The Evolution of a Scrapbooker

I got to spend almost the entire weekend with my little sister. We were all alone (i.e., without kids and husbands) and we had a blast. We tried to pack in as much girly fun ... okay, mainly just girly eating ... as we could.

Friday night, we had dinner at Zoe's Kitchen, and then finished the evening off with Ashley's chocolate martini. It was yummy! I seriously almost wet my pants while we were trying to take this picture. We had the camera balanced on top of a butter dish on top of my toaster oven and the self-timer kept messing up. Guess you had to be there?!?

We scrapbooked late into the night (and early morning hours) on Friday, and then got up and started again on Saturday morning. Ashley did all of her "scrapbooking" on Walgreens.com and I did all of mine by hand.

I had Zoe's again for lunch (Will hates to eat there) and we fixed baked salmon and mango couscous for dinner. The mango couscous is divine. Must. Try. It. Now. We scrapbooked a little more after dinner and then Ashley headed home as Will and the kids returned from their trip to his parents' house.

Back to reality.

Okay, so I finally finished scrapbooking our 2006 family album this weekend. I have been working on that album since February 2007. I took a short break to work on Claire's first year baby book (which is no where near finished ... I think I got to coming home from the hospital), but it was certainly a long process. As you can imagine, my scrapbooking style has certainly evolved over the last 2 years.

Here are a few of my fave layouts from the book. This first one probably most defines my current style.

I was going through a MAJOR stamping phase when I made this page ... not so much there now. All of those flowers on the bottom of the pages were stamped by moi. This page is a little busy for my taste, but I'm not changing it now.

This is a good representation of my M.O. when I started this album in 2007. Plain and simple with lots of WHITE background.

This is the title page. I always hate making title pages and usually wait until the very end to make it. I like how this one turned out.

I did a lot of sorting/organizing/purging of my scrapbooking supplies this weekend while I was cleaning up and thought I would make a list of my TOP TEN favorite items. Here are my faves in no particular order:

1. paper flowers

2. 12-inch paper trimmer

3. Cricut die-cut machine (and accessories)

4. Stampin' Up stampin' scrup stamp cleaner (say that 3 times fast)

5. Xyron sticker maker (this is great for die cuts/letters I make on my Cricut machine)

6. dimensional adhesives (aka foam squares)

7. circle punches

8. Creative Memories tape runner

9. Creative Memories photo splits (for vellum paper)

10. DCWV paper pads (check Joann's for sales on these paper pads ... you can always find a great deal)