Before 
After Isn't that better?! Did you check out the size of our old monitor?! LOL! This was our extra older computer - the one that I reformatted and put Windows XP on it. Plus, black is my all time favorite color. Also check out my little bendy dude. I can't draw but I wanted him anyway. My ds used him for a project at school. I absolutely refused to allow him to glue anything to him. Can't mess up little bendy dude!
Yes I did get my little Crackberry - oops, Blackberry. It truely is addicting! I totally don't mind being hung up in traffic, long lines at events, waiting for my boys hockey games to start... Anytime there is downtime I can surf. It takes a little bit of getting used to but it's awesome! I was so enjoying waiting forever to get my oil changed at Firestone the other day. No problem, I think I'll check out Two Peas message boards. I've set Google as my homepage because I love them - everything about them. Have you ever checked out their employment page to see behind the scenes of what they do and how they treat their staff. It's great!
I've been scrapbooking a lot (for me anyway) lately. I would like to finish our New York album sooner then later. This first photo is of course of the Statue of Liberty. She is so beautiful and amazing to look at. I was surprised by how special she would feel to me. What she stands for gives me goose bumps and looking at all the details, the folds in the material... it's just perfect. That's why I titled that page "It's all in the details" I tried to draw your eye into the details causing one to look a little bit closer by stacking a smaller photo on top of the larger one. Eventually I will go back and reprint the one photo that is a little bit darker then the rest - so those details don't get lost. But, by the time I finished this up I wasn't in the mood to do further tweaking.
This is my two-page spread on Ellis Island. I used an Ali Edwards two-page spread as inspiration for this. I wanted to break out of my box like layouts which I have done on a few other pages. I wanted something linear but something I could still use several photos on. I love having a printer that I can quickly print multiple size photos on. I find I'm using less and less 4.6 photos. I'm still working on using my computer for journaling. I'm from the old Creative Memories days (used to be a consultant) where journaling in your own handwriting is important. I agree with the importance of that but I'm really ok with more computer jouranling. It's cleaner looking and quicker for me to do. 
This is the last page I finished last night. All the photos were dark but bright colors pop throughout because of all the neon lights. New York is filled with neon lights! The picture in the center opens up where it lists the description of each photo. I stamped the corresponding number on each photo. I'm going to put a clip with a ribbon on it to use as the page turner for the center photo but I didn't want the page/book to get too bulky. I'm using embellishments carefully because I don't want bulky albums - if I can help it. It will be fun to see if this changes. As you can tell I really like using multiple photos on my pages. Although I am setting aside individual photos that I really like that I will use to create special pages, some which I've already used. I'm finding I can look at one photo and have it generate different feelings. Hmmmm, my wheels are spinning...
I LOVE having my own room to create. I realize now one of the reasons I never got anything done was because by the time I got everything out it was time to leave to do something. The stuff would lay where ever (dining room table or worse the kitchen table) for a couple weeks until I couldn't stand it there anymore. Then I'd pack it all back up and the cycle would continue until I just never took anything out anymore. This way when I have a spare minute or at night when everyone is snuggled in bed I can quickly go in there and get some things done. When I have to stop I can just leave everything there and close the door. Plus, I love knowing where everything is. I just LOVE it.
I have to give kudos to Stacy Julian at Big Picture Scrapbooking for giving me a guideline to use for setting up my albums into specific categories. I have purchased multiple albums that I like (yes - Creative Memories) and have already put in my refills and all pages have page protectors on. I have labeled each album to cover what I want it to reflect. Then I create the pages and just slip them in the pages where they belong. I don't adhere them to the pages because this gives me the ability to rearrange where they go. Eventually I will adhere them so they don't move around but for right now it gives me the flexibility and freedom I needed to allow me to really get going.
That's enough for now. Gotta go to Hockey!
