Tomorrow, I'm handing off the CD of photos I took on Sunday of my step-brother and his family. Thought it might be a good time to try out the CD sleeve pattern that was featured in the September Stampin' Success (the magazine for SU! demonstrators). Totally fun!

I will for sure be making more of these. Can we say Christmas compilation CDs? Heck, yeah!

I photographed my step-brother, his wife, their kids and her extended family this morning. It was a very brisk, cold morning, but still lots of fun. The only little kids were my two nieces. The older one wouldn't look at the camera at all during the family pictures, but I did manage to capture a few cute moments while she was running around and playing peek-a-boo from behind a tree (I must remember that game/trick the next time--it was perfect!).

Anyhow, here are some of the highlights:

Hi everyone! I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful! For me, I stayed home and me and my mom hosted the family this year. Thankfully it was just my sister, her kids, and my brother and sister-in-law.

Before dinner, we played Speed Scrabble, which might be my new favorite game. My cousin Erin taught it to me when we were visiting them at the cabin last summer. Totally fun!

For some reason, I do not like the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, so my mom was too sweet to make ham and cheesy potatoes just for me. :) It was a very yummy dinner!

Anyhow, here's the latest creation. I tried my hand at faux metal. It was actually rather easy to make. See full instructions here.

UPDATE: The photos of the scrapbook page page are removed for publication.

Work has been super busy this week—as usual—but, things have also been really busy at home. My brother and sister-in-law moved this week (must help, of course), I had to finish up a logo for my step-mom's new loan processing business, and I feel like I should be creating things for magazines...

If time was so object, and I could just do whatever I wanted for a whole week, I would go paper crazy and just create all the things that I've stuffed in my inspiration folder. I have so many things I want to make and no time to make them!

This weekend should be a welcome break. Besides a hair appointment in the afternoon and going to see a play Saturday night with my mom, I have no plans. This is me scheduling much needed “Kristina time” for Friday night and Saturday morning. I'm just going to kick back and do whatever I want.

That is, if I don't fall asleep.

After my week, that's probably more likely. :)

UPDATE: This starbook appeared in the April issue of Scrapbook Trends.

Hi all! For those that aren't familiar with them, this is a starbook. The pages fan out similar to an accordion book, but stand up and form a star when looking from above. Super fun to make, but do take quite a bit of time.

Supplies: All paper is American Crafts from their Play series, ribbon and buttons (AC), chipboard stars and circle (Technique Tuesday), chipboard frame (Fancy Pants), stamps (Stampin' Up!), stamping ink (SU!), embossing powder (SU!), white cardstock (SU!)

Download the instructions here (PDF).

Well, I'm back from Virginia! It was a great trip and one that I'll remember for a long time. It was awesome to hang out with my aunt and uncle. They live in Arizona, so I've never been able to just be around them for an extended period of time.

This week was a whirlwind of catching up at work (not entirely caught up, actually), and trying to find time to sit down and do some paper crafting. I put through my demonstrator pre-order of the new SU! product coming out in December and received in Monday night and didn't have a change to even touch it until Friday. Isn't that awful?! The paper and stamps were just sitting on my drawing table, screaming at me, "COME PLAY WITH US!!!" and I couldn't until four days later.

Anyhow, once I broke them out, I went on a bit of a frenzy and made lots of things. Here we go... (see next post for the starbook).