Christmas Wrap Up!

Well, Christmas is officially over, and the New Year is on it's way! Christmas actually went better than I thought it would, seeing as I wasn't at home and was dealing with my Mom being in hospital. Ended up having some great moments over the holiday, especially with it being Nate's first Christmas. One special moment was seeing my sister read him his first Night Before Christmas (which is a family tradition for us), and another was seeing my Dad reading his first grandchild stories before bed. He's such a great Grandpa, it was too cute. :)

Ended up with some fun presents too! Brandon got me a great book on photography, all about setting up proper exposure (I'm still a photography nub). So I'm looking forward to improving my photography in the new year (more of that later when I start talking about my 365 challenge.) And... wait for it... my sis got me a CLIP IT UP! I'm so stoked about using this awesome storage device for my large sticker/rub on stash. So looking forward to getting back to Comox to set it up. :)

Speaking of being back in Comox, I'm still staying at my mom's place in Ontario right now. She's been improving quite a bit in the hospital, and she told me she would really love me to stay as long as I could, so Brandon and I added an extra week onto our trip. The huge smile on her face when I told her I was staying longer, was well worth it! I hate seeing her stuck in a hospital bed with tubes and iv's all over her, but let it be a lesson to everyone to take care of themselves! Especially you smokers out there *shakes a finger at any bad smokers* But it's looking like she'll make it through, though it will be a long, hard, road to recovery.

Till next time, have a safe and happy New Year!

<3 Gillian

P.S. I wanted to fill this post with great Christmas photos, but I keep forgetting them on my sisters camera! Silly me. hehe

Merry Christmas!

Well, this will be my last post before the holidays, so I hope everyone has a fabulous Christmas and enjoys time with all their friends and family :) I leave tomorrow night to head back to Ontario to see my sister and Dad (and Mom, in the hospital). I'm not excited about how things are turning out this Christmas, but I will make the best of it. Happy to get to see my Dad, and planning to hang out with a couple old friends from high school, which should be fun! Tonight is Christmas with Brandon's family, so we get turkey (yummy!) and presents!! Very excited :)

I've been trying to take lots of photos of the sights of the season around here, and I think some of them have turned out quite well! I'm excited to do a fun layout after with all my fave pics.

Speaking of layouts, I'll leave you with this one that I finished last night of my Grandpa and Uncle Frank (who is basically my 3rd Grandpa). This pic is from 4 years ago at my sisters wedding, and it's such a good pic of them! I love to remember my Grandpa (who passed away this year) with that big smile on his face, and my Uncle Frank looks cute too. I used the kit from Coordinates Collections (for November). If you've never been there to check out their kits I highly recommend it! The kits aren't as big and full as some other places, but I like it that way. You get enough stuff to do a couple 2 page spreads or 4-5 single page layouts. It's perfect cause you don't get bored of the style and have an album full of the same type paper. Also (and this is the best part), you get to choose between two kits each month. There has yet to be a month since I discovered this place where I didn't love at least one of the kits! And it's a good price, so go check it out :)

Merry Christmas to everyone! See you after the holiday

<3 Gillian

Santa Baby!

I'm still on a roll with my scrapping! Up to date on my Christmas Journal (which I so thought I'd fall behind on, let's see what happens when I head away for the holidays!) and gotten quite a few other layouts done besides that! I worked on a layout last night for the challenge over at How Much Is Too Much, in which you had to use 5 patterned papers, 5 ribbons, 5 embellishments, 5 stamps and 5 fasteners. The theme was 'Top 5' and to do with the holidays. It was a fun challenge and there aren't many entries so far, so you should go and check it out :) I'm just loving my finished layout, which is odd for me, normally I don't like my work too much!

So tonight Brandon and I are going to cozy up in front of the TV with some good old National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and finish up our wrapping (ie. start our wrapping! lol). He even spoiled me (as usual) and made a nice lasagna type thing for dinner, with veggies and my FAVOURITE dip! I'm not sure how I was so lucky as to find this guy, but trust me, I am never giving him up! :)

Just a few more days until I head back to Ontario for Christmas. My whole family is there, so it's where I need to be for Christmas, but I'd much rather enjoy Christmas in my own house. But my mom, who is still in ICU, is doing a bit better, and is awake and starting to talk, so she wants to see us on Christmas. I'm glad I'll be able to be there and cheer her up a bit :)

Happy Thursday all!
<3 Gillian

P.S. I'm working on an adorable little project that I so wanted to show everyone, but it's a Christmas present for my sister and she reads this, so I can't :P But keep your eyes peeled post-Christmas to check it out :)

Missing my little man

Well, my sister and Nate (my nephew) have been gone for less than two weeks and I just miss them like crazy! I knew I'd miss my sister, since we're ridiculously close, and with Mom so sick it would be nice to have eachother close by, but I didn't think I'd miss Nate so much! At least with Jen I get to talk to her each day. It's pretty hard to talk to a 3 month old! lol All I can do is hear his little giggles on the phone and picture his big smiles. But I just want to see his big smiles :(

This time away from him is only temporary, but next year my sister and her husband will be posted away to another Air Force base... which means they'll be moving my little man across the country. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to let them leave! lol Anyone have a good plan as to how to keep a family of three (plus a giant dog) living in your basement? :P

Anyways, speaking of Nate, I did a little layout of him the other night. I'm not super pleased with it, was hoping it would turn out better, but the photos are adorable, so I thought I'd share anyways. Happy Tuesday!

