I was reorganizing a bookshelf near my kitchen that I primarily use for cookbooks, when I found this little scrapbook…
I forgot that I made this at a workshop last year. So I’m glad I took some photos at Christmas. I can now have pictures printed and tape them down. I haven’t done that in a long time!
I made a two-page spread for this week. I love it when I can make two page spreads. I feel like I have so much more room. Sadly, to fill the album that I’m using, I have to make more one page spreads. But oh well. Once again, I used Creative Memories’ Delight products.
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This is the first page in my new Project 365 Album that will span for the second half of the year. I worked on this page for hours. I restarted it several times, trying to figure out what paper pack and what theme I want to use for the these pages. I decided on the Delight series by Creative Memories. It’s very girly and light. I like the brighter colors. I hope I like using it.
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Since I finished book one of my Project 365 2009 album project I decided to get some of the pages printed. I get them printed at Costco, which is pretty reasonable at $2.99 a print, but I’m not thrilled with the result. The pages come out a bit darker than I would prefer. I’m not sure if they are using color correction on these kinds of prints, so next time I’m going to ask. Actually, that’s not quite true. Next time I’m going to go through this Internet service that prints 12×12s for $1.99. They market toward scrapbookers. An extra dollar a print saves a lot of money, so I’m hoping that I like the quality. I’ll report back when I find out.
Two of my favorite pages from the first album.
Woo-hoo! I’ve finished my last page for my Project 365 Album (Part 1). This means that for my next album I can use a different paper pack. The Earthy Power Palette by Creative Memories served me really well for the the past six months. Overall I made 32 pages. So tomorrow I’ll go get the 12×12s printed at Costco and slide them into my Portfolio Max. For this particular page I used the same paper as I did for the very first page of the album.
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I was quick on this one, and worked on it while watching Burn After Reading. I love that movie! Brad Pitt is so hilarious in it. Anyway, here’s a layout that I did for the pictures I took today. I used Creative Memories’ “Everyday Predesigned Pages” for it. That’s also why it went so fast. I love the pictures I took of Marissa and Johnny today.
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When I woke up this morning I decided I would do a little photo project within my big photo project and show you all what a day in my life is like. Especially in the summertime, which is just pure chaos every single work day.
Today was so incredibly chaotic and busy that I actually didn’t get that many good pictures, but I got a few, so here we go…
Today’s work goals: Help launch a new service, make progress on my computing guide, set appointments, attend the monthly staff meeting.
Today’s personal goals: Eat healthy, do some laundry, and work on something in the creative realm.
How do you think I did?? Well, I’ll tell you up front, nothing ever goes as planned!
First…you should probably know what I do. Basically, I write, create, and manage self-help documentation for computing on a college campus. Need to configure your e-mail client to use our e-mail service? Read my documentation. So I manage a big old website full of the stuff and I make a printed publication here and there.
So the day started off great. It was gorgeous today and not a cloud in the sky.
Even the traffic was light, and the drive was quick.
My first stop this morning was to go to our east campus office, which is called “The Computing Center,” for our monthly staff meeting. We have around 125 staff members or so. It’s hard to say since we work in geographically diverse places. I like this meeting because I get to see some of my friends, and I get a free bagel (it’s always about the food with me).
As I’m walking into the building, I get a call from a co-worker, and my plans change. Turns out, my help was needed to finish an eight-page program for an event we’re doing next week. So I go in and grab my bagel, because I’m not going all the way over there and not getting a bagel!
Then I high-tail it back to my neck of the woods, on campus, to the building behind the prison fence.
So I get to work on the program, and I’ve got a wicked killer deadline. I had until 11 to finish it up for review. So I get right to it.
With only a few seconds to spare, I package it up and send it off to review, because then it was time to launch one of our new services. It had been scheduled for 11 and I meant to stick to that schedule. My part of the puzzle was to pull the trigger on the website to make the service available to our customers.
So when I got all that done, it was back to working on the program. I got the edits back and I began to perfect the document. It was due to the printer by 1 p.m. at the latest, and so I put the pedal to the metal. Finally, it was finished. I did a quick print out just to make sure it was good to go and then I sent it off.
