A hangover

Today I have what could best be described as a hangover.  This hangover came from my favorite kind of night, when friends come to our house so we can drink ourselves silly and play card games.  I feel like doing nothing but lying on the couch all day.  However I am trying to be productive instead and do things like post to my blog, organize a craft cabinet and put stuff on Ebay that I need to get rid of.  My mind is not functioning well and I can't think of anything clever to say so here's my latest.  Unemployment allows for plenty of time to scrapbook and I looove that.  I'm starting to catch up, working on October now.  Yes I scrap in order of events happening, I'm one of those Type A organized people.

As for that productive thing?  I think I might go do what Ollie's doing right now:

Class photos

I made some pages for my niece and nephew's 2011 class photos, so damn cute they are.  My nieces is a scraplift from the Basic Grey blog, a Pamela Young design. Her's is such a gorgeous design that I followed it very closely.  I have one other "class photo" of my two nephews in Colorado but that will require a separate post as it is a very special story.

Basic Grey Hello Luscious

Old reliable-Basic Grey embellishments

A corner of flower rubons

Second Grade

Made this beauty with my Silhouette

Meeting Dean Wilson

I love when there is a story behind a layout and it's not just a photo I love.  This particular layout is one of those.  My husband and his brother were born in Scotland and came to the states at a young age.  They grew up in California riding motocross and have always been big fans of the sport. This past fall, at the outdoor championships at Pala, they got to meet Dean Wilson, the only professional motocross rider that is Scottish.  A good day for the Coutts brothers. My husband jokes that we should post this on his fan page, is that going overboard?

I used the American Crafts chap line for this one, still my current favorite.  I love the alternate stitching around the outside, I got that idea from a layout on a Basic Grey blog post.

The coordinating embellishments make it so easy!

Alternating colors stitching

Unemployed

Today is that day where everybody went back to work after the holidays.  Everybody except me that is.  It feels really weird and I kind of don't know what to do with myself.  I love the feeling of freedom but I'm also scared.  I want to enjoy some time off but not more than a month because then paying our mortgage becomes a problem.  I was notified of our layoff 2 months ago and the unfortunate thing about this layoff is both my husband and I work for the same company in the same division; and they cut our entire division. He has one more month of work but I was done as of December 31.  And the thought of us both being unemployed at the same time is absolutely terrifying.  However I'm a positive thinker (or I'm in complete denial) so we will cross that bridge when we come to it.  Until then I have decided to make my January to do list and get some stuff done that I have been procrastinating on forever:

1. Go to yoga twice a week and try to embrace that yoga-zen thing that doesn't work so well for me.
2. Fully convert our guest bedroom into a craft room (yippee!)
3. Make thank you cards.
4. Paint that wall in our hallway/bathroom with all the test paint strips on it...finally
5. Clean out my damn closet
6. Get cracking on my craft to-do list which includes taking a photo a day for weekly pages, making a bunch of bracelets that I have tutorials for.

These are NOT New Years Resolutions, I don't believe in those because they never actually get done.   This is just my to-do list.

And finally, some of my recent pages:

Fall Sunset-Fancy Pants Summer's End

The Whole Fam-American Crafts Margarita

I love this My Minds Eye line! (Happy Days)

Christmas in Santa Fe

I was kidding myself when I said I might post photos during my trip.  I was also kidding myself when I thought I would take a lot of photos.  Thankfully we have a professional photographer in the family so I anxiously await my brother Jeff Warner's photos of our big, chaotic family Christmas.  However here's a couple of my shots that came out OK.

My nephews-TROUBLE

The kidlets, posing for the pro photographer

Santa Fe Plaza Lights

St. Francis Cathedral-downtown Santa Fe

Oh Christmas Tree (and a ridiculous amount of presents)

Snowball Fight!

MJ's first fake nails-Hello Kitty

American Crafts Chap

My favorite line of the moment is American Crafts Chap.  It's versatile, got great colors and loads of embellishments to round out the cool papers.  My only problem is that the only place I can find that carries it is Two Peas in a Bucket and they sell out pretty quickly. Thankfully they just re-stocked and I stocked up on multi-sheets of paper. This is my first layout with it, my nephew, filthy after 3 days of camping.

It's A Summer Thing

Oh how I wish it was summer right now.  The weather in beautiful Southern California has been rainy, cold and miserable.  We've actually had to turn the heat on for the past week, yes I know, poor us.  But some of us are made for warmer temperatures and don't do so well in cold.  My best solution to cold crappy weather is to scrap (and daydream) about warm, summer beach days.  My niece gives me the best photo ops, a shot of her snapped at the beach this past summer, dancing away. I was having a hard time with the Cosmo Cricket's Salt Air collection before this layout.  I don't know what it was but everything I used it in came out looking crappy, very pleased with this one though. The text on the bottom reads, "McKinley always dances as if everybody is watching."  A little star she is.

Waves cut out with my Silhouette