Slide Show

Just had to share with you... This morning, at 2 am, my friend Teri and I finally finished burning the Kindergarten slide show onto 27 DVDs. Essentially the first copy you burn has to compile all the files which took about 45 minutes, then for each copy after that it only took 5 minutes. After the first copy was done, we celebrated with a glass of wine while we watched it play downstairs on the tv. We ran into a few glitches that held us up, but we plowed on through until we were done.

Here are a few still frames from the intro pages.While this screen is up the Charlie Brown theme music (Vince Guaraldi) is playing. I had everyone in the class write their name and then Teri and I did a photo shoot of all the kids which cycles through as the music plays.

When you click on the left tab, a new slide show starts featuring photos from the entire year. This slide show is full frame and doesn't include the curtains and other background elements. There are 73 photos in this slide show...music is "We're going to be Friends" by the White Stripes.

The middle tab is for the "special occasions" which is the PC way of saying Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentines day photos. There were 34 in this group...music is "You are my Sunshine."

The right tab is the field trip slide show with 94 photos...music "Somewhere over the rainbow/What a wonderful world" sung by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. I love this version of this song and both Teri and I get teary-eyed when we watch it's just so sweet.

Just a quick update...

I just realized it has been a while since I've blogged on Paper Capers...so here I am. I have actually been quite busy these past couple weeks with the end of the year activities for my kindergartner. I can't believe her first year of school is already over...just 12 more to go!
This week another mommy and I have been putting together an awesome kindergarten slide show using iDVD. It was really simple to do and we are hoping to burn the slide show to DVDs tonight! I am so excited to see how they turn out. I have also completely rearranged (and cleaned) my scrap room...I will post photos as soon as I can get my husband to hang up my peg board. That's all folks!

Last Day of Preschool

I found this idea from 2 peas several years ago and have been waiting to use it ever since. For some reason I didn't feel compelled to put this all together for Natalie's preschool teachers (although we did give them something else). I just loved Zander's teachers so much this year and knew exactly what I wanted to give them on the last day of school. Here is what the tag says:

You helped me grow from September to June
Our summer begins this afternoon,
When you see your flowers in this little pot,
Think of me and Forget-me-Not.

Although now that I read this again, I am feeling like a dork, cause it's still May, not June...oh, well. It's a cute sentiment anyway!

His teachers both like their gifts.

Here he is receiving his memory book (what a relief to have that completed!) I ended up making the covers too. I'm kind of a control freak sometimes and want to do things myself, but it turned out great. Each mom was responsible for completing 2 pages (for every kid in the class, plus the 2 teachers)...I did 4 pages (three plus the cover...times 12) It was a lot of work, but so worth it.

Bad things can happen when I'm on 2 Peas!!!

It had been a while since I've had enough free time to post to the message boards on 2 peas. Well today as I was "peaing," I realized it was time to pick up my kindergartner from school. So I went downstairs, got my keys and purse, then I saw my almost 2 year old up on a chair, dropping eggs onto the floor! He was having a ball...I guess that explains why it was so quiet downstairs, and here I thought he was just playing nicely so I could play on the computer...silly me!

And yes, I am THAT kind of mom who has to take a picture of this before cleaning it up. Evidence for later!

I'm finally done!!!

Last Friday I ended my scrapbooking marathon and turned in all my pages. Boy was that a huge weight off my shoulders! I am such a last minute person. I could have started months ago, but did I? No, I waited until the week before they were due and spent every waking minute cutting and gluing paper and pictures for my son's preschool memory book. I used up 4 glue sticks in the process. I normally don't use glue sticks for scrapbooking, but my dotto tape refills are about $5 a piece, compared to .88 per glue stick. Anyway, I will be putting the books together on Tuesday. I can't wait to see what all the other moms came up with for their pages. Wish me luck!

Digi-Scrappin'

Here are a few sample pages from the most recent ibook I made for my Mother-in-law, for Mother's day. It's a picture book with all the photos from our recent trip to Disneyland together. She loved it!

On the farm

Tonight I spent a few hours at a scrapbooking work party for my son's preschool class. Each year they put together a scrapbook of all the fun activities they've done. Each mom is responsible for making pages for at least 2 events. I chose the Christmas party and the farm field trip. Now I have to duplicate my pages 11 times for a total of 22 pages...well actually I am doing the library trip as well so I guess that makes 33 pages. I better get busy. These cute farm animals were cut out with a Sizzix die cutter. Zander's teacher has one we can use, but instead, I borrow her dies and cut mine at home on my BigKick.

