Sweet Shoppe Designs

Darla shares some of her favorite products for scrapping your goals 

Before the new year started, I was already thinking of what my goal would be for 2013 – what would I do to change the way I lived my life now and start a new journey? While I was at a party with friends, I sat and watched everyone having so much fun and I thought to myself how much I was enjoying myself. It was then that I realized how hard I push myself to be a perfectionist and how often this way of life did not leave me much time to relax. I realized then that I wanted to enjoy life more, and the only way I could do this would be to relax a little more and not let the stress that life can throw at me run my journey in life. Excited to create a layout to inspire me daily, I turned to our wonderful store looking for products that would be perfect to scrap my goals for 2013. And, here is what I found that I wanted to share with you:

1. In With The New kit by Traci Reed and Gina Miller – This is a wonderful kit filled with warm beautiful colors to help you scrap your goals for the year! The kit includes elements that help you scrap your “one little word” or encouragement to start your year’s journey. As a bonus for all you Project Life scrappers, there are journal cards included that you could use for all the PL pages you create in 2013.

2. Resolutions: LOVE by Jenn Barrette – This is another kit that beautifully helps you create pages about your new year’s resolutions or goals. What I love about this kit in particular is the encouraging word strips to remind you to cherish yourself as you scrap your goals!

3. I Can. by Shawna Clingerman – How can you go wrong with a kit that motivates you to keep your goals for 2013? The colors are so fun and bright in this kit, which help lend to that positive motivation to scrap your new goals.

4. New Year: New Me by Jenn Barrette – This is a fun and whimsical kit from Jenn Barrette that you can also use to scrap your goals. My favorite parts of this kit are the cute little alphas and encouraging word elements to help you scrap your pages about the New You for 2013!

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

Sometimes you need a little help to get started on creating that page about your new goals, and here are a few that I found in our shop:

5. FAVE-O-RITES Vol 1 by Nettio Designs -Lynnette has a whole series of templates that encourage you to scrap your favorites, and this particular template set allows the flexibility to create a list of your goals quickly!

6. Cindy’s Layered Templates – Listmakers 1 by Cindy Schneider – Cindy has these perfect templates that let you create a list of all your goals or resolutions for the new year.

7. The Best Of The Year by Studio Basic – While this particular template set is centered around highlighting your past year, I loved the possibilities and flexibility of this set to help you create quirky and fun pages about your goals for the new year.

8. Celebrate LIFE by Janet Phillips – This is a really fun set of templates by Janet Phillips that helps you not only scrap pages about your initial goals but allows you to use them to create monthly pages to show how your journey is going throughout the year!

9. 10,080 Minutes Frame Stamps by Traci Reed – These stamp frames are a fun way to quickly add a bit of flair to your photos about your journey throughout the year!

10. It’s Goal-tastic by Nettio Designs – Well how can you not love these templates from Lynnette that help you create a page about that one word that will motivate you on your journey? I loved them so much that I created my own page with the templates highlighting the word that I hope will help me find much joy and love in 2013!

There are still many more products in our store that would help you create your goal pages, but these were my favorites that I hope you can find inspiring enough to create your own journey page or pages! Happy Scrapping!

Lynnette reminds us to evaluate WHY we scrapbook and where we want our scrapbooking journey to take us.

The start of the new year is always an exciting time as scrapbooker. A fresh year of memories lie ahead waiting to be captured. New projects like Project Life or photo-a-day and yearly layout goals are ready to be started.

But with all the excitement of new year goal-setting and projects, it’s easy to get caught up in the goals and numbers and lose sight of why you are on this scrapbooking journey in the first place. Which is why I like to start off every year with a bit of a scrapbooking “why” audit.

Rather than focus on what specific projects I want to tackle this year, I like to take a moment, look over the past year and remember why I scrapbook. What is it about this hobby that I love and where do I want my scrapbooking journey to go from here?

My Scrapbooking Journey

This January marks seven years since I first discovered digital scrapbooking. In some ways it feels like a lifetime ago and yet, at the same time, it feels like only yesterday when I happened upon that special digital issue of Simple Scrapbooks magazine in 2006.

