Merry Christmas and Happy Scrapping

It is hard to believe that Christmas is just a week away. By this time next week, all the presents will be opened, the turkey cooked and eaten and, if tradition holds, we will all be in bed sound asleep as we will have had too many things to do and too little time to do them without sacrificing many hours of sleep.

I have a whole lot of scrapping stuff on my list for Santa. I have a brand new Cricut Personal Cutter coming from the money earned teaching scrapbooking, so I am really looking forward to getting some new cartridges for it and having time to just play and really learn what all the tricks are with this great little machine.





I have taken lots of photos this holiday season - first the annual tree hunt - we bagged a big one this year - nearly 10 feet tall!! I used one of last year's pictures of the tree hunt on our Christmas cards for all our family and friends.

Then decorating the tree; and our Christmas party at our house and finally it will be Christmas Day itself.


Here's hoping that everyone has a great Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous 2008!

Merry Christmas and Happy Scrapping.

I survived the 30-hour crop

Well, I survived the 30-hour plus crop - I arrived at 1:30 p.m. on the Friday (just a little eager to get going) - helped set up all the tables, etc. so that I could have a choice pick of location. (I don't like being somewhere that everyone has to move behind you and is always tripping over your stuff.)

I found a great spot and got set up - I was not quite as organized as I planned to be so ended up pretty much taking everything that I thought I could possibily need - just in case!

I remembered my camera this time! (What kind of scrapper forgets their camera - me - that is who! The last major retreat that I went to, I remembered dang near the entire house, but forgot my camera!! Had to get pictures from my pals to use for my scrapbook!!)

I tried to take a picture every hour on the hour for the main 30-hour crop - just to see the changes happening over time - completely empty at first and then as it filled up and then died down over the wee small hours of the night and filled back up again the morning. Most of the time I remembered, but sometimes I got so engrossed in my scrapping that I forgot... I did get some sleep at Maria's house - from about 4 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. - about normal for a serious crop! During that time, Dianna, the owner of Remember Me, very kindly kept up the hourly photos, and even added some extra of the die-hard scrappers who carried on all through the night!

The crop was not quite as productive as I would have liked, inasmuch as I am still working on the "Lost Pictures" and it entails a lot of undoing layouts or lifting layouts and redoing or inserting other pages - so very time consuming for not a lot of progress.

I really, really want to finish these pictures - so that I can carry on moving forward, instead of one step forward, two steps back.

So the crop was lots of fun - there is another one in April that I will probably sign up for - depending on whether or not I go to an 'away' retreat!

Now, back to my scrapbooks - got to get those photos finished - at the rate that I am taking new pictures, I will never catch up!

Happy Scrapping!

30 Hours of Scrappin'

This Friday is the start of the "30-hour Crop" at Remember Me in Coquitlam. This is for the seriously crazy scrappers!!! Thirty hours straight through and then if that is not enough - come back on the Sunday (after a little sleep) and crop from noon to five!!

I am packing up my stuff - getting all my photos ready to go so that I can really get some scrapbooking done!!

I want to have a really good look at what pages I want to get done, so that I can have the paper, embelishments, etc. already pulled from my stash to match the photos - check through all my Becky Higgins Sketches books to pick out potential layouts. This is serious scrapping!!

I am taking the Monday off to recover from all the scrapping - probably will need to catch up on a little sleep!

Scrap-aholics Anonymous might come knocking at my door after this weekend!

Triple 77-in-07

Well, what started out as wondering if I could complete 77 pages in 2007, will wrap up tonight at a potluck dinner at Remember Me, with my total reaching my personal goal of "Triple 77-in-07".

When the information was first posted as "Come join the 77-in-07 club" to see if you could reach that goal, I thought that there was no way that I would be able to do 'that many' pages. I have always been on the competitve side - not that this is a competition with anyone but yourself - but that works for me too.

I started keeping track as of January 1, 2007 and found that, during my holidays right after the New Year, I had managed to do 25 pages in a few weeks - I knew that doing '77' would not be a hard task.

