Scrapbooking Eagle Ridge Lodge September 2014 – Part 2

Here are a few more layouts from my weekend of scrapping.  The best part is on Thursday I leave with my sister, Lynette, to meet up with my other sister, Sue, and her daughter to scrapbook at our annual retreat at Maplelag.  Because of this past scrapbooking retreat, I am all ready to go and have a lot of ideas to complete.

This is an 8×8 of Big M and JV back in 2008.  I do not remember what they were laughing about, but I love this photo. I wish there was more laughing in our house.  Some days I have so much to do, I forget to laugh, but I am working on that.

We have lived in Idaho and now in North Dakota.  Both states are proud of their connection with Sacajawe or as it is said in North Dakota, “Sakakawea”.   There is a statue of this brave lady on the Capitol grounds by the Heritage Center.  I had a photo of the boys standing by her, so I decided to do a layout about her name. If you are ever passing through Bismarck, make sure you plan a trip to the Heritage Center.  It is free, newly expanded, and filled with great historical information and exhibits.

Since my brother, Jon, lives in Dallas, Texas, I do not get to see him often, so he and his family do not show up in my scrapbooks often.  I found these photos from 2008, so I did a quick layout.

 

Back in December I did a post on a scrapbooking retreat my sister, Lynette, and I went on at the Badlands Ministries.  The photos are so beautiful of the hill, I had to get them scrapped.

I also made a few cards.  Sometimes when I am stuck or have leftover scraps.  Making cards helps me get my creativity flowing again.  I think I will use most of these as graduation cards next spring.

So there you have it.  A fun and productive weekend retreat.  I will try to post some layouts from this upcoming weekend.  Have you done any scrapbooking lately?

Scrapbooking Eagle Ridge Lodge September 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My sister, Lynette, and I were able to do a spur-of-the-moment scrapbook retreat at Eagle Ridge Lodge 10 days ago.  What a beautiful place to scrap.  This bed and breakfast is located near Medora, North Dakota in the Badlands.  It is on a ridge. With its floor to ceiling windows we could sit and look at this gorgeous view from sunrise to sunset.   However I did get some pages done.

 

This is a 6×6 layout with a small photo of my son, JV last fall. I love this photo and just wanted to make sure it was in scrapbook.

Here is an 8×8 layout from 2011.  His uncle is always willing to play cards with him when we visit.  That activity deserved a spot in my scrapbook.

I did a 12×12 of Joshua reading in 2010 when Lamb still read with him.

I also did a 12×12 layout of the boys cooking breakfast in 2011.  I realize they have been making most of their own breakfast and lunch meals for a while now.  I don’t think I appreciated it until I saw these photos.

 

I found a few different photos of Z looking over his glasses.  He did that so much we wondered why he even needed glasses.  It was fun to capture this memory.  He doesn’t do that nearly as much any more.

I didn’t do all layouts of my boys.  I will show you a few more tomorrow.

 

 

Weekend Scrapping at Badlands Ministries

This past weekend my sister, Lynette, and I went to the Badlands Ministries for a crafting weekend.  Of course we scrapped, but we also climbed the foothills at least 4 times.  Once on an extremely windy day, I thought my sister was going to be blown off the side of the hill.  40+ mph winds can do that. Fun times.  We got exercise, did a ton of chatting and got some layouts made.

This 8×8 layout was a quick one for documenting the day my son got his permit.  He is anxiously awaiting his driver’s license late this summer.  It will be so strange not to have to shuttle him around.  This morning was open gym and weight lifting from 6 a.m. till 7:30 a.m.  Yes it is off-season, but conditioning never seems to stop.

I also wanted to do a quick layout on Z’s car accident last fall. Strange, but only took one photo, so I did an 8×8.  This way we will never forget.

As I was searching for a photo I ran across this one of my boys before bed when they were much younger.  It is a little dark so probably can’t see their faces, but oh my, this captures their personalities so well.  Since I only had this one photos, an 8×8 was perfect for it.

This photo of Big M and I from Christmas is a fun favorite.  I love having layouts of just us together in our albums.  I wanted to use these embellishments, so it turned into a 12 x 12 for it to work.  When my boys go through the albums someday, they will never doubt that I love their Dad.

Two other older photos I found were of our boys when we moved into our house in 2007.  We planted trees with the though of taking a photo each year to show their growth and the growth of the trees.  Well the trees died that winter so that never happened, but I love see how small they were back then. Since I did a 12 x 12 I had plenty of room to journal.

