Another Shutterfly Creation!

Classic Cherry Thank You Card

Make a statement with Shutterfly custom thank you cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

Making My Life Easier this Holiday Season: Shutterfly Style

As many of you know by December of this year I will be 9 months pregnant. If you’ve ever been pregnant, you know that the last trimester can be anything but comfortable. So foremost on my mind as I look towards the holidays: “How can I make my life easier this Christmas????” One way I plan to make my life easier…creating a Shutterfly photocard for the holidays.

Traditionally I am a scrapbooker, and I love making holiday cards. But do you know how long it takes to make Christmas cards? It’s not an easy task and with a very active toddler and a baby on the way, there is no guarantee I will get anything made this year. So I am getting a headstart on the Christmas cards. I’ve got a photoshoot scheduled for November, and I have already begun browsing the Shutterfly website for card ideas.

Every time look at the products on Shutterfly I am impressed by their up-to-date style and quality. I love using photos to tell stories. As I browsed this year's collection of Christmas cards I realized how influenced I was by wanting to tell a story. I am very excited that this year they have some exciting 5x7 folded options that allow you to include pictures and short paragraphs on the inside of your card—no need to write a holiday letter, just put it right on the card! Most of these designs include only one picture on the front, BUT the insides all included 4 pictures, so I will still get a total of five pictures in my card. Some of my favorites in this design were “Sweet Holly Story,” “Joyous Holiday Story,” and “Most Wonderful Story.”

I should also admit, that I enjoy looking at the sample pictures on the cards. I am also finding them very helpful as I think about my upcoming photoshoot with Nathan and Thomas. "Starlight Snowflakes" caught my eye because of the cutest little girl on the cover. I think a close up of Thomas would be adorable on this one as well (though I doubt we will have snow in the background!) Another design I liked, “Mod Ornaments,” requires some extra space on the right side of the card for the design, so the focal point of the picture needs to be on the left side. I definitely want to have some of these things in mind to let the photographer know before the shoot. This way I will be more likely to have a great photo to fit my card.

Finally, Shutterfly has a lot of adorable 5x5 photocards this year. My favorites were the “Classic Red Square” and the “Believe in Magic” card (which would be perfect for a new baby!) Unfortunately, these cards require extra postage, so you’ll have to decide if that works for you.

If you also plan to throw a holiday get-together this year check out the invitations section. You can also find lots of great Thank You cards in the stationary section.

I'm excited to create my photocards, and more excited after checking out my options on Shutterfly!

Currently Shutterfly is offering 20% off all holiday cards!

Review: You Can Be Everything God Wants You to Be by Max Lucado

I received a complimentary copy of the book You Can Be Everything God Wants You to Be by Max Lucado from Thomas Nelson Publishing. This book is 127 pages long and contains excerpts from another Lucado book, Cure for the Common Life. It contains encouraging passages about how each of us is uniquely created by God and He has given each of us specific gifts and talents that make up who we are. Each section has scripture and various stories to better explain Lucado's points. The sections are only 2-3 pages each and which makes the book easy to pick up and put down periodically.

I see this book as a "gift book" or a "coffee table book." I enjoyed the insights Lucado gave, and that it was a quick easy read. However there were times I was wanting more and therefore for someone struggling with who they are in Christ, I think even more could be gained from reading the original book in its entirety, Cure for the Common Life (which I have not read, but am interested in after reading this shorter book). However, as a gift book or an encouraging word for someone struggling in their job or current life situation, I think this would be great to give away or read for yourself. Max Lucado does a great job of focusing on scriptures and he has a unique, easy to follow style of writing. I recommend this for new graduates, those starting new jobs, or seeking a career change. The book itself even came with a sticker marketing it as a gift for graduations. If you are looking for something deeper and more instructive, I would recommend looking into the full version instead of this shorter version of excerpts.

Review: Gigi’s Big Break DVD by Sheila Walsh

I recently watched Gigi’s Big Break on DVD. It contains two stories: “The White Lie” and “The Pink Surprise.” The first story is a lesson in honesty and follows Gigi as she tells a bigger and bigger lie, eventually admitting the truth and asking forgiveness. At the end a Scripture verse relating to honesty is shown. The second story: “The Pink Surprise” is about loving siblings. Gigi’s parents reveal they will be having another baby. At first Gigi is excited, but that soon changes. The storylines move in between Gigi’s make believe world and the real world.