Looking back through my albums, I can safely say that my style for both design and storytelling has evolved a lot in that time. And yet, when I stop to think about it, my reasons for why I capture my story in the first place have largely remained the same.

My reasons for scrapbooking have been on my mind a lot since my grandmother passed away over the summer. My grandma was a scrapbooker in the truest sense of the word. Her albums are full of photos, handwritten notes, and bits & pieces of her life spanning almost 70 years. Looking through them is like having her there sitting with you. You can hear her voice, her occasionally self-deprecating humor, and the love she had for her family. They are truly a little piece of her left behind for future generations.

That’s what I want with my own albums.

Being a digital scrapbooker, my process for scrapbooking is obviously a bit different than hers. But at the heart, our reasons for storytelling are not that far apart.

I scrapbook because I’m passionate about capturing my life adventures in a creative way. When someone pages through my albums, I want them to feel like there’s a little piece of me in those albums. And if I’m lucky enough one day to be a 94 year-old grandma with grandkids asking what I was like in my 20s or 30s, I think it’ll be pretty cool to have all these stories captured.

Find Your Scrapbooking Why

With the start of the new year, before you let yourself get caught up in new projects & goal setting, take a minute asking yourself WHY you scrapbook. Why are you on this scrapbooking journey? And, where do you want this scrapbooking journey to take you this next year?

Then use your reasons for why as a filter for determining how you spend your scrapbooking time and what goals and projects you want to tackle in 2013.

If you’re unsure of where to start when determining your why for scrapbooking, here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

Know Your Audience: Who is your audience? Who are you scrapbooking for? Is it for yourself, your family, future generations, or a combination of them all? When you know who you’re scrapbooking for, it becomes easier to know what types of stories and moments to capture.

Look Back: Look back through your completed layouts and projects. What stories do you love the most? What layouts do you love? Are there any stories you wish you’d told differently?

Look Ahead: Imagine your albums in two, five, or 10 years – what stories do you want to have captured? When you think of your parents or grandparents, what stories do you wish you knew about them?

Focus on the now: What stories are most important in your life right now? What stories are you most excited to tell right now?

Why are you on this scrapbooking journey? And, where do you want this scrapbooking journey to take you?

Remember there are no right or wrong answers to these questions, so be honest with yourself about what’s truly most important to you. Your reasons for scrapbooking are yours and yours alone and the more clear you can be the easier it becomes to know you’re spending your limited time in the right place.

Aristotle said it best when he said, “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” The individual pages and stories you capture today are just a small blip in your larger scrapbooking journey. Your style and storytelling methods will evolve, but the WHY behind your storytelling will always be the constant that holds everything together. Start the new year off focused on WHY you scrapbook and you’re sure to be on the right path all year long.

Hey hey Sweeties!

Just a quick note today to let you know that we’re taking a little break from the daily blog posts in December.  We’ve got some exciting stuff in the works for 2013 including an all-new blog format which you won’t want to miss.  We’ll still be posting our Featured Designers and Saturday Newsletters this month, so we won’t totally be going away.  We’re just taking the month of December to plan and prepare so that we can give you the very best in 2013.

Wishing all of you the merriest of holiday seasons this year!

It’s that time of year again! Letters to Santa are going out all over the world from very excited boys and girls and it is no less the case at our house this year. My son Avery is now at an age where he takes this very seriously and has written and edited his letter to Santa about 15 times. I finally got him to finalize it and so he knows now there will be no more additions. Ella, my (almost) 4 year old, hasn’t totally figured it out yet but she does have a good idea of what she hopes is under the tree Christmas Morning.

Here are a few things my kiddos are asking for this year:

The toy both of my kids have requested the most are these little critters. Apparently they were popular back in the 90′s? They look a lot like Gremlins to this 80′s kid. At any rate the commercial on repeat a zillion times over the past few months has convinced my boy and girl that they HAVE to have them.

