Up for grabs!

I’m a bit of a magazine junkie and have way too many. I have been known to buy ones I already own {how bad is that??}. I recently bought Martha Stewart’s Blueprint magazine and also Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion. Up for grabs is the current issues of both mags. Leave me a comment and I’ll pick a winner this weekend.

Update 2/3/2008 - Commenting is closed and a winner has been chosen. Congratulations Tiffany!

Indoor playgrounds for kids 5 & under

I’ve been looking into indoor activities and new places to take Nika. Today we visited our first indoor playground for kids. We went to the Old Redmond Schoolhouse, which is now the Community Center. Nika had so much fun! Her face lit up with excitement when we walked into the gym. It was toys galore and kids were bouncing around like it was Christmas. The gym also had balls, tumbling mats, crawl-through tunnels and push cars to play with. The cost is only $2 or free for kids under 1 year.

I did a little research and most cities have an indoor playground program, usually through the local Community Center. Here’s a great article in The Seattle Times that lists a bunch of indoor playgrounds and also movie cry rooms {special movie showings just for parents with babies}. The article is a little old, but will give you good information about many of the different indoor playgrounds in Western Washington. You can also go to Meetup.com and do a search for playgroups by zip code.

Look at my happy girl! She was grinning from ear to ear the whole time we were there.

Cute stamps

No new snow today, most of it already melted away. It’s just a cold, wet and windy day. I’ll stay in and play with these cute new stamps I got. I need to make some Valentines.

The acrylic Babushka stamp {means “Grandma” in Russian} I ordered from Story of My Life. Great online place to shop for hard to find items and unique stamps. They also have awesome monthly kits. The wood skunk stamps {Stinkin Cute} are from Stampin Up! This set was just retired January 1st. I thought these could be cute for Valentines.

I’m off to play, have a groovy day!

Snow fun

We don’t get much snow here in the Seattle area. Today we woke up to over four inches! After Nika had her breakfast, Daddy and I took her outside for a little fun. Nika had a great time exploring the snow. Here’s a cute pic of Daddy and Nika. Sounds like we might get a little more tomorrow too.

Friday Freebie - creative scrapbooking inspiration

Hello my crafty friends…it’s Friday! Have you ever had scrapper’s block, stuck in a creative rut, not sure what to do for your layout? I have the perfect freebie for you. Jessica Sprague has a 21 page idea booklet packed with color combos, sketches, creative product usage, techniques, and even clever page ideas. There is tons of ideas to help you get into the groove.

I printed out Jessica’s {100 in 10: The List} and have been reading it, circling all the ones I want to try, and marking all over it. It’s very inspiring. There are a total of 279 tips. There are pics, links, and resources galore to help spur the craftiness in you. I’m going to keep this on my bulletin board above my crafting table. I can see myself referring to it often.

Get the Friday Freebie

{Scouring the scrappy sites looking for good stuff, so you don’t have to.}
XOOXO ~ MamaSheg

Show & Tell - file folder album

Just finished up my 1st file folder album. This was a really easy project to make. I’m going to use this for Nika’s growth charts, the ones we get from her wellness checkups. I thought this would be a cute way to keep those documents for her. She can look back and see how quickly she grew in her 1st year.

This was a super easy project, great for beginners. I started out with a manila file folder. Any file folder will do, I just opened my file cabinet and grabbed an old one. I followed these folding instructions provided by Taylored Expressions. Once I had the album all folded up and scored I used the Basic Grey Precision File Set to even out any edges. If you don’t have the Basic Grey files you can use any nail file to do this. I traced each of the folder panels onto the back of patterned paper. Next I cut out the traced panels and ran them through my Xyron 900 and adhered to the folder. There will probably be a little excess paper hanging over, trim off what you can with scissors and use a nail file to get those pesky little pieces. All the matching embellishments also went through the Xyron. There is a couple doilies I cut out and sponged with Tim Holtz’s Distress Ink {Antique Linen}. Those went went through the Xyron 150. Very quick and easy to do. I’ll definitely be making more of these. I love how shabby chic it turned out!

Products Used

• Manila file folder
• Patterned paper {My Minds Eye} “Out & About” Paper Kit No 2
• Chipboard letter {K & Company} “Roam” Alphabet
• Button {K & Company} Wild Saffron Chipboard
• Brad {Making Memories} Metallic Basics
• Fiber {Really Reasonable Ribbon}
• Adhesive {Xyron} 900 & 150

Check out my previous post on file folder albums for more inspiration and tutorials on how to make these.

