happy thanksgiving

The eggs are boiling and I will soon be deviling them in preparation for tomorrow's feast. I don't think I've ever had a Thanksgiving without this side dish. I posted the recipe on my blog last year. It's the December 17, 2007 post in the Recipe section.

Thanks for sharing some of your favorite traditions. Great ideas! I was even inspired to think of another tradition ... something new for our family. I want to give our kids new pajamas on Thanksgiving night (instead of Christmas Eve, which is when we usually do this). That way they can enjoy them longer, and through the holiday season. We'll think of something else for Christmas Eve.

Oh, and for my international friends ... Helen in Africa mentioned that she didn't know what Thanksgiving was, but she has heard of the holiday. So if you're in the same boat, check out Wikipedia for a description.

Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, may you be blessed with the awareness of how richly blessed your life is. I challenge you to find a way to record these blessings any way you can: with your camera or in your journal, or in the form of video, or art work, or a scrapbook page ...

And for sure don't put off telling those that you love how grateful you are for their influence in your life.

thanksgiving

The week of Thanksgiving is here. I love it. I love the meal planning and the anticipation of spending the entire day with family & friends and the extra conversations on gratitude that I'm having with our kids. And I can not wait for our house to have that turkey aroma on Thursday. Brings back a flood of memories from a lifetime of celebrating the holiday of gratitude.

Anyone want to share a favorite Thanksgiving tradition? Now that Porter's old enough to write, I'm going to have him make a list of what he is grateful for, accompany that with a picture of whatever he wants to draw, and this will undoubtedly end up in his scrapbook and possibly a picture frame.

it's all about the presentation

Are you taking pictures for other people? Tis the season to do so, since everyone wants some family pictures for holiday cards. I know many of you (amateur or professional) are in this boat. The ever-so-creative Loni Stevens mentioned that a great way to give the cd or dvd to your friends/family/clients is with the cd cards & envelopes from my Holiday Cards kit. Included are 6 sets like this:



Or you may want to put a collection of your favorite pictures from the year on a cd to send to grandparents, best friends, etc. Anyone else doing something fun with these envelopes in the kit? What about the other extra notecards & gift tags? Share your ideas if you're doing something other than the traditional use.

And PS - You must check out Loni's blog. You'll LOVE her brilliant "Year in Review" project (11/3 post).

loving RAW

Can you believe our little Crew is 2 months old now? Here's my little buddy on a walk this morning. He LOVES fresh air and was in such a happy mood.



Now look at this same picture before I edited it:



People. Do you know about RAW? Definitely old news to you who are a little more seasoned with photography. But something I definitely felt like mentioning today because it just may change your life. Okay, that's a strong statement. But if you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, read on.

I am not ... I repeat NOT ... a good resource for technical questions. Seriously. Don't ask. I just need to be sure you know that. But my technically saavy brother Kevin, convinced me to shoot in RAW a while ago and I'm learning more and more why. PS - Kevin is a great resource, and since I'm his favorite sister, maybe he'll chime in on the Comments below if you do have questions for him. (Love you, Kevin!)

If you have the option to shoot in RAW on your digital SLR camera, then change that in your settings. You see, when you bring a RAW image up in Photoshop, this window pops up.



Do you see all those options on the right? It took me less than a minute - literally - to do a quick edit on the original image and turn it into a much better result. This is what I did: It was a bit overexposed, so I brought the exposure down, increased the temperature (warmer tones), increased the blacks, brought the clarity down (making it softer) and ... that's it! It does not take an expert to use this panel of options and I'm just SO in love with RAW for this reason alone. You have to try it (if you have a digital SLR with the RAW option)!

Oh! I bet you're wondering who won a free Holiday Card kit! Congratulations to:

1. Rhiannon in Conway, Arkansas
2. Kim in Altha, Florida
3. Michelle in Walla Walla, Washington (is that a real city? how cute!)

E-mail your name & shipping information to Vivian (vgrothe@ckmedia.com) and she'll get your kit to you. Happy card making, ladies!

new books

Keeping you in the loop on a couple new scrapbooking books that might interest you:

Simple Scrapbooks has a new book coming out by Lain Ehmann. It's called "Snippets" and you can get a sneak peak here. This is not an "idea" book and doesn't include scrapbook pages. It's a series of delightful essays exploring everything from getting started and making time for the hobby to stalking scrapbooking celebrities and yearning for a magazine worth scrapspace. Sounds like a great stocking-stuffer for any of your scrapbooking friends. It's shipping after Thanksgiving. Oh, and there's a Snippets virtual launch party at the Simple Scrapbooks website this Thursday.

Also getting ready to ship, the latest from Creating Keepsakes is called "Month by Month Scrapbooking" by Amanda Probst. You can find it here. This one has tons of inspiration for all the traditional annual events, rites, and rituals, along with new perspectives on how to document your daily life throughout the months of the year.

great idea!

A fellow blog reader, Lisa, mentioned a great idea that is worth sharing.

