Live in Color

Yesterday I did a quick scrapbook page that I'd like to share:

This colorful page is a perfect celebration of Sarah and how colorful, zany, and wonderfully weird she is. What a great friend.
She and I had a long and much needed talk today and I am just so happy to have her.

Bits n' Pieces of Happiness

With some of the stressful things going on lately, it's time to focus on a little bit of happiness. I read this today -

10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy

The first one is very appropriate right now:

I have been finding a lot of cheer lately in little things... a frappucino at Starbucks... a good conversation with a friend... making a scrapbook page... getting a new laptop bag that I love! I really think they key to not getting depressed is being able to recognize these little things and be happy about them. Apparently I've been REALLY happy about them. When I got a bunch of my scrapbook pages printed and put them in my album, I hugged it. Hahaha. And when I got my new laptop bag and it turned out to be even more wonderful than I thought... well, I hugged that too! I felt a little silly getting so happy about little things... but reading this article today showed me that it is actually a good thing. So, let's celebrate that... here's some of my new scrapbook pages I've done recently:

And here is my new -Pink!- laptop bag! I just love this bag. A digi-scrapper's dream!

Now it might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I am just loving it. Besides being cute, it has more pockets than I could ever need and it's really great quality. It is cheering me up and I just want to find some place to go hang out tomorrow so I can use the bag and take my laptop somewhere! :)

One more thing that is really making me happy is this blog that just started January 1st... It's all about digital scrapbooking. And it is so chock full of awesome things every single day. It brings a HUGE smile to my face. In fact, this article about happiness was posted on THERE today! That's where I found out about it and that gave me such a pick me up :) If anybody is interested, here's the site - The Daily Digi.

In other news... I think I might have my very first client for my teaching business! My friend Christine who is a digital designer has a good friend who would like to learn digi scrapping. I told her I am not totally set up & ready yet, but that I would gladly teach her friend for half price if she doesn't mind sort of being my guinea pig and letting me sort of figure things out as we go along. I'm waiting to hear back about all of that, but it looks pretty promising. It would be such a great experience for me to have a person to teach as "practice" so to speak.

Hard Drive Drama & New Layouts

Friday night I had the girls over. I made meatball subs with my crock pot (they were just ok I think) and we were all setting out to accomplish various projects. I was going to work on my save the date cards... printing out the addresses, and the additional brunch cards, etc. Before I got started, they wanted me to put the flower photos on my computer to look at them. When I went to do that, I opened my iPhoto library and it was EMPTY!!!!! I was freaking out thinking that my photos were all gone!!!! Luckily they are still there, but the XML file that tells iphoto how to find the photos and how they are organized - that file got corrupted. So I will have to import all my photos again and re-organize them. It could have been worse but EEEK. My external hard drive was the cause of this... it has been acting funky for a couple of weeks and causing my iPhoto to freeze a lot. So right now I am not even plugging in the external hard drive because I don't want this to happen to my OTHER iPhoto library where I keep my scrapping supplies. That one would be a BITCH to re-organize!!!!!

I did a LOT of research about external hard drives because Ian's also did this to him a while back so I am done with Western Digital. We think the reason is the type of USB connector, with the small end that's actually on the hard drive being the problem. It just doesn't hold up well to someone using it ALL the time. I am ordering one that will allow me to use FireWire 800 (which should be super fast AND more secure of a connection.) Here's what I'm getting:

The LaCie Rugged 500GB External Hard Drive

(I got it for $100 less on NewEgg.com)

This drive has gotten unbelieveable reviews. All the other hard drives I looked at were hit or miss with half of the people saying they had no problems, and the other half of people saying they had problems just like mine. This is the only drive where no one complained of it failing after a few months. One guy even said he carried it around the WORLD in his backpack WITHOUT A CASE and it still worked perfectly. That's why they call it RUGGED! :)

I don't really dig the bright orange (it's even brighter in person), but luckily you can buy other color rubber sleeves to put on it. I tried to get one at the Apple store last night but they only have the 250gb, and they even called all the local stores for me to check. Oh well... it's ok but now I have to wait a few more days before I can DO anything about this! I was on such a roll with my scrapbooking, and now I am just sitting here not able to do any. Can't work much on my business stuff either, because I need my digital kits to work with to do screenshots and stuff for my lesson plans. GRRRRRR! I can't wait to get the new drive, get things transferred, do what I need to do to be up and running and organized again, and get back to work!!

