Merry Christmas to my family and everyone else who celebrates the day. And Happy Chanukah to all of the others, including myself. Chanukah is still rocking with my SWAP goodies, can’t wait to share them all but I’m just going to wait until the holiday is over and share everything at one time. I wasn’t organized enough to post each day. Isabella is a happy little camper, lighting candles, saying blessings, and opening little gifts. She’s my sweet girl.

My dad and his wife are on their way to our house from Dallas. They should be arriving any minute so I’m off this computer so I don’t leave them knocking on the back door!

Somebody else liked one of my layouts too and posted it here!

A few weeks ago, I was selected to be on the Creative Team for JZ Designs. Jill makes fabulous templates that make digital scrapbooking easier than doing laundry. And a lot more fun! You can use the template as it is and replace each piece with something in your stash, or you can use the genral layout but replace bits and pieces with fancier stash, like instead of a circle piece of paper, you might put a circular embellishment on it instead. It gives you a PLAN and I like PLANs, even my non-scrappy friends know that about me. And sometimes, okay a lot of times, when it comes to scrapbooking anyway, I like using OTHER PEOPLE’S PLANS because they did all the work for me and I just get to make it look purty. So here is an example of how to KISS a template (Keep It Simple Stupid):
I literally filled each layer of the template with exactly what Jill told me to and voila! a page done in about 20 minutes, which is fantastic for this particular project because I am doing a storybook for my Girl Scout troop and have four years worth of photos to put together by May.

Now, here is another one but I played with it a bit. I replaced some of the layers with different elments and I even resized some photo layers to better fit what I had to put on the page. It still saved me a TON of time and I love the look.

If you are new to digital scrapbooking, there are some awesome sites offering classes. I took all of mine at Jessica Sprague and LOVED them. The beginner class is now available online to start whenever you want and take it at your own speed and that is very cool. Go for it, give yourself a last minute holiday gift. And then use Jill’s templates to get a big project done super quick. If you’ve been digi-scrapping awhile but sometimes get stuck, use the templates to jog your brain and get a jumpstart. You can find them here. Seriously, loving these things and have cranked out a bunch of pages for my project. I will post a link to the whole thing when its done but that won’t be until May and you will forget about it by then anyway. But I won’t so no worries!

And one last layout that I created for Color Combos Galore Challenge #102…

I love this photo. This is my daughter and her friend on our Spring Break trip this past year to Big Bend. It was so great bringing another girl along, they had so much fun and they learned so much without even realizing it. I loved watching them explore and discover and play. This photo makes me happy for so many reasons.

On that note, good night.