Out for a stroll - first set of wheels

Used more of that Making Memories baby boy paper (i'm a sucker for polka dots) and Studio Quickutz font. I was flipping thru a booklet of vellum quotes and saw this "first set of wheels" title and thought - why not. I could save it for pics of his first car but will i remember? probably not LOL so i just tucked it under the mat and said hey its cool.

sweet baby

i probably shoulda taken more time with the photographing of pages. but then that takes up too much of my suzy time so... bare (bear?) with me.

more stampinup patterned paper and a my minds eye (i believe) rub on (sweet baby).

I also realize i am not showing these in order. These photos are of my son in the first few days after we brought him home. I shoulda posted these before - oh well. it really doesnt make much difference now does it?

my cutie pie

if you look close you can see the Doodlebug alpha cardstock stickers - attached with little brads. The patterned paper is Me & My Big Ideas.

You'll notice i don't mind including every picture i ever took of this child LOL! I know lots of scrapbooking people are very big into just picking the best photo to scrapbook but - not me! I use 'em all! Of course if a picture was very blurry or cutting off most of the subject i'm sure i wouldn't (but if i didnt have another photo - hey that blurry cut off photo would be on there too!) I have issues I guess. You know those photos they take in school every year? in the fall? Well here they also started taking them in the Spring (a good many years back i guess). Anyway i was annoyed. I knew that I would never be able to NOT by the pictures. They are of my child for heavensake! I just couldn't send them back to school saying "no thanks!". Okay, more tomorrow.

baby boy - bundle of joy

what's fun about waiting to do these pages is that i have all these things i've been saving to use and even though they're from different manufacturers they work nicely together. Course that may have much to do with my personal taste (which runs to the more classic kinda style) For example here - at the top i used a stampinup "welcome little one" stamp and the little journaling rectangle stamp with American Crafts patterned paper and a SEI sticker. If i'd done these pages a few years back I'm sure i'd have come up with a nice solution regardless but i''m happy that it works out these products work nicely together. (I'm just lookin at the picture and the ribbon really is straight - its just pushed outta shape). Okay.. another one tomorrow!

Next Project - baby boy!

Well I've been busy working on that baby album I mentioned last week. I'm starting on my son's album. You should know my son is now 21 years old. Why did it take me so long to do a baby album? When I began scrapbooking about 10 years ago I thought I'll never get anything done if I go back to the baby stuff. I'd be put off just by the shear magnitude of the undertaking. Even at that stage - when my son was only 11 yrs old - heck that would be 11 years of pictures (not to mention just the ones of his first year. First child = mega photo ops, right?) So at that time a few friends encouraged me to just jump in and work on a school album. That's just one small slice of a kid's life right? And that's what I did. In between I did other projects, but kept on putting off doing anything with the older photos. So here i am. He's 21 and its time!

I began by pulling out anything I'd ever bought for those baby albums. All the items I've been squirreling away for literally years. Patterned papers, rubons, rubberstamps, quickutz, and various and sundry embellishments. (I will admit to one purchase - the other day I was in Target - not looking for scrapping supplies but i can't resist looking. Well strangely enough they had the Making Memories embellishment paper packs marked down - the baby ones. How coincidental is that? So i just bought the boy pack - 24 pieces of that lovely Making Memories heavy weight patterned embellishment paper for 6.28... happy dancing ensued).

And I got to work. I think i'll post them all through the week. The first one is at the top of this post. I used my Purple Onion Pink Flamingo Large and small alphas and i believe that paper is StampinUp! I'll post some more tomorrow.

A little organization

I mentioned i'd be tidying up my Ready-to-go file.I planned on doing that yesterday - but best laid plans and all that.

My family likes to eat so i had to go to the grocery store .....

and then i had a little visit with my sister (and nephews) before they left today.

So this afternoon was the day to clean up that file and do a little more organizing.

Here's my RTG file - all tidied up. I had some StoreInStyle folders (they're big enough for 12x12 paper/cardstock) so i used those for dividers. I have slipped some stuff into the folders themselves (small items with no place to go kinda things - like movie ticket stubs). In between each section are those large ziplocs filled with items for a layout or series of layouts on a particular topic/event. If i have the photos i put them in the ziploc too. And when i have time i can pull out a bag and add paper, cardstock and embellishments. When the bag has all the elements - then its truly RTG!

So now at least thats back to being organized only now its even better - with dividers!

While i was on a roll I thought i'd organize all the finished layouts I have but have not put into albums as yet. That was a pretty big stack of layouts since I've made so much progress since I started this Suzy blog.

I had the stack in a pizza box. The box was overflowing and I've been asking my son (who works for a pizza chain) to bring me some more boxes. Well last night he finally remembered - which is good cos he will be leaving for school this weekend! He brought me about 10 boxes. My cat, Frankie is here posing with the boxes. I put some of the boxes together and got to work sorting the layouts.

And here they are. All sorted. When I finally decide what albums i want to put these in, they'll be ready to go. In the meantime I have a few empty, unconstructed boxes to to use as these fill up.

While i'm at it I thought i would show you my photo storage. This is most of my photos. There is another box of various and sundry photos but these are the bulk of the photos. I often wonder what I'll be doing with these boxes when I have finished putting all the pics into scrapbooks!

I'm wondering how does everyone else store their photos until they scrapbook them? I know some put them in albums (the kind with the divided up pages). How do you store yours?

I'm back and I'm done

well i might journal a bit more here and there

but essentially I'm done with the Wedding Album

can i hear a Hallelujah?

Hallelujah!

Here are the last of the pages with photos

And here are the pages with a lot of memorabilia - shower invitations and cards, Pre-Cana stuff, wedding banns from the church bulletin, items from the reception venue; a swatch of faric from the bridesmaids dresses; receipt for my dress; receipt for my husbands ring; our receipts from our blood tests - you know that kinda thing. Yes, I'm a pack rat but for all pack rats everywhere - there's no better place to store your treasures than a scrapbook!

The only thing remaining is like i said a little journaling and actually purchasing a scrapbook to fill with all these pages. I saw a really pretty one the other day at AC Moore (it was a K&Company album. They make such pretty albums - especially for an extra special occasion like a Wedding album).

What else have i been up to? Well other than what you see on Small Smackerels - let's see. Yesterday i did a lot of cleaning in my room here. I also found a stack of my daughters artwork from elementary school. I know i put photos of some of them in her elementary school album but just to be on the safe side I took photos of all of them (it was a small stack - only the absolute musts I had to keep for her) and then put the originals in a page protector to add to that album. I'll get the pics printed and add that as well when i have a second.

While i was cleaning up in here I kept finding odds and ends - things that need to go on pages. Mostly memorabilia. My name should be Suzy the-pack-rat Scrapbooker okay. I threw those in my RTG file. Tomorrows project will be to get that RTG file back in order so I can actually work from it again - its trashed folks! In the interest of actually getting the cleaning up done around here, I couldnt get too fussy with how i put stuff into that file.

After that's done, I think I'm going to stick with my plan to work on my kids baby albums. I won't be as crazy as i was about getting them done as I was the wedding album. Afterall - the wedding album was pretty limited in its scope. A baby album for each kid will take a lot of time. Because I know it's just not "baby". It's really their lives up until they reach school.

And, as I'm sure all you parents know - that's some premium photo takin time.

It's gonna take a while but thats ok. I know I'm going to enjoy looking at those pictures again.