2015 ... Finally

I'm so excited for the new year. I can't honestly remember the last time I was legitimately hopeful and optimistic about the fresh start that a new year offers us. I wanted to share a few things that I am doing this month to lay the foundation for a new year.

1. Recommit to Flylady.
I've been a subscriber/follower since I saw an article in a woman's magazine in 2002. The messages and routines are quite ingrained in me; however, I tend to lose track of my routines every now and again and the house and my mind become a mess. I shined my sink before bed last night night and I have my first 27 Fling Boogie under way.

2. Joined the Move More, Eat Well Jumpstart.
I'm going to do Cathy Zielske's class at Big Picture Classes. From what I can tell, a lot of the work aligns with what I've learned by following Flylady and years of Weight Watcher membership.

3. Create and celebrate joy in my life. 
I'm going to be scrapping the joy in my life during 2015. To keep myself accountable, I'm hosting a series of monthly challenges over at the ForeverJoy Designs blog. For January, it's all about perspective and getting into the right mindset! Come join me!!

The Way I See It | 20/20 by ForeverJoy Designs

If you like the kit, it's being featured for 30% off this month at The Lilypad

4. Have fun scrapbooking.
I've always enjoyed doing challenges and I plan to do as many as I can this month. I put this step as fourth, because I know myself. If it was first, then #1 and #2 would never get done and I would never experience the joy of #3. So ...  after my daily routines are done, and I've moved and planned out some good food, I will be scrapping my heart out.

5. Read more books.

I set a goal over at Goodreads for 2015 to read 24 books. I love reading but over the past few years haven't really been doing much of it. So, I'm going to take it easy this year. Two books a month. That should do it. One for my book club and anything else that interests me. I love the audiobooks I check out from Overdrive. If my plans go well and I am outside more and moving, I should be blowing through my 24 books in no time at all.

Thanks for reading my post. I hope you are inspired to make 2015 a year full of joy and happiness. 

Christmas Wish

CHRISTMAS WISH by Dream Big Designs

I love when my house is decorated for Christmas. The white twinkling lights on my tree fill my heart with joy and I love driving up my street at night and having my lights welcome me home. Sadly, I'm running behind schedule this year. I desperately want to put up my tree and lights, but I promised myself to finish my chores around the house before I play dress up. 

In the spirit of procrastination, which I am amazingly talented in, I want to share with you a Christmas layout I made with a new release from Dream Big Designs. Until I get things set up for 2014, I'll just have to admire this photo from last year. Thanks to a artificial tree, it's going to look just about the same!! I am pondering changing the location though. We'll see ... 

In a moment of gratitude, I wanted to pause and appreciate the the opportunity to play with these lovely digital designs. I just love the creative teams I have the good fortune to be on. "My" designers are kind, amazingly talented, and just all around AWESOME women.

CHRISTMAS WISH by Dream Big Designs

Isn't CHRISTMAS WISH beautiful? I made the image nice and big so you can enjoy it!! 

Here's wishing you a very peaceful holiday season!!! Please keep your battery full and your memory card empty so you can take tons of family photos!!

The Scrap Nerds Facebook/Blog Train

Welcome to The Scrap Nerds' NERD ALERT Facebook / Blog Hop Designer Collab.  You probably came from Beautifully Blessed. You are at the EnjoyYourPix blog. 

I'm on the The Scrap Nerds Creative Team. I look forward to seeing you in the forums, gallery, and participating in the fun challenges and games. I talk a lot and love digital scrapbooking. Oh, and I'm a big nerd too!!

Anyway, I know you are busy downloading and I won't keep you long. Here is my contribution. I hope you like it. I love clusters and paint and had a little fun with the great distressed frame. Your next stop will be DigiDewi.

Have fun and see you around!!

Freebie Frame Cluster by enjoyyourpix

Download  <<expired>>

In case you get lost :)
1.  Scrap Nerds
2.  BoomersGirl Designs
3.  Jenn Summers
4.  Shmooangel Designs
5.  Joey
6.  Neia Arantes
7.  Mis Mis
8.  AKDesigns
9.  Beautifully Blessed <<<last stop
10. enjoyyourpix  <<<you are here
11. DigiDewi <<<next stop
12. Scooty
13. Magical Scraps Galore
14. SAS Designs

Whew! It's Summer Break

Wow. Not quite sure where the last ten months went.

I've updated my creative team links here on the page. Since my last post, I've added Chelle's Creations and ForeverJoy Designs to my teams. Also, I'm excited that I was selected to be part of The Scrap Nerds store creative team. It's been fun working with a store launch and have been busy discovering brand new to me designers and making a lot of layouts. I finished off 2012 and have all my layouts in my scrapbook. That was a major digi accomplishment. My yearly number of layouts created has almost tripled as I've become more involved in the digi-scrap community. I'm still designing layouts for Little Rad Trio and Dream Big Designs. And have been working with Amber Shaw on Facebook marketing and that's been keeping me busy.

