MATHIESONS 2011

I saw this globe on You Tube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKbUM5NLJ_g&feature=related and loved it! Thought it would make a great year end page. After finding Jana Morton's Year in Review http://janamorton.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-12-24T05:49:00-08:00&max-results=3  I decided to add it to this page. I actually had to delete some journalling but it was pretty amazing to see how much has happened to our family this year. Might just have to do this every December, it was a great way to document everything in one page!
Looking forward to 2012... and so grateful for the new additions to our family! They bring excitement, talent and love!

JOURNALING PROMPTS

Discovered a wonderful, inspiring website today that I look forward to following and reading. I know the owner of this site, Chantelle Adams and she has an amazing writing and speaking ability. Her "Foundations for Life Leadership Training" is motivational and inspiring. What I also love about it, is her journaling challenges that she includes in many of her posts! In her article on "Simply Write" she asks us to think of:

What happened lately that made me SMILE?

Had to laugh at the James boys absolutely thrilled to see Uncle Scott swimming with the sharks! Family heroes...

What am I most GRATEFUL for right now?

When visiting Prince George all the kids decided to sit on Santa's lap! I am always grateful for family,  just sorry that Danielle, Tim and Everett couldn't be with us.

What is lacking in my life and how can I achieve greater BALANCE?

Grateful for Don who is not only my husband but my best friend! I struggle with friendships and being included, knowing that it is also my problem because I tend to be a bit of a hermit. I lack perspective and want to be a better friend. I do want to be friendly with everyone but do not like fair weather friends. So I am always thankful for a wonderful husband who is always my BEST friend.  

EGG NOG LAYOUT

Took my post today and made a layout! I've been having fun with Tiffany Tillman's Holiday Templates 2011 class and used one of them to do this. I also incorporated some blending that I learned from Jana Morton's Blending and Beyond Class and love how it turned out on the page. I am seeing all these daily December pages and am impressed at the scrapbookers out there but I will just be happy if I can get one a week done!! So this is my first December page...

EGG NOG and PUMPKIN PIE

 Had to laugh the other day when a controversy arose over EGG NOG! At our house it is a hot commodity, I can only buy it at Christmas and when I do we are lucky if it lasts a day! I always try to find it on sale because of that. Apparently, someone who is not in our family yet, professed to NOT LIKING egg nog which absolutely flabbergasted Melodie and Mitchell! They could not believe that someone could not like egg nog: What's not to like?  they asked! He didn't like "raw eggs" and wouldn't believe them when they said it didn't taste like raw eggs. When they said that egg nog and pumpkin pie were just the symbols of Christmas, he replied that he didn't like pumpkin pie either!!! WELL, that was it for them...Melodie declared the relationship was doomed! How could a couple make it if one of them DID NOT like egg nog or pumpkin pie??? Needless to say, I was laughing my head off and so was Mitchell.

So that's it folks, at our house if you step foot over the mat you better be a egg nogging, pumpkin pier or just don't show up!!

CHRISTMAS TREE HUNTERS

Saturday morning Don and Rebecca with Melodie and Kevin headed out towards Chase to find a Christmas tree. Unfortunately Mitchell has been fighting quite a cold and decided to stay home so I stayed with him. I gave them strict instructions to take pictures and was so happy with the ones they brought home. They brought a beautiful Christmas tree home that needed to be cut down a wee bit, but it definitely fills our house with the smell of pine! Glad they had a fun day!

Rebecca misses having her sisters around!!

Vanessa and Amie

I was surprised to find this picture on my camera! This was taken at Melodie's Open House last Sunday when we had scads of people over to welcome her home. It was a pretty crazy day, with talks at church and then lots of company but it was a really happy day too. Unfortunately, when the "get together" is at my house I am "Martha" busily making sure there is enough food, enough dishes, enough punch and trying to visit with everyone so the camera is forgotten. I think I took two pictures....so it was with delight that I found some other ones, but I didn't know who took them until I asked and Amie said it was Don! So good for my sweetie for picking up the camera!
I loved this picture but decided to put Pioneer Woman's Colorized and Burnt Edges on it and love how it turned out. This is one Vanessa's best friends, Amie Short....they are in the nursing program together. I love how Don got Scott in the background. Will have to remember to give him the camera more often if I am busy!!

