Warm Fuzzy {{{HUGS}}}

If you are a long time reader here you know me and my crush on the gorgeous Leica Forrest. We actually grew up in the same area, attended the same school functions, went to the same youth group/church functions. Weird hey? Small, small province. So a few years back we hooked up again (such a blessing!) and ever since then my scrap life has been rowdy as a hurricane. This lady has some causes, let me tell ya. And I am always up for a challenge. So this morning I was perusing Facebook (shocking, I know) over my coffee (that I'm not supposed to drink) and saw that the fair Leica had a call out for help. Not just any help. 180+ pages worth of help. YIKES! She was 9 books short on her project for the peds unit at our local hospital and would never dream of sending over the donated books if she didn't have enough for every single child. Well she needn't have fretted because the Saskatoon scrapbookers busted it out in rare style. Kags and Jenn and their gals pumped out 60! Can you believe that? Janet in her magical way, waved her wand and did up 113. No, you didn't blink. The lady did 113 pages today. Because Leica needed it. That's Janet. What a doll. I know Pam was busy too...getting ready for a family vacation (pretty sure they leave tonight or tomorrow) and she did 30! Wow, I am SO freakin' impressed! I myself got in a books worth (20 layouts) and was SO pleased with the results. I didn't have time to photograph them...I was literally gluing on the last star when Leica dropped by to get them. But I still had to blog about it. Leica, if I have missed anyone here please give a shout out. Every single person who dropped their to do list to create those 8x8 layouts today deserves a hug and a Christmas kiss! I am so humbled by all the generosity we have in our scrapbooking circle. Saskatoon and area has some very classy ladies. And I am so blessed to call them my friends. xo

CMHA and a little Christmas Craftiness

When we moved back to town I was surfing Kijiji (LOVE that little gem) and came across an ad asking for a volunteer scrapbook teacher. And I thought to myself, "Self, YOU volunteer. YOU scrapbook. YOU have 19 boxes of amazing donations that you could bless others with." So "myself and I" gave Sandy Stotz a call at the Canadian Mental Health Association. What a sweet, sweet lady. I started with them back in September and we have done some wonderful projects. Like these exploding boxes:

Now that particular creation isn't my own. The pattern I used last Mother's Day was too large to do with a big class so I lifted this pattern off this fab blog Glitter Adventure. The dimensions were perfect and not too overwhelming for a beginner. They turned out great!

CMHA also threw my profile up on their website. Check it out HERE. I'm super excited to begin our "All About Me" scrapbooks in January. Up to this point, I have taught them cards and single class projects to get everyone used to the process. In January we break out the scrapbooks!

With all the cleaning, shelf-making and organizing going on in my scrap space I think my art stuff is calling me today. Even though I have more baking to do, the elctrician coming at 4pm, children to entertain and a workout to manage. I can fit in some creativity, right? It wouldn't be a good day without it! Go have a good day! xo

Create on a budget (aka the "I hate money" post)

Ok, so I don't actually hate money. I am frugal enough that we can live on one income and I shouldn't complain about that. Life is great and we are blessed. But I do whine {on occassion} about my lack of extra money for all of those yummy crafting supplies that call my name when I wander the aisles at several stores in town (oh who am I kidding...in town, out of town, online...). I mean come on...if you won the lottery {besides paying off your house} where is the first place you'd go for a huge splurge? Scrapbooking. Supplies. I actually get a little shiver even dreaming about it. So a lot of the time I have to settle for trying to repurpose what I already have. I am no crafting genius {I leave that to my friends!} but I was so super impressed with myself for this little gem I had to blog it. My oldest son wanted to decorate his room with popcorn strings which was great...I had several cups of stale popcorn kernels just waiting to be strung. But I thought...how can I make this cooler? And that started a journey that ended in a mess. And that's just how I like it! Start with air popping your kernels. Do not add butter (even if this does go against every fiber of your being) Try to stop the little fingers from eating it...go ahead, I dare ya. You just might lose an arm.

Use quilting thread so it won't break. Be careful not to poke yourself.

String popcorn until your back hurts and your fingers are numb. Then continue for just a few minutes more. Until it looks like this. Oooorrrr maybe until you get sick and tired of stabbing yourself and you cut the thread, deciding that that is long enough. Um yeah, it just may have happened like that at my house.

Ok, for this next part I have no photos because it was super SUPER {deliciously} messy and I didn't want to bring my camera anywhere near that. So you'll have to settle for a rather loose description. The background info being I thought it would look much cooler if the popcorn was coloured. So I went through my card catalogue brain on all the possible ways to colour it without making it melt. Because popcorn does that. Wet+popcorn=goopy mess. I finally settled on Glimmer Mist! GENIUS! So I laid out a towel on my work surface, put plastic bags on top of that and sprayed to my little hearts content. It was grand. At the end though...there was a huge puddle of glimmer mist floating on the bags. And I absolutely could not waste it. {Refer to the opening of this post} so I took care of another thing on my holiday to do list by dipping a whole bunch of tagsinto the puddles. (the ones you can pick up at Staples for less than $5 for a box of 100) They came out beautifully and now I have some holly jolly red tags to attach to every single gift we are giving this year. I'm going to stamp the recipient's name on it in black ink and handwrite on the back who is from. Oh, and the popcorn strings turned out great too, don't you think? It looks like cinnamon popcorn. Oh shoot...making that is on my holiday list too. Must get on that!

You can make it as light or as dark as you want just make sure you spray it and don't dip it. I found that I had to keep moving the string on the table so it didn't soak in the puddle or it became so saturated it just looked black. If you were really energetic, you could pre-spray the popcorn in old bowls, lay it out to dry and then string it with alternating colours. Maybe next year. xox

Is it Spring yet?

Guess who got a very important e-mail this week?! Woo hoo! Be sure to pick up the Spring 2010 edition of Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine. Darn I looooove seeing my art in print!
I've been creating more and more...in between cleaning the scrap space. I have insane photos to share here later in the week. They are not to be believed. I'm shocked the children survived. If we had a cat, we would have lost it for sure. LOL
Like vintage tags? I do! I'm SO surprised I didn't set the smoke alarm off with these. Ever played with fire in your scrapbook room? You should try it sometime. It freaked the Hubs right out. Tee hee. Burn some paper, melt some wax. It helps you forget that it's -31 outside. xo

Well...at least it hasn't been a month...

Ok ok...long time no blog. I know. But SO much happens at this time of year and I am not talking about Christmas shopping (that's done). On to more important endeavors! I am wrapping up a circle journal rotation (SO FUN) and of course following the 12 Tags of Christmas by the one and only Mr. T!m Holtz. I seriously love his techniques. I really, really need to get over to Staples today and get more tags. But I digress...

Remember back in the summer when I had my little rant about the rude woman in the line-up at Starbucks? No, of course you don't because you have far more important things to keep in your head than my rants! LOL You can read about it HERE to refresh your memory. Well, true to the natural course of my life shortly after I posted that all medical heck broke loose in our extended family and the rest of the summer was spent putting the art aside and taking care of ours. Fall led into some catching up around the house and yard and by the time November rolled around I was ready to dive in again. Head first. No goggles. I have proof, you should see my scrap room. So I finally, finally got something 100% amazing created for Danya at Starbucks and I will drop it off to her tomorrow. I hope she likes it.

Go cut up a Starbucks cup and make something out of it...the red Christmas ones are SO adorable. Happy scrapping! xo