So now it’s 1 p.m. and I haven’t even started working on my computing guide. But, alas, I still couldn’t get to it. I was meant to have two meetings, one of which I knew about but got rescheduled and another one that didn’t make it on my calendar! Oops.
I finally find some time to make my lunch (in theory, because I should have been in a meeting), so I go about making my Weight Watchers Lemon Chicken Piccata (which appeared very unappetizing at the time), strolled back upstairs and realized that I had locked myself out of my office. So I stopped in my co-worker’s empty office, which was open, to set down my lunch and dig through my purse for my keys. But instead of setting my food down gracefully, I essentially bowled it across her floor. That’s right. Chicken and rice all over. It looked like my lunch threw up all over her office.
So imagine the next twenty minutes of my day, as I crawled around on my hands and knees and picked rice out of the carpet, still locked out from my office.
Yeah.
Once all that was taken care and I was able to get back in my office, I called my friend Matt to see if he wanted to walk up to the UMC with me while I grabbed a late lunch. It was 2 p.m. by this point and I barely made it there before they closed. Unfortunately it wasn’t the healthy Weight Watchers like meal I had brought, but instead a greasy cheeseburger, which I probably should have taken a picture of, but I was too busy guzzling it to reach for the camera.
After lunch, I got back to it. Truthfully, I can’t remember what I was doing. It was all kinds of random work stuff, but it was not the computing guide that I need to work on.
And then somewhere in the late afternoon, things exploded again. With out going into detail, I had people to call, text to write, and information to track down. Which pretty much took me to the end of my work day.
So, no. I did not work on my guide, but that’s how the summer time goes.
When I got home, I changed right into my pajamas and vegged out. I talked on the phone with my sister for at least an hour, until we mutually agreed that we didn’t have anything more that was valid and worth our time (this is why I love my sibby).
And then it was time for a lovely dinner of Special K. Fancy, huh? But it was really really good for some reason.
And of course my cats went crazy, wanting the milk. Especially Persephone, she got those crazy eyes.
I did end up updating my message center calendars tonight. Still love those!
And then I watched Good Luck Chuck, which I’ve never seen. But oh my gosh, I could completely relate to Jessica Alba’s character, becuase I am that CLUMSY and forgetful! Obviously. Even my boss today warned me that I wasn’t treating my camera carefully enough. The strap dangled off my desk and flirted with the armrest of my chair, just waiting to be yanked off.
Tonight, I’ll probably take a bath and read, or watch TV in bed. And then it all starts over again tomorrow.
Now naturally, I didn’t tell all. There were sweet moments and emotional ones with my friends and loved ones. But I’m not going to give that up so easily 
Welcome to July!
I’m all caught up on my Project 365 album, and I have only one more week and page left to complete the first album. Which means I’ll be saying goodbye to the Earthy Power Palette I’ve been using for all 32 pages. It’s been a great kit to use, but I am looking forward to something new!
Click to enlarge.
Some days I completely forget to take photos. This was one of those days, which sucks because I did quite a bit that was picture worthy. But alas, it must go undocumented. I think my head is in the clouds too because work is just a bucket of stress right now and then when I’m not working, I’m thinking about it, or thinking about Photoshop. How dumb, right? Me not taking a photograph really symbolizes how the end of June is in my life anyway. Too busy.
At least I could make something pretty to replace a photo.
So for the past few nights I’ve been exerting my creative energy on making my own digital scrapbook papers and embellishments. I can’t even remember why I got started doing this, but I’ve been having a blast doing it and I wanted to share it with you fine people.
First and foremost, I am a loyal Creative Memories customer. They have some of the most amazing stuff at really good prices. They also have, hands-down, the best software I’ve ever tried for digital scrapbooking. I use Photoshop and Fireworks on a daily basis at work (and to make these kits), but for art of actual digital scrapbooking, their software Storybook Creator Plus is amazing. Trust me, save yourself a lot of time and effort and get this now. It’s well worth $60. You are not just stuck with using Creative Memories products with the software (although you’ll probably be unable to resist their goodies).
It’s got a lot of paisleys, but it’s the colors that really make this one nice. Purples and greens are so soothing to me. It has 20 pieces of paper and 3 coordinating embellishments.
And here they are in action:
The Simple Sisters
