Monday stuff and scrapbooking

I am thankful to be home!

I am glad Thanksgiving is over. Whew. My tummy can't take any more! Coincidentally, today is the launch of a brand new Weight Watchers program. Yipee! I love it. I have been "doing" this one for a couple weeks (as an employee, we had to learn it before teaching to new members obviously) and it is so awesome. Anyone who wants to get healthy and maybe lose some weight, you should take advantage of a free meeting to learn the new program. Anyway, I am not even worried about Thanksgiving weight gain, because the new program has given me lots of freedom and I know if I did gain (which I probably did!) it will be super easy to get back on track. With that being said, I am glad to be home and eating my own food and exercising regularly. How can one long weekend throw me off so much?!

My Things to Do this week:

• put away fall/Halloween decor
• store Parker's clothes he has outgrown (for Tanner)
• cut materials for my Christmas cards
• sort two scrapbook albums and put pages in the correct order (see below)
• buy needed scrapbooks at Hobby Lobby (sale this week!) for scrapbook pages (see below, again)
• decorate our Christmas tree!

My Menus for this week: (easy week, because I know we will be busy)

• we had spaghetti last night, so yummy after all that Thanksgiving food
• tacos for the kids, tofu taco salad for me (Paul has PhD class- easy meal)
• chicken pasta with bitter greens
• shrimp sandwiches (repeat from last week, so yummy, have leftover shrimp frozen)
• homemade pizzas
• tortellini with mushrooms and peppers

I am a scrapbooking girl and have been forever. Really. I have old Trapper Keepers full of scrapbooks I made when I was a kid! I don't get enough time to do as many pages and albums as I'd like but on the occasion I do get some extra time. You can bet I am camped out at my desk with my adhesive and my scissors.

A couple years ago, I came across an idea from Stacy Julian (a pioneer in the scrapbooking industry in case you didn't know) that encouraged you to scrapbook whatever you wanted, in no order. OK, so this goes against what I had always done which was to scrap things chronologically. I had files set up for holidays, birthdays, by dates, etc. Then I started scrapping pictures I really liked or just wanted to get put on a page. Well the problem was, I still liked having my albums set up chronologically. (Stacy did not recommend this, she said to have album categories like "holidays", bugged me, couldn't do it.) So I started putting them in a big box until I could get them in their correct albums.

It looked like this...

Yikes! It would not close. Not good. So I sorted them by year (for our family albums) and by child (for each one of them)...

I have albums for 2006, 2007, and 2008. I have to buy one for 2009 and 2010. I also have to decide if I want one for each child for each year (of course their first year is huge) or for a series, like age 2-5. Not sure on that yet. (Hence getting to Hobby Lobby for the 50% off sale this week!)

Now I have to sort each year by date and put them in their correct album. It is a big project and I have decided that Stacy's idea just doesn't work for me. I guess I have to do it my way, and that's ok. The crazy thing, once I get the pages in the albums, the album will be almost done so I was basically still scrapping chronologically!

While I was sorting, I checked in here... (I forget about this basket because most of my "have to do projects" are on my desk)

Lo and behold, there was a project that I started this summer (it was a class with one of my favorite scrapbooking diva designers Margie Romney Aslett) and never finished. It was a shabby chic mini album that was supposed to be a banner you hang up. Well, as much as I love the idea, again, I had to make it my own. I have no where to hang a banner that won't get destroyed. Here are the pages...

Whoops, sideways, you get the idea.

I put my "cover" on some thick cardboard (Sarah, I thought of you when I did this!)

Punched some holes in the pages and put them on rings.

Added leftover ribbon to the rings.

Voila! Love it!

And I used the leftover paper scraps to make some cards. I just have to stamp some sentiments and they are done. I swear, seeing all my finished projects is so energizing! I could have stayed up all night cutting and gluing!