WRAPPING UP 2017

I finally took the time to finish my 2017 Project Life album. As soon as I saw these In Review journal cards by In A Creative Bubble, I knew that's how I wanted to end the year. That is why it's taken me a bit longer to wrap up my 2017 album. Here are the last three pages of December plus my Year In Review page.

In Sweden we celebrate Christmas on December 24th. We had a quiet family Christmas this year, just the four of us. In the morning the kids each got a gift that would entertain them until lunch plus some candy in their stockings. We had a delicious buffet style Christmas lunch with lots of veggie dishes, which I love.

For these pages I've used the Northern Lights documenter kit from Studio Calico, plus several Holiday themed digital sets by In A Creative Bubble.

After lunch Santa knocked on our door and delivered the Christmas gifts. Me and the kids watched A Christmas Carol before bedtime. They used their new sleeping masks to hide behind when the ghosts were too scary!

In the week before New Years we celebrated Christmas again with our extended family. For this page I added in pieces from the SC Homestead documenter kit. The stamp I used on the bottom card is from Studio Calico but I don't know what set it came in. Sorry!

And last but not least, here is my Year In Review page. I chose to not use all the cards in the set, because all didn't apply. I really love this review idea and plan to be ending my future albums using the same cards.

How about you? Are you done with 2017? I still have a few pages left of my 2017 December Daily album. It feels great to have wrapped up Project Life for the year though. On to new creative adventures!

/Magdalena

SO BUSY CRAFTING

Hey! It's been a while since I posted on the blog. I've been crazy busy and crafting up a storm lately. My number one priority has been to finish the projects that have a deadline. This weekend I'm wrapping up the Studio Calico documenter kit workshop for February. The kit is called Candyland, and it's been super fun to work with. Below is a sneak peek of my mainkit only project. The workshop goes live on February 1st.

During Winter Break my fifth BPC class was due for review. I'm super happy with my projects for this class, and I'm excited to be sharing them with you when the class opens up this spring.

Furthermore, I have yet to finish my 2017 December Daily, the second half of my 2017 Project Life album and the baby album I started for my niece. My Summit kit has gotten lost in the mail, so at least I feel less stressed about starting in on the 2018 Project Life album. I made a few January pages with the Candyland kit, but I want to start the month using the monthly cork piece from Summit. I have yet to contact the mail service or Studio Calico about my lost kit, but I feel confident they'll sort it out.

I'm really on the last lap with all the above projects, but for someone who isn't used to not being caught up I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed. Today is Sunday, so I hope to be able to tick a few boxes on my to-do list. Here's a couple more pages for the 2017 PL album. 

At the end of November I took my class to the Viking museum in Old Uppsala. It's where the old temple of the Viking gods was located a 1000 years ago. If you've seen the first season of Vikings you'll notice they took a few artistic liberties with the surroundings!

The week continued into December and we decorated our house for Christmas and celebrated the First Sunday of Advent. The Falala rectangle is from a digital Holidays set by In a Creative Bubble.

Throughout December I've made a weekly highlights card using a template from Paislee Press. In week 49 me and my class visited Uppsala once more. This time to see a theatre production of Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Brothers Lionheart) by Astrid Lindgren. 

We finally had some more snow in week 50, and decorated our tree. All physical product is from the Studio Calico December kit. It had a great wintery feel. The red wood veneer stars quickly became a favorite of mine.

Week 51 was the last week of school. (I've blurred out the faces of the kids in my class.) Me and a collegue celebrated with delivery pizza and Prosecco. The basket is a present from my class. I can't believe they added two cans of diet coke. That totally cracked me up! They know me too well. I've used some digital stamps from a past Paislee Press Christmas Scrapbook kit.

Just one more week to document and 2017 is in the books!

/Magdalena

MAKING - NOVEMBER EDITION

We've had an amazing November here in Sweden. Just a couple of years ago we had a record breaking lack of sun. Only two hours of sunlight during the entire month of November! This year has seen many bright and beautiful days though, and as a scrapbooker I am thankful for that. I've made more pages this November than any other year of doing Project Life.