Avery is hoping for Legos of course and he also wants the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Action Figures. Who knew these would be such a hot toy this year because I almost never found them. I can remember TMNT being really popular when I was in high school and my baby brother loved them. It’s cool to see them coming back again.

And Ella has asked for 2 things specifically. A dollhouse and “dat baby doll dat walks”. So this will be waiting for her under the tree Christmas morning:

I also like to scrap the kids wish lists every year and this year Cindy has a fabulous template in the store that is perfect!

Christmas Single 1 by Cindy Schneider

And here’s how I used it to scrap Avery’s Wish List also using A Merry December by Jady Day Studio and Meghan Mullens and Dear Mr. Claus Font by Darcy Baldwin

Merry Christmas Everyone!

This year is the Fish household we are embracing the spirit of believing.  My girls are 10 and 14 (almost) and they have grown out of believing in Santa but still love the holiday spirit and magic of the season.  We’re not a religious family so I try to focus on believing – believing that there is good in everyone, believing that you can make a difference by thinking about someone else first, believing that there is a little magic in the season that makes every day special…

This year we decided to give the Elf on a Shelf a try.  Even though the girls know who is moving the Elf they love the idea that each day there is a new adventure in finding her and seeing what she was up to the night before while they were in bed.  I think it’s going to be a fun tradition.  Our Elf, Candy Cane, arrived on Thanksgiving day with a mini bottle of sparkling white grape juice for each girl to have with breakfast.

On Black Friday she was in the car when we got up early to leave Tennessee to head home.  In her hands were some fun striped socks with toe holes for the girls to wear on their ride home.  Then on Saturday she left a note asking the girls to do something for her – she asked them to believe that there is good in everyone and to find something nice to do for someone else that day.  So on our long drive home from Savannah to Tampa they each found something sweet to do for the other (which makes this mom’s heart feel good.)

Today Candy had a gift for the girls, a box of Snow Caps for each of them and tickets to see Elf the Musical at the Performing Arts Center.  This was the first time that either of the girls have been to real theater to see a show so they were both excited.  We all got dressed up and headed out the theater, which was all decorated for Christmas.  Santa even greeted us at the door!

Here’s a few pics we snapped before heading to our sky high seats (the high seats were what we could afford and for the basically the same price as a 3-D movie ticket we got to see a live, broadway musical, in person – what a deal!!!).  Our Elf, Candy Cane even came with us so she could see her elf friends and Santa.

 

The play was cute and the music was infectious and fun just as you hope it will be when you go to see a musical.  The story was a little different from the movie but both the girls enjoyed themselves and so did my husband and I.  As I tucked in my 10 year old she smiled and said to me.  ”That was so fun mom! Let’s make that a tradition.  I want to take my kids to see Elf when they are little.”

So today we started a new family tradition and kicked off a holiday season that will hopefully be full of the word Believe.  Happy Holidays Sweet Shoppers!  I’d love to hear what new holiday traditions you might be starting with your family this year.      - Juli

Hi everyone – it’s me Darla with today’s post. I won’t lie I thought about what I was going to write about today and my topics changed a few times until I started browsing through the gallery and came across some of the most beautiful art journal pages. You ask what is an art journal page? Well for me it is a page that is like a quick diary of your life – a few poignant moments are noted on the page and depending on the mood – lots of brush strokes, blended papers and inspiring quotes melded together on a page. There may or may not be a photo on the page but the words are certainly felt with the mixture of elements and colors that pop right out at you. Being a huge fan of brushes and blending – it would seem fitting for me to be drawn to these type of pages and I was so excited when I got an opportunity to create my own page using Jenn Barrette and Traci Reed’s new kit: Get Artsy: The Good this week.

