(diva)logues

"I threw my hands in the air I said show me something..."

As you know, SRM Stickers came out with lots of fun new products at the Winter 2013 CHA Trade Show.  I'm loving that they've partnered with The Twinery.  They have such FUN colors to choose from... like this brand new Platinum Shimmer twine that I used to create my title (since I kinda like anything that shimmers)...

I used quite a few SRM We've Got Your Border Wedding stickers on here (even adding some directly to my photo)...

I used a SRM Glassine Bag to hold my journaling card (which was from the Simple Stories SNAP collection)...

The rest of the page (my hearts and the background paper) are Crate Paper's Fourteen collection.  I'm usually into bold colors, but I was loving the greys & soft colors in this collection, and I like how it worked with the shimmer in the twine. 

This page was featured on the SRM Stickers blog yesterday.  You can see it here if you missed it!

Happy Friday, everyone, and have a GREAT weekend! 

"Everyone's itchin for beauty, but you're scratchin the surface..."

It was fun celebrating a friend's birthday today with lunch at a French restaurant.  I do love a good Nicoise salad & they just happened to have one.  Most of these girls that were at lunch today, were also at another birthday party in January that was a ton of FUN too!  In fact, I had just finished working with the photos from that party last night.

The page is a combination of things... mostly bits & pieces from the SNAP collection...

On the Let's Dance cut-out... I added a new SRM Sticker Stitches to the top.  I like to use faux stitching sometimes on pages (like I did around the border of my white space), and these new stickers will be fun to use too!  I also used a SRM birthday sentiment sticker to create my title.  Love the Bright SRM border stickers that I added under my title...  

And coincidentally... I received this thank you note from that party today...

Gotta love cute thank you notes!   ♥

Snow what?

Well... we were hit with about 6 inches of snow & a ton of ice yesterday morning.  School was cancelled the night before... just based on the prediction.  Craziness.  But it did finally start around 10am, so it was a good thing they didn't have to run busses.  No school again today either, so Bryn's had 2 days in a row in the snow.  Personally, I'm looking forward to Spring.

Being stuck inside did give me time to finish a couple pages though, so I'm happy about that. 

I got out the SNAP collection again (shocking, I know), along with some SRM border stickers, and a SRM Glassine bag...

There's SO many ways you can use the new Glassine Bags, which come in 5 different sizes.  I used mine to hold my journaling card this time.  I like that the bag is somewhat transparent so you can almost read the journaling without pulling the card out...

 

Those photos are from 2011.  Sheesh... finally getting around to tackling that trip. 

Just one of many trips I still need to tackle... (insert big sigh).

New product from SRM Stickers...

Have you seen all the cool new products from SRM Stickers?  I have a project on their blog today, using 2 of their new products that just debuted at the 2013 Winter CHA Trade Show...

SRM Thank You Stickers By The Dozen and SRM's Glassine Bags

Just a very quick + easy way to make gift card holders!  Place the card inside, fold the top over, add a journaling card (mine were from the Simple Stories Fabulous collection), punch 2 holes & lace your ribbon through.  A little bling, of course, will finish it off...

Check out the SRM Stickers blog daily to see more creative ways to use these products and MORE!

"My homey lent me some cash... thank you. Bartender filled my glass... thank you."

Did you know that SRM Stickers has teamed up with The Twinery and is now selling their twine in their online store?  How FUN is that?!

One of my favorite fun ways to use twine on a page is when making "balloons."   I used their Caribbean Teal Blue twine on this page about the birthday dinner we had for my dad last weekend.  My sister surprised him by coming in town for it...

I added a SRM We've Got Your Border sentiment.  And of course... more SNAP goodies on there too.   Oh... and some of that Target washi tape.  Gotta love it.

Also gotta love 7-hour birthday lunches.  Fun times!

That is all.

S-C-O-R-E... Score! Score!

I know.  I needed more new paper & more SNAP like I need more Zumba clothes (which incidentally, I bought a couple more tops too.  Shhhh). 