I love the color scheme of the November Studio Calico kits.It's so warm and has a vintage feel to it.


The kids each got to pick a book to read during Fall Break, which was week 44. Dante picked the second part of a ghost story series, and Nea picked Cinderella - in English. Dante plays lots of video games and his English is really good because of that,and she wants to catch up. We've been reading it together.

Us teachers worked an extra three days during week 44, but then we got the rest of the week off too. On the last day of work we had "After Work" outing at a super cool place called Pinchos, where you use an app to order food and drinks and then pick it up yourself from the bar. 

Below, I used the tag to journal about "Old Fashioned Week" at the kids' school. Their school celebrates a hundred years and there were dressup themes and lots of other activities. 

I loved the flannel shirt style pattern of the bottom card, but the center square felt kind of empty, so I stamped all the dates of the week inside to fill it up.

The same week Nea ended up with an ear infection that caused a burst eardrum. We had to go to the hospital to get her hearing tested. With a bit of luck she'll get tubes put in next year. She's had so many burst eardrums I've lost count. That NOPE card really came in handy!

In our Project Life album I mix in both ephemera and layouts. I like the chronology it gives, compared to keep seperate albums. I made a November favorites sort of layout for Catherine davis' Design School 2 "Working with a kit" challenge. The fall paper came from an October addon, and I found these veneer alphas in my stash. I considered painting the alphas gold, but decided against it and added some gold sequins instead.

This is my favorite page this month. I tend to like the pages with lots of journaling the most. It gives them a finished look. The d&n card is a design I totally stole from Catherine Davis!

That's all I've got so far. I have a few more photos to put in pockets before it's December.

/Magdalena

DAY IN THE LIFE

November 2nd was the last Day In The Life of 2017. I haven't observed any of the others this year, but this time we all had the day off so it was an easy day to document. When putting the pages together I used the digital kit Ali put together for this day. The cards had a fun new concept of counting during the day, which I enjoyed. The pages will go into our regular Project Life album.

Week 44 is Fall Break here in Sweden, which meant we could sleep in this morning. After breakfast Nea and I sat in the kitchen to do some crafting. She loves watching Kristina Werner's word art videos, so she tried her hand at one of her own. While I made lunch, she took a hot shower. Dante was playing Overwatch on the PS4.

I went on Ali's Craft the Story facebook page to ask if everyone counted breakfast as a meal. They did, but I decided against it. The reason is I journaled about being SO tired of cooking. I'm not a huge fan of eating cooked meals which makes me even less motivated to cook them. The kids on the other hand always want a cooked meal, which surprises me because I hated meal time as a kid. This day I decided to cook a big lunch, and then they could put the leftovers in the microwave for dinner.

The number stickers are from the October Studio Calico documenter kit, Gypsy Moon. They matched Ali's word strips nicely. For some reason my printer didn't print them all the same shade of blue, but that's ok. 

After making lunch, cleaning and doing laundry I deserved a reading break. My favorite tea mug is the size of a flower pot. I've had that brown wool blanket since I was two. It's huge and so warm and my favorite posession. It's what I'd bring to a deserted island, for sure.

The original card below had the dollar sign, but I cut the letters KR from another card and changed the colour to gray. Swedish money is called "kronor". The reason we spent so much without leaving the house is we had bills to pay. 

I propped my phone up on some books and used the self timer to take the nail polish photo. Nea has a pink night light in her room which gave the photo of her in bed a cool shade.

I didn't count the hugs during the day, but I used the eight as an infinite sign instead. We love hugs in our family!

I hope you've found some inspiration to document a Day In The Life of your own. Tomorrow I'm posting an update of how I'm doing with the 2017 Reading Challenge. See you then!

/Magdalena

TRICK OR TREAT!

I loooove Halloween! I always buy whatever addons Studio calico put out for the holiday. This year it was a mini card kit by Tina Aszmus which seems to have sold out unfortunately. You can find it digital form here, though.

I also bought the Paislee Press Fall Magic Elements pack, which really loved.

My favorite part of making a Jack o' lantern is I get to have roasted pumpkin seeds after. Some olive oil, rock salt, chili flakes and powdered cinnamon and you have the best snack ever. Yum!

