Blog award

My sweet daughter Sarah got a blog award, well deserved I have to say, for her so well written sewing blog. The award asked you to then give it forward to other bloggers that inspire you and she was kind enough to include me to her list. Thank you dear!

So now I have to give it forward to blogs that inspire me. I do read quite a lot of commersial scrapbooking blogs, but I don't want to include them here, they get so much attention as it is. In the catagory of commersial blogs I also include those of personal nature, but that seems to merely promote a certain company and I have to say that is kind of dull. So here is a variaty of blogs that inspire me.

Project Life Sverige  Four swedish bloggers, who do Project life, have started a blog in swedish talking about how they do their PL. They are in different stages of life and do it in different ways, which make it very interesting to read. I was so happy to see that it had been started and await each post with great antisipation.

Sockergrynet is a swedish blogger that I have followed since I saw her work in the first swedish scrapbooking magazine Scrapbook m m, which is no more.  I just love her style! She is SO talented. She is also one of the four at Project life sweden.


Lisa is also one of the girls at Project life sweden. I found her blog through write.click.scrapbook, were she also writes, and which I love. It's always nice to find swedish girls on the international scrapbooking scen. Lisa is doing her own thing and I like that.

Scrap-impulse is a german online scrapbook magazine/blog that I follow. German was my favorite subject at school so it's always nice to get a chance to read it again, and Barbara, who has this blog also makes gorgous scrapbooking all kinds of things. If you like smashbooks, don't miss to check out her amazing travel smashbook from the US. You can find it here.

Landet krokus is a swedish gardenblog about a garden that I have fallen in love with. Can't wait to see it evolve.

Wild and precious is written by a mother of five, with two pairs of twins, all children born within four years. It is just so charming and lovely. You never leave untouched.

Fröken gröns blogg is a swedish blog about this ladys home and garden. I first saw her home in a swedish home magazine and much later found her blog. I love it all, but especially the green painted furniture that pops up here and there in the house.

Who´s this chick! is yet another lovely scrap blog, I just love them. The chich is a lady called Laura and she is a woman with a lot of helth problems who still wants to stay positive. Go positive! I always leave with a smile.

So much of the scrapbooking world is full of mothers and it's so much about everyones children, but there is a lot of women out there doing this thing who doesn't have any children and I love to see their lives (I'm very interested in peoples lives and what they think aso so the scrapbooking scen is a wonderful place for me!!) and one of the most charming blogs is In a creative bubble, written by Geralyn, who also design and sell her own printable tags aso. Her scrapbooking is lovely and her love for her family is so heartwarming.

So...besides passing the award forward to other bloggers, you shold also tell some odd facts about yourself, so here we go!

I always wear a skirt or dress. The only exception is when I´m working in the garden. Some people find that quite strange, since they find skirts the most uncomfortable clothing ever, but I think just the opposite!

I like stuff. I mean. I like well stuffed rooms, with a lot of furniture and things. My husband doesn´t so I have to compromice, right now anyway. When he dies I can have all the stuff I want!! He´s made me promise to NOT die before him, he couldn´t bear that...so it´s not that I wish him dead or anything.

I am an anti trend person. If something is really "in" and "everyone" is doing or having it I refuse. Even if I actually like it, which at times makes me want something but it is too late to get hold of it. Being stubbern surely has it downsides...

I like dirt. I´m a famers daughter and I love the dark, rich soil. I like the sight of it and I like to touch it.

I´m careless. When I sew I don´t do everything as well as I ought to...it´s just too boring. Don´t tell the fussy ones!!

So that´s it! Hope you enjoyed the blogs I love. Have a lovely week!

Project life February

Since I made only one page of PL for January, I kind of only had one left for February and I had hardly taken any photos, so that is what happend. This is so much fun and I really want to do more each month, so I have to get better at taking photos and documenting what happens so I don´t forget. Anyway, here is my page for Febuary.

Birthdays, a happy girl, a friendly card and cut outs from an envelop and a note, is some of the things this month. I was really pleased with how the sum up page ended up with the circle stamp with the stamped numbers inside. Here´s a few close ups.