If you are on Facebook, I invite you to my new Enjoy Your Pix page.

I plan on being back soon. There are big things happening with all my designers this summer!!

Back to School -- Thank Goodness?

Sweet Dreams by Amber Shaw at Scrap Orchard

Whew ... just a few more days until school begins. In some ways I want summer to continue, yet I look forward to the kids heading back to school. Actually, they are upstairs quiet right now, so I change my mind. I don't want school to start. Part of me wants to rewind 14-16 years to the snuggle-y delicious days of babyhood. The days of playgroup and anticipation of which preschool we would attend. Now the realities of SAT tests, GPA, and possible colleges looms on my horizon. Do you think maybe I can go hide under my blankie???

I've had a few productive scrapping pages and have been happy with how the pages have turned out. It definitely helps to have great kits to inspire me.

Sweet Dreams by Fiddle Dee Dee at Scrap Orchard

First up is Amber Shaw's Sweet Dreams. It is sweet indeed. In fact, I think the little fuzzy bear and cute sheep gave me a bit of a cavity. New now to Scrap Orchard, Amber teamed up with the talented Cheryl of Fiddle Dee Dee and we have divine coordinating templates!! The blendy masks are perfect for big pictures or even blending your papers. The templates were soooo easy to use and I had a coordinated lush page in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

Layout by enjoyyourpix using
Sweet Dreams by Amber Shaw and template by Fiddle Dee Dee

Dream Big Designs New Discoveries

I loved the templates so much that I had another play with them and used New Discoveries from Dream Big Designs to scrap some old school pictures of my son's hero day when he was in second grade. Cheri's little light bulb was the perfect match for my pint sized Thomas Edison.

Dream Big Designs New Discoveries Graffiti

 










Don't forget the graffiti packs! I love how Cheri has the graffiti bits and pieces separate so I can customize my page and shadows. There is a bundle in the market for your shopping convenience. :)

Layout by enjoyyourpix using
Dream Big Designs New Discoveries Bundle and
Fiddle Dee Dee Sweet Dreams templates

Little Rad Trio's Run in Circles Template

If you missed the news earlier this summer, Little Rad Trio is now selling at Gingerscraps in addition to MScraps. It's been fun getting to know the new community. There sure is a lot going on there. One of these days, I'll get my act together and try their book club!

This week, Jennifer is releasing some new templates aptly named, Run in Circles. I love the look of circles on my pages, but I really have a hard time with circular pictures. These templates are a great solution. As I was looking through my pictures, I stumbled across this picture of my dog. My dogs are rarely out front so it was fun to grab this picture of my furry friend pondering the world outside our house. I used the lovely Afternoon with Grandma kit.

Layout by enjoyyourpix using
Little Rad Trio's Run in Circles templates and Afternoon with Grandma kit

That's it for now. I'm heading upstairs now to give "advice" to my daughter about what to wear to the freshman dance. By advice, I mean answering whatever question I am asked with my opinion and then being told why I'm wrong. I *know* I'm just a sounding board and it's her way of talking things through to reach her own decision, but man oh man, I am quickly understanding the semi-dazed look on my parents' face as I breezed in and out of the room during my high school years. Parenthood  truly is a marathon!

I guess I don't really want to rewind all those years and start over again. I think maybe just scrapping some more baby pictures and school pictures will be a nice way to reflect on their growth and how far they have come since those innocent, angelic baby days. With the first day of school just a few days from now, I think my dear sweet Golden Retriever shows it best. She's ready to walk into the sun, tail up, ready to meet the great big world. I pray my two not so babies go forth and conquer their new year. And while I'm at it, I'll say a prayer for all the other mommies out there. xoxo

Happy Independence Day Weekend

I love summer. The hot weather and laid back attitude is just my style. Some of my best childhood memories are from the summer and I love the little snippets of those memories that wash over me when I walk across grass at night, or drive to the grocery store at 10:00 o'clock with the windows down. Oh! This makes me want to make so many pages to document those memories.

I have a few pages to share with you and some great digi news. First up ... Amber Shaw is moving to Scrap Orchard on August 1st.  I am over the moon thrilled for her and happy for me too. Scrap Orchard is my favorite store and my little digi-home. She has a ton of products she is retiring and they are marked down 70% until her Pickleberrypop shop closes. Don't miss out, there are some cute cute kits that are going away. SHOP HERE

Boom Boom Sparkle by Dream Big

Cheri at Dream Big Designs is on her final countdown. She has a sweet baby coming at the end of the month and in the meantime is turning out amazing kits left and right. I had a July baby once upon a time, and can totally empathize for how she must be feeling right now. That, I must say, is a huge disadvantage to summer. I think it's much easier to be pregnant when it's cold outside.