But the SNAP Basics Kit is going to work great with the rest of the collection.  Ok well really, I HAD to have it because it's like ALL graph paper... colored graph paper on one side & white graph or lined paper on the other side.

Heaven!

And I found a few other goodies while at Archivers too. 

Ok, that is all.  Off to finish cleaning my house in preparation for an out-of-town friend staying this weekend & then to a Zumbathon for the American Heart Association tonight that our YMCA is hosting.    FUN, FUN!! 

All in all... an awesome Friday.  Hope yours is as well!  TGIF! 

"We will, we will, ROCK YOU..."

Ok so who wants to see more SNAP?

Cricket... cricket...

Well obviously I do, so here we go!   It's really just a few of the journaling spots on here, but let's face it... that's what most of the collection is & why I love it.   The photos are from Bryn's band concert in December that also involved the "parent concert" I'd been practicing for too.   The things I will do for this child...

I added a SRM We've Got Your Border sticker sentiment to the bottom of my journaling spot.  And the musical notes is a very OLD clear overlay on blue cardstock to match the letter & number Thickers.  The polka dot paper on the sides is Echo Park Springtime...

I shared this video Bob took of our stellar performance on Facebook last month, but I thought I'd share it here too since it goes along with the photos.  It's totally hilarious.  Actually we sounded a lot better than I thought we would though.  And yes, that's me right in front.  My friend commented on Facebook that I was "first chair"... something only those who have played in band would understand.  Cracked me up though!!! 

Did we or did we not rock Hot Cross Buns?

 

Ok nevermind, don't answer that...

Well that's just purrrfect...

Since January is a big month for birthdays, I've been busy making a few cards.

Now that I think about it, EVERY month is a big month for birthdays.

Anyway, I happened to have the Simple Stories Fabulous collection still laying on my floor, so I used one of the journaling cards as the background for this one...

In addition to my SRM sticker sentiment, I added my own grass, an extra wing & a punched butterfly to add some dimension to the card...

I went out & bought some cat stickers just for this next card.  It's a long story.  Not even sure how it began...

Another journaling card for my background (this one from Echo Park) plus some added punched clouds & a border punched strip for my grass...

To add to the "cat" theme for this particular birthday party last Saturday night, I happened to find cat masks while shopping that day...

 

What can I say... it got a few laughs.

And in my world... getting a few laughs is golden.

"Wobble baby... wobble baby... wobble baby... wobble..."

Yep... I made some changes here.  And since I know nothing technical about blogs, I went with something very clean & streamlined.  Although if someone could put a rainbow & clouds on here I'd be happy.  What I like most about this new blog layout is that I can now use large size images... making it easier for readers to see detail without having to click on each image to increase the size.  I've been going through old posts to resize everything, but I may just decide to leave the last 5 years as is.  It will take FORever & I've got better things to do! 

Oh... and we had tornado sirens today.  In January.  And it was 66 degrees.  Thursday we're supposed to get snow.  Only in Missouri. 

Moving on...

After going through old photos last night and then taking the big stack of completed pages that had been piling up on my counter & finally putting them in the books (chronologically the best I could)... I decided to tackle some more events from last year.  Bryn's books are pretty much up-to-date, minus a couple trips.  But the books I have for my (& Bob's) fun stuff... have some gaps. 

Can one ever really be "caught up" with all their photos anyway?  I think not.

So last night I got out my Simple Stories SNAP collection (I told you I loved it) & printed photos from this birthday party that happened almost a year ago...

Once again... a boat load of party pics.  And yes... there were at least 20 more photos I could've used on here but I showed some restraint...

Will I ever be a one-photo-per-page-with-a-bunch-of-flowers-around-it kind of scrapbooker? 

Nope. 

Works for a lot of people, but it's just not practical for me.  Or my style, for that matter.

I need LOTS of pictures.  And journaling.  Preferably all on ONE 12x12 page.

