Freebie Friday - Caravan Shoppe Christmas Printable

Are you familiar with Caravan Shoppe? This place has GREAT stuff, but I especially love that they have digital downloads! You KNOW digital goodies are so my thing. So I get their emails and much to my delight they have a free Christmas printable right now!

 I will likely scale it down to a 3x4 card for my Project Life album, but in the meantime, I downloaded it and using the magic wand tool, I recolored it to match my Christmas colors!

I'm SURE you've seen these bottle brush tree tutorials popping up everywhere, but if you haven't or are on the fence about it, I recommend it! I bought 21 Christmas trees on Amazon (they were $17 when I bought them but it appears they're now pricier!), then put them in bleach (did you know bleach goes bad and doesn't work if it's old? Yup. Now I know!) and dyed them different shades of navy/kelly green. Love my little forest! (my tree count has grown to 25- I'm turning into the crazy tree lady!). Here's the tutorial I used.

Merry Christmas and happy scrapping!

Recording Family Portrait Sessions in Your PL Album

So I got my photos back from my photographer (and good friend, Bianca!). The outfits I spent weeks picking out and the smiles I bribed my kids to smile are all there--the hard work and anxiety paid off! Pretty pictures taken by someone other than me! And I'm IN the pictures! Yay! But now what? Other than designing my Christmas cards and blowing up a photo for my wall, I wasn't sure what do to do with the rest. I thought of "sprinkling" them throughout my Project Life album but that seemed kind of weird. So I dedicated an insert to the pretty photos. Because, they're just one day of our family-just one moment in time. So I put them in the album in the week where they were photographed. I picked out some coordinating papers and brushes, but kept it simple overall.

FRONT of INSERT

BACK of INSERT

I'm having a hard time photographing my layouts, so bear with me! I'll figure this out!

AE Digital Creative Team - Just Thankful

My first layouts as a part of the AE Digital Creative Team are up in her shop here. And you can see all of  the team members' pretty faces up here with social media links. Go check out their blogs--they're full of inspiration!

So when I was creating layouts using the Just Thankful brush set, I had just returned from visiting my sister and her new baby and was so thankful that both of them were healthy and everything went smoothly as it was a bit dicey for a little while as she was in labor. That experience, coupled with great hospital photos (I thank the excellent lighting), inspired this 6''x8'' layout using the Just Thankful brushes:

Then of course, I used them again in my weekly Project Life spread:

Cousins! Melts my heart seeing my first baby hold my sister's first baby!

Other brushes from the Just Thankful set. I use them all the time! Turns out I have a lot to be thankful for.