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

This week is National Teacher Appreciation Week, so last night I got busy and created 4 sets of "old-school" stationery for my older kids to bring to school today (they each have 2 teachers). The cards are pretty basic, but I thought the retro art was cute...especially for a teacher.

Paper Daisy D, Foofala, and Basic Grey.

Happy National Scrapbooking Day!!!

Although I did stop in and pay a visit to my local scrapbook store, I spent most of my day at the Fairy Festival in Portland. This is a photo of my daughter up in a tree.

Anyway, as I was checking out of the LSS, I saw this deck of cards by Heidi Swapp. They are huge in real life (aprox 5x7). I don't know if I would spend $9 on them just to alter or embellish them, but they sure are cute. I think Heidi Swapp and other scrapbook vendors know that we are all suckers for cute packaging. Seeing those oversized playing cards reminded me of another oversized scrapbooking product I came across last week...Have you guys seen the new Martha Stewart Crafts stuff at Michaels? I thought it was nice, but nothing found it's way into my cart...yet! One thing I did notice...how could I miss it...was her HUGE 18x18 sized albums, and paper. WOW this sucker is gi-normous. And for $80 I don't think it will be a jumping off the shelf, especially when you factor in that all of the MS crafts merchandise is exempt from the 40% off coupon we all love to use. Who on earth is going to buy an 18x18 album...and where would you keep it? Not on a book shelf, that's for sure. On one hand she might be trying to start a new trend with this large size, but if she did her research, she would have realized that most serious scrapbookers use 12x12 and are already invested in 12x12 paper storage, page protectors, albums etc. Seems kind of strange to me. I like Martha, and her designs are very true to her style, simple, elegant and clean, but it doesn't scream "buy me." Maybe after I see what people are doing with it I will change my mind.

Tooth Fairy Pillow

Today my daughter lost her first tooth. I was totally unprepared and didn't even know her tooth was loose. Tonight after she went to bed I started working on this pillow. Can you believe it took almost 3 hours to make? I had to decide what I wanted it to look like, find some scrap material, cut it out and sew it. Easy right? Not when you sew as often as I do...once or twice a year. I must have ripped out 3-4 seams before I got it right. Oh well, I am very pleased with how it turned out. The little tooth is a pocket for the tooth fairy to leave a surprise!

Stationery Set

Girl's Night Out!

Saturday was girl's night at my place and we all had fun making stationery for Mother's day. Here's how they turned out:

Everything but the ribbon is Stampin' Up!
(although sadly, the pouch template has been discontinued)

So many digital photos, so little time

I have many, many thousands of digital photos saved in iphoto right now. So many, I couldn't possibly scrapbook them all. Let's face it, once you become addicted to making scrapbooks, you go looking for things to take pictures of just because they might make a great scrapbook page some day. Can you relate? Well I can. I take pictures of everything!!!

I think I would shrivel up and die if I didn't have a camera. Three years ago, my husband got me a digital camera for Christmas. It was by far the best gift I've ever received because I used it every day. At first I fought it. I didn't want to mess with learning something new. However, at the time, I agreed to give it a try because developing and printing film was costing us a small fortune with 2 kids to take pictures of (now we have 3 kids).

I couldn't believe how much better my photos were with the digital camera, and I had a really nice SLR before. I can take more photos without feeling wasteful and I love how well the camera takes low light photos.

Anyway, so now I have an abundance of photos, right? Well, recently I have been experimenting with the different new items you can make with your digital photos.

Earlier this month, my daughter was invited to 2 birthday parties. For their gifts we made photo books for each birthday girl. I had all these photos of Natalie playing with her friends and was planning to save them on a CD to give to their moms, but I started playing around in iphoto and before too long I had made a little book. Four days later it came Fed-Ex to my door. I didn't have to go out to the toy store and wonder which toy they would like. Instead they got a personalized book with their pictures inside along with a message from Natalie. They turned out great...and the mom's really appreciated them too.

This past Christmas, my husband gave me another great gift — a digital picture frame similar to the one shown above. You just load this bad boy up with photos and it cycles through. I have it sitting in our family room...it even plays music. How cool is that!

