The 2012 Family Calendar

When I posted last, I shared one of the pages from this year's Family Calendar.

I've made this calendar for us (and/or for ME) for about 10 years now. It's always fun and it ALWAYS takes me forever to be satisfied with my creation - seems like there's always one more thing I'd like to do before I'll consider it finished...

And then one day, I look at a REAL calendar and realize I'd better get this thing finished, or it's going to qualify for NEXT year's calendar!

I finally reached that point with this year's calendar and submitted it to be printed.

I debated whether or not to go ahead and order the other three copies at the same time - I had planned to get my proto-type printed and then make corrections where necessary.

But, at the last minute I decided, what the heck, just go for it! So, I ordered all four copies.

I'm very pleased with the final results!

Oh sure, there are a few things I'll change for next year's calendar - like not make the photos so small. My old eyes can barely see them - and I worked with them full size, so I KNOW those pictures! But my brother commented about the same thing, so, yes, next year, I'll be a little more selective about the photos AND their size!

Want to see a couple of pages from this year's calendar?


This is the calendar page for July. I walked across the stage at Convention this year, having earned my 20 year pin with Stampin' Up! YES! I can't believe it myself... Seems like just yesterday I was a novice demonstrator...

I've had a lot of fun being a demonstrator and met some of the nicest people because of it! Most of my current close friends are fellow demonstrators! It just seems to work that way... Maybe because we're all crazy about the same thing - those funky little rubber stamps! Ha ha

And of course, my Kidz have all become "demonstrators" as well - look at Melie sitting in a shoebox - being my current shoebox swap! Thank goodness no one took me up on that! I'd miss him!

And I really like the picture of Smudge, looking down at me from on top of the patio roof... She's so silly...

Here's another page from the calendar:



These are photos from my Alaskan cruise last August with my brother and sister-in-law. I took Flat Mamma (my mom) along too - so she could enjoy it with us. And I took a few pictures of the food they served on the ship. That desert was called the Love Boat or something like that - and it was delicious!

Hey - would you like to play with My Digital Studio, too? Well, you can! For FREE!

Yep, we're offering FREE 30 day trial use of our software because we want you to try it - cuz I know you're gonna LOVE IT!

Just go here to download your free software - and be sure to let me know how you like it! Any questions? Give me a call or leave me a comment and I'll do my best to help!

Thanks for stopping by...

Together

Here are The Kidz - for once, all together.

I only have two photos of the three of them together. Tough to do, with three of them!

Heck, it's tough to do to get any two of them in the same photo! LOL

I'm working on a digital calendar for my family this year, and one of the pages in the calendar is entitled "together". I was fortunate enough to find enough pix of various members of the family together (brother and sister, brother and brother, sister and sister, husband and wife, a group of friends, grandparent and grandchildren) to fill the page to my satisfaction, so I'm liking this calendar page!


Whaddya think? Pretty cool, huh? LOL

I had no intention of making a digital calendar - for the past 6-7 years I've ALWAYS handmade my family calendars. And I NEVER get them done for January - consequently, the calendar year for OUR family is either February or March to the same time the following year.

So, I hadn't been sweating it too much, knowing I had about another month before the unveiling.

I'm headed to Leadership next week and knew I wouldn't have time to even START them til my return. But I was nagging for pictures to put into them.

And then I realized I didn't HAVE the paper calendars - tried to order them and they've been DISCONTINUED! OMG!!!

I'm sure I either realized it when they were discontinued and bought some - OR, that was last year and I should have remembered the calendar was going to go digital this year!

And if I DID buy some this past June - where in that Stampin' Garage did I PUT them? Lord only knows...

And I just decided I wasn't going to sweat it.

I'd just go digital! Had been wanting to try a calendar anyway, and like any other software I've dealt with in the past 25 years, it's always initiation under fire.

IT'S SO EASY! OMG...

Of course, I still haven't had the nerve to send a prototype calendar out to be printed so I can see where I didn't really "get it" and need to do some editing, but that's going to happen soon, cause I want to play some more! Adding elements and stamps and punches is so easy!

