goals

It's the beginning of a new week, and Mondays are usually good for me. I know I mentioned a little before about my 2010 (which is it btw, "twenty-ten" or "two-thousand-ten"?) new goals. For me most of them might not really be "new", but continuations of things I kind of started at the end of last year. One of the main ones has to do with cleaning :) I'm the youngest in my family( the ever-so-slightly-spoiled-baby)and organization and such does not come naturally...and well, Tomio is VERY neat :) SO, I have been working at keeping things neat and tidy all the time...you know, so you don't have to feel like you have to throw your whole room into a closet when the doorbell rings :) I've been trying to raise my standards so to speak. Now I've been doing it more in steps than all at once so I won't get overwhelmed or burned out. And I can honestly say I can tell a difference. My bathroom closet is SO neat now, I actually like opening it and seeing how nice it looks lol.(yes, I am weird.) Oh, and my scrapbooking space is SO tidy too. I realized how much I enjoy working in a tidier place heehee. And I can honestly say that there are no toys or dust bunnies under my sofa, and if you crawled under my bed you would not get covered in dust :)These may not seem like huge things, but to me they are a big deal.I'm proud of myself and inspired to do more.  And that's a good thing.

Anyway, here is one more Christmas layout I did. ( I can't promise this is the last one, but I THINK for now it is. I've been working on some birthday layouts instead lately)

I always do a layout of Christmas Eve too. We have a fun family celebration at home on Christmas Eve, so I always like to document that. The kids love it--well, actually I do too :)

If you look at the bottom and side you can see I am still really into paper piercing lol. It just seems to add the right touch--subtle, but still noticeable.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope your week is starting out well too! Do you have any goals that are going well? Although Mondays are usually good for me, Tuesdays sometimes aren't, so I'm hoping to continue with my positive outlook tomorrow. We finally got all the toyboxes and furniture for the boys' room and I am hoping to finish arranging everything tomorrow.

supplies: cardstock: bazzill, pattern paper: fancy pants, diecut letters:Quickutz, diecute snowflakes: cuttlebug, ricrac:basic grey, brads: we r memory keepers, oval tag: Quikutz

now we have some mojo...

So it took a little longer than I thought, but here is my Mojo Monday card. And yes I do realize that it is Friday...in Japan it's actually already Saturday :) But here t is anyway:

I had hoped by posting this later I would have a chance to take the photo during the day, but no such luck lol. I used 2 of my new ABSOLUTE favorites right now. One is the polka-dot background from Cornish Heritage Farms. So perfect for just about everything! My other fave is Papertrey's Everyday Button Bits. So fun and adorable!! Even the images that I wasn't too sure about (the bicycle and hot air balloons, for example...) are SO cute! I can't wait to use them all heehee:)

Anyway, thanks for stoppinbg by! Just a quick Mojo post :) Hope your weekend is starting out great :)

Oh, but since Miss Emma just turned 8 months, I have to share some pictures of her :)

Isn't she too cute?! lol

supplies: cardstock: kraft-paper reflections, white and yellow-papertrey ink, brown-bazzill stamps-papertreyink, ink-tsukineko, buttons-papertreyink, basic grey, ribbon-papertrey ink

no mojo yet.

Ok-so I wanted to post my Mojo Monday card, but I haven't had a chance to take a picture and upload it yet :( I did make one though, so hopefully I will get it up tomorrow! I do have some layouts to share though. I have been making Miss Emma's pages that go in my album all along, but I hadn't been making HERS yet. I have a small 8.5x8.5 album for each of the my kids that I intend to give to them when they are older. They all get to look at them now of course. They love looking at them. Leah and Rhys like to read the journaling, while Levi just likes looking at the pictures. They complain if it has been too long since I added new pages too lol. Anyway, I wanted to go ahead and get started on Miss Emma's before she got too big. So here are a couple of the pages I made:

I love these pictures of Miss Emma :) She's not even 1 month here. This page actually came together really quickly, but I'm happy with how it came out :) I used 2 of my favorite Quickutz fonts- Maddie Anne and Chocolate. I'm also really into light purple lately, so I liked the felt accents from Fancy Pants too. The little flower in the corner I just hand cut out of kraft paper and crumpled it up :) I used some green buttons from Autumn Leaves for the leaves.

I have a page kind of like this for all my kids for when they came home from the hospital. I loved this picture of Tomio holding Emma! I used my new Cornish Heritage Farms stamp on the background of this layout. ( I absolutely LOVE them, btw! They so nice, easy to use...so glad I got them! ) I didn't like it with the mauve paper all flat, so I stamped the polka dots in versamark and inked the edges with burgundy. Love how that adds just the right touch :)

I didn't have a good place to put my journaling, so I used a hidden tag. I actually like the white peeking out of the top of the layout too. I used Doodlebug glitter on the heart. The 2 fonts on this page are 2 of the new ones I just got- Rollerskate and Jaqueline. Love them both :)

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to have my Mojo card up soon!! Oh, and my new Papertrey order just arrived today, so you know what I will be playing with hee hee :) I just got the Everyday Button bits, and I already LOVE it. I have to admit, that when it first came out, I thought "cute, but...nothing I really want" lol. Unfortunately, I usually end up really wanting something that I first think is "just ok". Am I the only one like that?! And almost always, I also end up LOVING it and using it all the time. (case in point, Quickutz Diesel and Mary Jane, my ALL TIME faves that I thought were *gasp* kind of ugly lol. Now with the Button Bits....) please tell me I'm not the only one :)

a card.

