It's Been a While

Well ... its been quite some time since I posted here ... and quite some time since I did any scrapbooking. Things have just been too crazy preparing for the deployment and spending time with the kids etc. With that said though, I did manage to get some pages done for Mariah recently. Here they are:

The first ... We Miss You ... is one that she is going to send to Robbie to brighten his day in Iraq.

There is another one for Robbie as well .... I like how it turned out ... here it is:

Then I did a page for her, one for Mackenzie and one for RJ. I had a lot of fun doing all of these pages, now I have to do some for us as well .. in preparation of Mitch's deployment to Iraq.
This is Mackenzie's page:

Here is the one that I did for Mariah ... I really like the words to Shedaisy's song, "Come Home Soon".

The page for RJ is cute ... I tried to get as many pictures of him and Robbie on there as I could. That way he can see his daddy every day.

Mission: Support Our Troops Extended

Mission: Support Our Troops! Thank our Soldiers with a Layout DEADLINE EXTENDED through Nov. 30 email: Gina Schwans DigitalsDiva@gmail.com to submit layouts for our troops and upload them to this gallery: http://digitalscrapbookpages.com:80/galleria/showgallery.php/cat/1044

~Stacey

Owner/Designer @ Digitals

http://www.digitalscrapbookpages.com/digitals/

Hummie's Hosting the DSD Tailgate Party

Just found out about Digital Scrapbooking Day being the first Saturday in November. Now there is another really cool event!
Hummie is hosting the DSD Tailgate Party. It's a party before the party!
There's going to be layouts, prizes and much, much more. Head on over to Hummie's Blog to find out more!

Thought I might take part in this Tailgate Party also. I am not really in a scrapping mood ... but we are supposed to share Heritage type layouts. Hummie's directions were to "Create a layout with "heirloom" photos and/or memorabilia." I decided to go back through my layouts and post some here that I haven't shared with you all yet. That was actually a fun thing to do .. going thorugh my old layouts. Here is the first one that I found. I cannot take credit for making it though ... it was shared with me by my mom. This was given to my Aunt as a Christmas gift this past year by her daughter. I really like it though, so I'm sharing it with you all here.
The next 2 layouts that I am going to share were created by me. The first is a page done using a photo of my husband's father from 1948. It is of his High School Basketball team. The second page is a wedding page. It was done using photos from 4 generations of my family members. My husband and I, My parents, My Mom's Parents and their parents.

Digital Scrapbooking Day

Well ... scrapbookers around the world have a holiday. National Scrapbooking Day is in May each year. Looks like Digi-Scrappers will have a day of our own to celebrate too. Digital Scrapbooking Day will be the first Saturday in November each year. This holiday will start with a bang on November 3, 2007.
For more information on Digital Scrapbooking Day please check out the information provided by Susan White (Director of Marketing for Triscape) at the DSD blog .. http://www.digitalscrapbookingday.com/

No More Training Wheels

I did this layout up for the Picture This challenge at Digitals. I had a ton of fun creating it. I combined two templates created by Simply Sarah. I used Amanda Thorderson's Songs of Hope kit. I took these pictures today while we were all outside. Here is what the journaling says ...
Today was a day of firsts! When the day started I sent the boys outside to play with their friends. They wanted to ride their bikes, so I got them out. They were riding with Wesley, Daniel and Jason. A little while later Andrew came in to tell me that Daniel had taken off Wesley's training wheels. I wasn't sure that was such a good idea, but he did just fine without them. A few minutes later Cody said he wanted to learn to ride without his training wheels too. I had him use one of the extra bikes that we have, since it had no training wheels. He did great.
BJ didn't want to learn, he was scared. I finally got him to agree to try, but he wanted to use his green bike, not one of the extra ones. We compromised. He used Cody's green bike after I took the training wheels off. I didn't even get a chance to teach him what to do. He hopped right on the bike and started going. He did a fabulous job too! Now there are no more training wheels in our house. They are all big boys now!