Grateful for Mayonnaise

Had fun redoing this old scrapbook page! I didn't like how I scrapped it and so decided to use my blending to see what I could do with it. Followed one of Jana Morton's lessons in Blending and Beyond and ended up pretty happy with this page, although don't know if I want to do this much work on a jar of mayonnaise again. It does remind me of how important journaling is though!

Happy day at home but I start Seminary again tomorrow so it will be a busy week especially because we have Melodie's Missionary open house this weekend!

WEDDING INVITATIONS

CHAMPIONS

Vanessa's cousin through marriage Kristen Pierson asked me to do her wedding invitations and so I've been working on them this week. Had lots of fun but I changed her template and added some embellishments, just waiting to hear which one she wants to use. I also changed the picture colours and made them all black and white using The Coffee Shop actions...these are "toasted coconut!"

Need to get to my Blending Class but just finished Seminary for the week so hoping I have a little more time! I was happy to use Jonathan Edis flourishes again and I discovered the sweetest Glowspots by Katie Pertiet that I added to these invites!

Let me know which ones you prefer.... I'll post which one she picks!

WEDDING LAYOUTS

Thought I would include the two wedding pictures I made last month using Jana Morton's Blending and Beyond Class! This class is on now and can be found at Get It Scrapped.  I just love taking her class and learned so much from it. Seriously, these two pictures just made my heart happy! Realized that I am artist after all, but a digital one! Each lesson has a video which I find makes it so much easier to learn. I just watch them, pause them and try them myself in Photoshop! It's nice to be able to rewind or fast forward!

WEDDING INVITATIONS...ENGENS/MCKENZIES

We were visiting with some of our good friends in Langley, the Engens a couple of weekends ago. They drove us to the airport on our way to Peru. At the time we found out their daughter Shayna had just got engaged that weekend and the wedding was in December. When I mentioned that I had made a wedding invitations, they asked if I would do theirs. I actually had lots of fun doing this! Designed the template, did the colours and put in the pictures early one morning when everyone was sleeping. These pictures are actually just prototypes that I sent to them, they ended up just using the hearts on their actual invites but they were fun to design.

The flourishes come from the son of some friends of mine, Jonathan Edis and they really are beautiful. I'm hoping to use them more! I am now on to another set because Vanessa happened to mention to a relative of hers that I make wedding invitations! I will post those when I get a chance to work on them!

Heading to Peru

Well, it's an exciting day!!! Can't believe it's finally here. Don and I are leaving for Vancouver this afternoon and flying tomorrow to Lima, Peru to pick up our Melodie who has been serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints for the past 18 months. I have misssed her dreadfully though I have been proud and happy with her dedication, hard work and love of what she's doing. I think she will find it hard to leave Peru which is a good thing because it means she has learned to love the people.
We will be visiting and touring her mission for 2 weeks and plan on flying to Cusco and seeing Macchu Picchu. We will be flying home on Friday, November 4 into Kamloops. It will be a fun day with family and friends at the airport to welcome her home! We are leaving Scott and Vanessa here to keep an eye on the house and to be with Rebecca and Mitchell. I plan on taking lots of pictures....surprise, surprise!
We are sooo excited!