To have room for everything I paired the month with some writing, I like that look. This was about my own and my mother-in-law´s birthdays, that are only three days apart. Here I used one of the home made cards I showed in an earlier post.

My happy girl. She had waited for this activity forever and finally the day was here, on my birthady actually.

About me deciding that this was the time for me to go on a diet and start taking daily walks to help it along and get a little fit. Used my very old footprint punch to make the footprints.

Can´t wait ´till next time!

By the way, if someone wonders about yesterday´s post, it is a swedish photo challenge to follow spring slowly winning over winter in our country. A lot of swedish bloggers is doing this every Sunday from now on.

Have a happy week, all!

All me

I have an album where I put all my personal layouts. The one I have had for the two last years looks like this.

It holds a number of pages, but last year I made just ONE page for this album. I knew it wasn´t much, but that surprised me. The last days, though, I have made two new ones. They´re both kind of Christmas related.

My Christmas very much happened inside of me this time and I write about it here and tells that these two items really was the two I really cared about this Christmas, as it goes to decorations. The red star I had in my window in my room and the advent candlestick holder I was lucky enough to find, after having put it away so well that I couldn´t find it the Christmas before this one...

The heart and the tree is chipboard that I inked. The paper is an old one from Daisy Day, I´m quite sure...and the red cardstock I cut with my big scalloped scissors.

This tin box I got from Sarah and her family for Christmas, isn´t it very suiteble for me?!!
The page really is about how good Sarah is on finding me presents. It´s titled She knows me, because she really knows me, and also remembers things I´ve said long ago.

Since Sarah is a sewing person these two cards was so very appropriate for this layout. I love red but not pink, but the qoute about quilts was so very perfect so I just had to use it. But to tone down the pink (and the other card is red, not pink) I put the red polkadot on top of the photo and found this border (that really is a cutting from a 12x12 paper from Webster´s pages) to get some green in (green is always a good choice!!). Then I chose the thickers and the stickers to enforce the border. I was really pleased with it.

These two layouts really is very much me; red, green, off white and brown, I just love them!

Year in review 2012 and a laugh

So now it´s done again, the Year in review pages, that is. I can understand why I´m so old, the years sure fly by!! Not that I´m actually so very old, but you know, you just don´t feel that old. I turned 53 on Saturday and yesterday someone jokingly said, that I turned 29. Well having a daughter that will turn 30 in some weeks, that just isn´t very likely! But if you go by the feeling, ok so then I´m 29. I love life, even if it´s hard sometimes, but my philosophy is that if you try to look at the bright side everything looks better.

Anyway here´s the pages.

Not much happened that wasn´t related to family, so that´s pretty much all there is.

Another layout I did the other day.

Me and Ilse and Elias were playing Monopoly one day and Elias was laughing really heartedly when things went wrong for me and later when things started to go really bad for himself he said: "I shouldn´t have laughed at Mom..."! I thought that was really fun, the boy has learned about the law of reaping... So I made a layout about it.

Then yesterday he wanted to play again and this time I didn´t have a chance and I told him that I probobly reaped the seeds from my sowing, as I had fun on his behalf making this layout... So I added a new labelsticker telling THAT story. If you can laugh at others, you have to be able to laugh at yourself too.

The sun is shining so wonderful today, I might even take a walk! Have a great week.

Project life: Title page and January

I have a lot of these divided page protectors that hold six 4x6 photos, so I will do my Project life with them this year. I really like Becky Higgin´s Style A pockets but that will have to wait. Using this six pocket pps makes for a little different style, kind of more freedom and that is nice too.

Since last year didn´t turn out to be all that I had thought it would be and things we did didn´t really match what I had put on the title page for 2012 I decided to just go with our family, you really can´t be sure what will happen during a year, can you?

So here´s the title page:

This is mostly about just the five of us who lives in this house, but since I had this photo of me and the children, including Josef and Adam, from Christmas I decided to use that and then put a seperate photo of Arnold (and the sticker with the paper reading man was perfect!) and also include one photo each of Sarah and Linda with their babies (those photos will have to represent their families, it´s impossible to include them all here!!)