ADSR2 -- Challenges 8 & 9

Challenge 8 for the Amazing Race was a tough one for me. Finding the pictures was a real challenge. I managed to find ones from when I was a teenager pretty easily; had to scan them in, but I found them easily. They aren't the greatest pictures in the world; but who has the greatest pictures from when they were a teenager. Not many people back then. Anyway ... finding current pictures was more difficult. I am always taking the pictures. Especially when I am with Mariah ... well, she takes pictures too, but nobody takes pictures of us together! I decided to use a picture of me holding Mariah's new baby and a picture of her when she was pregnant. We were at the bowling alley and she was taking pictures of the boys and Mackenzie bowling. She and I love to take pictures and do so as often as we can, especially when we are together. Maybe some day we will be able to get someone to take a picture of us together. For this layout I chose to mix a bunch of things together. The background paper, journaling page and star are from Amanda Thorderson's A New Baby Boy kit. The wordart is from Tracy Dane, Kikibug and TartzScrapz. They were all freebie downlaods from awhile ago. I love wordart, so I have quite a collection. Font is Velvet Script. Full page journaling reads as follows:
The meaning of friendship changes as we get older, along the same lines as we do. When I was in high school I spent a lot of my free time hanging out with Leslie Erpelding. She and I were inseparable. We played Volleyball together and did Chorus together as well. She was a year ahead of me in school, so we didn't have classes together, except for Chorus, but we got to spend lunch period together. The photos below show just how goofy we could be when we wanted to. Luckily there was someone around to take pictures of us, even if it was to embarass us with them later. Leslie was there for me no matter what. She helped me through boy troubles and parent problems and I did the same for her. She was even nice enough to help me learn how to drive. The things we talked about back then don't seem all that important now, but they were back then. I am married now and have children of my own ... all boys of course, so I won't have to deal with them and "girl talk". Every girl needs someone to talk to though, a place to vent her frustrations. I found that person again a few years ago. Being a military family we don't live in the same place for very long. That makes it hard to find real friends. Mariah is a great friend though. She and I cn spend hours on the phone talking about nothing. I dont' know what I would ahve done without her during Mitch's last deployment; or what I will do witout her during the upcoming deployment. She still lives in Mannheim, but we are stationed in Baumholder now. It is a 70 minute drive to get to her house, Luckily we still have the telephone and instant messaging. Thank God for the computer. It is a necessity that I talk to her every day. She knows just what to say when I am mad or frustrated with my children, or upset because of something that Mitch has said or done. She is a real sweetheart. Our normal conversations are more about our kids and life in the military than anything else, but its great to be able to talk with someone who knows what I am going through. Not many people understand the life of a military wife. Its great when you connect with someone who does. I'm glad I found Mariah!

This is the layout that I created for the ADSR2 Challenge #9. We had to scrap about our most embarrassing moment. I don't know if its my most embarrassing moment .. but its the only one I can think of at the moment, so it will have to do. We had to use at least one ribbon, a tag and 2 different fonts while creating this page.
For my layout I used a kit called PopTart ... available at Elemental Scraps. Its one of the kits that I purchased with the gift certificate we were given for completing a previous challenge in this race. The fonts that I used are Kids First Print Font, Lindsay Beehive and Velvet Script. It's A Date Stamp Set by Teriann Hanks @ DSO.

