Bj and I have a standing deal: we get one glorious morning each weekend day to sleep in. It’s beautiful and I love it oh so much. Of course I tend to go a bit crazy the night before I know I get to sleep in and this last weekend was no exception. In fact, factoring in daylight savings time changing, I stayed up until after three AM, oops! But I was on a creative roll and it felt so good. Spurring me on was some filing I was able to do (and thus de-cluttering) because I’m actually able to organize the basement now (hooray!).

Wanted to get my thoughts down about my dear friend Taro. I finally heard from him (he lives in Japan) almost a day after the quake. He happened to be 100 miles from home and waiting in a long line for water but he was fine. His wife was fine, as was his whole family. I was so glad. I didn’t let myself look at any footage until I heard that. I have since and my thoughts just keep going there, so much sadness. These pictures are from when he visited in November. I like the library of memories system for easy finding of photos not based on date (these were under People we Love -> Friends -> Taro). I used my Silhouette (but of course) and a cool alphabet stamp set I scored for $5 at Michael’s.

Here I was trying to set up a little scene like some people do when they snap photos of their layouts. I don’t think grabbing random figurines really added anything though. I might have gone a little embellishment crazy on the bottom left corner of this one. When it comes to brads I have a hard time stopping (I LOVE BRADS!).

I think I paid $10 for this broken toy horse. Totally crazy I know but I still love it. I think it’s worn to perfection. Wait, where was I?

I love these photos of Tuesday eating. She always gets to sit at the head of the table since it has the best light 🙂

Now it might be hard for the untrained eye to see but the brad I used here just wasn’t quite right enough and it spurred a late night internet shopping spree (CAN YOU HAVE TOO MANY BRADS?!?!) Note to self: buy some more brad storage.

I scanned the bunch of photo strips from my annual portrait this last year (30 baby!) and printed them as one 8×10. It worked pretty well. The sides of two were chopped so I tried to work that in to the layout a bit.

I love being able to take photos with my phone (and print them off at home) but it sometimes makes for color choice challenges. These photos all have a different color cast too them so I went a little vintage (can you believe all my use of pattern paper? I might actually use a quarter of my stash before I die!). I think these buttons really need some waxy flax or twine or something. I got rid of my waxy flax in a purge. The next week Sarah started using some again and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.

I know the title looks super light, but in person I think it works.

Sunday I made time to put away months worth of layouts. I really wish I had room for my scrapbooks somewhere else where they could be pulled out and looked at more (I know Marcy was thinking the same thing. Let’s hope she comes up with something good so I can copy her :).
Oh, I used this fun new trick for setting my white balance for these. I’ve never touched the custom Kelvin setting on my camera before so it was fun to try it out.