Book Review "Haunted"

I have to admit, I am pretty proud of myself for keeping up with my goal of reading a novel a month.
I think this may be the only goal that I have been consistent with.
I may grab a book at the last minute, but I still get it read before month end.
I actually finished this book last night.

My thoughts on this book...
It is a good story, I enjoyed the parts of the ghost making ita appearances and trying to figure out who the ghost was.
What I didn't care for was the romance part of the book.
I am not one to read about romance where the main characters dislike each other, then fall so hard for each other..then question if they are right for each other..blah blah blah, lol.
Give me some a hot and heavy love affair and maybe, lol.
I was also put off by the authors obsession with everyone's height?!?
But honestly, it was a good quick read.

Look at our baby, teehee.
Luna is enjoying herself in Sawyer's playpen.  

I am actually surprised that she didn't jump in there when we first got it.

Tomorrow I am hoping to get to my layouts and maybe make a page or two.
I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Opening up the Camp/Cottage

 Camp Season is upon us!!

Wayne and I spent the weekend at our cottage.
It rained almost the whole 2 hour drive out there, but cleared up when we reached camp, which was nice to unpack without getting soaked :)
Wayne worked most of the weekend to get our water turned on, but ended up we had a small hole in one of the pump check valve.
We did get enough water to fill up the sauna and fill up a few buckets though.

First thing I did once Wayne put the battery in the quad was go for a ride of course :)
I love to ride!!

It actually hailed before heading home.
Then we got rain...lots of rain.

As much as I love my Home away from Home, I am going to miss my Friday Night Scrapbooking I have with my friends.
I am hoping to have them one day during the week in the afternoon...sad thing is, most of my friends still work, so won't be able to make it.
They all need to retire, lol.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend :)

Tracy :)

Girls May Long 2017

Every year on the May Long Weekend, my daughters and I spend it at my SIL Sharon's camp.
Sharon and I usually go up a day or so early...the benefits of being retired :)

My daughter's came up the next day and brought laughter and Chinese food :)

One big change this year was we had a boy at the camp.
Sawyer...and we enjoyed every second with him.
I loved spending so much time with him.
He loves to snuggle in his blankie.

Ashley taught Sawyer a new trick.
He is so clever, teehee.

The girls enjoyed a few walks in between the rain.

We also had a weekend full of junk food...and plenty of pop for me ;)

And we created a lot!!
Last year we started a paint day.
Kristy picked this image and we all did a great job in re-creating it :)

The best was when Ashley would bring Sawyer to me when he woke up.
Nothing better then snuggling a happy baby when you first wake up :)

We also did scrapbooking!!!
I only completed 16 layouts in the 5 days we were there, but I think that was pretty good considering I wasn't feeling up to par for a day and a half.
But the layouts I did complete, I love how they turned out!!!

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Layouts Defunkified

I have finally got my loose layouts organized!!!!
I was a bit surprised that I had 44 layouts completed.
But I was even more surprised to see that I had 89 layouts semi-completed.
Meaning layouts without photos.
Then on Friday Night Scrapbooking, I did another 2 page spread without photos.

So now to count I have 135 layouts done!!!
I organized my completed layouts (on the left) in order by date of when the photos were taken.
I organized my semi-completed layouts (on the right) in order by kit...if they were made from a kit.
As a lot of my layouts are made from kits I had purchased at Crop & Create or our Thank You Goodie Bags.

My next task is to make a video on my completed layouts that I haven't shared yet and to also put photos on the semi-completed layouts.
My daughters were really giving me a hard time on not having photos on so many layouts...but I have been having so much fun just making layouts with or without photos.

I made a video on how I organized these :)
To watch this video on my YouTube channel, just click on the link "Tracy's Treasures24"


I hope you all have a very Creative Day :)

Tracy

My Mother's Day

Any day with these beautiful girls of mine is the best day :)
We celebrated Mother's day on the Saturday.
With Ashley being a mother now herself, we celebrated the day before so she could enjoy her 1st Mother's Day with her husband and son.
My girls and I enjoyed a nice walk around the neighbourhood.