Most of you are ordering multiple holiday card kits. For example, if you send cards to about 60 people, you're getting 2 kits because there are 30 greeting cards in each kit. Because there are a lot of "bonus" cards and chipboard tags in each kit, this may give you more than you'll need for your own thank-you's and neighbor gifts, etc.

So what do you do with the extras? Lisa suggests bundling some of the cards & envelopes & tags to give to teachers or others that you may think will enjoy those. She mentioned putting them in a basket for cute presentation. Great idea, Lisa!

By the way, a few of you commented about the pink snowflake rub-ons in the card kit and how they looked GREAT once they were rubbed onto the green. That's fantastic! What started out to be a mistake has turned out to work just fine. Thanks for telling us. So how's that for good luck!?

And speaking of good luck ... you know what's a really good idea?? The fact that you have a chance at winning a free Holiday Card Kit! Yep - time for another good ol' fashioned give-away on the blog. Leave your name, city, and state in the Comments and I'll announce some winners in a couple days.

[ more idea-sharing ]

Click here and you'll find the official Holiday Card Kit group, where you & others can share ideas and pictures of the cards you're putting together with the kit. It's easy to upload your own pictures.

We're doing this online group for the Baby kit too. Click here and you'll see dozens of sample pages, cards, and projects using the baby kit components. Don't forget to upload your pictures. I'd love to see what you're doing with the baby kit!

[ totally random ]

Before I sign off today, I know many of you are highly anticipating the new Twilight movie coming out this week. I personally haven't read the books. GASP! I know. Am I like the only woman on this planet who hasn't read the series? Don't give me a hard time. I just haven't made much time for reading novels lately. It's the whole prioritizing thing. ANYway ... I'm bringing it up because my friends have designed these t-shirts that some of you will probably want to jump on. Check it out.

a note about photo inserts

Hey guys, I wanted to mention a few things to those of you who are using the Holiday Card Kit:

1. Due to a mistake on the manufacturer's end, you have some bright pink snowflakes in your kit. I don't recommend using these on your Christmas cards because ... well ... they clash. You can just throw them away or use them on some other creative project.

2. The greeting cards are 4" wide (keeping it to postal regulations so you don't have to pay extra postage for an "odd" size). Because of this, a 4" x 6" print will be too snug. So if that's the size picture you're putting inside the card, you're totally fine. You'll just want to trim about 1/4" inch off the edge so it fits nicely.

3. The font I used on my sample newsletter below is called Gill Sans Light. This is definitely my #1 most used font these days.

Happy Weekend!

holiday card kit INSTRUCTIONS

Sorry guys. You're right -- no instructions included in the kit. The cards are so not complicated, so I'm confident everyone will be just fine. But I know how helpful it is to have a little instruction so here's what didn't make it into the kits (feel free to click on this and print it out for your handy dandy reference):



And, even better, here's a little video instruction. It always makes more sense seeing someone else put it together, doesn't it? PS - Could this freeze frame be any more attractive? Seriously.



The video cut off too quickly at the end, sorry. To finish, just adhere the band to itself and slip it on the card bundle and you're done! So easy.

---

With so many things we've had in transition recently (our customer service and fulfillment center, etc.), let me just remind you about who to contact in case you have customer service needs for any purchases made on creatingkeepsakes.com, including KOTM items.

Product Customer Service
800/453-1173
Monday-Friday 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. MST (GMT-7)
creatingkeepsakesCS@holdenmss.com

Here's a link to all-things-customer-service for Creating Keepsakes and related brands: Customer Service.

Oh! One more thing for today. Congratulations to Deneen Cook! She was the grand Golden Ticket winner (the contest we ran with Kit of the Month, in case you missed that).

got christmas cards?

Have YOU received your Holiday Card Kit yet? Have any questions? Post them here, in the comments. I want to be sure everyone feels totally successful in getting their cards pulled together well before it's time to mail them. Yay for getting things done early!

I have some pictures I want to share. For those of you who haven't ordered, but you're thinking about it ... this will give you a closer look at what you'll get if you purchase the kit.

For complete coverage on what comes in the Holiday Card Kit, see my video blog on 10/20. Plus, a full list of FAQs and other kit information can be found in my posts from 10/13 and 10/14. Make sure you check that over first, because I may have already covered the info you're looking for.

[ Okay. The pictures. ]

These are the 3 main greeting card designs you get in the kit. There are 10 of each.



The envelopes look like this:



And you're getting letterhead that coordinates with everything, for those of you who like to include a newsletter in your holiday cards. Click on this image and read my message for additional newsletter-writing tips, whether you're using this kit or not.



There are gift stickers for quickly labeling those presents:



And chipboard tags that you can also attach to gifts (I'm using mine for neighbor gifts):





And more. Itty bitty note cards for when you don't need to say a whole lot, thank-you cards for the holiday gifts you receive, CD/DVD-holding cards ... so much value to this kit.

I hope to be back in touch soon with more instructional type of information on those cards (not that you need much, but it might help some of you).

follow-up

PS - Yes, of course we stocked up while we were at Costco! This is another shot of both of our carts. : )