So, last night I finished my 231st page since January - I have completed the better part of five 12x12 albums!! At this rate I might even catch up to myself - though if I continue taking pictures at the rate that I have been, there is no worry about that!!

Along the way, I have also completed three 6x6 albums, cards and numerous other small projects like my samples for the classes I have been teaching this fall.

Through all these projects, I have tried out a number of new techniques and become proficient in others and therefore grown as a scrapbooker. One of the things I love about scrapbooking is the changing products that are available that push you to try new and different approaches so that your albums don't ended up looking the same.

I feel good about reaching my personal goal - on to "88-in-08" - I wonder how many pages I can do in the next year?

Upcoming November Classes

I have a number of classes coming up in the next couple of weeks.

On Sunday, November 18th, I will be teaching at Remember Me - a calendar class. In this 4-hour class you will finish an entire calendar just in time to give to a special person for Christmas. Each of the twelve layouts has different techniques and ideas so that you will learn quick and simple ideas for completing this great project.

Here are a couple of the layouts so that you can see what we will be doing:

On Monday, November 19th, I will be teaching a Christmas card class at Michael's in PoCo. Had a real blast the last time that I did this class - lot's of energy.

On Monday, November 26th, I will be teaching a laced accordian book class at Michael's - this one Christmas themed. There are two options for this class - the original 6-panel one or a bigger 2-panel one - your choice. This is what the 6-panel one looks like:

I am looking forward to teaching this classes - they should be lots of fun!

See you in the scrapbooking pages!

The Past Revised

Over the last few weeks I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about the past. During the summer I finally broke down and signed onto Facebook - within a few weeks, I had been contacted by one of my old high school classmates - after almost 30 years. Very shortly there after a few more followed until we now have 12 out of the 29 who graduated.

This past weekend, six of us got together - some I had not seen since the last day of school in 1978!! The years have gone by and we have all matured and our lives have gone on. We met for lunch and in some ways nothing and everything had changed. You might not quite recognize the face, but the mannerisms and the speech patterns remained the same after all this time.

I wanted to find a way to show everyone both my family and also one of my favourite hobbies - scrapbooking, so I created a little introduction book to incorporate both loves.

Here are some pictures of my little book:

And here is a picture of the six of us:

Meeting everyone again after almost 30 years was a little nerve wracking and also exciting - we are full of plans to see each other again - and Facebook continues to make it easy to be in touch with our busy days.

One of the funny outcomes of the weekend and my little book is that one of my old school mates had never seen modern scrapbooking and is now making plans to take classes in Victoria! (Ah, I have converted another one!!!)

The saying of "no matter how much things change, they always stay the same" comes to mind - I feel that I was able to bring two parts of my life together - my friends of my youth together with my current love of scrapbooking - the past meets the present.

Circle Journal Journies

On Friday night I picked up the first of nine Circle Journals that I will working on in the coming months and it started me thinking of the journey that my Circle Journal will be taking.

You might want to know what a "Circle Journal" is - it is a small scrapbook (at least in our case) that you start, set a theme and then pass along to the next member of your Circle Journal group. Once you do the title page, and the first two-page layout, the rest of the scrapbook is in other people's hands, for them to make their contributions, while you are making yours in their Circle Journal.

There are ten people in our group - so each book will be added to by nine other people before we have our own book back in our hands at the end of April.

We now have a list of the themes for each of the books and they are as varied as the people participating in the journal group. Everything from "Amazing Teachers" to "Quirks" and a number of things in between.

My first journal is a truly amazing book with a fabulous presentation - the theme is "Where in the world" and it is all about where you would like to go, where you dream about going - anywhere in the world. The book comes complete in a matching decorated box to go with the first couple of pages for Africa.

I have been thinking really hard on what I wanted to include for my two-page contribution - I think that I will be putting in "Holland in Tulip Time" as my addition to the journal.

I have not thought about Holland in the springtime for many years - it is definately on my life 'to do' list. I am glad to have this opportunity to revisit this dream.

I am looking forward to the journey through other people's Circle Journals too and as each changeover time happens - the books will be more facinating to read.......