Changing sizes of the photos is easy too! So, if, like me, you want to squeeze a LOT of pix onto a single page, that's possible. Or you can choose to have only one or two on each page. YOUR DECISION!

And the background for that page?

ONE OF MY VERY OWN PHOTOGRAPHS!

YES! I just added it as a custom Designer Paper and turned the opacity down to about 35. SO COOL!!!

Every time I use My Digital Studio (MDS) I get all excited about the potential all over again.

SO MANY things you can do with it - make scrapbooks, calendars, flyers - anything you want. You can WRITE YOUR OWN BOOK if you want!

You can include video and audio files too!

Do you have it? DO YOU WANT IT? Contact me via email and I'll be happy to help you get started using a digital format for your needs!

The Time Has Come

At Last!

It's been one of those very long projects, but it's finally complete.

Yep, the family calendars will be in the mail tomorrow!

Yee Haw!

Want to see some of the pages?



Oops - too much light on one of the photos - but it looks great in person!





Yours truly - at Convention in Salt Lake City last July, and some mini photos of redecorating that took place at my house last year...




Group photos of my nephew's family at various and sundry places...




This one might be my favorite this year. It's pix of nephew's cats and bro's dog. These pictures were the first ones I did anything with, and I was never satisfied with how they looked.

Let me see if I can find a "before" picture to show you.

Ah, here it is...



See what I mean. It just didn't have any pizazz!

And then I got the newest DSP Paisley Petals, and there was one sheet of paper in that pack that just grabbed my eye and yelled at me that these photos would look SO MUCH better on it.

So I changed this one at the last minute, and I'm pleased with the results.

Yeh, go ahead - scroll back up there and check it out...




Oh wait, let me just repost them, side by side...














You'll notice I kept a couple of things the same, but mostly I really changed it up !

I always attach photos to my calendars with Dotto adhesive - it allows things to be moveable until it's set for a couple of days, so that gives me the latitude of moving things around a lot.

And I end up with a lot of "out takes". You know, photos I thought I wanted to use, but for one reason or another, just weren't working the way I wanted them to.

So, I have these to use on other pages for another year, and I don't have to take the time to print them again. It's a win-win!

Do you scrapbook? Leave me a link to your blog in the Comments section so I can see yours too!

Thanks for stopping by - come back again soon!

It's TIME!

Yes, it's time for me to be DONE with my family calendars!

But, unfortunately, I'm not.

Here's where I am in the whole project.

ONE calendar is done to the point where I can actually start adding the dates for each month and any special occasion information.

Last night I was finally able to get all the photos and journaling done for each of the 12 pages for four calendars - that's one for my Bro & SIL, one each for two nephews and families, and finally, one for myself!

Tonight I attached journaled pages to the prototype calendar.

I started thinking last night about the months - generally I stamp the names individually, but I'm so far behind at finishing these things (I'm still HOPING to have them ready to mail by the end of March!), that I finally decided I'd try to do the month and year info using My Digital Studio (MDS).

And I did!

Here are photos of the pages I created in MDS

















I have the MDS download for making a calendar, so I just used the months info as it was already set up.

I adjusted the length of some of the names of the months, so that they'd fit better on the "Days to Remember" 6x6 calendar (Item 104144 $9.95).

I printed them out on Whisper White CS and spent the evening cutting and pasting these to the actual pages of the prototype calendar.

What I like about this calendar is that I can start it any month of the year that I want to! And I ALWAYS need to start it later than January!

If you noticed, this year's will start in April... Sigh...

Oh, and I DIDN'T have to cut the year information - I used a PUNCH! WOO HOO!

Lookie


Yep - the Tiny Tags punch! (Item 117190 $10.95 - page 202 in the big catalog)

It was PERFECT!

I'll just fake the hole in the tag with my wonderful Sharpie Ultra-Fine RETRACTABLE pen. Like this


and we're good to go!

