Hello Everyone!  Donna here with you today, and I want to take a moment to interrupt your Christmas preparations to talk to you about a new product from digital designer Crystal Wilkerson that will help you to develop a habit of gratitude and will also help a family in need.

This time of year is very special, and for many different reasons.  For Americans, we’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving and now for a lot of us, we are looking forward to, and preparing for Christmas.  We will spend time with our families, and we will try to remember all those great big things in our lives that we are thankful for.  Feelings of gratitude come to us naturally at this time of year, but perhaps you’ve thought about trying to cultivate that same spirit of thanksgiving all year long?  Last month Crystal hosted a Thirty Day Gratitude Challenge and to go along with the challenge she designed 30 gratitude cards with journaling prompts.  Here is an example card and its corresponding journaling prompt:

The cards and prompts fit on an 11 x 8.5 sheet of paper, and can be printed, cut in half, and placed in a 5.5 x 8.5 binder

(you can find the binders and page protectors at office supply stores). 

What prompted Crystal to design this project was a desire to help a family whose father is currently battling brain cancer:

Scott Norton is 30 years old, married to Emily, and a father of two young boys.  In August of this year, the family discovered that Scott had a large cancerous brain tumor.  He has had two surgeries to remove sections the tumor and has undergone radiation therapy to remove the remaining tumor and to prevent the tumor from spreading.  You can read more about their story on Crystal's blog.

The thirty quotes for the gratitude journal that Crystal created come in two sets of 15.  Each set costs $2.50.  Which means that all 30 quotes with journaling prompts can be downloaded in a high-quality .JPG format for only $5.  In addition, the second set of quotes also includes a cover page for the inside of your notebook, a contract and bonus quote, insert for the spine and cover of your notebook, and printable notebook paper.  You can find the sets here:  Gratitude Quotes Set 1, Gratitude Quotes Set 2.

100% of the proceeds will go to help the Norton family

with their medical expenses.

Maybe you are thinking that you don’t have time right now to start a gratitude journal, or that a thirty day commitment would produce more thoughts of guilt than gratitude.  Not a problem!  Because the files are high-quality .JPGs they can be resized, or manipulated and used for more than one purpose.  For example, I printed the gratitude card from Day 15 as a 4 x 6 photo and used it as a title for this layout:

I also used the journaling prompt for that day to help me focus my thoughts about this photo and that day.  The cards and prompts can be used in any way that you’d like which makes this a truly versatile product.

I hope you will take a few moments from your busy schedule today to think about all the things in your life that you are grateful for.  Then, please consider helping this young family in need.  I know they will be thankful and appreciative of your support!

Hi everyone! I've got a great idea for quick and inexpensive Christmas gift albums that you can make for anyone on your list—scrapbooker or not.

Here are three little albums I made for three family members this year—all in one evening! I used $1 brag books I found at my local big box store (just cheap 4 x 6 plastic photo sleeve albums), plus supplies I had on hand and the List It! Christmas Edition (digi plus) png files. The cool thing about the List It! products is that you can download the product once and then print it as many times as you want to make as many gift albums as you want.

I used the included List It! title page on the one side, with a quick page on the left side, featuring a photo of me with three of my siblings and Santa, circa 1984. BUT because I used the .png version of the files, I could colorize them a nice holiday red. (The printable version comes in neutral color palette.)

And guess what? Colorizing and customizing .png files is really quite simple. I even recorded a quick screencast last night to show you how it's done.

See how simple?

The idea with these albums is that my family members can just choose 12 favorite pictures from Christmas to slip into the photo sleeves next to the 12 prompted journaling lists I printed and included in each book. There are a few fun quizzes included in List It! Christmas, so I used a few of those as well. (Click image for a larger view.)

I will also include with the gift an instruction card giving my family members permission to use horizontal OR vertical pictures, just choose their 12 favorite Christmas pictures without regard to whether they "match" the topic of the list on the facing page, and use their own handwriting (no matter how they feel about their handwriting) for a truly meaninful keepsake for their kids. I'll also remind them that this one snapshot of Christmas memories does not constitute a requirement to do this every year. But if it sparks that desire in them, all the better!

I created my three albums assembly-line style to save even more time. So the interior contents of all three are identical. But I couldn't resist customize the covers differently.

The List It! Christmas Edition comes with several types of blank lists (blank title area, lines only, and completely blank inside). I printed a handful of blanks to include in the back cover of each album, in case anyone's not inspired by the particular lists I chose and wants to make up their own.

And, if you're signed up for the Ella email list, you'll be getting a nice coupon today that you can use on any one item between now and December 31.

I plan to give my albms a bit early, so my family can take advantage of that pre-Christmas anticipation that can be a real fuel for creativity and journaling.