Random Christmas Hoopla!

My sister tagged me with this today, so here goes!

The Random Christmas Hoopla!
Here goes:

1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas
2. Please refer to it as a ‘hoopla’ and not the dreaded ‘m’-word (which, for you bloggy newbies, is meme)
3. You have to specifically tag people when you’re done. None of this “if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged” stuff is allowed…then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you — but the more, the merrier to get this ‘hoopla’ circulating through the blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I’d like to get as many people involved as possible.

Random Chrismas "Me-Things"

1. I get irritated if i'm opening presents with people and they don't go one at a time! You're supposed to go one at a time people!!

2. I have no children, so I take my dog to see Santa Clause. I even dressed him up in a santa sweater to match!

3. When I was young I thought my Baby's First Christmas ornament was very fancy and made of crystal. I don't think it was until I was like 15 that I kind of had the realization that it's just cheap plastic, and probably from Walmart! lol

4. My family had a little ornament on our tree that was a tiny book with the lyrics to Christmas songs in it (and yes Jen, you're right, I will never forgive you for ending up with it! lol). It was my fave ornament and to this day I still get excited by Christmas lyric songbooks for some reason. I know all the lyrics to different songs, so i'm not sure why I love them so much lol

5. The best Christmas present I remember getting as a kid was the board game Mall Madness. It was a board game about shopping!! There were even little credit cards you swiped, and it talked. WAY too cool! lol

6. The first Christmas present I got for my sister with my own money, that I picked on my own, was a cheesy little candle holder with a fireplace and a mouse. She stil has it, bless her soul! lol

7. I have never got a bad Christmas present from my mom! She always gets me the most amazing gifts. Apparently even this year, while she's in hospital, I have a cool gift coming my way (or so my sister says).

8. I love the egg nog latte's from Starbucks (only available at Christmas time) even though I ALWAYS feel sick after drinking one! lol

9. I LOVE making my own ornaments! And I pawn off these ornaments to others and call them gifts! I've made penguins and snowmen out of lightbulbs, snowmen out of boxes and adorable gingerbread men out of cookie cutters. I think they're pretty cool :)

10. I buy and wrap presents for all my pets, and then open them for them :P And if i find something I really want for myself while shopping, i'll buy it, wrap it and sign it "To Mom, From Hope" ... Hope is my cat!

11. Christmas isn't Christmas without crackers (those things you pop at the dinner table) and the silly jokes and hats that come inside them. My Aunt Bev was always the only one who would wear her hat all night. Everyone else wears it for the obligatory 6 minutes and then takes it off. Not Aunt Bev, it would be like 2 hours after dinner and she'd still be wearing it! lol

12. I get into the festive spirit, even in my online video game world! I love in World of Warcraft when they have the Winter's Veil festival. Just today I made myself a cute little santa outfit and got a pet reindeer. Too much fun!!

And that's that! I won't tag anyone, cause I don't know enough people who read here, and mostly did this to amuse my sister. But if you're doing it on your blog, please leave a comment so I can check it out :)

Happy Holidays!

Hope - One Little Word

Here's my take on the current challenge at One Little Word. Hope couldn't have been a more perfect word for me to use at this point in time! My mom is currently very very ill, and in the critical care ward of the hospital. I'm not with her and there's not much I can do but sit here and hope for the best. I did the layout on a Heidi Swapp transparent clock face, because time seemed to be an important theme with my hopes. I used some of my favourite photos of my mom. Not amazing photos, but ones that mean something and make me smile. I'm awful at photographing transparencies so if anyone has any tips, please let me know! lol

Oh Christmas Tree!

Wow! I actually took a picture all by myself that I'm proud of! This never really happens, as I am so not a good photographer, but with inspiration from my sister and other online sites, I'm trying to learn new tricks of the trade! It's the one thing I tend to dislike about a lot of my scrapbook pages ... bad photos! So I figure it should be the first thing I try to improve.

I started working on taking some good photos of my Christmas tree for my Christmas Journal (I'm taking the class with Shimelle). I played with settings and by using the aperture priority setting and a slow shutter speed (I THINK that made sense, but don't quote me! lol) I got a pretty decent photo. :)

I then used the photo on my layout for the day, which had me discuss my Christmas tree, and that turned out quite well too! All in all, a great day in the scrapbooking world of Gillian :)

I finally joined the world of blogging!

Well, i've been obsessed with the online world of scrapbooking for awhile now and finally decided that I needed my own little corner of the web to post my inspiration, photos and scrapping layouts! I'll try to be clever and witty with my posts, but i'm not gonna lie, I'm not always the best writer in the world! lol

I've been scrapping now for about 5 years and I just now feel like my layouts are anything worth looking at, and even now, they're not always worth looking at! lol But I love every one, because they tell my story, and that's what scrapbooking is about :)

To start off, here is a layout I just finished for the December challenge over at Got Mojo?. I'm constantly surfing challenge blogs, but always too afraid to enter, but I figured, why not? I might not win, but it's about the inspiration anyways, and I'm quite pleased with this layout :)



Hope you enjoy and I'll be back with more in the next couple days :)