I'm playing along with The Scrapbook Challenges Blog - Sketch #469. Supplies: We R Memory Keepers, Crate Paper, Dear Lizzy, Heidi Swapp, American Crafts, Basic Grey. Here's a link to the scrapbook process video that you can find over on You Tube: Continue reading

I'm playing along with The Scrapbook Challenges Blog: Sketch Crew Crush Mandi challenge. Notes: Sometimes we bring Eevee downstairs during homeschool and today we decided to give her a first taste of milk. Of course she loved it. January '16. Supplies: Dear Lizzy, Crate Paper, Shimelle, American Crafts. Here's a link to the scrapbook process video which you can find on You Tube: Continue reading

Hey Scrapbookers! It's Katie Scott. I'm excited to start fresh with my scrapbooking in 2016. I had a challenging 2015 and didn't get to do much scrapbooking over the fall, so the supplies out on my scrapbooking desk seem stale... Continue reading

This scrapbook process video is part of the Creating a Tribute Scrapbook series. In this video, I put together a scrapbook page using a document only without any photos. Since it was an important document - in this case, it was the letter home from the Marines in WWII saying that Charlie had been injured - he would later be awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for sustaining injuries during batter - so I felt like it could stand on its own without a photo. I used a copy of the document for the scrapbook - I would never slap stickers on the original. Do you ever make scrapbook pages of documents? If you have, I'd love to see what you've made - please leave a link. Continue reading

We are now at the fun part of making a Tribute Scrapbook: Making the layouts and I'm making scrapbook process videos in real time as I make the scrapbook pages. Remember it has been a while since I've been scrapbooking or making videos - it will probably take me a bit to get back into the groove on both fronts. I'm happy to be back to creating and I'm happy you've stopped by! Please leave a comment to let me know what you've been up to. Continue reading

The second video in the Creating a Tribute Scrapbook series is up over at You Tube. This video is all about how I gathered and sorted the photos that I may use for the album. The next several videos will be scrapbook process videos showing me making scrapbook layouts - stay tuned. Continue reading

My favorite father-in-law - yes, I do only have one father-in-law, but he is still one of my favorite people of all time - passed away on December 30, 2015. We are hosting his celebration of life this Saturday. As a scrapbooker and family historian, my mind instantly goes to making a scrapbook for the memorial. So I decided to create a short series of videos about how I am throwing together a Tribute Album in 4 days. Here's a link to the first video which shows how I pulled together the bare bones of the album from scrapbook layouts that I've already made: I hope you will enjoy it and bear with me - it's been several months since I've made scrapbooking videos - or even done any scrapbooking at all - so I'm re-learning all of my video skills - rough as they are. This video is about an hour but many of the process videos will be lots shorter - so hopefully there will be a little something for everyone's video length preferences. Thanks for stopping by and please let me know what scrappy things you are up to and whether you have ever made a tribute album. :) Katie. P.S. If you are interested in more family history scrapbooking videos, check out the "Family History Scrapbooking" playlist on my You Tube Channel - here's a link: FAMILY HISTORY SCRAPBOOKING PLAYLIST Continue reading

Hi! It's Katie Scott and I've just returned from a colorful week in Washington DC. I took 1,875 photos on our trip. I don't expect to scrapbook or even print most of the photos. When scrapbooking a trip, I try... Continue reading