WEDDING PICTURES...PIERSONS/KICIAS

Well this last weekend I was so grateful for a cloudy sky! I had been praying that it wouldn't rain because I had been asked to take wedding pictures at the Vancouver Temple for my friends the Piersons and Kicias! It was my first wedding shoot and I really wanted it to be special. I know how disappointed I still am about the pictures I have from my own wedding and how poorly they turned out and I did not want that to happen on Saturday. I was thankful for Cory Roxanne Wilde who sent me a bunch of tips on what to do; I love her pictures. I was also grateful for the McCue's who took my Vanessa's wedding pictures, they had so many wonderful ideas.
I am still working on them, but I was thrilled with how so many of them turned out! It was fun once I got started and the wedding party was so patient while I took pictures for 2 hours. My Vanessa helped me and we watched the time like Cory told me too and I just kept shooting pictures. I spent 2 hours the day before  going through every photo shoot I liked and wrote down every pose I could think of because I knew I would forget the day of! Then I brought that sheet with me and had Vanessa remind me of anything I forgot, it was also good because the families came up with some fun poses as well.  In fact one of my favourite pictures Jaymie asked me to do and it turned out beautiful! Have to admit I struggled with the reception pictures because I still shoot in automatic mode and the lighting was so dim in the gym at that time that the pictures turned out really dark. Tried to get a few fun ones!
So here are some of my favourites:

Young Love

Since this was one of my favourite pictures taken at Vanessa's wedding and I included it here in my blog, thought I would post the picture that I scrapped using it. I am really happy with it....journaling is so important on my pages even though it's hard I always try to make sure I do some!

WEDDING INVITATIONS

KICIAS

I offered to make Jaymie and Bryce's wedding invite and told her to just bring over a template that they would like to have. I was pretty happy with the one she brought! Definitely a lot easier to work on than Vanessa's! Three boxes I could do... spent about a day working on it. What made is even easier was saving it as a jpeg. each time and then quickly sending it to Jaymie, she kept sending me suggestions and then I would change it. The hardest was getting the pink she wanted, until she actually sent me a picture of the pink she was thinking of... I simply used my colour picker in PS and voila, the right pink. We had this done in a day, just by texting and emailing! Happy about that and I think they were both pretty happy with how it turned out, I know I was! The joy of technology...

Album of Awesome

I am taking an online Album of Awesome class that teaches us how to look for the awesome things in our life. It is based on Neil Pasricha's Book of Awesome.  I have really been enjoying listening to Steph on her podcasts for The Digi Show so I am excited to take this class! I'm not always good at finishing albums so we'll see how this turns out, but it's always good to be working on something digital! My first entry:


#1 I received A MISSIONARY MOM LETTER today from a friend who knew I was missing hearing from my Mel, and she generously shared her missionary son's experiences with me. It was the first letter I opened up this morning and it touched my heart and made my day AWESOME! 

ENGAGEMENT PHOTOS...KICIA/PIERSON

BRYCE AND JAYMIE KICIA

Thought I would put up a few engagement pictures that I took last Saturday on my blog because it's a little more private than facebook. Jaymie, my daughter's sister-in-law asked me to take their wedding pictures for this October! My first response was are you kidding....not me, I like being the second camera, I do not like being the head honcho in anything frankly! I'm pretty much good at being a counselor (in my church work) but not being the last one responsible. It really worried me all night, I don't like saying NO but I did not feel confident and for a wedding, one of the most important days of a girls life!! I asked her if I could think about it for a few days. Luckily, my Vanessa phoned me the next morning and talked me into it...she told me I take wonderful pictures and that she would totally help me, would be my photo assistant! That helped me feel better, so I reluctantly agreed. I'm still super nervous about it but I did tell them they are not getting a professional photographer. I also talked to Deanne (Jaymie's mother) and we decided that I would do an engagement shoot to at least get a feel for it.

So I started thrift store hunting, found a cute chair that I painted pink and a huge picture frame (had Don take all the hardware and the picture and glass out) for props. I also had Jaymie bring a huge lollipop since she has a pink/ candy sort of theme. I was worried about the light that morning but we found a bridge and we took lots of pictures under it. Couldn't believe when I got home that in about an hour and a half we had almost 300 pictures so lots to choose from.

So here are some of the pictures that I took:

I was happy with how quickly my Mac made it possible to tag them and sort through them. I also happily added some filters to them.
Bryce and Jaymie were sure fun to work with and didn't once complain about about all the kissing I asked them to do!!