ScRaP SiStaZ Challenge 5a - Turning Fourteen

I still haven't given up on completing all of last year's ScRaP SiStaZ challenges. I recently completed Challenge 5a and I want to complete them all before Tina starts posting more challenges (which I'm guessing will be sometime after she finishes her Master's). In finishing this challenge, I also completed another layout for Jordyn's (still sparsely populated) birthday album. This is one of two layouts that I plan to complete to document her fourteenth birthday. Next on my list is her 14th birthday party with her friends. I just need to find a good inspiration layout to guide me through!

Turning Fourteen - Double:

Turning Fourteen - Left:

Turning Fourteen - Right:

Some observations about the process and the products used:

1. Inspiration was 8 1/2 x 11, I tweaked it to a 12 x 12 format.
2. I also tweaked the topic from Meeting Santa to Turning Fourteen. I'm not ready to tackle my kids' Santa photos yet. It's on my long list of projects that I plan to get around to some day....like when I've cloned myself four times over and when I no longer have a demanding career.
3. I've had these pictures printed since early January, with this layout in mind. I finally put the layout together in late February and am just now getting around to sharing it here on my blog. I might not move as quickly as I did last year, but at least I'm still moving.
4. Love how the orange and red patterned papers pick up the orange in Jordyn's shirt and the red poinsettias in the background at the restaurant. I also love coordinating patterned papers from a paper stack, which in this case are from DCWV.
5. I'm comfortable with hybrid-digi scrapping (meaning I journal and make titles on my computer). I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to learn how to do a fully digital layout. Maybe I'll make time on my maternity leave to figure this out. (Kendrea, here I come! Will you teach me??)
6. I was having a frumpy day, so excuse the hat and baggy sweater (which even now, at almost full term in my pregnancy would still be baggy on me!) But look at Jordyn, isn't she just gorgeous?? Yes, I'm biased. That's my job.

Inspiration Layout:

2009 Shellnut Thanksgiving Album

WOW! By this time last year I had created a dozen layouts and written nearly two dozen posts on this blog!! And here it is March 1st and this is my FIRST entry for 2010!! Man, have I been slacking.

However, in the last six weeks of my pregnancy, I'm going to try and scrap and post as much as is comfortable for me to do so. (And as much as my Monday-Thursday single motherhood schedule allows!)

I actually finished this Thanksgiving album back in January. Yes, it sat on my scrap table in a state of partial completion for nearly the entire month, much longer than I ever like to let a project sit. But, in the end, I got it finished, the memories are captured, and that's what counts.

It documents the Thanksgiving celebration that we had with my side of the family this past year (I still have to print pictures and make the album for the Thanksgiving we shared with Kevin's family!! It's on the to-do list.) We celebrated at my sister's house, and it was really weird not having my parents there with us. They're officially snowbirds now.

This album flips kind of like a perpetual calendar. And there are several "little" squares in between each page that has each person's thankful thoughts on them so that we can pull it out next Thanksgiving and be reminded of what everyone was thankful for in 2009.

Front Cover

First & Second Pages (My sister's family)

Third & Fourth Pages (My brother's family)

Fifth & Sixth Pages (My family)

Seventh & Eighth Pages (My cousin and her husband)

Back Cover