October Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

September has been a crazy month at our house, and I wasn't able to get any artwork created for the October Stamp of the Month. If you arrived here from Kim's blog, you're on the right path. You will want to now go to Terrie's blog to keep the hop moving forward! Enjoy all the lovely artwork! Thanks for your patience. I'll post very soon!

Cherry On Top Blog Award!

I was very surprised (and delighted!) to check my blog and discover this sweet award from Debbie Carriere.

Here are the rules for accepting the award:

1. Thank the person who gave it to you. ~ Thanks, Debbie! That was so sweet of you! Debbie is a fellow CTMH consultant, so be sure to check out her Scrappin' My Heart Out blog for awesome inspiration!

2. Post the award on your blog. ~ Done

3. Tell everyone three things you love.

• 
  
  My family
• 
  
  Scrapbooking/stamping/papercrafting (I know -- I cheated on this one!)
• 
  
  My BFF's - You know who you are.

4. Share a picture you love. ~ I love this picture because of the story behind it. My husband and I were vacationing in Washington, DC this year for the Fourth of July. On our visit to the Smithsonian, we had to see the Julia Child exhibit since I am an avid fan. And I loved the movie. A gentleman was standing next to this exhibit, and his wife was taking his picture. Since we were waiting to take our picture by "Julia," I offered to take a picture of the two of them together. They thanked me profusely, and as I was handing the camera back to them, the man said, "Thanks. That meant a lot to me, because I was in the movie!" Whaaaat??? Sure enough -- he played one of the chefs at Le Cordon Bleu. His wife took our picture, and we enjoyed a nice conversation (I now have the inside scoop on Meryl Streep!). They were in DC because his wife was performing in "Mary Poppins" at the Kennedy Center. Wow! Only afterward did I realize that I should have asked to have my picture taken with him by the Julia Child exhibit. Oh, well! It's still a fun story!

5. Pass the award on to 5 blogs you love. ~ There are many amazing blogs out there, and I'm going to share five of them with you. These five always provide me with inspiration and ideas!

• Clearly Creative Pam - Pam Korn-Eigenheer
• Booth #32 - Aaron B.
• Jen's Scrappy Pages - Jen
• Live, Love, Laugh, Scrapbook! - Jena
• Lisa's Creative Corner - Lisa Stenz

Page Planning

I've enjoyed a few days off work, so I've been able to start scrapping the pictures from our trip to Washington, DC in July. I wanted to use the newest idea book Magic, which required a little planning ahead since many of the layouts use larger photos or non-traditional sizes of photos. I spent some time with the Magic book and my computer to plan out which photos I needed to get printed. I use scrapbookpictures.com  for photo printing because they offer such a wide variety of photo sizes. The 1.99 shipping in August didn't hurt, either.

I started by selecting a Magic layout, then choosing photos which fit on the layout. In a little notebook, I wrote the name of the layout, the photo sizes, and brief notes about which photos I was using on that layout. Even though this was time-consuming, it is paying off now that I have time to scrapbook! Once all the layouts were planned, I went to scrapbookpictures.com and placed my order. I especially like being able to order 2x2 or 3x3 photos instead of cropping the pictures manually. The scale is correct, and it saves a bunch of time!

When the picture order arrived, I spent some time sorting the photos by layout. If I were really organized, I would have selected the papers, too, and had that all ready. But I wasn't that organized this time. I'm finding that, because of my planning, I can get the papers cut and the basic page completed in about 15 minutes. The embellishments -- not so much! Anyone who knows me knows that the embellishing is the most time-consuming for me, but I love doing it!

Here are a couple of the results of my planning:

Here is a page in process (about visiting the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian!). The Magic book is open to the layout being used. I shamelessly copied the page, down to the paper choice. Hey -- it worked for these photos! Why reinvent the wheel?

I hope this has inspired you to give Magic a try. Spending a little time in planning can reap big results when there is time to scrapbook!