Today is the last day of Week In the Life 2015 and I wanted to share a comment I left on Ali Edwards' blog: "I've been loving the WITL project all week - I've done it in the past - but I think this time has been my favorite. My family has only been mildly annoyed with the photo taking overload this week. Until - just now - I was uploading photos to my own blog to document WITL & my 12 year old daughter came in to see what I was doing and then I showed her my blog posts and then your WITL video and your blog posts and then she said "Awww - now I get it" and then after a few minutes she lit up and said "Mom! When does this end?" And I told her today was the last day. And she said "We have to go take more pictures right now!" Thanks for all this inspiration this week. It has been awesome." Today I took lots of pictures for the 7th day in a row. Today we went to church so Allison could see old friends and her old favorite teacher and afterwards we walked through the graveyard so I could show her where her great-grandfather is buried. We actually had church in a different room but I did talk a picture - so I used this old photo from the chapel to bring home the fact that we were at church - I didn't take photos during the service today and the old photo was from a school concert last year. Today she and I have lunch at Lime - her favorite - and she shows me the rap songs she likes on my iPhone. This week we've taken all of their devices - iphones, ipads, laptops - away so they can get back into the school mode. We aren't sure how long we'll have the devices on restriction but everyone - even the kids - are on board with this plan. Today Mac is frustrated about the locked up junk food pantry and fridge. Allison helps him out with the locks and shows off her Manga drawings. Later her puts a lock on my bathroom faucet which doesn't at all interfere with how it works. It is just a little symbol that he's not a fan of the locks. Today the whole family goes over to the little island in the boat. Today I manage to get a photo of the whole family with the self timer while we explore the mangroves on the island - there is a tree fort that the kids sometimes go up into - I've set my Canon point and shoot to self timer and put it on one of the ladder slats of wood going up the tree. We didn't make the fort but someone maintains it pretty well so the kids feel safe going up there - I've never gone up but my sister did... Continue reading

Saturdays are for sleeping in. I keep the curtains open so I don't sleep all day long. Saturdays are for hibernating in your room and watching You Tube videos on the Wii. Saturdays are for drawing even more Manga. Saturdays are for watching Simpsons marathons. Saturdays are usually for scrapbooking - but not this Saturday. Saturdays are for visits from Grammy. Saturdays are for kayak rides to the island with Jessie our flat coat retriever. She couldn't wait to go - the rest of the family said it was too hot out to go - so it was just Jessie and me. Saturdays are for hanging out on the island - I've been rowing or paddling to this little island for the past 20 years now. Those big puffy clouds mean we can't stay long - we need to beat the coming storm. Saturdays are for finding things like driftwood, minnows, tiny horseshoe crabs and peace. Saturdays are for checking on the backyard plants - birds of paradise, hibiscus, cactus, rosemary - and the spider plant that Mac was given at school at the beginning of 6th grade and he was to turn it in at the end of 8th grade - last year while he was going to school we kept the plant inside and it didn't do well - and then when we started home schooling I put the plant outside and since then it and he have thrived. (I've got to remember to do a scrapbook layout about that at some point). Saturdays are for swimming - Jessie's swim is a bit of a forced swim - I make her clean off in the pool after going to the island - she hates it and then goes crazy running around the backyard and rolling in the grass afterwards - it is so funny and so much like our old black lab, Duke. Saturdays are for underwater photos of my beautiful girl. Saturday afternoons are for hanging out in this new little seating area that I created at the beginning of the summer. Saturdays are for checking out what kind of Lego creations Mac has made. Saturdays are for seafood dinners: stuffed scallops and clams. Saturdays are for setting the table. Saturdays are for family dinners. Saturdays after dinner are for letting Jessie out of the cage, sitting in the backyard with Grandfather, and doing dishes. Saturday evenings are for bike rides with Grammy and looking up at the puffy clouds which are unusual tonight. Later Charlie and I watch the movie "This Means War" with Reese Witherspoon. Continue reading