 

And something else I need...

a little practice at doing "The Wobble."

The end.

"I'm easy to see, I'm with the girls on the dance floor..."

It's almost birthday party time.  A party that just might involve a dance floor. 

My FAVORITE kind of party.  For reals. 

In fact I just finished making a fun cd of party songs per the birthday girl's request.   

A warning to my Facebook friends... there will probably be a ton of pics on there Sunday.  That's how we tend to roll.  LOL

And what is this I see?  A Christmas page that WASN'T made with the 12 Days of Christmas collection?  I know... finally.  Sheesh.  And it's not even a Christmas collection.  It's the Echo Park Today's Story collection.  Sorry, I know.  I'm addicted to that one too.     

It's mostly the entire 12x12 journaling cards page.  I changed it up just a bit to cover the yellow & blue.  Also added some SRM Christmas-themed stickers + some of my own embellishments...

The grid made it easier to finish in a reasonable time. 

And by reasonable, I mean less than 2 days.  LOL

Have a FABULOUS weekend, everyone! 

 

Wha' shoe lookin' at?

You know it's really cold outside & HOT inside when the windows in the Zumba room are all fogged up.

Zumbliciousness.

Just a couple more pages here using some more of my December photo stash, along with more of the My Mind's Eye 12 Days of Christmas collection.  You'd think I'd used it all by now, but hang tight!  I still have a few more scraps.  LOL 

I mixed in some old Cosmo Cricket (the polka dot background paper) + some Simple Stories Fabulous stickers.  The shoe is a downloaded clip art image to fit the theme, with some added bling.  It doesn't look like any of the 3 pairs of shoes she received, but frankly I don't care.  It matches the page.

This kid is a total NUT.  I'll admit she gets the crazy faces from me, along with the outta control excitement over shoes.  She better study hard & get a good job... that's all I can say...

On the next page I wanted to use the photos Bryn had taken with her iPod Touch when she attended a parade with her friend.  They aren't the best quality photos, but I'm all for using imperfect photos in the books to document an event...

I made my own tree + added some bling.  I do love me some bling...

I also kinda love graph paper.

Duh.

It's almost the weekend!  ROCK ON...

We're all in our places with sunshiny faces...

The weather is a-mazing today and yet I just spent the whole day, minus my 6:30am spin class + a quick run to Starbucks, in my craftroom working (or playing, really).  And to be perfectly honest at 3pm I thought to myself... this was the best day ever.  And Bryn has volleyball intramurals all week after school, so that gives me an EXTRA hour to do whatever the heck I want.  Strange, I know, but with everything else going on lately, to have an entire day to devote to choreographing 2 Zumba songs + getting a couple scrapbook pages completed... I was a happy girl. 

Or... perhaps it's this Simple Stories SNAP collection that makes me so happy?  Page number 3 is here, so sorry in advance if you're not quite as into SNAP as I am.  You're going to see more of it too.  That's how I roll.  When I like something, I just keep using it.  Like rainbows and clouds and buildings and... well, you know the drill. 

 

In addition to the SNAP collection, I also used a SRM Stickers 12x12 calendar page + some SRM Calendar Companion stickers on the bottom...

Ok, so today wasn't really the best day EVER.  Clearly I've had better days.  Like with people.  I'm not just a recluse or anything.  

But it was really nice.  And I really am a happy girl right now. 

And according to the forecast we have 3 more days of weather in the 50's & 60's, so I'm pretty sure this will be the best weekend EVER!  Well maybe not EVER, but my weekend involves really cool & fun people.  Oh and 2 birthday parties.  And probably a headache on Sunday.  WOOOT!

Enough exaggeration.  Off to pick up my volleyball girl...

SNAP out of it...

You know you are not feeling well when you're too sick to Zumba, let alone sit in your craft room.  But after 24 hours of a stomach virus, that somehow lead to a sore throat today... I'm at least out of bed & have showered.  It's the little things!  Hopefully I snap out of this soon.

