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| Halloween portrait layouts

It seems that something I tend to do in the fall is do a little photo shoot with my kids in their Halloween costumes. I usually do this the weekend before Halloween, during the day so that I have decent light and I don't have to worry so much about getting the perfect Halloween portrait.

Here's the layout I did with this year's portraits:

And some "flashback" layouts:

Man, that's an oldie. I think I did that last one the first month I was scrapping. Not too horrible, either.... OK, maybe the shadows are a little harsh...

| Halloween layouts

I discovered, much to my horror, that somehow my 2008 Halloween photos are gone. I must have thought I transferred them to my external drive, when I actually had not, and deleted them from my laptop. Except now that I think about it... it was Dan's laptop or the defunct desktop.

Anyway, once I discovered that I didn't have the original files, it suddenly became incredibly important that I get those photos scrapped. Thankfully, I had blogged them and pulled them from here to scrap. I know you're not supposed to do that due to resolution issues, so I kept the photos on the layout small. Still tell the story, though.

 

Thought I'd share some older Halloweenie layouts, too. I do love looking back at these!

 

lyrically inspired

On our road trip, we sang a lot of songs. When the song "Chicken Fried" came over the stereo, I did this internal groan because hey, enough of that song. However, about mid-song, I remembered that I'd always wanted to scrap a layout using the lyrics. I did that Sunday morning, and here it is:

 

While I was at it, I thought I'd share some of my favorite older layouts using song lyrics.

New stuff at the Shoppe!

If you're a digital scrapbooker, or even if you're just someone who'd like to make some photo calendars for Christmas gifts, you should definitely check out The Shabby Shoppe. The Princess is releasing her 2010 calendar kits, along with some fun scrapbooking kits.

I got a chance to play with those kits over the past month or so, and here's what I did:

 

My favorite is the Gorjuss Girl layout. I love the photos I took that day.

Check out those calendars. So easy to pop a photo into them and have printed at Kinkos or Shutterfly!

A couple of layouts

It's easier for me when I have a theme to scrapbook. I did "our summer" last weekend, and this past weekend I was lost. Just looking for an idea. Then I remembered that we are getting our family photos taken this weekend (just a quick Christmas Card photo shoot) and that gave me the idea to scrap our family photos. So here's a little trip in the way-back machine, starting with 1997. Brady was 18 months, Dan had color in his hair, and Kiah was in my tummy. This was my favorite maternity shirt ever.

I'm a little bare on the old family photos thing until 2007. I know we had them taken at my sister's wedding, and with my family when Brady was 3, but I don't have any of just our nuclear family. So that brings us to 2005. Had these taken by the same photographer who did our engagement and wedding pictures.

Next up is 2008. We had these taken while on vacation in Springfield, MO, and I still love them. Probably always will. I have 5 of them hanging on the walls of our living room, and it makes me oh-so-happy to look up and see them.

I'm lazy, and didn't feel like scrapping Sunday evening, so here's a layout I did in the past using our photos from 2008. (P.S. do you know I have approximately 1700 layouts on my EHD in saved for web format? They go clear back to when I started digi-scrapping.)

I'm excited for our portrait session. I love the colors I have picked out for our outfits, and I think this such a huge time in the history of our family that it's important to me to document us. I'll share as soon as I can!

A few layouts from our summer

Difficult for me to believe, but I did sit down and scrapbook a little this weekend. I had treated myself to a shopping spree at my favorite digi-shop, Sweet Shoppe Designs, over Labor Day weekend, so I thought I should actually use some of the stuff I bought. I tried to focus on capturing our summer while it was still fresh in my mind.

 

It felt so fun just to sit and scrap what looked good at the moment. I really like the way these layouts (and our summer) turned out.

 

Some quick layouts

Did these a while back, and so happy to share them with you now. They are available now at The Shabby Shoppe.

 

Photo Shoot

Aw, man. I was going to save these photos for later in the week, but I'm just too excited. I have to share them.... today.

This weekend, my family went to my hometown to visit my parents. It's become a tradition that over Labor Day weekend, I do a little photo shoot with my kids. In the last two years, however, I've lost a couple of subjects.

Those would be my teenagers.

I'm really glad I went ahead and had that third kid. I don't think Hayden Pup would have looked nearly as cute in black and white tights as Chesney did.

Saturday afternoon was perfectly cloudy, and Ches and I got her all emo-ed out for our shoot. I had ordered her a pair of black and white tights, and we found a bunch of white tulle in my mom's stash. Ches wanted to look like a Gorjuss girl. I think we did pretty good. We went to the park, the railroad tracks, and a dump-ish area on the outskirts of town. I'm not sure where my favorite place was, but here are my favorite shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

check it out!

The Princess has a new kit up in the Shoppe! I did four layouts with this kit, and could do many more. It's incredibly fun and versatile!

P.S. Rose, I hope you like it. We are definitely getting together this Fall/Winter. I have some ideas. I'll email you.

My Inkubook Review

We arrived home from Disneyland on June 14, and on July 14, I finished digitally scrapbooking all those photos. My next step was to try to decide where to get my layouts printed into book form.

I usually go with Shutterfly, and I'm fairly loyal to Winkflash for prints, but for some reason, I decided I'd try a company that specializes in printing bound books. I went with Inkubook and I have been so pleased with the entire process.

Let me walk you through the process. First I sat down with all my photos and divided them into folders with page numbers (for example, all my photos of the parade at Disneyland went into a folder marked page 39 40 dps, which told me to use those photos for page 39 and 40 and that it was a double page spread -- or  a 2 page layout). Then I'd open up the photos, and choose a template to use with that number of photos. This was pretty easy because in my template folder, I have them ordered according to number of photos.  For the base of every page, I used Janet Phillip's "The Album" template set. I don't think it's available any more, but if you're considering doing an album, you should talk to Janet about it.  It's a full album template set, but I found that it was very easy to just open a left or right page, delete the existing photo template, and then add my chosen template to the page. It makes my book really flow well. The best thing about Janet's templates was that it kept everything away from the "bleed" space on my layouts. I didn't have to worry about anything being cut off in printing. I did check every page with Wendyzine's book sizing actions. I did end up having to nudge a few things into the live area, but most of it was great without any changes.

I also tried, in most cases, to use the same kit on both pages, even if the subject matter was different. Again, trying to keep it flowing. Some of the Disney themed kits I used were by Melissa Bennett and  Libby Weifenbach. I actually found myself reaching for kits from Sweet Shoppe more often than not. In addition to those 2 designers, I used lots of Eva Kipler and Lauren Grier stuff.

If you'd like to take a look at the layouts, you can view my album widget here. I'm also hoping to get them all on Facebook today. If you have any specific questions about anything, feel free to email me. I'd be happy to help you out.

The book itself is amazing. It's soft bound, and I just love the thick paper and the wonderful colors. It was only $30 and it's 100 pages plus the 2 covers. It's the best bound book I've ever ordered.

I took some photos of my book that I thought I'd share to help you visualize it better. This is my 4th bound book, and by far my favorite. Highly recommend Inkubook (and I ordered it Wednesday, and it was here Saturday!).