Finished most of the things on my last weeks to-do list and had to carry a couple things over. Finally went last night to Baker Book house to find a devotional book and I ended up with 3! LOL Now the problem is I can’t decide which to read first. I read the first day of the 40 Days of God’s Presence so my goal is to at least read one day from that every day but I’d like to start reading the other two right away too. For most people this wouldn’t seem like a big deal but I am NOT someone who sits and reads a book so we’ll see. Maybe I’ll find I actually enjoy it. Tough to give up scrappin’ time though and it’s definitely not something I can do while watching my favorite tv shows. Here are the 3 books that I decided on:

Also finished 4 LOs for the Featured Product reviews in the SBB Newsletter. Got to use some FUN stuff from the Sweet Shop and some gorgeous papers by Dana Zarling. Can’t wait to share the LOs but I’ve gotta sit on ‘em till after Feb. 5th. Man that’s tough! Anyway, here’s my updated to-do list for this next week. I think I’ve got it figured out how to check things off and keep a copy posted to the blog here so hopefully I can get that set up this week. :)

I’ve been working on a new video of baby Jacob with the song Held by Natalie Grant for the music background. Ever since I started the video of the day thing here on my blog I’ve been checking this artists site frequently and all of the video code sites hoping she’d release a video for me to post here. It’s such a beautiful song and I’ve heard it was written about a friend of hers who’d lost a baby at 2 months old. It didn’t come out until after Jacob was here but when I first heard it I was amazed at how perfectly she’d put into words the feelings of being in such incredibly difficult circumstances and somehow still having a peace that you just couldn’t explain. I used the lyrics in these pages for his album with photos that I thought perfectly illustrated that feeling of being ‘held’. To read the lyrics you can click on the pages to see them full size. Edited to add: I’ve changed the video of the day but if you’d like to still watch Natalie Grant’s video you can find it here.

Yay! I’ve actually posted my 100th post to this blog. I think I started this almost a year ago now so I know I should have probably double that but it’s a milestone none-the-less. Not much to say in this post but I did want to share a link to some great filters that I bought last night. I discovered these actions after seeing THIS LO by jas7797 at SBB. Typically I like the original better than the filtered version for scrapping but here are a couple that I ran the actions on last night and actually think the new versions will be so fun to scrap:

I also bought the vivid color, cross process and dark chocolate actions. So far the two that I’ve shown here are my favorites but I think it all depends on the photo and I didn’t play around with many yet. I’ll post more when I do. :)

I’ve been doubly tagged by Gina and Lisa :)

What scrapbooking lines/products/etc do you DISlike?
Anything that looks too digital. I tend to lean towards a paper-scrapped style so I like my papers to have realistic texture and I like my elements to have dimension.

What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to scrap?
Emotionally the hardest would have to be pages about my angel nephew Jacob. I’d also say there’s the most pressure for those to be perfect so they can be creatively challenging too.

What technique do you use more than any other?
I have this thing with ‘attaching’ things to my pages. It’s almost impossible for me to have something on the page that’s not visibly attached. I use alot of stitching, staples, fasteners, tape, anything that keeps stuff from falling right off the page. LOL

Ever been published?
Once in the 2nd Simple Scrapbook Digital magazine, once in a Memory Makers book on family scrapbooking and once in the Digital Scrapbooking Magazine. All from the first time I submitted a batch of LOs to Scrap Submit. Haven’t submitted since but I’ve been thinking if I ever have time I really would like to again. It’s so fun seeing my nieces or nephews in print. :) I’m extremely honored to have been chosen for the ‘artist spotlight’ in the next Digital Memories Magazine too. When I look at the current artists spotlighted I can’t believe they picked ME!

What’s the smallest scrap of paper you save?
I won’t try to pretend this applies to any of my scrapping. LOL Haven’t touched my paper supplies since going digital. Pretty sad since I’ve got some beautiflul ‘scraps’ of paper left.

Ever have any scrapbooking-related injuries?
I cut myself trimming CD calendars that I gave as gifts this past Christmas. Would that count?

Give us your best storage or organizational idea.
I keep everything on an external hard drive. I NEED to get everything tagged in PS Album but I HATE how it displays PNG files so I’m holding out till they realize they need to add that feature.

You just won a week-long scrapbooking cruise for 4. Who’s going with you?
I’m gonna pretend that means I can take 4 people and I’ll say my sisters, Manda the crazy scrapper, Nina our fantastic photographer & scrapper, Tammy our closet scrapper and we can’t go without Kimmy and maybe on a cruise we’d be able to convert her. :)

I’m tagging Dawn, Kari, Lauren, and Lisa :)

I loved the idea of this ‘balanced’ to-do list by Shannon. Mine tend to only have the housework type stuff. Clearly those other areas are just as important in life. It’s taken me a whole week to put one together myself but now that it’s done I can just make a few changes each week and swap out the papers and elements every now and then to make it fun. I felt like to really stick to this I’d have to make it personal. I think I pretty much kept the same categories but I’m not a mom so Shannon’s original didn’t fully apply. LOVE the idea though Shannon so thank you sooo much for posting this. You can download a free one to fill out yourself daily, weekly or however often you’d like from Shannon’s blog. You’ll have to scroll down aways (that’s how long it took me to find the idea and make one myself).

I decided to do mine in weekly Friday thru Thursday lists. One, because I finally finished it today and tomorrow happens to be Friday, and two, because I tend to get more done on the weekends so I figured that way I won’t be discouraged half way through the week when I’ve barely checked anything off. A couple of the things on my list I want to do a certain number of times per week so I put #’s behind the item so I can cross them off and then check them once I’m done with it for the week. I aslo included a few reminders in different areas of things I should do each day. For now I plan to print them each week and probably post it on my fridge but I’ve got some ideas for possibly either incorporating it into my desktop or maybe as a link from my blog as sortof a pressure to keep up on it if others are checking in on how I’m doing for the week. Not that anyone else would likely care but the possibility of it is pressure enough. :) Gotta figure out how much hassle that would be to repost each day with the newly accomplished tasks checked off. Maybe if someone in the digital designing world could design some fun check marks for just this sort of thing – hint hint. :)

In other news, my sister Amanda is currently in the hospital hopefully about to have my brand new niece any time now. They induced a little before noon today and I haven’t gotten a call yet (as of 7:00 pm) but hopefully I’ll be able to go meet her yet tonight. I came down with a nasty cold yesterday and have felt much much worse all day today. Spent most of the day sleeping to catch up from tossing and turning all night last night. Soooo, little baby H is probably gonna have to meet her favorite Aunt Shawny for the first time wearing a goofy hospital mask. It also means I won’t be able to kiss that brand new super soft baby skin. What a terrible time to be so sick. :( Anyway, please pray that the delivery goes well and that the new baby (name yet to be announced) is healthy. I’ll be posting the big announcement with pictures hopefully tonight or first thing tomorrow. :)