Dante wanted to be "V for Vendetta" and Nea wanted to be a witch. We didn't have a wide brimmed hat, but Dante found my dad's old hat and used that. I think my dad wore in the late 60's! 

I found a pack of fun Halloween paper glasses at H&M, and did a family photo shoot. The kids picked their favorites, and us grownups took what was left. Super fun glasses! I sliced off a row of pockets to make an insert. On the pack I will document what movies we watched during Fall Break.

Also I'm mad jealous of my daughter's hair colour. Yes, it's real! 

I hope you all enjoyed Halloween, and have fun documenting it! Come back tomorrow for a look at my Day In The Life pages from November 2nd. I used Ali's kit for the day, and really like how it turned out.

/Magdalena

MY OCTOBER PAGES

I've decided to split up my October posts. Tomorrow I will post my Halloween pages, and today I'll be showing you the rest of my October pages plus a layout. I'll be making more layouts from my October photos, but I usually focus on documenting our everyday life first.

The gold and black October card is from Tina Aszmus' Halloween mini card kit. Love it! Everything else is from recent monthly Studio Calico kits. I've also used the Autumn Vibes templates from Paislee Press.

For some reason I took a ton of photos for the first week of October, but hardly any the next. The first week of October has my birthday and also the Swedish "Cinnabun Day" - a very important occasion to celebrate. The photo of my daughter has a quote. The first thing she said when waking up this morning was "Mommy, you are the world's best everything!", then she paused and added "Except the world's best turd.". Lucky me!

So I'll be honest here. I LOVE making my album pages but I HATE photographing them. Mainly because to prevent glare I need to remove every single card from the pockets and then put them back. For this blog post I couldn't be bothered (sorry, not sorry) so there is glare in these photos.

In our family you get to pick dinner on your birthday, so I picked pizza. Not because it's my favorite but because it's the only kind of restaurant nearby. I didn't want to cook, and I didn't want to have to go into the city on a school night, so pizza it was. I picked the Quattro Formaggi - four kinds of cheese including blue cheese. The kids were horrified that I picked moldy pizza for my birthday dinner, bwaha!

Also how happy are we that Supernatural, Stranger Things AND The Walking Dead are back on? 

I know you can't see it in this picture but the closeup of the kids' eyes shows off how different their eye colors are. Dante has blue eyes with lighter rays and Nea has green eyes. They asked me to take a photo so they could compare. 

Skipping week 41 because I didn't take any photos, here is week 42 on the left and week 43 on the right. I don't always record the weekly number. I know my photos are roughly in chronological order so not having a date on something doesn't bother me. 

I took an afternoon of from work and went to get a haircut. I had time for a stroll around the city before a friend met up for dinner. We ate at a super cool place called Pinchos, where you order through an app and pick up your own food and drinks from the counter. They serve delicious tapas and the decorations are circus themed. They even have entertainment through speakers in the bathrooms.

Fall is for reading! Refurnishing our bedroom meant I got to trade my nightstand for a bookshelf. Woohoo!

If you have visited my blog before you know that every year I do a birthday interview with the kids. This year I thought "Hey, why just the kids?!", so I made a birthday interview layout for myself. All products are from the Studio Calico October kit "Gypsy Moon". I hope you notice how I used both a border punch and a label maker for this layout. It's been years since they were brought out for scrapbooking. And yep, I'm 45. Imagine that!

Stay young at heart people! I hope to see you tomorrow for my Halloween pages.

/Magdalena

HELLO FALL

My favorite season is here! I love everything about fall - the temps, the food, the drinks, nature, the cozy darkness, scary movies  and books coming out. All of it! I was lucky enough to recieve Tina Aszmus' Fall journaling cards as part of my September guest DT spot goodies. Last month I ordered her Halloween kit, too. Looking forwards to using more of that in October.