Just yesterday I placed my first online digital photo order with Snapfish.com. I was prompted by an email that said my membership would expire and I would loose all my uploaded photos if I didn't buy a minimum of one photo at 12 cents each. Well, I didn't see anything wrong with spending 12 cents, so I proceeded to place my order. Then I came across a special where you can order photos for just 10 cents each, but you have to buy 250 of them. Well...okay...so I signed up for that thinking, what a great savings I was getting. Now I could finally print my Disneyland photos. Even when I take them to the store, the photos cost anywhere from 16 cents to 18 cents a print. So I proceed to upload all 350+ photos to Snapfish.com...TWO DAYS LATER I finally have them all uploaded! Whew! Now I am starting to rethink my "savings," because what I saved monetarily, was nothing compared to the time I lost trying to upload all my photos 12 at a time. Not to mention, the shipping was $13. Yikes!

I also uploaded some special photos I wanted in unusual sizes (4x12, 12x12, 3.5x5) to 2peas pictures from twopeasinabucket.com. Their cost for 4x6 prints was 18 cents per photo, but their enlargements price was almost half of what Snapfish was charging, plus the shipping was a flat rate of just $2. They also offered some cool photo treatments. See the preview photo of the magazine cover featuring Zander standing next to Lightning McQueen. I can't wait to get my pictures and start scrapbooking!

Bowling Pages

Got some more layouts done today...even had time to do the journaling! These photos were taken at my brother-in-law's bowling birthday last February. It was the first time for our kids and they did great.

Solid Cardstock: Stampin' Up!, Wood floor Background paper: Sandylion, Bowling Shoe: Lil' Davis Designs, Bowling pins and ball: Paper House Productions. Don't know why, but the color is really wonky. It is a true red in real life. Maybe I should take my photos of the layouts in natural lighting. Anyway...there you have it.

Valentine Cookies

This is a layout I have been toying with for about a month now. Originally I had the Basic Gray background paper under the whole layout, but I think it looks much better in the center. It was just too busy before. I loved the background paper though because the colors matched the photos and jolee's stickers perfectly. It feels so good to finally finish something. Now I am back in the groove and hope to post more layouts soon.

Cardstock: Stampin' Up!, Background paper: Basic Gray, Stickers: Jolee's Botique. In real life, the photos don't look this dark.

Disney Downpour

Last night was double punch day at my favorite scrapbook store, so I went a little crazy buying things for my not-yet-printed Disney pictures/future scrapbook pages. Thanks in no small part to Jolee's for making these "too sinkin' cute" 3 dimensional stickers that for some reason find their way into my basket every time I'm at the store. I have a love-hate relationship with Jolee's Boutique. I love how cute they are and how realistic the designs are and the attention to detail is unmatched by any other company...however, I hate how I have single handedly spent enough $$$ on these little gems to pay for her retirement! I mean, come on...did I really spend $3.49 on 12 ultra-cute princess themed photo corners? Perhaps someone out there knows of a 12-step program I can join.

I also found this fun pocket for holding park maps etc. from EK Success.

Carrot box

It has been a while since I have had enough free time to scrapbook or do much of anything crafty. Before we left for Disneyland, I had high hopes of creating these carrot boxes to fill with candy for our Easter egg hunt. Well, I made 4 and then got busy with other things...Here is how it turned out though.

Palette O'Prints

Introducing Stampin' Up!'s newest
colored background paper:

This 6x6 sample pack will be available next month, just in time for
National Scrapbooking month! Yes, we do have our own month!!!

We're Back!

Disneyland was so much fun. I'll be posting layouts from our trip soon...well, eventually. Just wanted to check in since it has been so long since I've posted here. Hope you are all doing great too!

Disney Autograph Books

I've been busy getting these ready for Disneyland. We leave in 9 more days!!!

Getting ready for Disneyland!

Front and Back





















This is my first attempt at decoupage. I started with a square Sarabinder and some "Disneyesque" paper...add a whole bunch of modge podge and a few hours later... My Disney Vacation organizer/trip planner.

Here is the paper used:

Magic daisies by Reminisce (Real Magic Line)

Magic polka dots by Reminisce (Real Magic Line)

Magic Flowers by Reminisce (Real Magic Line)

The stripes are from the same line. However, I used up the part that has the name.

The paper I used on the tabbed dividers is from Sandylion.


The last 2 photos show the inside with tabbed dividers.