Happy that it's Friday! The story of this photo: It's been a fairly boring week for this flat coat retriever - no walks (it is still pretty hot for walks - but when it cools off a little more she'll get 1 or 2 daily walks around our island), no boat rides (so far). She has been pretty successful at begging for chewy bones and at sleeping in Allison's room and sitting on counters and dining room tables. She is happy that it is almost the weekend since she usually gets a kayak or boat ride over to the little island to explore without a leash and chase minnows and find stinky things to roll around in. But meantime she's happy to take naps all over the house. I got out the "good" camera for some of the photos today - my Canon Rebel that is 10 years old now - please leave a comment if you have an opinion about whether I should upgrade to a more current DLSR? I'd love to know whether I should keep using the current old one or to ask for a new one for Christmas. The story of this photo: Another day, another day of home school. If I ask him how homeschool is going he'll say "terrible" but if you ask if he wants to go back to regular school he might say "no" or "maybe next year" - if someone else asks him how home school is going he tells them he loves it. Here, we have just watched the second hour of the History Channel program "America: The Story of Us - Westward" and I have written down key terms like "Daniel Boone" and the "Erie Canal" and "Lewis and Clark" and he has to describe the terms in a few lines - either from his memory or by using 2 US History texts that we have for home school - one text is the same one that my daughter used in her 5th grade US History class and the other text is geared more for the high school level. We use both of the books. He is getting better at looking up things on his own - I am working with him on study skills and note taking this year in home school. There is progress. I feel good about that. The story of this photo: Using the teacher planner has been a God send for me - I really enjoy having everything in one place and visually being able to track our progress - and not having to make up what we are going to be doing on the day that we do it - I need to sit down with the planner over this weekend and flush out next week's plans. All that said, I think we only stuck with the hourly schedule on Monday - by Tuesday we were making up our own schedule - and that was just fine with both of us. The story... Continue reading

I want to remember how much inspiration I'm getting from Ali Edwards' blog. I think it's been a while since I've really followed a scrapbooking project or class and this is really amazing. I'm digging it completely. *** Here's what I want to remember from our Thursday: I want to remember that having a dog means that I vacuum the house every single day - and that Jessie is afraid of the vacuum - and that Jessie finds comfort in Allison's room even when she isn't here. The two of them have a special bond. I want to remember that even though Mac doesn't want to be snuggled most of the time that he likes to be snuggled some of the time and that he desperately wants to be able to snuggle with Jessie - and that Jessie would barely let us touch her when we got her from Florida All Retriever Rescue and that she's come a long way and will tolerate petting and even a tiny bit of snuggling now. She likes to be near us but she is skittish about truly snuggling or being held down in any way. But when she feels like you want to pet her, she'll roll over on her back and fold her front paws and let you pet her belly. I want to remember that this was the summer that he grew to be taller than me and he wants me to know that he can now touch the part of the ceiling that goes down lower than the rest of it - and that he's always wanted to be tall enough to touch this part - even though he wishes he weren't taller than me and he wishes that he could just stay a little boy. I want to remember that we've made a lot of progress since we started home school last January and that it was a decision that we thought about for years before we made it. I want to remember to be patient with him and that he is trying really hard since doing school work is an enormous struggle for him despite that he is a naturally very smart kid. I want to remember that eating breakfast and drinking coffee in the morning prevents migraine headaches in the afternoon. Although lately, I do get one horrible migraine a month no matter what precautions I take. I want to remember that everyone in the entire house - even Allison - loves Boar's Head Honey Maple Turkey - and that we go through at least 2 pounds of it every week. I also want to remember how adorable Jessie is. I want to remember to take photos with me in them - even if I don't have any make up on, even if I'm still in my pajamas, and even if I don't like the wrinkles on my forehead or the dark circles under my eyes. I want to remember to look past my own vanity issues... Continue reading