At least I did manage to get some more scrapbook pages done before this happened. Here are the newer ones that I haven't posted yet:

I am really happy with these pages! Yay! And I miss my scrapping. I hope I'm up and running soon.

Finished Scrapping 2007! Well, Kinda :)

I am officially done with scrapping 2007 now...as long as you don't count my separate Greece & Turkey album! That one will still take quite a while. There was one empty page in my 2007 book and I finally threw this one together:

Nothing too special, but at least I'm DONE!!! Whoo hooo!

Now it's not as though I am just now getting started scrapping 2008... I've already done quite a few! But now it can be my focus. I am really hoping to get caught up, since you know, it's 2009 now. Haha!

Here are the new ones I've gotten done, from early 2008:

Pretty good for this week so far! I am glad to be getting things done. Next on the list is to finish my engagement pictures (from the day of getting engaged, not the portraits done later, those are already scrapped.) Just one more 2-pager to do with those. I do want to keep working on my Greece & Turkey book too. I think I might try to focus on that every time I get together with Kellie, so at least once a week I'll work on that album and the rest of the time I can keep catching up on 2008 :)

New Layouts & Teaching

I scrapped a new page today - FINALLY! It had been almost a month! I used the cute photos of Melissa & me from last week and a great freebie kit I found today from this blog Stolen Moments.

I also have this two-pager to share. I actually did this one at the beginning of the month but had forgotten to post about it.

The photos from that layout are from August 2007 when we went into Rocky Mountain National Park with my aunt and grandma.

Those are all I have in the way of new layouts to share. It's been a busy month and not a lot of time for scrapping. But I am feeling the mojo coming back :)

I got to have my first experience in teaching digital scrapbooking over the holidays! My aunt has been wanting to learn, and I gave her some lessons. I didn't have my lesson plan all done or handouts to give her, so I was totally winging it. But I basically took things in the same order that I will be teaching classes. It was easier with her than it will be with a complete newbie, because she is somewhat familiar with photoshop tools and things like that.

I have to say, it was SO MUCH FUN to help her learn, and to see how happy she got when she completed her first page and realized she could do it! I think I will really enjoy teaching this to people. I did decide that I would like to start out with one-on-one lessons before I try to tackle a small group. It will help me gain the experience I need.

I guess overall I am just happy to see that this is something I will enjoy :)

More Scrapping

Some MORE scrapping! Kind of all over the place...a page from Christmas 2006, Ian's New Zealand trip in April 2007, and a layout from our Fraser trip April 2008 as well as an additional engagement page from that trip. Hope you enjoy!!

Tea Party Pages and More

Wow it's been a while since I got any pages done! First of all, I did these first three about a month to 6 weeks ago. The first two pager is from a small family gathering with some distant relatives which took place in August 2007 (Yep I am waaay behind.) The 3rd one is from my birthday tea party, September of this year.

So I had started off the tea party pages with that one of Sarah, but then I didn't touch the project again until this week. I used some quick pages to get these done - I'm pretty happy with them...

So I'm feeling good that I'm finally getting back into my scrapping. There is SO MUCH I want to do! I really really REALLY want to finish off my 2007 album and of course my Greece and Turkey album. I think oh 2008 isn't so bad because we're still in it... then I realize it will only by 2008 for another 7 weeks... holy crap! So much to do. SO SO MUCH. I would freaking LOVE to be caught up, but does that EVER happen????

I got my 8x8 prints in from MyPicTales.... still waiting on the 12x12 prints. I placed my order October 5th so this waiting game is making me mad. I guess it's worth it with a coupon for 100 free prints, but I don't see myself continuing to use their service after this. Maybe for bound books but that's it! I'm going back to my beloved Costco.

It was nice getting the 8x8 prints though, because I've never really SEEN them before. I always thought 8x8 would be too small for me to enjoy them... but I actually do like them a lot. After I finish 2007, 2008, and Greece/Turkey I might switch to 8x8 fully for future stuff. Except maybe vacation albums.

Here's my 8x8 prints:

That's all for now... more soon, I hope!