Holiday Season

I've neglected my personal blog for months now and hope in the new year to revitalize it again. I've been busy with my photography biz (weddings and portraits) while carving out lots of time to digi scrap. I've created almost 200 pages this year. It helps to be on CT teams and be required to create with their new kits. It's a win-win situation. I get lots of digi stuff for free while creating lots of pages for myself. I've pretty much given up on paper scrapping except for the odd card here and there. It's hard to let go of all my supplies and I love my scrap room so I may keep just a portion of the supplies to justify keeping the room setup and gathering my scrap friends for a few crops here and there. I'm scrambling now to get all the holiday prep done (I seem to do this every year lol). But...it always come together by the time Christmas rolls around. I've been eating low carb for most of this year and need to see what veggie dishes I can contribute to Xmas dinner that I can eat with the turkey. I need to go peruse pinterest for ideas. If you want to follow me on pinterest, you can find me here
my pinterest board
Here's a few pages I've created lately, if you'd like to see some of my work.

Update on Life and Digi Stuff

I've been MIA for a bit. Got busy with the wedding photography biz and digi-wise, have been busy as a CT member for Little Rad Trio and LaurieAnnHGD.  Plus, I have been a guest CT member over at mscraps so have been scrapping my little heart out! This year my digi scrapping has just taken off! I now have 100+ pages completed this year (you can see them on my pinterest board). In August I will be a guest CT member for The Lilypad store. I will be scrapping like crazy! Plus I have 3 weddings to shoot in August. So, it will be a fun, crazy busy month ahead but oh so much fun! Here's a layout I created for Dunia over at mscraps (Kraft Alpha, Addicted to Paper and Do You Remember Kit).

A Few Recent Layouts

I've taken a few minutes here and there to create some layouts. I'm having fun playing more with clustering and photo/background blending. I often start a layout, then walk away from it for a few hrs or a day or so until I can find a few more minutes to work on it. That's the beauty of digital, no mess, no clean-up and, if I remember to save as a psd file then I can come back and change the design as often as I like. I do tend to put my layouts together quickly. I'm a quick scrapper and don't usually make my layouts very element heavy and usually have a fair amount of empty space on my page.

My LO For The One Word Challenge "Fun"

Credits: LaurieAnnHGB - TakeMyHand Alpha and SimpleLife Kit
The parade goes right by our trailer so we always have a front row seat. I'm glad I finally got a chance to scrap a page about this.

From A Photo Walk With Sue

Credits: TLP store - Laurie Ann HGD - BloomBabyBloom and MaBelle kits
Used this photo I took from my photo walk with my scrap buddy, Sue, last yr. I'm starting to pull out some images from the last few years to scrap finally. We must have spent at least an hour at the duck pond at Granville Island snapping pics of the wildlife there. I never get tired of visiting the island and always find so much beauty there to capture on camera.|

OF NOTE:  this LO was featured today on Kate Hadfield's Gallery Standouts. WOOT WOOT!
Kate Hadfield's Gallery Standouts

New Collab by Ninigoesdigi and Pink Reptile Designs

 I knew as soon as I saw this collab from TLP that I would love it. 

New Release Today from LaurieAnn at The Lilypad

This year, orange has become a fave color of mine to scrap with. Standouts in this kit for me were the orange flowers, the canning jar, the banner and the butterfly. I will use this kit over and over for all the fun little bits in it. If you want to see the kit, head over to The Lilypad store; it's 20% off this wkend and comes with a free alpha too.
Heart and Hand Kit

TLP SOSN Today

Did a LO of my scrap buddy's sweet little girl, Sabrina. Don't you just love that face? She is so adorable. I used a kit by LaurieAnn "Bloom Baby Bloom" from The Lilypad. Here it is if you want to grab this kit at 50% today. My fave bits of the kit are the butterfly (love the colors) and the fun funky flowers.
https://the-l.com/store/Bloom-Baby-Bloom-by-Laurie-Ann-complete-kit.html

Catching Up

I was away on holidays for three weeks and had a fabulous time. It was a staycation at our trailer in Washington. Every day we watched movies, whole series of shows (loving Army Wives right now), read books and scrapbooked a ton of layouts. I set up a small folding table in front of the couch so I could sit comfortably to scrap and watch TV. I stayed up late every night and slept in every morning but awoke to watch "Kelly & Michael". I never watch that show the rest of the year, only on holidays; it seemed like such a treat to watch some daytime TV as at home I get started working at about 7:30 so no TV watching. The weather was blech...rainy and chilly most of the time but we stayed nice and cozy in our trailer (which is a triple slide so pretty roomy). When it wasn't pouring out we had BBQ for dinner. I don't eat wheat so no bun for me but I have grown to love burgers with avocado and BBQ sauce...yum!