The last one to share is of two photos taken 2 days apart in 2011 in our back yard.  The top one is after it snowed.  The bottom one is two days later after the typical strong winds we have in North Dakota. (I am writing this as I listen to the winds blowing about 25 to 30 mph with gusts in the high 30s.).  The wind completely changed the landscape, and I wanted to document that change.

I doubt I will scrap again until next September, but it was exactly what I needed at the end of a school year. Relaxation and getting away.  Now to tackle my huge spring to-do list.

 

Scrapbooking One Last Time

The weekend before Thanksgiving my sister, Lynette, and I went to Badlands Ministries to scrapbook.  We won’t be scrapping until next, April so we really enjoyed and relaxed.  Out the window we saw these hills.  In the evening the hills just glowed.  It was absolutely stunning.

I didn’t finish many regular layouts, I mostly worked on finalizing my Project Life album.  I have been doing 7 on the 7th for 4 years.  I was missing some pages and journaling.  I wanted to finalize it.  I plan to continue keeping the 7 on the 7th.  Love the history of our family that it shows.

The first layout is a mini layout.  I came across an old photo of the boys toes.  I love to do little 6×6 pages to write about a memory, or I this case, something about me…I hate anything between my toes.  When I am gone, will anyone care or remember?  Probably not, but I would love to know little things like this about my Grandmother.

This one is a 12×12 of the boys 10 years ago, 5 years ago and this past fall.  I love seeing the progression of their growth on one page.  This type of layout are truly my favorite types of layouts.

A 12 x 12 layout of something that was a regular occurrence in our house for years, the boys playing laser tag or something similar.  They no longer do it, so I wanted to capture that memory now.

Finally a layout of the boys this summer with friends of theirs they have known since birth.  They were goofing off when I captured the one with all the boys in a line.  Finally after several shots, I asked if they could be serious.  Not sure if you can see their faces or not, but they are being serious.  I guess I got what I asked for.  Love these photos so I just had to make a layout of them.

So that will probably be all my scrapping for the next 3-4 months.  Z is in high school swimming and JV is on the 9th grade basketball team.  It is going to keep us busy as bees.

Do you scrapbook throughout the year or do you go in spurts like I do?

Scrapbooking 3rd Time in 6 Weeks

This weekend my sister and I were hunting widows, so she came and spent two days with me.  We chatted, eat left-overs, listened to music, went to Mass and scrapbooked.  It was a last-minute get-together, but it was so much fun and so relaxing.

I was able to get 14 layouts done and 5 cards.  The layout above, Hunting, is an 8×8 of JV this year when he got his first coyote.  There are too many of them in my Uncles pastures. It was important for JV to get one.

Harvard is an 8×8 of Z with his letter from Harvard.  We knew that with good ACT scores Z would get letters from all over the country, but just had to do a layout about the letter from Harvard.  No, he doesn’t plan to go there, but it was a fun layout to do to remember this time of Z’s life.

Then I went back into time.  I did a snow and sledding layout as a 12×12.

As well as a 12×12 to remember the year we moved into our new house.  One of the good things was that the boys were able to use tools to put furniture, shelves and other things together.  I like to think of it as male bonding time.

I came across these photos of a time I tried to take a nice photo of my boys in 2008,  These type of photos were typical facial expressions I had. But now, I appreciate them more. A quick 12×12 captured this memory.

Wanted to capture a 12×12 layout of a fun time we had when we were at Bear Country USA, South Dakota in 2006.  I keep reminding myself to enjoy the little things, so layouts like this are important for me to do.  Keeps my priorities in the forefront of my mind as life gets to crazy, busy.

Then I found an adorable photo of Z.  This was when we lived in Bothell, WA.  He loved to take all my plastic out of the cabinets and crawl in.  This gave him hours of entertainment.  Now there is no way he could fit, but I have a feeling, it would be somewhere for him to go, if he could, and we still lived there. This 8×8 layout captures this awesome memory.

The final share is this one of JV playing UNO when he was 2 years old.  Yes, our family loves to play cards, and it started when the boys were very little.  The other night we were all together for dinner, so afterward we had to play a game of partner pinnacle.  That will be something I will miss as my boys go off to college.  Glad that is a family activity of ours.

As you can see I don’t scrapbook chronologically.  I prefer to scrap whatever inspires me.  I hope to scrap photos of my boys when they are little long after they are gone.  Do you scrapbook in chronological order?