Some days we get to the good gym - today Mac did 8 miles on the bike and I felt good about doing the stepper and weights. Most days it is still super hot here in August and it feels good to jump in the pool after a workout. Some days I jump in too - the kids love it when I swim with them. Some days there is a mountain of laundry and an unmade bed. Most days Jessie the flat coat retriever is in the middle of whatever I'm doing. Most days I shower after the workout and before car circle - so something like 2 pm. I don't think I've ever taken a selfie in the shower before - this one was inspired by the one on Ali Edwards' blog. Most days I spot a dolphin or manatee from the window in my shower. Most days we have turkey sandwiches for lunch, most days Jessie the flatcoat sits on the counter while I make lunch and we eat it. She politely begs for a bite - but she never takes food without permission - our late yellow lab Dandy never got physically up on the counter, but he could stand up with this paws on the counter to eat the entire sandwich without permission if I wasn't watching. Most days I pick up Allison from school even though Charlie says that he'll be picking her up every day - this is day 3 and I'm 3 for 3. Most days she is happy to see me and tells me all about her new friends and her day. Most days she controls the radio and most days we like the same kind of music. Some days home school happens upstairs if we get a late start aren't done when Allison gets home. Most days he is cooperative about homeschool but most days handwriting is a struggle - this is actually one of his better handwriting samples. We are working on writing this year. Most days she does drawing all on her own - lately it's been Manga. She is talented and she practices hard and often. She is an artist at heart. Most nights she gives Daddy a better hug than she gives me and lately she puts herself to bed. Most nights Jessie sleeps in Allison's room. Most nights I read Harry Potter to him in my room and he gets a case of the giggles at some point and I have to tell him to settle down already or I'm going to stop reading and just go to sleep. Most nights it is hard for me to actually fall asleep. *** A few notes about the Week In the Life Project: Blogging about Week in the Life fell off my to do list for Wednesday so I'm getting this done on Friday morning - I think getting the journaling portion done the night or the morning after is probably best but I'll take what I can... Continue reading

Hello Tuesday: I got a lot of inspiration from Ali Edwards' blog post about Week in the Life. I have to admit, it's been a while since I've been super excited about scrapbooking and taking photos - I still love it, it just hasn't been a burning source of excitement - this WITL project might be the ticket to renewing my passion for memory keeping. So we didn't get up quite as early today as we did yesterday. Since Charlie drives Allison to school - this year earlier than ever before; and Mac and I are homeschooling, we can sleep in a bit. Sometimes I let him sleep while I get work done around the house. This morning I let him sleep while I wrote the blog post - I felt really rusty with my blogging skills - ie. uploading a photo and linking to things - it's been a while. And now, even uploading the photos from my iphone from yesterday - everything is taking longer than normal because I haven't done these photo things for so long - it's time to get back to having the photo processing and blogging as part of my regular routine. He loves to sleep in - all day if possible. I love to have the chance to take photos of his eyelashes and toes like I did when he was a baby - Beverly Goldberg from the TV show The Goldbergs has a scrapbook of photos of her kids sleeping, I can appreciate that - although I usually just taking the sleeping photos on Christmas Eve. His feet are now bigger than mine and he is taller than me. And he is still my baby. Today I wanted to make sure to get some photos of homeschool since I didn't get any yesterday and it is a huge part of our day. This year I got planners for both Mac and me. Having a plan written down ahead of time is good for both of us - we deviated from the plan and started with a science experiment instead of English - but having the plan all written down is a very, very good thing - especially when he tries to frustrate me - yes, he does this intentionally sometimes - he'll kick the table and make screetching sounds and then ask if he is annoying me - he says he finds it amusing to see me freak out. So I really try really, really hard to not let the intentionally annoying behaviors stress me out on the outside. I'm not sure how we are going to fix this little phase, but we will get through it. Notice my my reflection in my ipad? That was unintentional but pretty great. \ I'm trying to get Mac to be more independent so I created a planner for him, this morning he decides to mix it up and start with a Science experiment first. I've planned to have a reading day for Science followed... Continue reading

