David found this great little camera case on Amazon.com and we just got it today. LOVE it. And the color … well, it’s the one that “speaks” to me … but they also have a super happy shade of orange, the perfect pink, and other great colors. The direct link is here.

By the way, the point & shoot that I use now (as of last week) is the Canon SD900, recommended by my techie brother Kevin. So far, so good. I know there are a ton of great point & shoot cameras on the market. This one just suits us best – it’s small, high resolution (10 megapixels), great video clips, etc.

I love reading or seeing something that really inspires me. I’m not talking about the oh-that’s-so-pretty type of feeling. I’m talking about the okay-I-am-totally-going-to-do-this-right-now type of feeling. And now I’m adding Rebecca Cooper to my list of favorites.

I mentioned that I read her new book on my way home from CHA (where I met her for the first time). I did this layout the very next day:

This all-text layout is a list of things I wanted to thank David for (we just celebrated our 12th anniversary). I spent all my time on the journaling, and putting the layout together was the quick part. I like it like that. Sometimes it’s fun to spend time on the creativity aspect and sometimes the embellishing is not necessarily where I want my focus to be. You know?

You can learn more about Rebecca’s fabulous book here. Thanks, Rebecca, for giving scrapbookers seriously simple, wonderful, attainable ideas.

PS – There were some really fun things at CHA! The Creating Keepsakes website has some really great video clips online – right on the homepage, in fact – so be sure to check often.

Hey there. I have some pictures to share from CHA – mostly of wonderful people. I don’t have anything visual to share of our evening in the city, but I so enjoyed spending time with a few CK friends in Chicago. Got to pick up my all-time favorite popcorn from Garrett’s (truth be told, it’s the only popcorn I really like … the caramel & cheddar cheese MIXED is seriously to-die-for). We did a little shopping at H&M, had a lovely meal, and a bit of an adventure trying to get back to the hotel late at night when they cleared everyone off the train for “maintenance”.

Say hi to a few new friends:

This sweet person is Wilna, a super talented gal from South Africa that I met there a few years ago. She made this AMAZING, very-much-from-scratch scrapbook for our little family, using pictures that a photographer took of us in South Africa. She’s held onto it all this time (no wonder … it was hard for her to part with it!) so that she could give it to me in person. I about died. What a treasure and I feel totally unworthy to have it. Thank you, thank you Wilna!

These fun girls are on the design team at Picture Me Perfect in Fremont, California (with Suzy West). So fun to see Rocio, Sylvia, and Erin.

This group of cuties is from Tinkering Ink. So, so, so nice and just a fun group of girls. Pretty booth, eh?

I’m told that Kelly Crowl (pictured above) is my biggest fan. And by the way she reacted when she turned around and I was right there … oh MY. Totally entertaining. Such a funny, funny moment for all her friends watching too. Kelly is on the design team at The Memory Zone in Plymouth, Indiana … and totally my new friend.

These sweethearts are from The Scrappin’ Buds in Slidell, Louisiana. Many of them lost everything to Katrina and talking to them about it was sobering. They have such positive attitudes and you can tell that they also have a very special bond and wonderful friendships with one another. So much to be thankful for, and they reminded me of that.

Last, but certainly not least … Rebecca Cooper. Can I gush? Am I allowed? She is DARLING and super talented and she has this fabulous new book out that I love, love, love (and read cover to cover on the plane ride home). I was so inspired, that I even did a layout the next day. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.

By the way, the book I’m holding is my NEW BOOK! It was so fun to see it for the very first time at CHA (I had to smell it right away … I love the smell of fresh printing) and I got to give away a handful of copies too. We’re on schedule to have these available to you in September and if you want us to mail you a copy as soon as it hits our warehouse, you can pre-order here.

Thought I’d drop in to say hi. I’m in transit to Chicago for CHA (Craft & Hobby Association) and looking forward to a couple days there and looking even more forward to being back home with my family Saturday night.

Oh – the picture. These folks look familiar to many of you, yes? They’re from the recent season of American Idol and now they’re on tour. David and I went to the concert last night with some friends and had so much fun. Our personal favorite? Hands down – Blake. They’re all super talented. Even Sanjaya wasn’t so bad. : )

More later. My flight’s about to board.

The fonts that I used in those “written time capsules” that I did with the youth are Abadi MT Condensed Light (as seen in most of the page titles) and Rockwell (as seen in all of the journaling prompts). These happen to be the same two fonts that I used for another project recently – this little album.

This is a 4″ x 4″ album that I put together (with Porter’s help) for Aimee, who has been a dear & wonderful friend to our family this past year. She just had a birthday, so we gave it to her over the weekend.

This impossibly cute (felt) album is from KI Memories, and so is all the paper I used on the inside. But it’s really about the pictures & the journaling. Here is a sampling from inside the album.

That layout shown bottom-right is my favorite. Claire’s hair … before Aimee & after Aimee (in other words, she does such a great job bringing out Claire’s cutie-patootie side). : )

Last night I had about 40 teenagers from church in my house, along with about 10 youth leaders. We do this once a month on a Sunday for all the youth in our congregation. It’s always a different topic, a different speaker, and a different house. Always a great experience. I love being with the youth.

So I did a little presentation on the importance of keeping personal records, and specifically focused on keeping a journal. Didn’t even bring up scrapbooking, actually. Each person got one of these little booklets and they worked on filling out the information for about a half hour.

Not super in-depth stuff. Just some tidbits about their life right now. A little record of who they are at this point in time. And possibly stuff they haven’t recorded … at least not lately. And it’s something they could actually take home with them instead of just “talking” about writing.