I used three journaling cards from Simple Stories and the one with the house was perfect for holding "home" and our home is very important to us, not the house itself but the "home thing", being together, the love aso. I found a use for one of the typewriting ladies from October Afternoon´s 9 to 5 line, which, of course, represents me doing this documentation. The other card has "our family" and all those names that means family: mom, dad, sister...to uncle and grandchild.

January:

Two pockets on Elinor and her dresses. She went to a youth conference on the 2nd and she had made one dress herself, for the ball, which is amazing since she doesn´t sew! It turned out great, you can do very nice things from a sheet and a curtain... Finally I found a great place for the old "sew cute" die cut, since she is such a cute girl.

The dress for the fancy-dress dance was made by her sister Sarah who was delighted to having an excuse for making such a dress again. You can read her own blogpost about the making of it here, if you like. It is of course Bo Peep from Toystory. And Elinor won the price for the best costume. No surprise there!!

I´m not a fan of pink but I just had to have it here, since Elinor loves it and both the dresses was pink...

Other stories are about Adam buying us a new TV! Now that´s a loving son!! And about Elias making his first cooked dinner ever. And some other curch stuff too.

I love doing this! Hope you like it too.

Take some photos, mom!

You know how it is, the mother is "always" behind the camera, so Linda asked me to take some photos of her and her children. It turned out to be some great mother-child photos as well as some really nice real life photos.

Take some photos, mom. Here´s some behind-the-scen photos. I made the last layout first and then made this and the next one and these where both made to fit the last one. I made them on the same theme so you can see that they belong together. The colour of the background paper, the letter stickers and the embellishments all help to do just that.

Such riches. Linda is rich having such wonderful children and we are rich for having them all. Lovely photos of her and her children. I had a lot of different photos to choose from but I lked these ones that showes the love they share.

And finally the one I made first. When I took these photos (and I really got some "real" ones first) an airplan flew by and Gabriel heared it and finally all of them (expect Noah, who couldn´t care less!) looked for it!! I knew while I was taking these photos that I would want to do a page like this.

Chee...airplan!
So the question was, how would I fit in this photos in a sequel that showed off the actual happening? The ideal would be having them after each other from left to right but then I would need two pages and I really didn´t want that, I already had so many pages. And the green background was kind of destacting so I croped them, something that I hardly ever do this days. I moved them around and realised that having them move in a circle was the best thing, but I had to make people see that that was what was happening so I made this big circle arrow.

When I was finally done I was really pleased with it. This is what is so amazing with scrapbooking, you get to be creative and make something that pleases you, and has a bigger meaning too at the same time. Sitting there making this stuff gives me a great amount of energy.

Happy scrapping, folkes!

Playground

Linda and I took her children and went to town one day. Took the children to this amazing playground with so much fun. Then I took the big ones to McDonalds while Linda browsed the local scrapbooking store with Noah. After that we went to visit my in-laws. A full day that left us quite worn out!!

Here I managed to fit in many photos and still get some design in, that´s kind of my signature. Since we have such a big family there is always many photos to fit in.

Another day I took the children to another playground in our nearer, smaller town. It was a wonderful fall day too, so I just called it A wonderful day.

I thought this paper was just right for this day since we had this amzingly blue sky, so I started with what was actually the last photos, of the children lying on the big swing, just enjoying the lovely weather and being pushed.

I made two smaller pages too. One about Gabriel always wanting to do what his uncle is doing...

...and the other about Elvina and how you can´t keep up with the bigger ones when you are only three and needs help here and there.

I wanted to hold on to the amazing blue so I put these pages on a clear blue paper (it is actually the same blue paper even if it doesn´t relly show on the pictures). The one about the boys I just went with the outdoor theme, but made the one about Elvina realy girlish with pink and other girly stuff.

One last show off of my Big project and then I will show you the start of my Project life.
Enjoy your life!

A lot of childrens pages

More from my Big project.