 

Weekend Scrapping Layouts

My sister, Mom, and I drove to the Twin Cities area last Thursday for a long weekend to visit my sister.  My nephew had his last home football game.  I hadn’t seen him play for a few years, so I really wanted to see him play.  (He did awesome…he had a terrific interception as a DB.)

We shopped for wall hangings for my Mom as well as scrapbook supplies.  Archivers in Coon Rapids is closing at the end of October. They had 30% off everything in the store.  I definitely found some goodies to replace the items I cleaned out of my room last month.

We also took some scrapping supplies and found a few hours to scrap in the evening.  I was able to complete a few pages.  I scrapped current photos.  The above layout is of my son, JV, at sunrise on the youth deer hunting opening.  Love the sun over his shoulder.

Z has been into 3D puzzles right now, so wanted to capture that in a layout.  He doesn’t do regular jigsaw puzzles, but loves the 3D ones.  Me?  I can’t do 3D puzzles, but love to fix a regular puzzles.

I decided to also capture the fact that I am an auction addict in a layout.

In August Big M and I took a 4 wheeler ride around our neighborhood.  The sunflowers were beautiful.  We stopped in an alfalfa field, and I found several small insects in the flowers.

I didn’t want they photos to be large, but thought little 2×2 photo border of those photos would make a great base for the sunflower photos.  It was an amazing evening in North Dakota.

I did a quick 8×8 of a photo of Z with his new prescription sunglasses just for fun.

Finally I had to capture a layout of our family when we had to go get tested for TB.  We were exposed to a relative who had TB and didn’t know it for months. We needed to be tested.  No one had it, but it was an interesting experience.  We had to call the nurse when we were in the parking lot.  She came out with a mask on and gave us masks.  We needed to keep them one while in the office.  I actually appreciated that she was being careful not to expose her staff or other patients to TB.

It is unusual for me to scrapbook twice in two weeks.  Loved it.  Still motivated to find time to scrap a layout or two at home.

Maplelag Scrapping Layouts

Last weekend was the annual scrapbooking retreat with my sisters at Maplelag.  Last year I showed you the last several years of my sisters and I, so I thought I would start with a photo of us right after a walk.  I think this is the walk where the mean dog didn’t like us being there.

This year my niece, Lynae, from last year didn’t make it because she has a 3 month old little girl.  However, we were blessed to have my niece, Bri, join us.  Bri is one talented lady.  It was so nice to have her there to share the fun times.

It was really nice at the resort for the first day and a half, so we were able to get some work done as well as get in some walks through the woods.  Then the weather turned cold and rainy.  Sad news, but we got a lot of scrapping done.  I thought I would share some of my completed pages.

This is a 6×6 layout.  When I have just a small snippet of a story to tell, I like to do smaller layouts.  I had this layout done from years ago when I attended Scrapfest at the Mall of America in Minneapolis.  Just hadn’t used it for a photo and story. This weekend I was trying to use some of my old supplies.  This one worked perfectly to remember when Joshua got his permit.

This is an 8×8 layout.  Big M looks more like his Mom’s side of the family.  However, in this photo, he looks exactly like his Dad.  His Dad has been gone for 13 years now, so I just had to capture the fact that there is some of his Dad in him.  His Dad worked on cars all of his life, that is why the car is on the layout.

I just loved these photos from my birthday, so I made another 8×8 layout.  Normally I love to journal the story, but to me the photos say it all.

Ok on to 12 x 12 layouts.  I don’t use stickers a lot, but these stickers just seem to work with the photos.  So only photos, stickers and journaling were used on this layout to capture a time we went sledding in the park.

I really love to scrapbook whatever inspires me.  I love to scrap current as well as older photos.  These photos are from 2001 when my boys were little.  I came across them and had to do a layout. My son, JV, loves basketball now.  It must have started early.  I used an old page title on this layout.

Here is a current photo layout.  I wanted to capture JV’s experience on the golf course.  I used new Creative Memories papers, but paired it with an old title piece.  Glad I am using some of my supplies. Since I organize my little scrap elements by color, I was able to find a few green elements to complete the page.

I complete several other layouts, a mini album, caught up on my Project Life 7 on the 7th, and got my 30 Days Hath September album ready to be completed.  I was productive, but my last layout share is this layout of my son’s experience running track this past spring. I used my Cricut to cut out the letters, and some new paper and cutouts from Creative Memories to complete my layout.

It really was a wonderful weekend.  If I am lucky and the weather holds, I hope to head to Minneapolis next weekend to see my nephew play football.  Hopefully we will get some scrapping in as well.

