SCRAPBOOKING STORAGE SOLUTION - FOR SALE!!

Looking for the perfect storage solution for your scrapbooking room?? This is it!! I am downsizing and I just don't have the room in my new scrapbooking room.  :-(  This really is a great storage piece!!

Eighteen acrylic paper trays slide into the slat/slot wall to hold your scrapbooking papers; and three glass shelves are also included to showcase your mini albums, cards, display items &/or hold storage boxes. (Please note papers and other display items in the photos are not included.)

Included:

* Maple/birch veneer Slat/Slot Wall 48" W x 34.5" H
* Glass Shelves (x3) & Brackets 48" W x 12.25" D
* Acrylic Paper Trays (good for slat/slot wall or pegboard) - fits 12"x12" paper - lot of 18

Most of the paper trays are in brand new condition, one has a crack and one or two have a peg missing but will not deter from the functionality of the trays.

The slots on the Slat/Slot wall are reinforced with aluminium guides for extra strength.

Great Deal!!  Selling for $108 - local only, please (will not ship)

Please email if interested!  Thank you!!  :-)

FREE FONTS!!

I just love fonts and have collected many different fonts over the years!  Many aren't just alphabet letters, but are doodles or other designs.  I love to use them for journalling on my layouts, making my own sentiments for cards, and cutting them out with my Silhouette for scrapbook page titles or other projects.

scrapNfonts has a bunch of new fonts available for download and they are free!!  Click here to view the free fonts.  My favorite is the DB Garden Shower Notes!  How cute would those be for journalling tags or cards!?  They also have many more fonts available at a very reasonable price.

Are you a font junkie, too?  Which are your favorites?

PEAS PLEASE!!

Isn't that just a gorgeous bouquet of sweet pea flowers!?!  My daughter picked them for me and I just love the scent, it reminds me of Hawaii!  :-)  I can't take credit for growing the flowers, however, as they are from my neighbours garden.  Their yard is truly a sanctuary with a wonderfully colorful selection of flowering plants and baskets, complete with bird feeders & baths, statues, and a vegetable garden.  It is simply amazing and I love to gaze over in awe!

I also had a little sweet pea awaiting for me along with the flowers!  My daughter has been anxious each day to see if there are more ripe sweet peas to pick!  She will eat them all day if she could!!  They are deliciously sweet and reminds me of when I was a child picking and eating the sweet peas that grew in my Gran's neighbours yard.

So I look over on the other counter, and there was a huge crop of sweet peas and lettuce (from our neighbours garden)!  I turn to my husband and asked why didn't we plant anything like this?!  lol!  We chose to start small and go from there, so I will say for sure that I will definitely be planting more things in our vegetable garden; and to see the delight on my daughter's face is priceless!  :-)

GARAGE SALE & LEMONADE STAND!!

This sale is HUGE!!  I was up late pricing everything; and let me tell you they are priced to sell!!  We have all sorts of great stuff!! Children's items include:  toys, girl & boy clothing including onesies, sleepers, pants, tops, skirts and beautiful girl sets & baby boy winter snowsuits!  We also have lots of board games including Trivial Pursuit, CSI, Ripley's, Last Spike, Slang Teasers, Balderdash, etc.!  Lots of housewares, too!

And, of course, lots of scrapbooking supplies!!  Prices are marked down HUGE!  Patterned papers will be going for .10 each!!  Pre-made coasters, albums, etc., will be starting at .10 each!

I also have quite a few retail display items for sale.  Click here to see photos of retail display items for sale on Facebook.  Here is a list of what I have left:

* wall mounted bracket system with glass shelves and two tilted adjustable wood shelves ($25)
* wire wall mountable brochure holder ($3)
* folding metal tabletop book rack ($5)
* spin rack with acrylic holders (great for cards, books, etc.) ($5)
* acrylic peg/slot board paper trays x 18 (fits 12"x12" papers) ($90/lot)
* acrylic magazine holder ($10)
* acrylic brochure holders x 2 (size is larger than brochure but smaller than magazine - great to hold mini albums!) ($8 each)
* wire paper tray cube with 5 slots (fits 12"x12" paper) ($5)
* four lattice displays (can be mounted on table) ($10/lot) * SOLD *
* folding 6' table (from Costco) ($40)
* large white retail display unit with shelves ($15) * SOLD *

Ella will, of course, have her pink lemonade stand outside for those wanting a cool refreshing beverage!  :-)  She is super excited about this!