I enjoyed feeding Sawyer his first veggies.
His Grandma Karen fed it to him the day before and the poor little guy hated them...he actually cried and gagged the first time he ate them, lol.
He was better this time, but he still wasn't loving them.

Sunday morning I woke up to this sweet text from Ashley since we didn't see each other on Mother's Day.

Spending the day with my family was all I wanted, but as always they spoiled me :)
I received this beautiful card, a gift card for Michael's (this will help with my no spend on craft supplies challenge).
They bought me a Doxie photo scanner..which I received early.
And my grandson and son-in-law gave me this precious mug <3 p="">

Later on we went out for ice-cream. banana strawberry...yum.
I usually get a kids size cone, but this time I got a small and ate it all, lol.

How did you celebrate your Mother's Day?

Tracy :)

Layout Organization and Face Time

I am still working on organizing my layouts.
I don't know why I had the urge to put these kits in order of when I bought them from the Crop & Create event...but I did, lol.
It took most of my day.....many may think it was a waste of time, but it is something I just had to do and am happy that I did.

I also did a couple of videos of the pages I have done from the kits, but most of the pages don't have pictures on them, so I figured I will hold off on the videos until the layouts have the photos on them.

Yesterday I was at my daughter Ashley's house scanning our old photos to have digital copies.
That also took most of the day, but we are on my albums which are in order, so the scanning should go a lot quicker now.

But the great part is being able to see, play and snuggle with this little guy.
Oh my goodness he has my heart.
Oh yes, and of course seeing my daughter Ashley :)

I miss this girl so much!!
Kristy is still in Italy and having a blast.
I am so happy she is enjoying herself as I know she would.
One thing that helps me miss her a little bit less, is that we have a family group text.
So she posts what she is doing during the day and we keep her up to date with shat is happening here.
But even better....we FaceTime at least once a day!!
I get to see her pretty little face and hear her happy voice and she will give us a tour of her hotel.
3 more days and she will be home!!!

I hope you all are having a Creative Day :)

Tracy :)

Happy International Scrapbooking Day

Hope you all are having a great International Scrapbooking Day :)
I planned on scrapbooking all day, so told my friends to drop over if they wanted to play along.
My friend Lynne came by and we had some chuckles and instead of scrapbooking we organized, lol.
Lynne took her photos out of her sleeve albums and put them into photo boxes, and I moved from task to task, lol.

After Lynne left I worked on my albums and layouts.
My daughters have mentioned that I haven't completed their baby scrapbooks..yup, sad but true.
My oldest is 27 and I still haven't completed them.
So the first thing I did was take out their albums and some of my finished layouts that I don't have photos in.

I went through my daughter's albums and figured out what years or milestones that I had missed in these books and wrote them on sticky notes for each one.

Then I gathered up all of my layouts that weren't in albums, or that don't have photos on them.
Yup, those are all (that I know of) layouts that I have completed.
Some are completed pages with photos on them, others need photos.
I am hoping that a lot of the layouts with no photos will work in my daughter's albums...that will make completing their albums so much quicker.

I also did a quick video sharing my hopefully easy process with a couple of quick flips in their albums :)
If you would like to see the video on my YouTube Channel...just click the link "Tracy's Treasures24"


I hope you all have a very creative Scrapbooking Day :)

Tracy :)

Organizing my Photos

Thought you would be seeing my tote organization....ya, me too, lol.
But I can't just have one task going at a time, I need many.

I have been worried about my photos in these sticky paged albums.
The adhesive they use (or used) on these albums are not archival safe.
Over the years the adhesive deteriorates your photos and makes them brittle
I have planned on taking them out of here for years.
Today was the day!