Gabriel turned five while they where here and Linda took him outside to take some photos and he´s sitting there so nicely holding up his five fingers...but who´s that in the window?! Little sister is making funny faces and this photo shoot took a turn. Isn´t that wonderful when that happens?

I really liked how this page turned out. When you have so many 6x4 photos that you want to include you have to get crafty with them to fit in the important stuff without the photos filling the whole pages. Here I cut down three photos to fit at the bottom of the page. And the three tags was great for the title and turned in to nice embellishments at the same time.

Play. When Linda comes here with her children Elias gets some younger kids to play with, which he isn´t used too. At first, some years ago, he couldn´t deal with that so well, but now he´s learned to handle it quite well and can enjoy the company. Some would call us a typical LDS family with an uncle just three years older than his oldest nephew... That´s when we don´t count Lindas stepchildren who are both older than Elias!!

Just a simple page about some of the playing that goes on when they are here. I like how the red paper strips, that I rounded the corners on, hold the whole grind together so nicely. The sticker with the kids on the merry-go-round was just perfect since there is two boys and a girl.

All these lovely photos of the children playing in and around the playtree I made into a layout about the tree itself, how it´s the only really great climbing tree and the only one to hang the swing in. You can find more than one story in a photo. Here I used some really old stickers and they were just perfect for this page.

Hide and seek. These great pictures that Linda took of the children I just wanted to be seen in all their glory and not get them lost in a lot of embellishments. A page couldn´t get any simplier, I think.

I had more photos from this game so I put them on a seperate page...

...and called it Play with me, Auntie, since Elinor and Ilse played with the children.

And the last one.

Another simple page showing off the sleeping little darlings. I called it They are cute when they are sleeping... Because they ARE and also because we are kind of old and not so used to having smaller childrens noise around any more...even if we love them dearly.

More to show you next time. Have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.

The BIG project

Here is the beginning of my big project of documenting the weeks that Linda and the children spent here in September. It´s increadible that two weeks can hold so many stories... But of course all of these layouts is not only about these weeks. Since we see each other so seldon because of the distance it really is more about them in general, but now I happened to have photos from when I actually was THERE too.

Welcome my so very much beloved children!! I was SOO happy when I picked them up at the airport. I hadn´t seen them in a almost a year and little Noah was born in the summer. The title says "Nothing bad that doesn´t bring something good", since they where able to come here because of the leake they had in the kitchen which made the insurance company pay for their flight here since it wasn´t good for such small children to live in the bad air.

The fact that they stayed here so long made for a much more casual way of spending time together than if they would have only stayed for some days and that was so nice. I loved taking care of little Noah, we can never have too many babies in our family!!

I made one page each about the grandchildren. This is Gabriel, he´s mommy´s boy, not only in that he loves his mom, he´s quite like her too.

Sweet Elvina. She´s such a girly girl, much to her mothers delight... She loves pink. I was making a dessert and she stood beside me and watched and when she looked at it and saw the colour she said: "Grandma, it´s pink!" and I just knew I had to put just that on a page!!

Oh, my darling little Noah... He´s the cutest little thing. I so much loved to lock myself in in my room with him and just enjoy having a baby in my arms and while sitting there, all the old feelings of how much I have enjoyed all my children as babies came back too me. I am such a blessed woman having had eight precious little ones of my own and now being able to enjoy my grandchildren. And Noah is such a special, sweet little spirit. I´m so grateful that I got this oppertunaty to have this time with him when he was so little.

Well, folks, that´s it for today! Have a great week!

Some more random layouts

I keep working on pages from 2012 and I think I have only the Christmas pages left now. Not that I feel so very much inspiration scrapping Christmas in February, I finished my Document: 2012 and December was really hard since I was so totally uninspired. I think I will leave the rest of the Christmas scrapping for later.

Some more random layouts from last year for you today, before I begin showing you the BIG project, scrapping about the 2 1/2 weeks Linda and her children spent here in September. I had a lot of photos and it turned out there was a lot of different stories to tell.