I mentioned you would probably be seeing a lot more of Simple Stories SNAP collection soon, so here we go!  I simply ADORE that collection.

This page is a combination of SNAP + DCWV The Edumacation Stack (a fun school-themed paper pad)...

The questionnaire was a free download found here.  I like to be able to include things like Bryn's handwriting or art work in her scrapbooks as much as possible.  I think it's hilarious that one of the foods she doesn't like is tofu.  How many kids have even tried that?!  And her favorite color is zebra.  Sooo funny.  That's my girl!

And I finally used all the movie ticket stubs I'd been saving for the past couple years.  These are all movies I've seen with friends... which incidentally is how I see most movies lately.  Thank you, friends! 

The polaroid frame paper on the right that holds all the movie ticket stubs is from the Echo Park Sweet Day collection, while the rest of the page is SNAP.  I also added some SRM Sticker sentiments to my Nikki Sivils scalloped border strip... 

Gotta love 3D glasses!

Hope you're enjoying your weekend and are virus-free!  ;-)

"I'll buy you a round, if you come close, turn up the sound..."

Well... I think we're finally in the clear and my little very tall mini-me will be heading back to school tomorrow.  She's been eating today, so I think that's a good sign.  Love when she's home with me, but yay for that virus being behind us.  It was AWFUL.    

Here's that other new page I recently finished.  It was inspired by my Top 12 favs post from Monday.  One of the layouts I included on here wasn't even on my list, but I wanted to include a page that I'd made about Zumba since 2012 was my first year teaching it.  Well, plus it kinda matched...    

Most of the page was made using the Simple Stories SN@P collection.  Love, love, love it.  Will be using more of that collection ASAP.  The blue background paper is from Simple Stories Harvest Lane collection.  That photo of me is from 2 summers ago.  Sadly... the state of my craft room floor pretty much looks exactly like that right now...

The rest of my house is usually immaculate.  Why does my craft room floor look like this?  This must say something about my creative mind.  And I'm not sure I want to know what it is!

And speaking of my creative mind... what do think about these new booties?

I say... different, sparkly & maybe slightly crazy.

Kinda like me.  ;-)

Why is patience a virtue & why don't I have much of it?

Just a quickie post today!  I'm a few days behind on my December Daily, but I do have this quick & easy page I put together the other day.  Just printed out wallet-sized photos from Thanksgiving... built a little scene around it... printed my journaling & voila... DONE.

I used the Simple Stories Harvest Lane collection.  I'm liking Simple Stories stuff lately.  STILL patiently waiting for my pre-order SNAP collection, that I'm beginning to wonder if the company forgot about... but that's another story.  Hopefully it arrives here eventually, like before it's considered old news...

The paper leaves I used for my tree are some very old ones from Close To My Heart. 

And let's see... I attended 2 Christmas parties the last 2 nights in a row so tonight I think I better get my beauty sleep so I can do 3 hours of ZUMBA tomorrow morning at our annual YMCA Zumbathon!  It's gonna ROCK & I can't wait!

Hopefully by Monday, I'm back on track with my December Daily mini book.

Have a great weekend everyone! 

It's Deana. Not DeAnna. Just sayin'...

Although the older I get, the more I'm willing to answer to anything.  Well don't be mean.  Oh & don't come in yelling a childhood nickname at me while I'm working.  But that's a story for another day.

This story here involves my name being mispronounced.  So what else is new.  But it wasn't until after I printed my journaling that I realized I didn't even include that part of the story.  Thus the sticker in the top that says Hello My Name Is.  Hopefully some day when I'm old & senile the sticker will remind me of that part of the story.