We were up early today because it was Allison's first day of sixth grade at a brand new school. We checked the Student Handbook dress code online one more time to make sure she was wearing the right kind of socks. She refused to let me take a first day photo. So I did the next best thing and took a photo of her backpack and lunchbox and of course our flatcoat retriever, Jessie, jumped up and got in the photo - she is a dog who acts a lot like a cat and she loves to lay on counters on the dining room table. And yes, I tried to get her to stop doing this but my husband encourages it so I finally gave in and we have a dog who lies on the counter. She is pretty sweet and she gets down when I ask her to. *** I didn't even know about Week In the Life until this morning when I got up early at 5 something am and started working out while listening to the Scrap Gals podcast. This put a kink in my husband's day since I'm not usually in the home gym this early - he sort of stayed grumpy about it for the rest of the day which might explain why he isn't in any of the photos today. I shot all of these photos with my iphone 5 and I'm uploading them to my computer to write this blog post - something I almost never do - one of my current goals is to get my photos process back to a better more organized place - so that I can have more current photos available for scrapbooking - and to get scrapbooking back into my daily routine. I did make a scrapbook layout in the evening and I made a process video while doing - as is my routine for the last year or so. I'll put a link to my You Tube channel down at the bottom - my process videos are shot in real time so then tend to be longer than pre-planned process videos - but I usually chat away and some people like to feel like they have a virtual scrap buddy while watching and doing their own thing. Anyway, I'm happy that Week in the Life started today - the first day of school so that I could get the scrapbooking and photography in as part of the new school routine. *** Mac was cooperative about getting up early and out to the gym which is all part of my master plan this year for home school. I didn't actually take many photos from homeschool today - mental note to do tomorrow. We did 15 minutes treadmill, 15 on leg weight machines, 15 minutes of bike, and 15 minutes of arm weight machines. We felt pretty good about this and it was a fun way to start 8th grade home school. Even though this photo is blurry,... Continue reading

See my scrapbooking on the go mini kit - and a layout share of the nine layouts I've made so far with this kit. Supplies: Crate Paper Jouney; Teresa Collins; Amy Tangerine; Dear Lizzy; Prima; Silhouette Cameo; and lots of other goodies from my scrapbook stash. Continue reading

This scrapbook layout is all about the ride home from our spring break road trip last year and how we got new tires and averted disaster. Seriously - we got to the tire shop 5 minutes before they closed. I had no idea my tires were this worn - the damage was on the inside. Yikes. Supplies: American Crafts Amy Tangerine and October Afternoon Stickers; Crate Paper Washi Tape (that came in the form of a 12x12 sheet); Studio Calico 6x6 paper pad. And I thought I made a scrapbook process video of this page while I made it but I couldn't seem to find it so here's another scrapbook layout about that same road trip: *** Continue reading

My sister, Jenny, will beat you at any word game. I should know - she's been beating me at Boggle for our entire lives and lately she gets something like triple or quadruple my score in Words With Friends. Supplies: October Afternoon, DCWV, We R Memory Keepers, and Me and My Big Ideas / MAMBI. Continue reading

Hey Scrapbookers! Most of the scrapbook layouts I make are single pagers; however, lately, with the inspiration over at Masterful Scrapbook Design / Get It Scrapped - I'm loving the double wide again: One reason I'm loving the two pager again is that I'm thinking of this set up more as a one page layout with a supporting page. So the left part of this 2 pager could totally stand alone as a regular one page scrapbook layout: In this case the supporting page includes lots of journaling, but more often than not my supporting page includes a ton of photos. I had lots of random memories that I wanted to jot down so doing this journaling only page was a great way to get them down on paper. One more thing, I used an original photo on this page! I sewed a part of a plastic pocket onto the page so that the original photo was safe and sound - the stickers are on top of the page protector for that photo rather than right on the photo: Want to see more 2 page layouts? Go check out Loving the Double Wide at Masterful Scrapbook Design. Want to hear more about one page layouts versus two page layouts? Go check out The Scrap Gals Podcast: Episode 67: Real Life vs. Pros which includes a discussion about the 1 versus 2 page layout. Want to see my process video for making this page? Go to my You Tube Channel: Thanks for stopping by! *** Continue reading

This was Mother's Day 2012 - this year we did the family photos with my new selfie stick which I'm having a lot of fun with - just check my Instagram account if you are curious about what kinds of pictures I'm getting. And just as I am posting this - my daughter came in and said "Happy Mother's Day" again and gave me a hug. That's all we really want, right? I am so thankful to be a mother - it really is the best thing I've ever done. The layout design for this page was inspired by the Spring Colors line over at The Digital Press - loving the triangles. Here's the scrapbook process video showing how I made the page: Happy Mother's Day! *** Continue reading