This is what the journaling says:

Lunchtime at the Elementary School is usually a fun thing to see. But not always. There was one day in May, during the year Andrew was in Kindergarten. I was at the school volunteering, like most days. It was time for lunch and ice cream was on the menu for dessert. The lunch ladies had forgotten to give Andrew's class their ice cream when they picked up their trays. The lady working the register gave me the box of ice cream and told me to make sure that all of the students with hot lunch got their ice cream. I handed the cups to all of Andrew's class and the class that shared the tables with them. Then I went to the other tables and started handing the ice cream cups to the third Kindergarten class. I had given it to almost the entire class when their teacher's aide threw a fit. She had purposely made sure that her class didn't get the ice cream cups when they went through the line. She was really mad at me for giving it to them and made me take it all back. I was so embarrassed. I had only been doing what I was told to do, but she made it like I had done something incredibly wrong. I felt so bad for the kids in her class. Especially when I was taking the ice cream back that I had given them I shouldn't have been embarrassed, I only did what I was told. I honestly don't know if I was more embarrassed or upset at the whole situation Probably a bit of both. After taking the ice cream cups back from her students I took the box back to the counter and went to eat by Andrew. I hope tha tI never have to go through anything like that ever again. It was not fun!

Digitals Challenge Layouts

Along with the Amazing Race, Digi Scrapping, 2; I am also working on completing this month's challenges over at Digitals. I do my best each month to get all of the challenges done. It keeps me motivated to scrap and also earns me great kits for free. The two layouts above are from the August Scraplift Challenge and the August Sketch challenge. Here are the original images that were used as inspiration:


















The layout on the left was created by Amanda Risende and was chosen as one of the scraplift choices for this month. I really liked this layout, the way it used so many photos and was a bit grungy. I didn't go with the grungy feel when I did the lift, but I did use the same photo concept. For my layout I used Sharia Braxton's Little Boy Blue kit. The photos on the layout were from Friday, August 3, 2007. The boys had a ball making faces for the camera while they were outside playing with Mitch.

The layout on the right was a sketch template created by Jen Maceunas at Digitals. The sketch was available for purchase as a template in the store, but I didn't do that. I just created my layout based on the sketch. I used Sharia Braxton's Little Boy Blue for this layout also. Photos on the layout are from Sunday, August 5, 2007. They were taken at the park in Mannheim after dropping Mitch off at the airport.

Teamwork

I tried to take a bunch of pictures the day that Mitch left for Georgia ... I didn't do a very good job at the airport. I managed to get a few there, and only one of Mitch himself; but I did a decent job at the playground in Mannheim afterwards. The boys love to have their picture taken. I hate to take posed photos, but sometimes its the only choice I have. I get a few natural ones of them playing around and such, but when they realize that I have the camera out they want to do funky things. Its ok though, sometimes it can add to the quality of the photo ... or the silliness of it at least ... LOL For these layouts I used Dea Spina's newest kit -- Untouched -- available at Digitals, along with her newest template pack -- Variety Layered Templates -- also released this past week at Digitals. They are both great buys. I like the textures and patterns in the kit and the templates are different from her others. I like multi-photo layouts, so these worked really well. If the papers are placed right they make a fantastic 2 page layout. More photos from the park can bee found on my fotki site.
There isn't any journaling on the right page ... just the date (August 5, 2007). The left hand page, full of photos of Andrew, shows the location (Mannheim, Germany) and contains all of the journaling. Here is what the journaling says:
Andrew can be such a monkey sometimes. It is really fun watching him play outside. We stopped in Mannheim on the way home from dropping Mitch off at the airport. While we were there the boys got to play at the park by the Post Office. They really like that park; nothing like that here in Baumholder. Andrew had a great time swinging and sliding down the Fireman's pole. He went down the pole a bunch of times. I'm glad that they enjoyed themselves. That park has a lot of opportunities for teamwork. BJ and Cody worked really well together on the mari-go-round. I miss being able to spend time at the park with them like this ... if only we had nice parks to go to in Baumholder, guess that means more trips to visit Mariah and Mackenzie in Mannheim.

Playing With Daddy

Well ... the rules of the ADSR2 challenge #7 were changed ... so Shawn and I had to redo my layout because we couldn't use templates.

My new layout was made using an enlarged photo of my husband combined with a blue paper from Sharia Braxton's Little Boy Blue kit. The Reel is from Pamela McNicol’s Digitreats Expecting You kit ... recolored using a paper from Sharia Braxton's Little Boy Blue kit.

