31/12, time for some resolutions!

Just this once I will post the same post on this blog as on my photography blog, mostly because it's long and it is both scrapbooking and photography related! 2008 is almost behind us, we’re going into 2009 and guess what, I still haven’t met any extra terrestrials :-O The “new” millennium definitely doesn’t live up to the expectations!

Looking back at the year 2008, even though some great things happened such as moving to this beautiful area in the South West of France, 2008 has been the worst year of my life with loosing my sweet mother in May. I’m glad to go into a new year, even though that won’t change a thing!
It’s time for some resolutions, of course. OK, there is still the goal of loosing the few kilos I have too much, I still blame it on my son although he’s 4 now and I really should start blaming it on myself ;-) But this year I only set “creative” goals, skill developing goals! Here we go!

Photography – I just bought myself a Nikon D60 DSLR (Reflex) camera and my first goal would definitely be to learn to get the best use out of it, using manual (or at least semi-manual) mode! In order to achieve this, I read a lot (I love reading) but I do realise that practice will be the best way to get there. I therefore plan on doing the POTD challenge on Two Peas Photography (cf. post before), which will “force” me to practice every day! At the same time, I hope to learn how to use Photoshop Elements to get the most of my pictures!
Scrapbooking – Last years goal was to make 104 layouts in the year (2 a week!) but I didn’t make it, I came to a (sad) total of 63!!! But, having moved houses and having had all my scrapbook things in a box for 3 months, I am not surprised about that! For 2009, I set my goal on a little less, because I hope to spend time on Photography too ;-) Up till yesterday I thought I’d set my goal on 1,5 layouts a week average, for a total of 78, but this morning I revised my goal and I’ll put my scrapbook thicker on 52 layouts because I also plan on making quite some mini-albums (Richard gave me the bind it all for Christmas!!!). I plan on doing a challenge a week (which means a layout a week) on some of my favourite challenge blogs!
Scrapbook related – ATC holder! I bought myself an ATC holder earlier this year, it is still in the box. I plan on filling the holder with ATCs (surprise) that show my children in 2009. I basically plan on taking one picture a day of them (at least), either the two together or only one of them, and on the ATCs I want to document their year. I’m not setting the goal of making one ATC a day, I’ll probably do loads of them every once in a while ;-) but I really am gonna try to keep up with this!

Well, that would be about it. I do have to clean my house once in a while, and I do have a job to go to!!! Having said that, I do realise that these goals might be a little optimistic, because it does involve daily photography and daily blogging :-O but I’ll try!! See you next year!!

Christmas

Let's start with a layout!

We took this picture of the kids in front of our tree (barely visible!) for some of our christmas cards. Quality could have been better, but we were in a hurry!! :-) I made this quick layout with the picture, craft cardstock (I love that color!!), a lot of felt, a Autumn leaves stamp and the eternal prima flowers! I didn't give it a title, just a little journaling that this picture was used for some christmas cards!

In 2008, I had set the goal for myself to create 104 layouts, which is 2 per week ;-), but I got to 63 and will MAYBE be able to create one more, but not 41!!! I blame that on us moving houses and most of my stuff being in a box for 3 months! I'll set a more realistic goal next year, even though in 2007 I did make it to 104 layouts, I guess 1.5 per week, on average of course, will be OK. So that would be 78 (please correct me if I'm wrong!) layouts, and I also plan on making mini albums, as Richard offered me a bind-it-all for Christmas, a little machine that binds books made from just pieces of paper/cardboard etc.

I offered myself for Christmas a new camera, a DSLR or Reflex camera! Nikon D60 with 2 lenses. I have created a website for this: Linnao's Photography, which sounds quite professional but which is NOT, I'm an amateur trying to learn how to use the thing ;-) But that is a lot of fun. On Two Peas Photography , I not only find tons of useful information, but I also decided to do the POTD challenge, POTS meaning Photo (or Picture?) of the Day. So I'll try to keep up and post (at least) one picture each day on my blog! It will be fun to see the progress after a year! Or at least, so I hope :-)

Again on Two Peas, this time on the Scrapping board, I sometimes do the blog challenge, which for today is "why is creativity important?". Well, I can't say WHY creativity IS important, but I can say why it is important to me. I've only been creative since a couple of years (2 or 3) and it is important to me simply because I enjoy it and because I really like that when you're creative, or try to be ;-), you have a lasting reminder of it, something that not only you but also the people you know can enjoy.

I wish you all a happy new year, a nice celebration tomorrow night and please know that I am very happy with comments!!!

My take on a Scrapjacked challenge

I felt like doing a challenge from a blog this weekend, I love these!! I was very inspired by the scrapjack challenge, that you can find here . I usually don't do layouts with many many pictures on it, BUT I was very tempted by this one as I took lots of pictures last week, when we had snow, but didn't want to use them for several layouts because they all looked quite the same :-).

The layout is quite simple. I used kraft cardstock, white cardstock, grungeboard alphabet (NEIGE) painted white with stickles (Ranger), a flower, felt (both with stickles again), a paperclip from who knows who and my favorite white pen.

The snow is all gone, we have gorgeous weather this weekend with sun and blue skies! I defenately prefer :-) Only 2 more work days and I'll be off for 12 days, gotta love christmas!!!

Thanks for stopping by and for your comments!

Winter's here...

What a surprise this morning to wake up and find this:

Beautiful, on a Sunday :-) I sure hope that during the week we won't have any snow (because I like driving and I like snow, but I don't like driving in the snow), but in the weekend it is truely beautiful!

I have been a little bit active on the creative side these last weeks, mostly in cardmaking, which is a first for me because I never make cards and basically don't really know how to make them. But I tried my new Cuttlebug embossing and cutting folders and I found some sketches here and I managed to make some! A little overview:

I have also made a few new layouts. The first is featuring Naomi and "her" ScoobyDoo. The colors of her clothes (well, pyjama's) were very hard to scrap, because I don't really like to use purple, but the result was quite OK:

And as I really love these pictures, I wanted to scrap them again on another color combination. I therefore printed them out in Sepia to get rid of the purple and made a layout that I framed to put in Naomi's room:

I looooove the picture in the next layout, even though a photographer would probably say it is not a very good picture :-) My little girl looks sooooo big, so grown up! Well, on the biggest of the picture that is, in the other ones she looks just like a 6 years old :-)

And after all these Naomi layouts I obviously HAD TO do an Alban one. Maïté gave me these cute pictures she took during the summer holidays, and I was eager to scrap them, but I honestly am not sure about the result. A little too simple but I have no idea what to add...

That's about it for now! Thanks for stopping by and PLEASE leave a comment to show me you were here! :-)