are willing to fight the crowds, you can get some great scrapbooking deals on Friday and Saturday.  I’m sure Michael’s, Joann Crafts, and other major retailers will be pulling out all of the stops to get you into their stores.  Always be sure to check your local smaller specialty scrap stores too, as they also want your business.  If you are looking for scrapbook gifts for others it can be somewhat difficult as we scrappers all have different tastes and styles.  A few things that will always be used are 12×12 albums, archival pens and markers, and storage supplies.  Probably the best gift you could get for your scrapbooker would be a gift certificate to her favorite store.  This is actually the ideal gift as she can pick out whatever she likes for her next project, or buy some new gadget she has been wanting that you’ve never heard of.  Happy shopping!

Well I picked out a picture of my girls from this summer to put on our photo cards.  Walgreen’s had a design that went the best with the picture so I have it saved at their site.  Now I’m going to wait a couple of weeks to see if they will run a sale on their photo cards.  They did last year and I scooped up a good deal.  All of the online photo companies along with the retail stores will all be competing for your valuable money with their photo cards.  There should be a lot of good deals within the coming weeks all the way up until Christmas.  Shutterfly was another site I looked into and they have free shipping if you spend over $25, so they were definitely worth considering also.  I have a Walgreen’s less than a mile from my house and their design went better with my picture so I chose them.  I guess I am now ready to start working on the rest of the holiday items on my list of things to do.

Have you figured out what picture(s) you are going to use for your photo card?  Me, either.  Time to get on the ball and look through the pictures or get the kids gussied up and take a few photos for that card.  Just add it to your long list of things to do to get ready for the holidays.  Not to feel sorry for myself, but let’s face it, Christmas is a women’s holiday.  We do most, if not all of the shopping.  We prepare the big meals.  We decorate and we wrap gifts, we choose the photo cards, order them and address them all.  It can be very stressful, but face it, without women, Christmas would not be the memorable holiday that it is.  So in the middle of December, draw yourself a pampering bubble bath or stimulate the economy and schedule a massage to pat yourself on the back for all you put into Christmas for your family. 

Now that the basics of the advent calendar are done, we can do some embellishments.  I had enough chipboard letters to do “advent” on the side.  I added a tab that says December and some other Christmas sayings on the side.  You could also add ribbon or a picture of your kids from last Christmas.  Now I just need to pick up some candy to put in each of the date windows and then decide whether to frame it and hang it up or just place it on a bulletin board or maybe above my regular calendar.  The kids will take turns counting down the days and take turns on the candy and hopefully I won’t be hounded as much about how many days are left until Christmas.  We can only hope.