So this month at Get It Scrapped / Masterful Scrapbooking Design, it's all about two page layouts or as Debbie puts it: "Loving the Double Wide" Here's my take (in the form of a scrapbook process video) on Emily Pitts' advice to border the entire two page layout to give the layout a cohesive feel: This was layout #3 in my 9 layout series using my DIY / Make Your Own Scrapbook Kit Series inspired by Crate Paper's Journey collection. *** Continue reading

Hello Scrapbookers! I'm loving my new system of creating my own scrapbooking kits and making 9 layouts from the kit - I'm on the third "Create Your Own Kit" kit! This one is inspired by Crate Paper's Journey Line embellishment pack - and it is so cute! Take a look: *** Continue reading

Everything old is new again. When I started scrapbooking, I did 8.5 x 11 layouts - and I still do them from time to time, but the majority of my pages are 12x12. I've noticed so many 8.5 x 11 layouts on Pinterest this year - I think this size is definitely making its come back. A few of the things I like about this size are that the pages go together quickly and they are easier to store than 12x12 layouts. What size layouts are you making? Leave a comment, I would love to know. This page is all about my Grandma Grace who never stopped talking - thus the "blah blah blah" patterned paper was so appropriate for this layout. She was also a collector of stuff - she was an expert at squirreling things away in drawers and closets. She loved an abundance of stuff - thus the little to no white space on this layout matches her personality. I miss her so much. I thought I made a process video for this layout but I can't seem to find it - but here's another layout I made about my Grandma Grace with the Jenni Bowlin October 2014 kit: *** Continue reading

Over the past week or so I've been making my own scrapbook kits using a 6x6 paper pack as inspiration for theme and color and then challenging myself to create 9 layouts with the kit. So far I've made two kits: the first inspired by Kelly Purkey's Mon Ami line with Basic Grey and the second inspired by Dear Lizzy's Serendipity and Polka Dot Party lines with American Crafts. The result has been an explosion of creativity for me! I made 9 layouts with the first kit and 11 with the second kit (and one more to come so that will be 12 with the second). Want to see how I did it all? Well, I also made 20 scrapbook process videos - you can see how I made the kits and how I made the layouts. Fair warning: my videos are intentionally unprofessional - I make my videos so they are in real time so scrapbookers can see how long it actually takes me to make a layout - so for the most part so the videos tend to run long (like about an hour) - some people like the longer format so that they can watch and think of me as their virtual crop buddy. And like a crop buddy - I talk about all sorts of things from what I'm doing to make the scrapbook layout, to news from around the online scrapbook community, to which movie my family watched last night and how we liked it, to the ups and downs of homeschooling - really it is whatever pops into my mind. Nothing is rehearsed or planned - I just press record on my ipad (which is what I use to film the videos) and start scrapping and talking. I realize that many people do not want a long video - if you are in that camp - just watch the first 2 or 3 minutes of the video - I make that part of the video at the end of my process so that the long video starts with a short - here's how I made this layout and what the finished result looks like - I know some people who just watch that part of the video and then maybe skip ahead to the parts that interest them. Want to start with a shorter video (6 minutes) that recaps a bunch of layouts? And here's a more typical longer scrapbook process video (45 minutes): Thanks for stopping by - please leave a comment to let me know what types of scrapbook process videos you'd like to see. Continue reading

Hey Scrapbookers: I've been scrapbooking lots in 2015 but blogging has fallen off my radar - time to get it back on. I've been working on making my own kits inspired by paper pads - there are lots of videos over on my You Tube Channel: With each homemade kit, I'll be creating 9 layouts which will include videos. So come and play along - I've found that making a kit and then challenging myself to create a set number of layouts is a very easy way to get a ton of layouts created in a short time. #fasterscrapping Thanks for looking :) Katie. *** If you'd like to pick up some of these delightful papers (or anything else you might need), check out the Amazon affiliate links: Continue reading