The best part of creating these kind of pages is there is really no right or wrong way on what you add or don’t add to a page. It feels like when you were a kid and you just went to town with coloring with no care as to if you stayed within the lines. The pages generally express some kind of poignant journaling or a powerful quote that perhaps sums up your mood you are in as you are creating your page. It is also a great way to get out of that scrapbooking funk you might be in. If you are the kind of person who needs a few prompts to help them create a page, here are a few I found online that are perfect for your art journal page:

1. Fill a blank page with shapes. Paint or color them in.

2. Pick a quote and design an art journal page around it.

3. Write down five of your core beliefs. Pick one and illustrate it.

4. Journal about things that you love.

5. Live in the moment. Journal about what is on your mind.

6. Write down 10 things that you’re grateful for, and use them to inspire your next art journal page.

7. Journal about heartbreak.

8. Journal about peace.

9. Journal about what makes you happy.

The Sweet Shoppe store has quite a few kits that would go perfect for the prompts above and if you needed some extra inspiration – here are a few pages that my fellow Babes created:

Now that you have some quick prompts and a bit of inspiration, maybe you too can create an art journal page of your own! Happy Scrapping!

A few months ago after the main part of the kitchen remodel was done, an idea popped into my head.

The beginning starts like this… I have a group of friends who we used to go to Archiver’s scrap nights to get some scrapping done, well it was starting to cost us money to do it so I thought it would be fun to have them over to my house to do our scrapping and rubber stamping… I had invited a few local digi scrap girls to join us and we had a little potluck and had tons of fun meeting some of my online friends and still scrapping with my girls who used to go to Archivers. It also kept us from heading into the store and buying a whole lot of stuff that we didn’t really need and that made my hubby happy LOL. That happened the night the new designers were announced here at Sweet Shoppe and we chatted a ton about the new girls and all the excitement going on here. It also was right after we bought our new to us kitchen cabinets and I knew we wouldn’t be able to do it again for awhile. We had usually done it every 4 months or so, but I knew the next time wasn’t going to be for several months while the kitchen was under construction.

This was the first one from March, when I met Kim and Sarah for the first time…

Thankfully it wasn’t as long as I thought it was going to be and as soon as we got our new countertops in I knew it was time to start planning another one… but this time I decided I wanted to open my house up monthly and anyone could come whenever they were available to come. We had our first one in October and it was soooo much fun to finally meet some more digi girls in person and find out that one of my digiscrap friends only lived 8 minutes away from me, how cool is that!!! This past Saturday was our November scrap night and I even had a couple girls drive 4 hours to come and party with us. I was soooo excited to finally meet them. Many of our kids were there too and I’m not sure who had more fun, the kids or us, LOL!!! We’re taking the month of December off, but I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to January!!!

I’m a bit behind on Project Life, so I don’t have any layouts yet for October’s meet-up LOL…
excuse the poor cell phone quality pics

 tee hee… we said HI to Rubia (Studio Basic Designs) on FB that night… totally made her night

Anyways, I’m sharing this because I really want to encourage you to find out who lives near you and plan a get together. It’s been so fun seeing all the laptops out and seeing each others’ process in scrapping and even designing. It’s so fun to gather with a bunch of online friends who “get it” and understand why we do it… we may be totally different personalities but that is the one thing that has brought us together and built some amazing friendships. As Thanksgiving nears and I really start to think about the things that I’m so thankful for, this is one at the top of my list. I’m so incredibly thankful for the friendships I’ve made just by getting over my anxieties and taking the first step to invite them to my home. It’s such a blessing to hear the kids squeeling and laughing and having so much fun and getting to gather around the table chatting and laughing and singing and sharing and eating some yummy food.

and here’s a layout from Saturday’s fun!

Five weeks till Christmas. Are you ready? I’m not. I haven’t even started shopping. I’m still trying to sort out the little one’s birthday next week.

Our family is so very blessed to have all our needs covered. We’re not a material focused family either, so our wants are few. We also prefer to concentrate on the real reason for the season, which is the birth of Jesus Christ. Last year, my sister donated to a charity in our name, instead of buying gifts for my kids. The money went to 3rd world countries to buy beehives for Ugandan families, and books & sports equipment for children in war torn areas. My kids LOVED that idea. We got to research those countries, and they got to see what real poverty looks like. They saw how the money was used to make better lives for those families.