Elinor and Ilse on the train for the 18 hour long journey to Linda and her family. 18 hours is a LONG time but they think it is SO worth it.

But, Mom... The girls had an activity at church which the parents were invited to and both of them made a little presentation and I, as the only partent doing just that, of course had to take pictures of them. And Ilse said "But, Mom..!", but what can I say...I´m a scrapbooker, I HAVE to take these photos!!

Since last year was so hard, the garden that usually give me so much pleasure and relaxation, became such a burden for me. But there was a still some pleasure too and I just wanted to highlight that.

It´s Saturday and I have been putting off some household chores that I really have to do now so, Have a great weekend!!

Some random layouts

Today just some random layouts.

Finishing school. Ilse´s last day, in the autum she started high school in town. Got to use some old Simple Stories cards here.

Sweet little Noah was born, my littleest grandchild. This paper kind of suited the season, but I tried to make it more baby boy-ish by using the light blue paper. The card with the truck was well suited to carry a heart brad since one of the photos show him off going home from the hospital and his sister, now a big sister, cuddling him and every child entering our family is a great joy and love. There can never be too many persons to love!!

I used to love this green colour, but right now I´m kind of tired of it (that might change again, though) but I have quite a lot of it so I use it here and there anyway and it was quite good for this page about our chickens. After a while we let them run all over the garden and they started to come running as soon as they saw me (that´s the upper photo) since they always hoped for more food, but unfortunately some hunting dog thought they where his dinner and they all ended up dead. One day he just came running on the lawn with a dead chicken in his mouth... Too bad, but still, being a scrapbooker I was kind of sd I didn´t have the phone with me so I could snap a picture of him... Could have been useful if we ever find out whos dog it is.
I used som REALLY old Provo Craft stickers here.

Elias and I put the girls on the train though almost the whole country to take them to Linda and her family, and then he and I went to the amusement park. That was one lucky boy. The ticket is a printable I printed some time ago, I´m sorry but I do not know where I found it.

Off to life!

Happy New Year & My Christmas album

I finished my Christmas album right after New Year and was doing this post some days later, but the pictures wasn´t doing what I wanted (some insisted on turning the wrong way when I was importing them from the hard drive) so I got kind of discouraged and didn´t finish it. But now I decided I woundn´t let that stop me so here it is, my whole album! Hope you enjoy it.

I never posted the last days so here is a little about them, if you like.

Dec 28th.
Sarah and her family came here and seing little Birger again was wonderful. They don´t want him seen on the internet so that´s why you can´t se his face, which is sad for you as you can´t really see the reason for my choice of papers for this day. You see, he has such amazing blue eyes in this picture and his shirt is blue too, so nothing at all with Christmasee colours, so I went with the blue, but found the upper paper which holds both the blue AND both red and green, so that was good.

Dec 29th.
I love this paper. It´s an old one from Basic Grey (I´m quite sure...) that I used in my 2009 album too. I still got a piece for another year! I didn´t want to cover up the paper so I thought about how to still get the message of what we did this day and I ended up using these Prima letters and that worked really good, I think. And with the red and green accents to the blue paper it all came together quite nicely.

Dec 30th.
Sunday, so we went to church and then we just was together, enjoying each others company and being with the baby, he´s such a darling. I love this relaxed photo of him and his parents.

Dec 31st.
This years calender from Marie at Stitch in time . Everything else was chosen to match the calender. The little family went on the the other in-laws.
This wasn´t one of our best days, my husband was feeling really bad, so that´s why there´s no journaling at all. Not much of celebration...

Jan 1st.
Welcome 2013. My breef thoughts on 2012 and the good and bad. There´s been a lot of bad, all of which connected to my husbands health, but also really good things, all connected to our wonderful children and grandchildren. How we would have survivied this year without them I truely don´t know.
I ´m quite pleased with this last page, that I let the white page take center stage, and the red and black. The diecut is from a summer collection from Simple Stories, you sure don´t have to stick to just things from Christmas collections to do Christmas pages!!

Well, that´s that and now I really look forward to this new year!
Hope it will be a really good one for all of you!!