Well, I should be off to finish pricing and setting up!  Wish me luck!  :-)

DE-CLUTTERING, GARAGE SALE & BEFORE PICS!

With the closing of my business, we decided to switch up some rooms and renovate the suite as well.  So, that meant packing up a lot of stuff and planning out the rooms.  And that eventually lead to de-cluttering the entire house!!  I have been wanting to do this for a very long time.  And, literally, I have been going through every cupboard, closet and nook & cranny; I am finding all sorts of stuff that we just don't need, use or want anymore!  At the moment, the entire suite is packed *FULL* of stuff for our garage sale we are holding this weekend, July 10th.  I can't wait to see it all go!  There will be baby/kids items, household items, retail displays, scrapbook items and much more!!  I will post pictures soon so you can see the room full of stuff we have accumulated over the years!  Incredible!

I found going from room to room and closet to closet worked best.  Though sometimes I would be going through multiple rooms/closets at once, as sometimes I needed to make room elsewhere for the items I wanted to move then I would get distracted.  lol!  But we finally have our entire kitchen (mostly) organized, our upstairs closets (including our walk-in closet which we were totally not utilizing the space!) and even dresser drawers, and bathroom drawers & cabinets!!  We even have a new dresser for the front entrance hallway, which DH picked up at the SOS; and all of the shoes, mittens, scarves, etc., are all neatly organized!  :-)  Ahhh!

I have missed being so organized before having kids!!  lol!  But I feel a huge sense of relief now!  :-)

After our garage sale, we will be working on renovating the suite; then on to organizing my scrap room and playroom.  But, it's so nice, as we have already gone through and packed up the supplies I am keeping and all of the playroom toys.  So all I need to do is start unpacking.  I can't wait to play again!!!

Hopefully I will be able to share "after" photos soon!  But here are some "before" photos (sorry, the pictures aren't pretty!).

This is our hallway & entranceway.  There are lots of things I'd like to change here, but it's just getting a minor facelift for now.  The Ikea unit shown in the hallway is a wonderful piece of furniture!  Each family member had a basket for their winter/summer items, it was perfect.  However, we need it for storage in the playroom and DH picked up a dresser from the SOS to replace it, as we are on a limited budget.

Below is the Playroom (no, the kids don't ride the horsey on the table! lol!).  It is usually a complete disaster zone, which really bugged me.  I would shut the door and pretend the mess isn't there, but it's a glass door.  lol!  I will now be sharing the space with my kids and cannot work in a disaster zone!  So, some toys have been boxed up for "rotation" so they will be "new" once again at another time, others have been moved upstairs to her room (not sure if that's such a good idea!), and yet others have been boxed up to sell/give away.  You can see some of the boxes piled behind the door that we are keeping (a few of those are her craft stuff).

My plan is to make my creative daughter an art centre, and have her toys put away but easily accessible with the two smaller Ikea Expedit units that we have.  We would like it to also be safe for my younger son to play down here, too.

[I will be re-claiming the large Ikea Expedit unit for my scrapbook supply storage.]  :-)

And below is my side of the den DH & I shared; some of my scrapbooking supplies have since been packed up and moved to the playroom in preparation for the suite mini-renovation.  I still need to move out the stuff in the closet.  Eekk!

And, finally, this is a "before" photo of our master bedroom closet (Shhhh!  Don't tell DH I am posting this!!)  Yes, we have a bookshelf in our closet!  We needed more shelves and it was the best option!  ;-)  Need more on the other side, but the hanging shelf thingy works pretty good, too, for now.  And we literally had bags and bags full of gift bags!!  We are selling almost the entire "collection", as there is no way we could possibly use all of those bags!

.Hope you enjoyed!  :-)  Do you have any before/after photos you'd like to share?  Any organizing tips?

Fresh from the garden!

Ahhh, nothing beats fresh ingredients right from the garden!!  This was the very first year we tried our hand at growing herbs and I am loving it!!  This soft taco is a perfect summertime dinner.  I headed down to the garden to pick fresh cilantro and chives to add to it.  And I admit, I was so excited that I forgot to add lettuce; but it was still soooo yummy, juicy & delicious!!

