December Desktop Freebie

Can you believe that tomorrow is the first day of December? Are you ready? I know it's a busy month for our family. To save you a little time, we've got this cute desktop freebie for you (made with the kit Santa's Workshop) over on the Trixie Scraps blog! It comes in two sizes: 1280 x 800 and 1024 x 768. Enjoy!

Manic Monday and Desktop Freebie

Hey everyone! Happy Monday! Trixie Scraps has a great way for you to start off your week today... a fantastic deal on a fantastic kit!

Today "The First Feast" is on sale for 50% off. But the sale is ONLY for today (Monday, November 1), so make sure you hop on over to one of Trixie's stores and grab it quick!



Trixie Scraps Store
ScrapMatters
Gotta Pixel
Scrapbook-Bytes

What a great time for this kit to go on sale with Thanksgiving coming up in a few weeks! This is definitely one kit you need in your stash for the holidays. Plus, you can hop on over to the Trixie Scraps blog and get this fabulous desktop calendar (made using "The First Feast") free!

Anti-Procrastination Tuesday

It's Anti-Procrastination Tuesday with Amy over at New Nostalgia. Now don't fall over just because I've had blog posts two days in a row! :) I figure if posting my weekly menu plan on Mondays can help me be more consistent with meal planning, then maybe participating in Amy's Anti-Procrastination Tuesdays will help me, well...tackle some of the tasks I've been procrastinating.

The to-do list is long, so I'm just going to start by listing a few short-term and long-term projects that I need to remember to work on completing. Then I'll come back and cross them out. So, in no particular order, here I go:

• Get bags of salt out of trunk and refill water softener. (I needed to start with an easy one).
  
• Clear off dining room table (aka storage space for stuff that needs a home).
  
• Buy photo albums and page protectors.
• Start printing out the backlog of photos just sitting on my computer. I can always do digiscrap layouts to add to the albums later. I need to at least have 4x6 prints in albums to enjoy.
• Calendar gifts to give at Christmas.
• Finish knitting youngest DD's baby blanket that I started knitting four years ago when I was pregnant with her. Didn't finish it before she was born, and, well, it's still not done.
• Finish making felted purse for my niece. (I want to be done with it by the beginning of December so I can give it to her for Christmas.)
• Knit and felt a pair of mittens for me. I keep making them for the kids, but have never made a pair for myself.
• Knit and felt a pair of mittens for youngest DD.
• Create family silhouettes to frame (see here and here).

I think I'll stop there. That's overwhelming enough for now. So what tasks/projects are on your to-do list that you keep procrastinating?

Menu Plan Monday

I've been trying to be more consistent about planning our family's meals. Life goes much smoother around our house when I don't have to decide what's for dinner on a nightly basis. And when the kiddos ask me the inevitable question, "Mom, what's for dinner?" at least I can give them an immediate answer (whether or not they like that answer LOL).

I've been following Laura over at "I'm an Organizing Junkie" for a few months now. My menu planning has been rather hit or miss (some weeks I do, some weeks I don't), so I thought if I started posting my weekly menu plan on my blog it might encourage me to be more consistent with my planning. Every week, Laura posts her menu plan for the week, and her readers link up to their menu plan blog posts. It's a fabulous resource for finding new ideas and recipes (which I seem to always need with all of the picky eaters in my house)! So this week, I'm finally joining in on the fun for the first time.

Here's my menu plan for the week:

Monday: Meatloaf

Tuesday: French Dip Sandwiches

Wednesday: One-Dish Chicken Bake

Thursday: Chicken Fried Pork Chops

Friday: Leftovers or sandwiches

Saturday: Breakfast for dinner (probably French toast)

Sunday: English Muffin Pizzas

Sometime this week I'm also going to try this pumpkin bread recipe. I already have a pumpkin bread recipe that I love, but this one caught my eye and is different from mine.

Do you know what's on your dinner menu for the week? Head on over to Laura's web site and check it out!