Anyway.  If you're new to reading this blog, my craft room was on TV again last summer for the 2nd time.  The first time it was on TV, it was for a segment KMOV's "Great Day St Louis" was doing on gift wrap areas, as I have a whole area of my craft room that was built to be a gift wrap station.  You can see video here... forward to around 7:30.  This particular time though, the producer of the show had emailed me & said they were doing a segment on "mom caves" & said I had a "great one" & asked if I'd be interested in shooting footage again.  You can see the mom cave video here... forward to around 6:10. 

Well of course!!!   

Did not love that during the editing process, the host must've forgotton how to pronounce my name.  Oh well... Deana... DeAnna... whatever. 

I used mostly Simple Stories Fabulous collection for this page with a bit of Echo Park & Bella Blvd...

In other news...

Bryn's first day of school went "great!"  She said she only got lost one time & asked a teacher where to go.  She also said that "middle school is way better than elementary school." 

If she's happy... I'm happy! 

"If you're looking for me... I'm with the girls on the dance floor...

... I'm easy to see I'm with the girls on the dance floor..."

LOVE that song.

We had a fun weekend... especially on Saturday night at my sister's going-away party.  She's moving to Denver next month.  Even though she travels A LOT and I don't get to see her regularly, I'm not looking forward to her living in another state again.  She lived in Dallas for a few years after college, but moved back here right after Bryn & Sydney were born.  So she's been here for almost 11 years now.  Everyone keeps telling me it's a new place to visit, but I like visiting with her here thank-you-very-much.  I travel enough as it is.  I've been to Denver once to ski... over 20 years ago... so I guess I'm looking forward to going back?  Really I have no choice though.  I'm going.  She can't get rid of me that easy! 

 

I have a mess of scrapbooking products all over my craft room floor for an upcoming project I've been working on... which has been making practicing Zumba interesting.  I haven't slipped on any paper yet, so all is good so far.  So... with these projects in mind, I had been going through all my photos on my laptop and ran across my Mud Run photos from last year.  I had been planning to make a mini book, since I already had all the photos printed... over 100 of them.  But... I decided to use these photo collages I had made last year for my blog and went with a pretty simple design that allowed for 24 photos + a boat load of journaling.  The journaling was pretty much cut + pasted from my blog post last year and is probably easier to read here if you're interested. 

My HELLO tag sticker came from the Simple Stories Fabulous collection... 

Did Spin class + a little running this morning.  Came very close to having to sub an abs class + a Zumba class tonight, but someone else offered at the last minute after I was still getting texted & begged this morning.  Thank goodness!!  I've never taught an abs class.  In fact, I don't think I've ever taken an abs class.  I prefer flabby abs.  LOL.  Bryn has her Zumba class tonight.  And yes... I will be checking for shaking body parts if you remember that conversation.  Then I'm getting up at the crack of dawn for Spin class tomorrow morning and subbing a Zumba class at 10:45am.  If you're local... please come dance with me! 

And this weekend is Girls Weekend in Phoenix.  So extra work-outs before I leave are definitely in order! 

"Hey I heard you were a wild one..."

Somehow I ended up on Stop and Scrap's mailing list.  I guess must've googled something & found it one day.  Umm.... I tend to shop online.  A lot.  So when I received an email from them about preordering the Simple Stories Fabulous collection with a discount back in January, I kinda had to go for it.  I mean... it's girly, cute & fun... so what's not to love?  Although I think they had me at FABULOUS.

And what could be more FABULOUS than my friends?  I'd say this collection is the perfect fit... 

Gotta love all the cute journaling spots that are included too.  I love that they're SO cute, you really don't have to do a lot of embellishing on your pages if you're feeling lazy short on time.  Ahem...

So... YAY!  I finally created something after a bit of a break.  AND... I even finished choreographing a new Zumba dance.  So... all in all... I'd call that a productive day.  But even better... is this AWESOME weather we've had lately.  I had to keep reminding myself last night that it was still a school night... even though Bob had salmon going outside on the grill, while I was making a salad inside for dinner.  We may have had to open a little wine, too.  ;-)

Life is good.

Especially since I have my dancing shoes on right now & I'm headed out the door...