The animation on the DVD is pretty basic and not very exciting. At the beginning of the story this bothered me as the characters seem incredibly stiff. However, once I was involved in the story this no longer bothered me. I liked the fact that the story includes real conversations between Gigi and her mother. Some other highlights include a family prayer before a meal, Gigi praying before bed, and scriptures included at the end of each story. The lesson is told clearly and interestingly. I do recommend this video and other Gigi products for young girls. Young girls (preschool) would enjoy the cuteness of the characters and animation while school age girls would be more likely to get something from the story.

**A complimentary copy of Gigi’s Big Break (DVD) was provided for me by Thomas Nelson Publishing for the purpose of this review.

Learn more about this DVD at Thomas Nelson Publishing

Gifts

One of my favorite parts of scrapbooking is being able to make things for other people. I love giving unique, thoughtful gifts, and if I can make the gift even better! The following I made for a friend who was kind enough to do something for me, and I wanted to say thank you.

I made an album using a BoBunny kit I had purchased awhile back at Archivers. I highly recommend any BoBunny kits you can purchase. They come with everything you need and they are awesome. They are beautiful and different then just a standard mini-album. I wish I was creative enough to create this on my own, but since I am not I love using kits!! Here are a few pictures from the album I made that can be used for pictures or just journaling.

The Cover

A cool page but quite difficult. I used a craft knife to cut the page in half and to take a square out of the page to show the pictures on either side. I don't have a great craft knife, but I did my best.

This might be my favorite page of the whole book. I think it is a beautiful design, and I love the right side and the layers it holds.

This is a fun page as well because it has a pocket with various journal pages. Pockets are a lot of fun and add a lot to a page!

As with most kits, when I finished I had quite a few leftover pieces so I decided to try and create a few cards for my friend. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. My base was a yellow card with a slight white flowery background. Most of the embellishments are stickers with a few other embellishments I had on hand. I created a layered look on many of the cards using paper layers as a starting point sometimes finishing with an embellishment using pop-ups. Also, many of the pieces already had a layered look to them. It was great how much stuff was left from the kit!

Birthday Creations

For Thomas's birthday I tried to get a little crafty. I made this sign to hang on the front door. It's great because it will double as a scrap book page! I also made some favor bags using this same truck cut out--unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of those!

I also made this display of Thomas's birth announcement. I wanted to do something to display all three pieces of the announcement and wasn't sure what to do. For this, I just attached all three pieces to a strand of ribbon.

Thomas's First Christmas Mini Album

After Christmas, I wanted to make something easy and quick to guarantee I got something created to remember Thomas's first Christmas. I didn't want a lot of journaling, I just wanted to display some of the fun pictures, and have something ready to show friends and family at his birthday party. I hadn't really created in a few months. I had tried to make some cards, but just couldn't get into it because my scrap area was a complete disaster.

After Christmas Nathan and I committed to cleaning up our bonus room so that it could really become the multi-purpose room we envision. Though we hope for a lot of improvements still, it finally is a place we can all be. Thomas has a huge area to play in and Nathan and I have usable areas as well. Since then I have been in the room almost every day working on things. One of the first things I created this year was a 6x6 album of Thomas's first Christmas. It's very simple. I precut all the background papers, printed the pictures I wanted in size 3x4 (my at home picture printer does this), grabbed a few embellishments I had, and went to work. Hope you like it!

Life Gets in the Way

I never meant to go three months without publishing. I really had a lot of posts in mind that just never made it from my head to the computer. A lot was going on in the past three months. Thomas learned to walk which really changed everything; he was sick and teething and fussy. And then the holidays came with lots of shopping and traveling. Then we celebrated Thomas's birthday. Finally life has calmed a bit, Thomas is sleeping through the night, and I am making myself get up early for some quiet time with God and sometimes Thomas even sleeps a little extra long. So, one of my goals this year is to use this time for my blog when possible. I do like sharing what I have created or sharing my opinion on what I have read or seen. I have read a few things over the past few months, so I will try to share those things over the next week or so. I haven't seen much. Nathan and I haven't been to the movies in months, and we held on to a Netflix movie way to long (we never did watch it). But finally we sent our Netflix back and got Star Trek. I have to say I did enjoy it! It moved pretty fast, and was entertaining. We watched some of the extras (which I recommend) and it was fascinating to see how they created certain scenes. Evidently during a lot of scenes they were manually shaking the camera! Very cool. So, if you haven't seen Star Trek, and your husband or boyfriend or guy friend wants to watch it, I'd see it with him. I don't think you will be bored, and it's a good movie everyone can enjoy.

So, my goal from now on is to make sure life doesn't get in the way of blogging. I spend too much time browsing the internet anyway when I could be posting!