This year I asked my extended family (Mum, Dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc) what they thought about donating to a charity instead of buying extended family gifts. They loved the idea too, so that’s what we’re going to do this Christmas. What type of charity, and the amount/form of donation is completely up to each family. Whether they donate money, self, product or time – it’s up to them. On Christmas Day we’ll reveal to the rest of the family what we did and why we chose that specific organisation.

Hubby and I thought we’d look for a charity a little closer to home this year. Something local. After a bit of research and a lot of thought, we have decided to support the Starship Foundation.

Here’s a little about them:

Starship Hospital was opened in 1991. It was New Zealand’s first (and only) hospital built exclusively for children and young people and their health needs. Its prime focus is on delivering family-centred care in a child friendly environment. Starship Children’s Health is a dedicated paediatric healthcare service and major teaching centre, providing family centred care to children and young people throughout New Zealand and the South Pacific.

Except for croup and a broken arm, my girls have not been seriously sick. Many other children are not that lucky, and we are comforted knowing Starship is there should we need them. I went to the Starship website and found specific information on how we can donate/support them this Christmas. They have a list of toys and craft items the children would benefit most from, so we’re going to go shopping with that list, and hand deliver the gifts to Starship ourselves. I think our girls would really feel the spirit of Christmas if they see the end result of their gift.

We’re excited to start this new tradition with our family. I think it will be of great benefit to our children to serve others and emulate in this little way, the Savior and His teachings. How about you? How will you show charity this Christmas?

My eldest turned six almost a month ago and I still can’t believe how much she has grown. From a tiny baby to a preschool graduate, she sure did grew up a lot. She officially finished preschool today and will start going to the big school this January. We went from needing diapers to now needing to buy school books and uniforms. She looks just like her dad but she’s also like me in so many ways. I love that we can both spend hours in the library or at the book store and that she enjoy going out with me to watch movies and go shopping. I’ve always wanted to have a daughter and I’m blessed to have two. She might be six now or sixteen but she will always be my baby.

Hey, hey sweet shoppers!  Laura here today and I’m throwing what I was going to talk about to the wayside and give you a little glimpse into my crazy head.  I can sense you’re all thrilled, right? :p

The events of the past couple weeks have really thrown me for a tail-spin.  With the passing of Eva as well as a turn in my favorite uncle’s health, I’ve really started to reevaluate who and what I am.  While I hate that it took some tragedies for that much needed self-reflection, I am eternally grateful that it did.  I don’t think that I’ve ever been a horrible person, but I have definitely done things and said things that I regret.  These two tragic events have made me realize, life is WAY too short but to do anything but live life with no regrets.  If you love, say it.  If you want something, get it, you can’t take money to your grave.  If you want to see someone, call them and make a date.  Just last Friday, my oldest daughter didn’t have school, but my younger daughter did.  I decided to take my younger daughter out of school for the afternoon so that we could go on a very much needed girls day out with friends.  We spent the day shopping, eating lunch and just being goofy together.  At the end of the day, the look on their faces was well worth any guilt I had about not sending her to school.

These tragedies have also made me reexamine a lot of the relationships in my life.  I’m a giver.  I always have been, and that always carries over into my ‘friendships.’  I tend to befriend people who have nothing to offer me.  I’m a good friend and I have finally come to realize that I deserve the same in return.  I let people walk all over me and while I understand that it’s good to have some compassion and do nice things for people, it’s not wonderful to let them walk all over you.  I found this little nugget while searching on Pinterest one day, and well, it sort of stuck with me.

Kinda perfect for a people pleaser like me.

All in all, I’ve totally gotten a new grasp on life.  I’ve decided to stop wallowing and take in the things that I am ever so grateful for.  I have a WONDERFUL family, amazing friendships (that have come out of not so amazing friendships), a roof over my head, things that I don’t necessarily need but want, and most importantly, I have my health.  It took me 35 years, but I’m so glad I had this much needed slap to the face.  While it’s hard to change your old ways, I’m hoping I can stick with what I’ve been given.  I like the new me, and I think most everyone will agree with me, life is too short to be angry all the time!