Keep in Touch!

Change is so hard for me…and as the years pass by I have realized just how much I crave routine, familiar things.  After many discussions and sleepless nights we’ve decided to send the boys to a private school next year.  Aaacck!  I know it’s the right decision for our family but it’s such a big change!  The boys are both very excited and a bit unsure at the same time.  They have great friends at our current school and we want to be sure to keep in touch with them.  I made up “business cards” for the boys with their phone number on them.  They brought them to school today to give to their friends.  Jamie just got off the phone with one of his classmates.  He is grinning from ear to ear.  Doesn’t matter that they just saw each other less than an hour ago, or that they’ll see each other tonight for the Kindergarten Circus – they talked about nothing, were goofy and it was hilarious!  Wanted to share this idea just in case you'd like to do something similar.  These came together really quick in Storybook Creator Plus (on sale for under $39 right now!)  I used mostly elements from the Primary Elementary School Additions  kit. 
 

Kung Zhu Madness!

I've moved this post to my new blog - Frugal Folk.  That's where you'll find all future posts about money, rewards programs and word of mouth marketing. Hope to see you there!

Sneak Peek of New Products available July 1st!

Great new products are on their way – including LOTS of new Disney items including Fairies, Toy Story, Mickey and Friends, Crusin’ Cars and Princess Tales!  Here’s just a few – LOVE that new 12x12 coverset!!

Close-up of the coverset:

A new paper album – would make a great autograph book!

There is also new non-Disney stuff, too!

Simply Beautiful Summer Additions

New Classic Water Sports Stickers and a Small Wavy Rotary Blade

You can see all the new July products in the new Mini Catalog – which you can download here.

Frappuccino Bottle Cocoa Set

I love cute marshmallows!  I saw these heart shaped ones at The Dollar Tree and picked up a few bags –knowing I wanted to do something with them for Valentines Day.  Marshmallows go perfectly with hot cocoa so I decided to make a cute hot cocoa gift set for each of the boy’s teachers.

I bought  a couple of 4 packs of Kroger brand frappuccino – the ones that come in the little carriers.  (Note for future projects:  start earlier – those frapps (even the light ones) aren’t as good when you have to drink them by a deadline!) - and then removed the labels.  The Kroger brand labels are shrink wrapped so they were really easy to remove.  I traced the shape of the carton on the wrong side of the paper I wanted to use, cut it out and adhered it to the carrier.  I dressed it up with a bit of coordinating paper, paper flowers and clear quote stickers. 

For the bottle lids I cut a thin piece of paper with the CM Rotary Trimmer, then placed that around the edge of the cap.  I used circles punched with the CM Circle Maker and put them on the top of the lid, labeling each with the contents in the jar.

I kept this really simple because I liked to see the cute stuff in the bottles.  You could decorate the bottles, too if you wanted to dress it up more. 

Besides the heart marshmallows I’ve seen red (really pink) & green trees for Christmas and brown, orange & white ghosts for Halloween.  I just bought some really cute pastel colored bunny marshmallows - all of these were at Target :)

Marshmallows, Cocoa Mix, Pocky Sticks & candy hearts.

The Pocky sticks I found in the international aisle (asian foods, I think) of my local Kroger.  They are chocolate covered “biscuit” sticks – cookies I think – and the pink ones are strawberry flavored.  I thought they would be cute stirrers for hot cocoa.

The set above features paper from the retired Cherish kit.

This is the other set I did and it uses paper and paper flowers from the Delight Power Palette.

The teachers loved them!

Paper + Digital = Hybrid!

Being a Creative Memories Consultant I sometimes decorate blank albums with new product to have on display. I try to use products that I will be able to use myself but sometimes I make things with no end project in mind. When the Cherish papers came out I fell in love with them and couldn’t wait to play with them! I just love the richness of the colors and the patterns in this line. CM had a Cherish kit for a 7x7 album – complete with pre-cut pages, stickers, vellum shapes and an idea for each page (I love not having to re-invent the wheel!) I made up the album just like the examples shown in the book that came with the kit. I showed it off & then it sat on my shelf for a loooong time :)

My 10 year wedding anniversary was last September & I knew I wanted to do an album for my husband but wanted to keep it simple. He's not a scrapbooker & barely tolerates having his picture taken ;) I pulled out the Cherish album that was just waiting for photos & decided to fill it with pictures of us throughout the years. I used Memory Manager to sort through the thousands of pictures I have to find favorites of Rich & I together (this is super easy to do if you tag your photos in Memory Manager). I imported those into Storybook Creator Plus and then converted them to sepia. I added some digital elements from the Cherish Digital kit (which is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD here) and others that coordinated (mostly from the Romance digital kit) and a few other embellishments (from the digital freebies on the CM Project Center) and then printed them out 4x6” an put them into my Cherish album.

Here are a few pictures I used in the album:

This one uses a free photo mask from the CM Project Center

 

This one I used the magic wand tool to remove all the color from the picture, except for the flowers. 

A few pictures of the album pages:

Super easy & quick.

The Cherish 7x7 kit isn’t available anymore but the 12x12ish paper is – you can find it here (while supplies last) in the clearance section of my CM website at a fantastic price!

I love this album & so did Rich! Hope you like it, too!

Journal, Journal – JOURNAL!

We all struggle with it – putting our feelings into words but just in case you need a reminder about how important it is to record what’s in your heart – here you go:

My Mom just sent me the most beautiful letter written by Big Jim – my paternal Grandfather.  He wrote the letter after meeting me for the first time.  He was writing the letter to my Dad who was serving in Vietnam.  My Dad wouldn’t get to hold me until I was about 4 months old when he came home from Vietnam.

Big Jim describes the visit he had with my Mom and her parents, my Grandpa Abe & Grandma Nellie, the meals my Mom cooked and other trivial things – about the drive home & at his work that week.  The letter is 3 pages long and filled with lots of details!   Here’s my favorite part:

In looking back over my life – I presume that biggest thrill I ever had was seeing you for the first time a few minutes after you were born, but believe you me, – the thrill of seeing and holding Lisa last Saturday afternoon for the first time, ranks very close to my biggest thrill in life.

Wow. 

I remember Big Jim as a cigar smoking, martini drinking, lovable old Grandpa.   He was fun – I loved spending time with him but I really don’t recall him being a man of many words, just your typical Grandpa stuff.  Of course I knew he loved me, but to see his very own words on paper just makes my heart swell.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the letter – Big Jim was quite taken with me.   I think I may have blushed a bit while reading about how much of a doll I was & how good of a baby I was.  My heart just about exploded when I read him gushing about how I cuddled up to him so nicely when he held me. 

We all have those times in our life when we think our heart will burst because it’s so full of wonderful feelings that we think we’ll remember forever.  YOU WON’T!  Write it down – record it for the people you love.

 

This is Big Jim holding my Dad. 

If he could journal you can, too!!

I have to go get some more tissues and then go journal in my albums. 

Boo!

Just sharing a couple of REALLY quick projects I did today.

The beakers of candies I picked up at WalMart.  They were only $3 each!  The cute little labels are freebies from the CM Project Center –they’re in the Digital Freebies section. I just imported them into SBC+ (instructions for this are on the Project Center) then printed them off onto regular  paper and stuck them onto the bottles.  The center jar is filled with my newest addiction…sour pumpkins by Zachary you can find them at Meijer. 

I cut a circle using the Custom Cutting System out of paper found in the new Halloween Additions Kit and added a sticker from the same kit to the top of the lid.

(This kit is now only available in a Digital format)

Doesn’t get much easier than that!  Thanks for looking!