{Fisk-A-Teers} scrapbooking community

Have you been to the Fisk-A-Teers site?

The Fisk-A-Teers is a social networking site specifically targeted to the scrapbooking craft community. Fiskars created the Fisk-A-Teers as a way to stay connected with their customers {very cool} and also to give crafters a way to connect with one another.

I joined the Fisk-A-Teers a few months ago and love it! It’s a great place, especially for newbies to scrapbooking. Everyone there is so awesome. The forum is hosted by four lead Fisk-A-Teers who post projects, techniques, contests, and more. There is always a lot going on, challenges, swaps, online crops, chats, RAKs, and all sorts of fun stuff. There is currently over 3000 inspirational crafters who are part of this community. This is truly a great place to meet other scrappers who are supportive and passionate about crafting.

It’s free to join and similar to many other social networking sites. You have a place to add friends, upload your projects for others to see and post comments, you can email other scrappers, there is a very active message board and gallery, a blog hosted by the leads, and a calendar of events listing classes and other special Fiskar sponsored activities.

Look what they sent me for joining. How cool is that? The scissors came with my Fisk-A-Teer number engraved on them!

Stop by and check it out, look me up…I’m Fisk-A-Teer #2835.

File folder mini albums

Have you seen all the beautiful albums created with file folders? Who knew you could make such pretty stuff with a plain old file folder. They look so cute and sound easy to do. Here’s a sampling of what I found about how to make them and some really great examples.

Check out this example from the Daily Scrappin Inspiration blog.

Taylored Expressions has great step-by-step instructions on how to fold a manilla folder to create a file folder album. If you are interested in trying this project I recommend using Taylor’s instructions as a guide. She has many photos documenting the process.

In the ScrapShotz forum, KathyT has a wonderful example and instructions. Check out this is a cute album made by Moralia.

Tobi’s Place has a fabulous file folder album, I really love the colors on this one. She also has a link to download PDF instructions on how to make one.

Take a look at this amazing album created by Karen. The Desperate Stamper has a pretty example of an album she made.

So many wonderful ideas. I’m going to make one of these and will share it with you soon! TTYL

Nika update - 9 month milestones

It’s a nice cold and sunny morning here in Seattle. Hopefully it will warm up enough so I can take Miss Nika for a stroller walk. I’m sure looking forward to doing more things outside. I’m tired of all the cold and wet weather…I’m ready for spring!

Thought I would share some Nika updates with you today. I can’t believe it’s already been 9 months! Nika has reached some great milestones. She is finally crawling forward now. She’s also able to prop herself up from lying down too. She’s rolling and crawling all over the place. Now we need to go out and purchase some baby gates.

Teeth update: Nika loves to eat teething biscuits and now has six teeth in, four up top and two on the bottom. She’s become a very picky eater ever since having the flu. She only likes to eat the banana-oatmeal-peaches sauce and will also eat sweet potatoes but that’s about it for varieties. She also goes back and forth with liking rice and oatmeal cereal.

We’re working on getting her nap schedule back on track. She’s only been doing one nap a day since being sick. We’re trying to get back to two naps a day and re-establish her routine.

Nika loves her toys, especially getting new ones. I find she becomes easily bored with her toys after a week or sooner. Right now she enjoys playing with this pound n’ play. She likes hammering on it and gets a kick out of the balls falling through and putting them back. We also just discovered looking at old photo albums. She loves to look at the pictures and flip the pages. She recognizes pictures of daddy, the kitties and our dog Jesse, it’s really cute.

You can check out more pics of Nika on Vlad’s Flickr site, he posts some of his favorites there.

Chat ya later ~ Cathy

Friday Freebie - Valentines projects

Gotta love Martha…she has a ton of really great Valentines projects. Here’s my top picks from MarthaStewart.com.

• {Paper Heart Wrappings} - Fun and super easy.
• {Doily Envelopes} - I’m going to make some of these. I’m really liking doily-everything for crafting right now. These are beautiful.
• {Crayon Hearts} - I remember melting crayons as a kid, Martha has taken it up a notch and made it cool to do as a grown up!
• {Miniature Valentine’s Day Gift Bag} - Love these mini gift bags, be sure to download this template.
• {Sentimental Valentine’s Day Wheel} - This would be a fun addition to a card or scrapbook page.
• {Sweet Tidings: Handmade Valentines for Kids, Flower Lollipops} - Clever idea for using paper cupcake liners, cute flower decorated lollipops…love this one for kids.
• {Easy Doily Valentines} - This is a great project. Flower bunches made from doilies!

Have a great weekend. XOOXO ~ MamaSheg