Shawn added to the layout and made it pretty. The paper behind the reel and star on top of the reel are from Amanda Thorderson's America the Beautiful kit, and the flourish is SwirlsII brush by Obsidian Dawn.

WordArt created by SimplySarah.
Journaling font is Velvet Script.

Journaling reads as follows: Mitch has been gone so much lately that the boys have not gotten to spend any time with him. First he was always busy with work and then they went to the field for 3 weeks. He did manage to come home a full week before he was due to leave for school. He was still busy that week at work and the boys didn't see him much then either. It was really nice to see them outside having fun outside Friday night. They tossed football, played helicopter and generally acted goofy. I think we had about 10 kids in the front yard that evening. I got a real laugh when Mitch kicked the big playground ball in the air ... he kicked it so high that it got stuck on the 3rd floor balcony. That apartment is empty so we couldn't get the ball back ... that ended that game real quick.. I got the ball back on Monday when the workers were there to clean.

Girl Talk by Gina

Challenge 8 for the Amazing Race was a tough one for me. Finding the pictures was a real challenge. I managed to find ones from when I was a teenager pretty easily; had to scan them in, but I found them easily. They aren't the greatest pictures in the world; but who has the greatest pictures from when they were a teenager. Not many people back then. Anyway ... finding current pictures was more difficult. I am always taking the pictures. Especially when I am with Mariah ... well, she takes pictures too, but nobody takes pictures of us together! I decided to use a picture of me holding Mariah's new baby and a picture of her when she was pregnant. We were at the bowling alley and she was taking pictures of the boys and Mackenzie bowling. She and I love to take pictures and do so as often as we can, especially when we are together. Maybe some day we will be able to get someone to take a picture of us together. For this layout I chose to mix a bunch of things together. The background paper, journaling page and star are from Amanda Thorderson's A New Baby Boy kit. The wordart is from Tracy Dane, Kikibug and TartzScrapz. They were all freebie downlaods from awhile ago. I love wordart, so I have quite a collection. Font is Velvet Script. Full page journaling reads as follows:
The meaning of friendship changes as we get older, along the same lines as we do. When I was in high school I spent a lot of my free time hanging out with Leslie Erpelding. She and I were inseparable. We played Volleyball together and did Chorus together as well. She was a year ahead of me in school, so we didn't have classes together, except for Chorus, but we got to spend lunch period together. The photos below show just how goofy we could be when we wanted to. Luckily there was someone around to take pictures of us, even if it was to embarass us with them later. Leslie was there for me no matter what. She helped me through boy troubles and parent problems and I did the same for her. She was even nice enough to help me learn how to drive. The things we talked about back then don't seem all that important now, but they were back then. I am married now and have children of my own ... all boys of course, so I won't have to deal with them and "girl talk". Every girl needs someone to talk to though, a place to vent her frustrations. I found that person again a few years ago. Being a military family we don't live in the same place for very long. That makes it hard to find real friends. Mariah is a great friend though. She and I cn spend hours on the phone talking about nothing. I dont' know what I would ahve done without her during Mitch's last deployment; or what I will do witout her during the upcoming deployment. She still lives in Mannheim, but we are stationed in Baumholder now. It is a 70 minute drive to get to her house, Luckily we still have the telephone and instant messaging. Thank God for the computer. It is a necessity that I talk to her every day. She knows just what to say when I am mad or frustrated with my children, or upset because of something that Mitch has said or done. She is a real sweetheart. Our normal conversations are more about our kids and life in the military than anything else, but its great to be able to talk with someone who knows what I am going through. Not many people understand the life of a military wife. Its great when you connect with someone who does. I'm glad I found Mariah!