Enjoy!

The Tastes and Smells of Christmas

Nothing tastes like Christmas more than hot chocolate. We think this homemade version is fit for Jolly Old Saint Nick himself! But even if your holiday agenda doesn’t include flying in a reindeer-drawn sleigh or delivering presents around the world, you too will need a break from the hustle and bustle at some point. Relax and enjoy this recipe—a perfect pairing with some peppermint bark or a couple of warm sugar cookies.

Now that your lights are up and your tree is trimmed, make your house smell like Christmas, too. This delicious-smelling potpourri recipe is sure to do the trick. It’s so easy to make with items you probably already have in your cupboard.

Check out the One Charming Party website for more great ideas for holiday parties, birthday parties, and more!

Hi this is Teresa from Talented Terrace Girls [talentedterracegirls.blogspot.com]. If you are saying what blog is that? Well let me tell you….we are a group of neighbors (8 to be exact) trying to swap and share ideas, recipes, and fun monthly challenges between us girls. We have a bit of everything and we love creating. We just started our blog June 2011 so we are a baby blog, but I am proud to say we have over 150 posts!!

Thanks for letting me share my idea I loved creating it.

Okay let me explain how this idea came to be. Every month over at Talented Terrace Girls we have a challenge where we are given an item and told to “create” something AMAZING! Well this month we were given chipboard. After much deliberation I decided to make a photobook! I have always wanted to create one from scratch but was always a little intimidated until NOW!

Supplies: chipboard, scrapbooking paper, pictures, scissors, glue (mod podge or elmers), embelishments (ribbon, brads, clips, stickers, etc…)

First cut your chipboard to 4”x 4”. I cut 16 pieces and used 2 of those for my covers. If you have a husband who lays carpet like me then you can find a cool knife to cut your boards with ease.

Now cut some paper you will use for binding the book, you will need 1 less then the number of pages you have. I have 14 pages so I cut 13 binding strips. This paper can be seen or unseen. I choose to leave mine seen so I didn’t clog up the page centers. I picked my solid colored paper and cut it to 4”x 2”. Now fold it in half length wise (hotdog style) with the pretty sides facing each other (kissing).

Now take 2 pages and 1 binding strip. Glue the strip onto the 2 pages so it opens like a book. The paper fold will face out leaving 1” pretty inside each page. Continue to glue all your pages together using your binding strip in between each page. Make sure to keep them as straight and flush as possible to create a more precise book.Once they are all glued together I added a thick layer of glue to the back of the binding to give it a little extra strength.

Now the cover! Take a large sheet of scrapbook paper lay it pretty side down, white side up. Then place both your front and back cover on the paper. But wait.. what is the little skinny piece in the picture?? The spine of your book of course! To make the spine cut a 4” piece then place the binding side of your book on the 4” piece and measure or trace the width of your spine. Cut it out and placein between your covers. Leave a little space between your chipboard so you have moveablitiy, allowing you to open and close your book. Now glue your cover and spine to the paper leave a 1” paper excess on each side. Now cute the corners of the paper off (the little green triangle). Now get ready to wrap your book cover! You are going to fold and glue each side down making crisp corners.

Your cover should look like this on the inside.

Next cut 2 pieces of paper 4”x 8” This is the inside page that is attaching your cover and pages together. Fold this paper in half (hamburger) so you have a 4” square on each side of the fold. Cover your first page of the book with glue, then place the 8”x4” paper onto the front page. You need to have the fold match up with the binding side. Let dry for a minute so it won’t shift on you. Then put glue on the inside cover and attach the other half of the 8”x4” paper to the cover. This paper is what holds your cover and pages together. You wont be adding glue to the spine.If you want to tie some ribbon onto the spine of the cover now is the time. Next attach the back cover. TADA!! You have assembled your book.

Now cut and decorate the pages! I cut my main page paper 4”x 3.5” this left a little of my binding color showing on each page. After I attached the main page paper I scuffed it with a little brown ink to give the distressed look.

Let me explain the use of my book-One of the family traditions I grew up with was….Christmas morning pictures on the stairs! Now mind you this was before we got to open our stockings and while we were still wearing our new jammies from Christmas Eve. Lets just say mom has a ton of these Christmas morning pictures so this book is going to be our yearly Christmas morning pictures (I know this pic is not from the morning please don’t judge me I messed up on printing the pictures I thought I could crop them down but NO I need to print them in wallet size cause I edited them all and zoomed them in so there was no crop room)

Here is the cover completed!

This is a look at all the fun paper I used.

I love my little book and can’t wait to make more for gifts. Thanks for reading my post and please check out my fun blog Talented Terrace Girls