Nea got a movie ticket for her August birthday and wanted to go see Despicable Me 3. On the way home we got caught in a crazy rainstorm and had a good laugh about that. We also went shopping for new tea flavors. The seasonal blends of fall are my favorite. We got Choco Chili, Earl Grey Spice (which smelled just like cinnamon buns) and Autumn Embers (a mix of black tea, cardamom and grapefruit). 

The autumn sky photo was taken by Nea on the way home from a friend. I've also documented getting carded at the liquor store. I'm 44 and the legal limit in Sweden 20. YAS! I'm sticking to my scary reads. Two books in September. Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King was a good short story but I don't know if it deserves getting published on it's own. It would've sat better in an anthology. The other book is the third and last part of a trilogy by John Ajvide Lindqvist. I suspect it'll be awhile before it comes out in English.

The next page is all new cards paired with older embellishments from my stash. Barbequing at my brother's and silly kids playing around. I have the world's cutest niece! You'll just have to take my word for it. :)

More scary stuff! I've been watching FTWD in wait of TWD premiering in mid October. I cannot wait! The other night I dreamt Daryl turned into a werewolf and had to be put down. Me and hubby went to see It and it was everything it's been hyped up to be. Loved it!

The last page for September is all photos from a day in the woods with grades 4 and 5. It looks like I was alone but I had four classes and seven collegues with me. I just made sure to keep them out of the frame so I could publish the pictures without asking for permission.

And that is all for September. Enjoy whatever season you're having where you live!

/Magdalena

SEPTEMBER GUEST CT AT STUDIO CALICO

I was really excited to be asked to guest the Studio Calico creative team for September. It's such a colorful kit that suited my style perfectly. I got to work with both the scrapbook and documenter kit plus the mini book and fall card addons and a few extra stamp sets. You can find all the creative team projects here.

This floral paper was my favorite paper from the scrapbook kit. It looked great on top of the black cardstock. I used the bottom strip of paper to add a bit of punch next to the photo. This is my favorite photo from our summer roadtrip to Dalarna. I love how their cool poses don't match the beautiful countryside setting at all!

Nea had her birthday in August and every year I do a birthday interview with the kids. I used no patterned paper for the birthday interview layout, just every single button in the package! The title stamp got some golden dots from a gel pen.

As I may have told you before I keep my layouts and pocket pages all together in the same album. The layout above goes with this pocket page, that I've made with the August documenter kit.

The first week of August is also GISHWHES week. GISHWHES is short for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. It's such a fun event that focus on charity both by donating money but also comitting random acts of kindness throughout the week. You're in a team with 14 other people trying to complete around 200 crazy and creative challenges. The whole thing is organized by American actor Misha Collins. This year GISHWHES saved 40.000 acres of rainforest in Nepal and rescued a dance school aimed at providing a career in dancing for underprivilaged children in South Africa.

One of the items for this year was to get the quote "We create therefor we live" tattooed on your body. I wasn't the one to get the tattoo, but I thought it was a wonderful quote. I put it on this layout to document my parttaking in GISHWHES of 2017. I picked the rainbow stripe paper and cut it in tiny triangles to make it look like a big colrful explosion of creativity. The photo was taken by my daughter. I'm wearing a caveperson costume I stitched together for one of the items.

I wanted to put some of the items I completed in my album, so I put together a pocket page too. I used the August kit with a few other items to make a GISHWHES spread. The items you see here are toys caught in the act, snail yoga, recreating a page from a children's book, recreating a celebrity photo shoot and then tweeting it to said celebrity (check the hashtag #embracereality for more hilarious recreations!), my favorite cartoon character made from spices, an Enochian typewriter, giving flowers to someone exiting a place of worship other than my own, a caveperson demonstrating glass blowing and showing off a teacup and saucer holster to bring a bit of sophistication to the wild west.

I was super excited to have my Rihanna tweet picked up by the GISHWHES team on the second day of the hunt. Don't I look just like her?

Besides the three layouts above I had a pocket page spread in the CT gallery for September. It was all about our day of fun at Gröna Lund, the Stockholm amusement park. We spent the day on the rides and in the evening we got to watch Alice Cooper in concert. Something Dante had been looking forwards to since Christmas.

Come back tomorrow to see the rest of my August pages!

/Magdalena