A Few More Layouts

Recent Layouts

Layouts Today

Project Life Week 8

Still have March layouts to do but hope to be caught up this week and then will try to get into the habit of creating my two page layouts every Sunday. I am having a blast just using my camera phone for these photos. It was very weird and difficult to stay away from my DSLR's and lenses but by using only instagram phone pics it has been so fast and easy to shoot a couple of pics each week for this journaled photographic diary of my year.

Layout for TLP

Bucket List Digi Challenge

This list was fun to put together. Don't know if I'll ever get an African safari...but a girl can dream LOL

Greek Yogurt

I have Greek yogurt almost every day, either at lunch or for an afternoon/evening snack. I used to buy vanilla flavor but now I buy plain, either 0 or 2% fat version, and add in some Stevia and a bit of vanilla. I add whatever fruit I have on hand, usually berries and banana. I top it off with a dollop of jam; my fave is cherry or apricot marmalade.

Project Life Week 7

Project Life Week 6

Project Life Week 5

Lunch Leftovers

For lunch today I had leftover fish tacos. I added extra corn to the fish, rice, avocado, beans and salsa verdes sauce. Instead of once again stuffing a tortilla shell I chose to oil, spice with salt, pepper, chili seasoning and then cut into triangles a couple of shells which I baked at 400 for about 5 minutes to crisp up. This was heavenly! I could have eaten another bowl had there been any more. I had to restrain myself to reserve a few tbsp of the mixture to give to Sandy (my retriever) for her snack (mixed in with a bit of her dog food).

Project Life Week 2

Photography Meet-Up

We watched a video and then went out for a photo walk in Gastown. We walked thru "Blood Alley" which I'd never been to before. It's not an area of town I'd wander thru alone but it sure is visually interesting with the old architecture and graffiti.

10 Random Things

This was a fun challenge I completed with my scrap buddies. I used an instagram photo of myself (I'm loving my camera phone lately) and used mostly products from "One Story Down" digi store.

TLP Journaling Challenge

Monochrome Neutral Challenge

Scraplift Challenge at TLP

Vacation Challenge LO

Used photos from our day trip to the Lynden Fair last summer. It was our first time going and we
had a blast. Can't wait to go again this year.

Lilypad One Word Challenge

 The March word challenge is "You" (hence the title).

Tell A Story Challenge

The photos tell the story rather than journaling. This was Bailey's 15 birthday celebration.

TLP March Challenge - Flowers

This was an easy challenge for me (creating a layout using flowers). I have a multitude of flowers as so many kits do include at least a few flowers. I used a lot of Paislee Print "Weekender" for this layout.

Color Scheme Challenge

Project Insta-Life

I needed to simplify my Project Life pages so have started to use these templates from Weeds & Wildflowers. It should be a lot faster now to create my weekly 2 page layouts. I decided to make the process even simpler and will only be using my Instagram photos for this project so I don't have to spend time editing and since I almost always have my phone with me, I'll be ready to snap a shot at any time. Sometimes simpler is better!

Journal Challenge

For a Lilypad journal challenge I used these instagram pics I took when a few of the girls came over to scrapbook last month. I had let the room get quite cluttered last fall so had to spend a few hours cleaning up and re-organizing but I'm so glad I did b/c now the table is cleared off and all my paper/embellies are put away. I had a great time chatting with friends but didn't actually get much scrapping done. Brenna & I did manage to get Gina hooked on instagram and got her to set up an acct and take some pics. 

Then & Now Layout

For a "then and now" challenge I used these two images of Courtenay, one from last summer and the other from 4 yrs previous to that. I used a couple of kits from The Lilypad.

Love Challenge

For a FB challenge with friends I created this layout with my hubs and our retriever titled "This Is Love". I took all the pics with my camera phone. Sometimes the convenience of a camera phone outweighs getting the DSLR out.

Food Challenge Layout

For a food challenge layout I used this photo of my hubs holding a huge sub sandwich. 

TLP Product Challenge

The product challenge was to use an alpha set. I used Pink Reptile Designs "Simple Thngs" and applied a white edged style to it. 

Project Life Week 2

TLP Scraplift Challenge

This was a scraplift challenge from The Lilypad. I had to search for a pennant custom shape to mask with paper but now I'm glad I took the time to find it b/c I'm sure I'll use it again and again. I'm loving the font

I used. I had it created with my own handwriting. It's a bit sloppy, a bit uneven....and totally me!

TLP Journal Challenge

Here is page 2 of week 1 of Project Life.