We also have a couple of smaller strawberry plants, which we are anxiously awaiting the first fruit.  I hope to eventually expand our edible garden which will also include a blueberry bush!  The kids are huge blueberry fans!

What edible plants do you grow in your garden?

BIRTHDAY CAKES!!

My daughter's birthday was at the beginning of the month and I promised you I'd share the cakes I made for her family party & friends party!

She had requested a rainbow cake for her family party and my first thought was to do a 7 layer cake each a color of the rainbow. Unfortunately, I had some health issues prior to her birthday and wasn't able to spend that much time on her cake. So after much thinking and deliberating how I was going to do this cake, I decided to take a look through my Wilton cake decorating course materials. Then I saw it; I knew I could do this cake and was sure Ella would love it! So here is the result...

This is a 9" round two layer vanilla cake with the yummiest buttercream icing & white chocolate pudding filling.  I added piping gel to the icing for a shiny look and used my star tips to make the rainbow and the star border.  I love Wilton's 'gel' icing colors!!  I will never go back to using the liquid drops!  The colors are so spectacular and it does not change the texture of the icing.  I actually added some of the icing colors to the cake batter by dragging a toothpick around the circle starting with red at the outside and working towards the centre using the colors of the rainbow.  So when the cake was cut, you could see all of the different colors!  (Sorry, I didn't get a photo of that.)

As per Ella's request, I had to add marshmallows to the cake, so I thought they'd look good in the clouds!  The absolutely hardest part about this cake, and all others I have made, is the lettering!!  I must buy me some lettering stencils!  The whole cake took a bit longer to decorate than I had thought, but Ella was delighted which makes me happy!!  :-)

The cake for her party with her friends was an Ariel themed cake.  I admit I could have done a much better job, but it always takes so much longer to decorate than anticipated!

Without further ado, here is the other cake...

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it before being transported to the gymnastics school, so the "sand" is all over the place, but I suppose it just adds to the feel of the cake!  ;-)

This is a double layer cake, half vanilla and half chocolate with buttercream icing and white chocolate pudding filling.  I broke out the piping gel again, but this time I just skimmed some on top of the blue "sea" for a shiny look.  I had Ariel sitting on a rock that had been brought home from the beach at some point!  The trees are from a Dora themed cake for her 2nd birthday; which I have used quite often, actually.  And the sand is graham cracker crumbs.

Do you like baking or making cakes?  I have found that a good cake is hard to come by, at least here in Nanaimo!  So I started to make my own and have had a fun frustrating time coming up with just the right cake recipe (moist and not too sweet) and buttercream icing.  Though I have the icing down pat now, but am still trying to find the perfect cake recipe!  ;-)

HAPPY SUMMER!!

Summer has arrived!  The last couple of days have been so nice and sunny and warm.  I thought I'd update the blog look with more of a summery feel, love that orange!

Ella wanted to bring out the sprinkler, so we have been spending the last couple of afternoons after school in the backyard with the sprinkler on!  :-)  Lee just loves it!  I just love hanging out (in the shade!) watching them play.

Ella's Kindergarten "graduation" is tomorrow, then just one more day of school for her!  Monday the class is going bowling, so it will be nice for her to have one last hurrah with her friends.  I can't believe in a few short months she will be starting Grade 1 and will be full-time at the school.  I will then start Lee in playschool in September, too.

Whatever you are up to, I hope you are enjoying summer!  Take lots of photos to capture those fun summer days!  :-)

TOOT TOOT! I HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED!

I am so excited to share with you that I have had two of my layouts selected for publication in the June 2010 Scrapbook News And Review on-line magazine!!  This magazine is full of fantastic inspriation and information, check them out at http://www.scrapbooknewsandreview.com/.  My layouts "One Fall Day" & "Shine" can be found in the Fussy Cutting section.

I guess I better get my new scrap area organized soon, I am itching to get back at designing & submitting my work again - it's been wayyyy too long!  I have been recovering from gallbladder surgery, then to top it off I have managed to get the cold, so I have just been in "survival mode" lately!  Hopefully next weekend we'll get furniture moved and I will be able to organize my space SOON!!  :-)

(If you are viewing this on Facebook, please check out my blog at http://www.thescrapbookinghousewife.com/.)