Some of the albums were difficult to take the photos off, and other the photos practically fell off.
See how the adhesive effects the photos.
The top left one is so discoloured.
I was going to discard this one, but my daughter (Ashley who is a photographer) told me she could invert the colour (or something like that) so I kept it.
See the cute short haired girl on the bottom left...thats me ;)
There is a long story about that hair cut...but that is another story.

Look how the pages have discoloured around the edges...that is what happens to paper over the years if the paper isn't acid free.

I used these tools to pry and lift the photos off of the pages.
Some were stuck on there good...or should I say bad.
Most are not damaged from the front, but this one really didn't want to come off.
Plus I was so over this process, and may have lost my patience.

If this wasn't enough of a challenge for me, I also asked my siblings for their albums of our childhood photos to scan them as well.
After taking off all of the photos, then came the tedious process of putting the photos in chronological order.
Which wasn't the easiest as my mom wasn't very organized ...... she had old black and white photos with more recent coloured photos. Also only a few photos had the year on them.
Plus my mom passed away years ago and all of our relatives have either passed away or live so far away, putting them in some kind of order was little like playing a detective.
This is where searching for details in the photos help a lot....."he is wearing a wedding ring, so this is after mom and dad were married"
Or even looking at the size of the photos or the background colour of the photo paper.
My daughter was really good at this.

I purchased a photo album with sleeves to put the photos in so they wouldn't get out of order before scanning.
My daughter Heather had this job.
We did this while FaceTiming with my daughter Kristy, who is in Italy, and told us about her day :)
In between prying photos off of the album pages, I took many breaks with this little cutie.
I am so lucky that my family lives so close and that they actually enjoy spending time with me, teehee.
Making memories everyday :)

We still have so much more to do and I will share with you more on our process when we are closer to being done.

I hope you all have a very Creative Day today.

Tracy :)

Organizing my creative totes

I have been putting off organizing these totes of mine for quite some time.
By the look of my living room floor, I should have put it off for a bit longer, lol.

If you know me you know I love planners, journals, notebooks and well, anything paper related.
I also craft all over.
I got to crops, to friends homes and anywhere around my house.
So I will grab another tote and fill it with the supplies I need for that project and move on...never to put away the supplies.
So I decided to go through everything.

This one is my Craftsman Tool Tote.
I have been using this for my planners and journals.
Then I just started to put other things in here, and it just got to stuffed and I kind of stopped using it as it didn't work for me anymore.

This one I bought from 31 Bags.
I use it to just throw stuff in.
Like when I am working on a project and tote my supplies to other areas in the house.
Truth Time: when I have to clean up and I don't feel like I have time to put my supplies in their proper places, I just dump them in this bag.

As tiny as this tote is...I can sure fill it up nicely, lol.
I keep this little tote on my desk when I am scrapbooking.
It has my pens, scissors, bone folder and other supplies and embellishments that I need (or may need) right in front of me.
I like this little tote as it doesn't take up a lot of room on my desk or table.

Now like everything when I organize...the first thing is to take everything out and see what I have.
I put things in a bit of an order.
Planner stickers, fauxbonichi stickers and stamps in the back.
Washi tape on the left.
Supplies that need to be put back in my craft room in the center.
Embellishments on the right.
Pens and inks in the front.
See a bit organized ;)

I took my planners, notebooks and journals out and am going to figure out a better way to keep them.
The Create 365 planner holder holds my Christmas planner.
I left it in there as I have loose papers in there pertaining to this planner.

Look at all of these empty totes.
I have to admit I do have more totes as I have a bit of an addiction to them.
I left the pens in my Craftsman tote as I have to go through them all as there are some that I don't like to write with, so they will get donated to friends.

You thought I would be sharing my organized totes with you today?!?!
I wish, lol.
My living room looks a bit like a stationary store blew up in it.
Hoping to complete it tomorrow, but I can't make any promises as I have another project I am doing with my daughter.
So many projects not enough me, lol

I hope you all have a very Creative Day today :)

Tracy :)