A new hat to wear!

I am thrilled to let all of you know that I was asked by Tracy of Trixie Scraps Designs to join her CT (Creative Team) as her Special Agent Team Captain! This happened back in August, but between being so busy getting started on her team, and going on family vacations, I just haven't gotten back over here to blog about it! I've always been a huge fan of Trixie Scraps Designs, and am having a blast working with Tracy and the rest of the ladies on her team.

You can find Trixie Scraps Designs at ScrapMatters and Gotta Pixel, and today is her grand opening over at Scrapbook-Bytes! And to celebrate, she is having a 30% off sale in her brand new store all month long!



As we get ready to head into a new school year, I've been doing a little scrapping to catch up on years past. I created this layout using Trixie's kit "Love My Guy" and the Back to School 4x6 photo template freebie I created for the 8/19/10 Trixie Scraps Stars team blog challenge.







I hope you've had a fabulous summer and are ready for fall. It's hard to believe that the summer went by so quickly! Our family had a great time, and one of my goals is to actually get some of our vacation photos scrapped sooner rather that later. I'd better get started because I certainly took enough pictures! We went on a week-long vacation, and even with two SD memory cards along (1 GB and 2 GB) I still had to find a Best Buy so I could buy another memory card for the last couple days!

Hanging up my design hat for now...

For the past few months I've been working on figuring out how to best balance everything in my life. I'm at a point in my life with my husband and kids where I need to re-prioritize, which means for now I've decided I need to step down as a designer at FaithSisters. If you use the coupon code farewellsale_54 you will get 65% off your purchase of $3.00 or more in my FaithSisters store. The coupon will expire July 31, 2010, as my store is closing at the end of July.

I have loved working with everyone over at FaithSisters! I will certainly still be out and about in digiland, just doing some of my own scrapping for now. I'm sure I won't stop designing altogether, so you'll probably see an occasional freebie or two here on my blog. And this poor neglected blog of mine will probably start to have posts on some of my other interests in addition to digiscrapping. So I hope you stick around!

iNSD sale 2010 at my FaithSisters store!

I hope you are enjoying iNSD weekend 2010! Just popping in quick to let you know that you can use the coupon code nsd2010_54 to get 50% off any purchase of $3.00 or more at my FaithSisters store through Monday, May 3, 2010!

Happy scrapping!

Enter to win my newest template set!

Well, I’m back from an unexpected hiatus, and I decided to give my blog a makeover. What do you think? Do you even remember what it used to look like since it’s been so long? I still may do a little more tweaking, specifically with the new header, but it works for now.

I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter a few days ago. Kelleigh and Pam wrote about speedcleaning on their blogs last week, and that was the final push I needed. As Kelleigh says on her blog, "The idea behind #speedclean is that you clean as fast as you can so you can get on to doing the stuff that you love to do. Just get it over with." So if you’re on Twitter, you need to check out #speedclean. And if you’re not on Twitter, go sign up so you can check it out!

This year I decided to give Project 365 a go. The idea of taking a picture a day for an entire year is a little daunting, but how cool will it be at the end of the year?! So far, so good…I’ve only missed a couple days. But now I need to scrap my January photos. Have you?

I just released Volume 1 of my 2010 Project 365 Template series. Just in time to get those January photos scrapped. Each set in the series will include interchangeable week and date specific page borders. So this first set includes a solid border, borders for weeks 1-4 and date specific borders for the first four weeks of the year (i.e. January 1 – 7, 2010).



You could win my new Project 365 Templates, Vol. 1. What do you need to do to enter? Two things:

1 – Follow me on Twitter.

AND

2 – Be sure to leave a comment at the end of this blog post with your Twitter username.

I will randomly select one of my Twitter followers to win on Saturday, February 6. And in the meantime, if you just can’t wait, Project 365 Templates Vol. 1 is 20% off until February 8, 2010 at FaithSisters and My Life and Scrap.