Saying Good-Bye to Daddy

Mitch left for Ft. Gordon on Sunday and I tried to get some pictures of him with the boys before he left. It didn't work very well, seeing as how he hates to have his picture taken. I did manage to get a picture of him and some of the boys. So I did up this scrapbook page to put them together. I took the photo of the boys at the airport while Mitch was checking his baggage in and finding out his gate. After that we went upstairs to McDonald's for breakfast. Nothing like burgers and chicken nuggets for breakfast .. LOL I took the picture of Mitch while he was walking back to the table upstairs. For this layout I used Dea Spina's Bejeweled Nigtht kit. The page was submitted for the Ad Challenge at Digitals.
The journaling reads:

August 5, 2007 --- Frankfurt International Airport, Frankfurt Germany
Daddy left for school on Sunday, August 5th and we had to take him to the airport. It was a rough day for all of us. Going to bed the night before was a challenge; many tears were shed. BJ didn't want to sleep, he wanted to go on the airplane with Daddy. It was hard to explain to you all why he had to leave the next morning. This is the first extended separation that you boys are really old enough to understand. Sunday morning we got up at 5am to leave for the airport. It was a nice drive, but a long one at that hour. You all behaved remakably well. At the airport you were kind of crazy, but it was understandable. After a breakfast of McDonalds burgers, nuggetts and fries it was time to say good-bye to Daddy. Instead of saying good-bye at the gate he walked us back to the car and we said good-bye there. 14 weeks is a long time to be apart, but we can do it.

August CT Assignment

Well ... August has arrived and our CT assignments have been made at Digitals. I am working with a fabulous designer this month. Her name is Dea Spina and she is from Brazil. Dea has a multitude of kits available at the Digitals Store ... make sure you stop by and check out her shop.

Today is the 4th of August and I have already worked with a handful of her fabulous kits. The first one that I worked with was My Little Gentleman. I combined this with her A History To Tell template set ... what a great combination. Here are a few of the layouts that I did with these kits.




















The next kit that I chose to work with was Dea's Beyond Mystery kit.I combined this kit with templates from other sites. I really like this kit because the papers have that grungy feel to them ... and the elements are really neat. This was a perfect kit to scrap some of the photos from the Munich Zoo.




















I am having such a great time working with Dea's kits. She has a new one that just came out. I can't wait to get a chance to work with it also. It is called Untouched ... and I just noticed, she also has a new template pack out, its called Variety Layered Templates ... what fun! Lucky Me!

New Duties ... More Layouts?

Just wanted to stop by and mention that in addition to my duties as a 1st Responder and Challenge Hostess at Digitals I am now also on the Creative Team there. I can't wait to get to work with the different designers. What an opportunity this will be.

I am also participating in the Amazing Race, Digi Scrapping 2. The race is hosted by Natural Designs in Scrapbooking (NDISB). Its a ton of fun. More on the Race can be found here.

Stop by and see the layouts created by my team. I have teamed up with Shawn (csuramsrule) and we have a race blog.

Digitals CT Call

If you can't see the graphic, here is the text:

Want to work with a variety of fabulous designers, earning free kits and making gorgeous layouts? We have the job for you!

We need 5 more members to join our Creative Team at Digitals. Each CT member will work with a designer for 1 month, making at least 2 layouts with each kit provided and posting them in our gallery, DST, and a minimum of 2 other galleries of your choice. Emailing LOs through Yahoo groups, writing reviews in the store, and submitting to magazines are big pluses. You will be given a minimum of 2 kits per month (4 layouts) for free, but you have the opportunity to do more if you and the designer wish. CT members will rotate to a new designer each month. Please be willing to make a minimum 3 month committment and sign a confidentiality agreement. If you and a designer click, they may ask you to be on their personal CT.

Please email Stacey @ Digitals with a paragraph explaining why you want to be on the team, links to the galleries where you are most active, your other involvement in the digital scrapbooking community (moderator, creative teams, etc.,) your username at our site, and a little about yourself. This call will remain open until we find enough people that fit our team.
We look forward to your applications!