Her newest release Boom Sizzle Sparkle is full of great firework goodness. Perfect for Disney, Sea World,  baseball games, and of course the 4th of July. I decided to play with the journaling cards and InstaLife cards. I can never decide if I want the square or rectangle, so I'm delighted to see that Cheri includes both in her BUNDLE.

{Side note. If you want to print out the cards to use in hybrid projects, pocket scrapping,  or note cards, use the full bleed, untextured versions and send them to your favorite printer. They are untextured so you can pick your favorite paper texture. For my scrapbooking, I use the textured cards so I can mix and match them with my paper. If I wanted to do a more glossy, magazine, "flat" page, I'd use the untextured cards.}

For my page, I used a Scrapping with Liz template, the cards, word art, and little embellies. To keep the patterns small, I merged some of the cards together to give me a larger mat. As long as you make sure that you apply your shadow AFTER you have merged the cards, you should be good to go. I'm so happy that I now have this bundle in my stash, it will be used for many more pages in the future!!

April Madness using DBD's Boom Boom Sparkle

Jennifer at Little Rad Trio has also been busy. In addition to renovating her house and dealing with the aftermath of a storm that decided to strike just as the roof was removed, she has some new releases. This is for the MScraps monthly Memory Mixer where designers create papers and elements in the same color palette for easy mix and matching. The more purchase, the greater the discount is. Jennifer made an adorable kit called Simple Pleasures that highlights all those things that we love: our coffee, chocolate, books, pets, and just relaxing. The pinks, browns, and blues in the kit are very soothing as is the softly muted palette. I made my page to remember a lovely morning at one of my favorite local restaurant/coffee houses. It's always very busy and I wanted to make sure we grabbed a table overlooking the street, so I went a little early, had coffee, and digiscrapped until my friend arrived. It was such a nice day. It's always fun to drink your coffee out of a bowl!! LOL. Good thing I didn't spill.

I must disclose that I cannot believe that I forgot to use the graffiti on my page. I LOVE graffiti and paint!! What was I thinking??? Never fear though, I am currently revising my page for the Bring it Challenge over at Scrap Orchard. This month, you have to scrap on the diagonal. The new and improved page will be on my July Challenges board and will be on the diagonal with lots of this great graffiti.

Friends using Little Rad Trio's Simple Pleasures

Once I finish this post and then go outside to check the chemicals on my pool, I'm going to get started on my Iron Scrapper Week 1 layouts.  I completed my digi shopping and picked up the North bundle and some Fresh Fruit. I cannot wait to see what I make! I don't think I ever know what my page is going to look like before I start. You never know, it just might be an EPIC page!

See you later! :)

So much Scrapping Goodness

I have several fun pages to share with you this week! The designers have been super busy. It feels like every time I go online, there's a new kit! Now that school is out, I feel like I'm getting a handle on everything again!

I made a freebie for Dream Big Designs. It's on the Dream Big blog. Grab it soon, before the link expires. I made the card to go on a page in my kids' school albums. I hope you like it.

Amber Shaw teamed up with the dynamic duo Bella Gypsy. Their Wild Boy kit is awesome. Because I'm still trying to finish up the cheer trip to Disney in March (I have a free Shutterfly coupon that expires on Tuesday!), it was perfect for the parade at California Adventure.

 

Wild Boys by Amber Shaw and Bella Gypsy

It's also Pickle Barrel time again. Amber created a super fun Geocaching kit called Cache Me. Grab the elements, papers, and a coordinating template.

Dream Big Designs released super cute InstaLife and Journaling cards that coordinate with the Splash Zone kit. If you don't have the kit already, you really need to grab it. The orange and blues are fabulous for your summer pictures.

Splash Zone by Dream Big Designs

Little Rad Trio has been super busy as well. The move to MScraps is complete and Jennifer is quickly filling her store with new kits and templates. I made a page with her new template set Seven-Eight Don't Be Late. As for content, it's mainly the Way to Go kit with a little bit of Retirement thrown in. 

Little Rad Trio's 7 8 Don't Be Late and Way to Go

 This next kit is a newer release from Little Rad Trio. It's called Is the Grass Really Greener? Isn't that chevron paper awesome? If you are a lover of green and browns, you need to add this to your collection.

Little Rad Trio's Is the Grass Really Greener?

 I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I LOVE the challenges at Scrap Orchard. In particular, I love the MIS challenges. (Make it Snappy). This one was from last week. It was the template challenge where Fiddle Dee Dee donates a template and then everyone who participates gets a 40% off coupon. She is so generous and makes lovely templates too. I was super excited to use a new kit that I actually bought! This is Once Upon a Time by Megan Turnidge with a Fuss Free Freebie from Fiddle Dee Dee. One more page closer to finishing Disney!! Yippee!!!