Anyway, it’s a simple little project and in case you wanted to do something like this for your kids or yourself, here’s what I included on the inside pages. Just click on the image & it’ll go really big on your monitor.

The front cover (that green block) is a place for them to put a current picture. All of the paper (7Gypsies) is cut to be 5″ x 8″ and then the top is another piece of paper that is 5″ x 4″ and then folded in half. It’s all held together with 2 staples. Super easy. Great little activity for kids with “down time” before school’s back in session next month (for many families).

So this is one of the yummy salads I promised to share. My friend Karolyn made this & I think I had seconds AND thirds.

SUPREME PIZZA PASTA SALAD

[ s a l a d ]
2 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/2 medium red onion, chopped
8 fresh white button mushrooms, sliced
1 small green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 stick pepperoni, cut into small slices
1 lb. fresh mozzarella cheese, diced
20 leaves fresh basil, thinly sliced
1 lb. wagon wheel pasta*, cooked and cooled then drained.

* Any kind of pasta will work. Farfalle (bowtie) pasta is shown here.

[ d r e s s i n g ]
1 tsp. garlic salt
1 tsp. dried oregano leaves
1 rounded Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1/3 c extra-virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Combine tomatoes, onion, mushroom, peper, pepperoni, cheese, basil, and pasta in big bowl. In a small bowl, whisk garlic salt, oregano, tomato paste, and vinegar together. Stream in olive oil while continuing to whisk. When oil is incorporated, pour dressing over pasta salad, add a few grinds of black pepper, then toss to coat evenly. Adjust your seasonings and serve.

Have a terrific weekend! I’ll be sharing a couple of fun projects with you in the coming week, before I head to CHA.

Personally, I think Christmas music is appropriate all year round. Recently, my Christmas playlist is what you can hear in my home office. Helps me get in the mood for all the holiday-related stuff I’m creating (we’re working on our December issue of the magazine).

It’s at least 110 degrees outside, but I recently finished a handful of Christmas card designs (and yet also thinking about getting in the pool with my kids later this afternoon). A little strange? Of course. But after 10 years of working in publishing, I’ve gotten used to working on the opposite season than what’s outside my door.

While I was in card mode, I did a couple of baby congrats cards (a cousin just had a baby girl and a neighbor just had a baby boy). Wanted to try out my new tag curler from Making Memories. Love it.

It curls the metal accent (also from MM) around the ribbon. How cute is that? The cards took like 2 minutes to make. I love quick. Speaking of quick, I’ll quickly answer a few more of your questions:

[ square punch ]

“Keatingdeirdre” asked about using a square punch for my pictures. No, I did not use a square punch on the 4th of July layout that I posted. I cropped them to size in Photoshop (they’re 2″ x 2″) and then put these small images onto 4″ x 6″ canvases (still in Photoshop), which I then uploaded to Costco for printing. When I trimmed the prints, I simply left a skinny, white edge around each little picture. No matting needed. PS – I don’t own a square punch.

[ current scrapbooking ]

Sue asked if the magazine only accepts submissions with more current pictures, and she was surprised that I was “behind” in my scrapbooking. First of all, I hope no one is adding stress to their life with the “I’ve got to be caught up” mentality in scrapbooking. It’s not about everything being totally documented from your life and your children’s lives. The fact that you’re doing anything at all is terrific. And the order in which you do your pages is entirely up to how you want to prioritize and how you’re able to manage your time.

I’ll soon be sharing more about my system & my entire scrapbooking process (it seems there are a LOT of questions on this subject). But in the meantime, I’ll tell you that I do NOT work exclusively with current pictures. I still have layouts from a few years ago that I’d like to do, and I occasionally work on family history stuff and other projects as well. But the “randomness” of how I work is actually pretty organized. Like I said … I’ll be sharing more on this, and how I manage it all.

[ CHA ]

Yes, I will be attending CHA in Chicago next weekend. If any of you are going to be there, please stop by and say hi! I’ll be in the Advantus booth (promoting the Lisa & Becky line) on Friday 10am – noon. I’ll be in the CKMedia booth from 3 – 5pm that same day (promoting my new Sketches book). I’ll also be in the CKMedia booth again on Saturday from 11 – 1.

I have to share another idea for how to use the flowers you likely have in your scrapbook supply stash. I love the American Crafts felt flowers. So adorable. My friends, Erin and Karolyn, made a bunch of these hair clips for their daughters and shared a handful with me for Claire (lucky me to have such creative, thoughtful friends). Super simple.

The flowers are hot-glued onto the hair clips (which you can buy at the craft store) and then a button is hot-glued in the middle. Imagine all the cute variations with all the flowers on the market now! And as for the middles – try page pebbles, little glass pebbles, jumbo brads, smaller flowers, anything.

I had scrapbook night last night and actually got a couple layouts done. It was a really busy day so I didn’t get much time to whip something up in the kitchen, but Costco did a great job helping with the treats. : ) My friend Karolyn has made a couple of REALLY great summer salads lately, so I’m dying to share those recipes as soon as I get them. I’ll also get to more of your questions later this week. Hope you’re having a really happy day today.

An additional note on the flowers for flip flops: Hot glue may be necessary. I secured the velcro dots to both my flip flops and each of the flowers with hot glue. Much better.

Also, your flowers and glass pebbles don’t have to be huge. Here is an example of a smaller scale flower (love that my daughter stuck her foot in my flip flop as I snapped this picture).