I have gotten little more crafting time. Emma is very much at a stage where....well, let's just say she's very attached to her mama :) I don't really mind, of course. But I have managed to work in some crafting time here and there. And here is a card made in a few spare moments:

Lots of Papertrey on this one. Since I {heart} using my Papertrey Cupcake stamps so much, I try to use them on as many different cards as I can :) I used to be a little afraid of green lol, but I have been really liking it lately. I used Damask designs for the background in Versamark. I stamped the text stamp in Papertrey's Scarlet Jewel. I really like the heart sprinkles for the cupcake--just the right touch.

Thanks for stopping by! How are your New Year's "goals" going? SO FAR, mine are going well. I'm trying to gradually work them in so I don't get burned out.

supplies: cardstock:green, pink-pti; brown-bazzill,  stamps: pti, ink:pti and versamark, ribbon: pti

party time

I really wish I had more time to craft on the weekends. But really I almost never do. As all mothers know, the weekend may mean time off for Daddy, but it doesn't mean time off for Mommy :) So as usual I didn't get to make anything new on the weekend. We were extra busy with a certain little miss's 9th birthday party, though :) Leah is SO into golf right now that she insisted on having a "golf party". It didn't make for nearly as exciting of a cake as normal where Daddy draws a picture of whatever character they want on the cake, but it did make for fun games :)

Lots of fun of course :) All the cousins came to join in the fun. And the party was at Nana and Papa's as usual :)

Rhys was very excited to get his ball in the hole!

These are pictures from the actual party, but Leah really got 3 days of celebration this year. They always get 2 days because Tomio takes off from work on their actual birthday and we have a cake on that day too. But this year, Leah's birthday was on Saturday and Tomio was already off. So he took off Friday instead. And he took all the bigs kids to see a movie. Then Leah got to celebrate at home on Saturday too and have a party on Sunday. It was a full, busy weekend. I can't believe Leah is already 9!!!! wow.... since I had her when  I was 20-almost 21,  I'm sure you can figure out how old I'm going to be this year....lol.

ANYWAY :) that is what went on at house this weekend. So nothing crafty to share..sigh. But hopefully I will have something this week.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you had a great weekend!

scrapping goodies :)

I was just so excited that I had to share :) Look what I got in the mail:

Lots of crafting goodies :) My SWEET :) hubby knows that I like scrapping and stamping stuff best. But he also knows that he couldn't choose what I wanted. So for Christmas, even though he gave me LOTS of presents including a gorgeous necklace and some adorable earrings :), he gave me some money to spend on whatever I wanted. YAY! Of course I knew what I wanted to spend it on. This is actually only about half of what I got. I have a couple more packages on the way and several inks that I bought because ink the one thing that I can actually get here. Some of the things I most excited about are these:

I have been wanting some background stamps. I only have a couple of clear ones, and they aren't the full size of an A2 card, so you have to stamp theme a few times and line them up. I still like them of course, but I really wanted some that I could just stamp at one time. So I decided to try these from Cornish Heritage Farms. They are really reasonably priced and they had several that I wnated. I loved this polka dot one of course :)

I also was really excited about this music one. How fun is that?! It is actually 6x6! HUGE! These are goind to be so fun :)

Other than these, I also got some 4x8 Quickutz alphas and some embossing folders. Now if I can just finish the party prep and little Miss Emma doesn't mind :) I have some fun new toys I want to play with :) Have you ever gotten any stamps from Cornish Heritage Farms? I was very impressd with their service and the stamps look wonderful :) Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed seeing my new goodies heehee :)

too late for Christmas?

I know its January and I'm sure just about everyone has taken down their Christmas decorations...But is too late to show Christmas layouts!? I didn't think so :) I personally like to work on my Christmas cards and layouts all year long. These are from last year's Christmas, well, no actually from 2008's Christmas :) And no technically I am not "caught up" in doing my Christmas pages, but I don't mind :) I used to. I used to do all my layouts chronologically and I felt like I was behind and needed to "catch up". But then, 2 years ago I think, we went to see some really pretty flowers and I got some great pictures of the kids. I told Tomio that I couldn't wait to scrap them, but that I had to...because of course I had to do my older pictures first. And then he said "why?". And I thought "hmmm... why not?" lol. AND, I did it. I scrapped those pictures right away! It was SO much fun. I loved scrapping memories that were so fresh.Ever since then I've been scrappig whatever pictures I want, whenever I want. While I always loved scrapping, I can honestly say I fell in love with it all over again and enjoy it a 1000 times more now that I do. I so enjoy scrapping whatever I am in the mood for :) How about you? Are you a chronological scrapper? Do you have another method for choosing your order? Do you feel guilty for not being caught up like I did lol?! Let me know!

ANYWAY :), here the layouts I made:

We always have alot of fun putting up the tree, so I try to get lots of pictures. I know I've mentioned my love for 2 page layouts lately :) And I especially like them for all my Christmas layouts with so many fun pictures I want to include.

The cardstock is Bazzill and the pattern paper is from We Are Memory Keepers. All the diecut letters are Quickutz. The little tree is BossKutz.The buttons are from Basic Grey. The little noel embellishment is made with Papertrey stamps and spellbinders label die.

More pictures of our Christmas traditions :) All the diecuts on this layout are Quickutz. I love these ornament dies! So fun :)

These fun pattern papers are Cosmo Cricket. Love the music print!!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed a little bit of Christmas cheer :) I've got a birthday party to prepare for, so I don't know how much scrapping I will get done this weekend.