Weekend Happenings

Yesterday we helped Wesley celebrate his 7th birthday. It was a lot of fun. We should have been celebrating Mitch's 32nd birthday with him ... but he is currently in Graf and not here with us, so that was not possible. The boys got to play some fun games at the party and really enjoyed themselves. Here are a few layouts that I've done so far today with the party photos:

This is a fun 2 page layout ... you get to see all of the kids that were at the party in it. I also did up a page with just one photo .. its a quick page but I love the photo so it had to be done too.
I have been a busy scrapper this weekend. I did up a page for Kaleb (who turns 12 today). I really like the way that it turned out. I also did a page for my grandmother with photos from the baseball game that she went to on the 4th of July. I hope she likes it.

Mission: Support Our Troops

I have been AWOL from here for quite a while .. for that I am truly sorry. I feel like such a slacker. I promise to get better though. Mitch left this morning for the field and will be gone, for the most part, for the next 19 months. He is doing training for the next month and then will return home for a few days and head off to school in Georgia. He is due to return here to Baumholder around the 17th of November. His unit is deploying to Iraq some time that month .. so he will come home and deploy right away. In preparation for his deployment and in support of those already deployed we have started a new campaign at Digitals. Mission: Support Our Troops. We are asking people to submit 12x12 layouts @ 300dpi. These layouts will be gathered and made into a video. It will be shown when his unit leaves for Iraq this fall. We are offering to send it to other units that are deployed as well. This is to show them that they are appreciated and that we support them in what they are doing. So, whether you believe in the war or not, let's believe in our troops. Show them that you care and send them a message from home. Every person that submits a layout will receive a Patriotic Mini-Kit made by Selana. Here are a few of the layouts that I have submitted for this great cause ... the first is a simple thank you message from our family and well wishes for all of the service members who are serving overseas right now. For this page I used the Mini-Kit that Selana is providing as a gift for those who participate. The second layout is pretty straight forward and to the point ... Some Heroes Wear Capes ... Mine Wear Combat Boots! My third submission was inspired by a poster that I saw on the Air Force website and by the lyrics from a Toby Keith song. I used Lori Imel's US Army Forever kit to create this page. It's one of my favorites. Right now I have one more page that I have submitted for this project. This one was inspired by a website that I found to purchase an MP3 version of the song whose lyrics I used for the layout. A Soldier Coming Home by Ned McElroy & Jerry Williams. This is one of my favorite songs. It was definitely true the last time that Mitch was deployed and I'm sure it will be true again this time too. I really enjoyed making this page. I used the flag background paper from Glenda Ketcham's Red, White & American Blue kit. Photos shown are all my family and friends. Anyway ... I hope that you have enjoyed seeing the layouts that I have submitted. Stop by the Mission: Support Our Troops gallery at Digitals to submit your own or see ones submitted by others. I can't wait to see how many layouts get submitted for this great cause. A few other digital scrapbooking sites have done similar projects in the past few months and their participation was fantastic ... lets hope the folks that hang out at Digitals can do just as good a job, if not better.

Everyone loved the layouts that I did for my grandfather's memorial service. I was asked to do a layout for my Great Aunt Helen and her husband Arthur. Art is the only one of m grandfather's siblings that is still alive. They celebrated their 57th Anniversary the week before my grandfather died. The photo of them together is from my grandfather's memorial service and the bottom photo is their wedding party. I used Tink's Tying the Knot kit, available at Digitals, to created this layout. It's great to celebrate a life lived together.

This photo of my grandparents was shared with me by my mother. I loved the photo and felt that I had to do something with it. I used the Virtual Painter, Oil Painting filter to get the painting look on the larger version. The background is a paper from Tink's Orange Spice kit, available at Digitals. The page was recolored to look like the dining room wall. The frame is from PSP X.

Grandfather

Today is the day of my grandfather's funeral. I cannot be there physially, but I will be there in spirit. In memory of you PaPa.

A Few More for Grandpa

Did up a few more layouts this morning .. Thought I would share.