Month: May 2010

A Pinkalicious kind of day.

My girls are fans of the Pinkalicious books that we’ve collected (Costco often has them, as does Target and our Borders Bookstore). The new paperback Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink has been held up as a potential reward ever since Amazon.com added it to my coming soon recommendations (oh how I love that feature!) a few weeks back. Being book fiends as I am, the girls have been looking forward to it. After we read it twice it was determined we’d have to have a pink drink party, and today we got our supplies together and made it happen.

We decided to make the treats, and simply buy this tasty looking pink lemonade. We made strawberry cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting, and to add zip we smashed about 10 strawberries through a strainer into the cake mix. Extra yum.

We used some of the leftover cake mix to make cake pops, which the girls swear were great but were in fact kind of heinous. I need to read (and actually follow) Bakerella’s directions next time. They’re not as easy as they seem!

The pink drinks served (after reading ALL the books, naturally) with cherries in them added another level of fun. The occasion was literally “daddy’s not home, it’s Wednesday, we’re inspired” for this little fiesta. Just fun girl stuff.

If you’re thinking “May, you owe me __ (e-mail, call, project, etc)__!” Now you know why it didn’t happen this afternoon.

Back to the book – it is beloved (just as the others are), and when I asked what they liked best I was told the gross part where she puts frosting into the lemonade is the best. Also that it’s best read when wearing tutus and pink nail polish. My thought? You’ll be seeing a “pinkalicious” scrapbook project in my near future.

I hope you have a happy & creative day – whatever that might mean to you!

PS – in interest of full disclosure and all that, the publisher of Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink sent the book to me, I didn’t purchase it. This got me untold cool points with the children – that “pinkalicious” knows me and sent me her book. 🙂  They LOVE the book, and I think the series is just one of the prettiest, girliest, most lovely things out there.

Once upon a time…

Audrey Neal and I go way back… we used to exchange e-mails about our thoughts on hybrid scrapbooking and how there should so be a book about it. (Then we wrote it together and Memory Makers published it!) She’s got awesome digi designs and is a fellow bookworm too.

Anyhow, when she asked me to be a guest blogger I said OF COURSE!!

http://audneal.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/guest-blogger-may-flaum.html

If you do a layout inspired by books, or anything I mention in my post I hope you’ll please share with me! 🙂 Happy Wednesday.

10 minute creative: tag

A while back I posted about all the possibilities you could enjoy with five minutes of dedicated creative time. Today, amid an insane (even for a Monday) schedule I took a few minutes to play with some goodies.

Tag, canvas flowers, and paper is by Jillibean-Soup (a personal fave company -so much kraft love!); ruler ribbon is by the girls’ paperie (another fave!) Oh, and both are friends of Camp Scrap… so you can look for give-aways from them in class! Just a fun tag that is now ready to go onto my next girly page.

My tools used – you can see I just punched out a scallop circle and crudely cut into it in a swirl until I reached the middle. To make the flower I just held down the center and twirled it around until I liked the look. Quick, easy, cute!

Can I even tell you how much I LOVE these Jillibean-Soup goodies? I don’t think I can. The typed on flowers and tags as well as this particular gingham paper are just total faves.

 Now I must go back into here… and yes I’m showing you a horrendously hideous picture. I have been keeping this “clean the studio” thing real. It’s documented at it’s worst as well as best. Ok, actually not at very worst because at one point I got stuck in the closet and couldn’t get to camera and had to clean/dig my way out and when I did it looked as it does below.

Want to know a secret? I’ll be posting “organization fun” all next week starting on May 31. Some fun ideas, some helpful hints, no perfect studios or professionally decorated/put together stuff though. If you want jaw-dropping beauty and to turn green in envy, I suggest you look at Kendra’s blog. I love her dearly, except I am jealous of her and her beautiful space just a teeny bit right now. I wish I had her vintage goddess-ness.

If you’d like some incredibly inspiring video on storing stuff by color (and just the eye candy that is Stacy’s home studio) then check out Stacy’s blog. I linked up to the page that has all her color posts that I’m so LOVING! 

For now, I’ve enjoyed my creative break (and warming myself up to new ideas!) and I’m back to the cleaning/sorting/re-organizing grind. This week is PACKED with stuff, I’ll be here daily to check in with you, watch for a prize coming up very soon…

and a mad week begins as another ends.

I wasn’t like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree. Richard Gere’s a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who’s a hero. The music he’s created over the years, I don’t really listen to it, but the fact that he’s making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I’m selling? No. Do I know what I’m doing today? No. But I’m here, and I’m gonna give it my best shot.

I’m here… on a wild ride. Just have that quote in my head (Zoolander, how can you not love it?!) and am cracking up at it’s appropriateness for me right now.

 I feel like I’m taking crazy pills! I invented the piano key necktie, I invented it! What have you done, Derek? You’ve done nothing! NOTHIIIING! And I will be a monkey’s uncle if I let you ruin this for me.

I’m off to obey my dog. I will return with something coherent, not frenzy induced as soon as I can. I just really wanted to post a bit of Zoolander love on the blog tonight, as it’s what I’m using as my background noise…

Friday random-o-rama

Could I be more annoying if I told you nothing? Well, I’ll just say that there’s a lot going on here. Not just cleaning/organizing, but fun creative stuff too. I’m still going to be doing a whole lotta posts on organization/process/cleaning… but for today I’ve got a few random things.

I have a tutorial up over at the Lily Bee (a friend of Camp Scrap!) blog. You can see it HERE. So much fun. Stay tuned for more with their fabulous stuff both here and in class (just 4 weeks and 6 days away!)

Above a shot from the studio window. Deciding WHAT to do with my old Ball jars… hmmm…

Next, a shot of the two who enjoy my reading corner the most so far. Though if Becca is there it’s usually for movie time. Princess has just about moved into that chair as a perma-home.

More new – I did a mid-release article (w/2 new layouts): http://www.scrapbookupdate.com/2010/05/20/spring-2010-mid-release-products-report/

That’s all I’ve got to report for today (but hey – 3 new layouts – not too shabby!). Have a happy Friday!