Have you gone on any retreats lately?  Do you try to use older supplies with new?

I Love Productive Weekends

A scrapbook page.  I actually completed a page.  However, I have to admit I didn’t do it from scratch.

You see, this weekend Z is at a retreat and Big M and JV are hunting.  It is opening deer season for youth.  I stayed home to clean my den.  I am going to my sisters’ annual scrapping weekend in Maplelag, MN next weekend, so I need to organize my room before I could even begin to thing about packing.  The den was a disaster.  I worked from 3:30 until 12:30 on my room on Friday.  I already have 3 large bags of scrapping accessories I am going to share and donate.

Then I got up this morning and started again. I came across a couple of things to list online to sell. I stopped cleaning and listed several items either on Ebay or on our local sales site. It include a couple of carts that I had in my room that just weren’t working for me anymore. Also listed some large items that were in the garage.  Have to make room for a snowblower.  It is going to snow, even though I am trying to deny it.

In the process of cleaning, I found this snowman layout kit I had completed probably back in 2003 when I took a class.  I set it aside.  Then I came across these photos of the boys building a snowman in 2005 back when we lived in Boise.  I decided to just stop and put the layout together.  It felt so good to put it together and scrap.  Now I am really excited about next weekend with my sisters and my niece.

It definitely is a dated layout.  Rarely do you see paper piecing on layouts any more. I don’t care.  I think it is cute.  I have finally used a started layout, and I have rescued some photos from a pile of stuff.

Yep, I love productive weekends like this.  Now back to my den. I have a lot more work to do.

Recent Scrapbook Layouts

Here are a few of the layouts I completed at Maplelag.

When I saw this photo of Big M. I knew I had to do a layout to feature it.  So I just wrote about this man the first things that came to my mind.  I really like how it turned out.

I love to mix my layouts up with current photos as well as older ones.  These photos were from 2003.  We took our boys to two different live shows. The photos weren’t great, so I kept putting it off.  However, this time I decided to just scrap them, because I wanted to record that we did take the boys to shows they really enjoyed…Dragon Tales and Bob the Builder.  I didn’t want to do separate layouts, so I put them on one page in a messy style.  Not my favorite layout ever, but I love that I have finally captured these memories.

My favorite movie of all times is the 1988 movie, Beaches.  There is a part where one of the characters notices that her hands and her daughters are similar.  She digs through photos to find ones of her Mother’s hands.  I have noticed that my hands are looking more like what I remember my Mom’s looked like at my age, so I did a quick 8 x 8 layout to capture those thoughts.

There is a trend of 6×6 paper pages in the scrapping industry. I like the paper because the scale is smaller than 12×12 paper.  There where two photos I took this year that I wanted to capture the memory.  I did not want to do a large layout for these photos, so I did small layouts.  The first one is a view I see every morning when Z is working on his school work.  He is a junior this year, so we only have 1 3/4 years left to do this.  Wanted to freeze this memory.  The other layout is of JV with his hair long.  For years we always buzz cut it, but now it is long enough to stick up.  I love doing quick and easy, yet cute layouts to capture a memory.

Finally my favorite layout I did was this Mr. Spider layout.  I was able capture some photos of our garden spider spinning a web around a grasshopper.  I used some fun paper from Creative Memories called Enchanted and the rustic fence border punch from their new border system.

I am looking forward to another weekend retreat that my sister and I are going on next weekend.  I have more I want to scrap. I can’t seem to find time to scrap unless I go on a retreat.  How do you find time for your hobbies?

Design Challenge – 1

I love taking classes at Big Picture Classes.  I just started a new one called, Design Challenges from Elizabeth Dillow.  It started today.  A fun part of this class is that Stacy Julian will be creating a page based on the challenge and then showing it to us via video. 

The first challenge was to make a layout based on a familiar form.  I took it as something that I see everyday.

I knew immediately that I wanted to make a layout based on the My Classes page on Big Picture Classes.  Above is the view when you click on the Design Challenges page to sign up, but you get the idea. 

I am not a digital scrapper, however, I decided to try this layout digitally.  It went so quickly.  I am so pleased with this layout that captures my boys…right now.  The gray lines state specifics about each of the boys, and the right hand column are things that they both do right now. I would not have done this layout without this class.  Life is changing so quickly; I know I am going to love looking back on it to see what the boys were into at this time.

You can still sign up for Design Challenges through May 2. I don’t get anything for telling you about this class. I just think it is fun and motivational. If you want some motivation to scrap, go check it out.