Of course, now that the photos are actually attached to the calendar, it looks pretty bare! Need the dates, of course, but before they go in the mail, I'm sure each of the calendar pages themselves will also have the occasions we need to celebrate, as well as some stamped images of some sort!



Can't have all that white space, you know! If I go ahead and send them this way, it'll drive me nuts! So, guess they probably won't make it out of here before the end of March - although that's STILL my goal!

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Hey, did you remember that this is the last week for getting your FREE STAMPS from Sale-A-Bration (SAB)?

Well, it is. March 31st is the last day this year anyone can enter a $50 and receive a free item from the SAB mini-catalog. That's Wednesday, for those of you (like me!) who have to have your computer to tell you what day of the week it is!

So, hurry up! Dig out the Occasions mini or the big catalog and do some shopping - take advantage of Stampin' Up! - they'll LOVE IT! And so will I!

Thanks for stopping by - come back soon!

Electronics! Love 'em or Hate 'em?

Have you ever had problems with electronics?

You know - cell phones, computers, printers, TVs...

Well about 2 months ago, it seemed as though EVERYTHING I own that's electronic was not working in some way or another. VERY frustrating, to say the least!

I kiddingly told someone Mercury must be retrograde - Mercury is the main influence on communications, whether electronic or otherwise, if you're into Astrology.

So, I checked Susan Miller's horriblescope site, and, sure enough - Mercury WAS retrograde!

So, the cell phone eventually started working again (although I still don't like this phone!), I found all my lost contacts for my email... But not without having spent about 3 hours on the phone with various "help" lines - and I use that term very loosely!

And I THOUGHT everything was working again...

Then the printer decided to die on me. It was in the middle of printing out some flyers, when it ran out of black ink.

So I changed the cartridge, tried printing again, and all I got was PINK!

OK, change out the rest of the cartridges - and now it doesn't print ANYTHING!

I get very frustrated with technology, very quickly. I can take about 3 stabs at fixing something before I get so upset I have to walk away from it.

And once I walk away, I'll talk myself out of tackling it again for WEEKS! I figure, I've already tried everything I know how to do, and nothing has worked, so I'd better not fiddle with it anymore, cause, sure as heck, I'm gonna screw it up further!

So last week I decided I NEEDED to get the photos printed for the family calendar. Our current one runs out the end of February!

Tackled it again, only to have the same thing happen - NUTHIN'

Worked my way thru the on-line help from Epson, did everything they told me to do, and then I couldn't find the printer anywhere! Finally called their help line (after several emails discussing the problem). The person I talked was very helpful, but....

... long story short. I ended up buying a new printer the other day. It was going to cost more to fix the old one than a new one costs.

That's a sad thing, don't you think? We've become such a "throw away" society, that it's cheaper to buy a new one than fix the old one...

And while I was buying the printer, I bought myself a different phone, too!

So, now I've got NEW electronic things to learn how to manipulate and mess up! As I walked out of the store with my new printer, the guy at the door said "Now the fun begins" - guess if you're an electronic geek, that IS the fun part.

The printer's all hooked up and I'm printing out the photos I want to use for the calendar.

I've made these calendars for about the past 5-6 years - I sort of have a process. But not matter how you cut it, making 4 handmade calendars is time consuming.

Don't get me wrong - I love making them and I love that they appreciate getting them. But they are time consuming.

I debated making them on My Digital Studio, but realized the smallest I could make was 8-1/2 x 11 - consensus was the smaller 6x6 is better for all of us. I suppose I could have come up with some sort of a work-around, but by now I've burned up any excess time to play with it that I might have had.

So, handmade it is!

Here are some sneak peaks - nothing is glued down, nothing is final as far as which photos will be on which pages. But it's a start!











Come back again in a few days, and, hopefully, I'll have some finished pages to show you!

In the meantime, just a reminder that it's Sale-A-Bration (SAB) time - pull out that Occasions mini-catalog and that SAB catalog, pull a $50 order together, select an SAB item, and give me a call!

Thanks for stopping by...