Gift Idea #4 -- Christmas Countdown Display

This has to be one of my favorite projects. I had so much fun creating it! The Everyday Display makes a perfect backdrop for hanging this two-page set of 12x12 Page Prints. As you can see in the detailed photo below, the top page is printed with the numbers; the bottom page is printed with the hidden holiday icons.

There's two ways you can recreate this look ...

Order the completed pages -- Both of these 12x12 Page Prints are available for purchase on my Digital Center website here. Login ID is cmphotomemories@gmail.com and the password is photobug. Click on the My Projects tab at the top, and then Page Prints Create/Edit. Select the two Page Prints and click on "Order" from the menu above the photos.

When you receive your prints, follow these instructions:
1. On a flat surface, use an X-acto knife to carefully trim three sides of each numbered box.
2. Using a scoring tool, score the side of each box where the flap will be folded back.
3. Use a hole punch to clip one corner of each flap, to make it easier to open.
4. Turn page over and run adhesive down each side and around each box. Carefully place over second page. Let dry before hanging.
5. Hang for display either on Everyday Display magnetic board or other display option of choice.

Create the Page Prints yourself -- Using Storybook Creator Plus software and your choice of digital papers and elements (I used 'Tis the Season and Primary Christmas) ...
1. Open a New Project for 12x12 Page Print. Fill the background with paper of choice.
2. Insert 25 rectangles of various sizes. Use the Arrange tools to align the box edges evenly at the top, sides, and bottom. Fill each box with paper of choice. NOTE: If you plan to hang your Christmas Countdown on an Everyday Display, leave the bottom 2.5" open to place a quote or insert family photos. This section will hang below the Display's ribbon.)
3. Insert 25 text boxes and place one on each box. Fill each text box with numbers 1-25, varying the color, size and fonts as you wish. (I used Swirly Digital Alphabet set for all the numbers)
4. Add a quote to the lower front section.
5. Once you have the boxes aligned exactly where you want them, right-click on the page thumbnail and select Duplicate this Page.
6. On the duplicate page you just created, replace each number with a holiday icon sticker, adding shadows to each sticker as desired. Center each icon within each box. DO NOT make any other changes to this page, as you want the flap on Page 1 to align perfectly with the icon boxes on Page 2.
7. Once both pages are finished, click on the Order button on the Home menu ribbon. Follow the instructions to upload to your CM Digital Center account or create a new account.
8. Once you receive your Page Prints, follow the instructions in the section above to cut and adhere the pages together.

You then can finish your display with holiday cards you've received, your own family holiday card, holiday ornaments or other holiday items.

Hope you enjoy this project as much as I do!

Halloween Cat Cookies

I couldn't resist posting these Halloween Cat Cookies that I made last night -- aren't they adorable? And so easy ... here's the recipe:

1 box chocolate cake mix

1 c. peanut butter

1/3 c. water

2 eggs

M&M candies

Preheat oven to 375F. In large bowl beat peanut butter, water, and eggs. Gradually add dry cake mix. Roll into 1" balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten each ball with bottom of glass dipped in sugar. Pinch out 2 ears at the top of each cookie. Press fork on both sides of face to form whiskers. Add M&Ms for eyes and nose. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Week #3 -- Holiday Recipe Book

This is one of those gifts that the home cooks in your life will absolutely cherish. They will be thrilled to have all their favorite holiday recipes in one place -- no more searching through scores of books, no more loose papers, no more smudged ink from the inevitable spills.

For the Recipe Book I created above, I made each recipe card digitally using StoryBook Creator Plus, Primary Christmas, and Jewel Christmas digital kits.


But the real star in this gift is the PicFolio Minutes album. Available in black or cream, it holds 24 4x6 recipe cards, and the magnetic strap creates a perfect easel display for your recipes. What I love most about this project is that my recipes are standing up, easy for me to view, and protected from splatters.


Additional deas for a Recipe Album gift:

• Using StoryBook Creator Plus, make easy blank templates and print them off onto white cardstock. You can then hand-write the recipes onto the cards, or print off a batch, tie them together and include with the PicFolio Minutes album as part of the gift.
  
• Use PicFolio Milestones Kits that include decorated and pre-cut, lined sheets perfectly sized for the PicFolio Minutes album


• Use other decorative or blank recipe cards


• Create dividers for Holiday food categories such as Menus, Entrees, Appetizers, Side Dishes, Desserts, Beverages, Brunch, or Food Gifts


• Include photos of all your favorite dishes either on the opposite page or digitally added to the recipe card itself


• Include blank cards for writing family traditions and memories that relate to your collection of recipes

Week #2 -- Holiday Organizer -- FREE Download!

[Update 10/27/09 -- Oops! The free download referenced in this post is no longer available. However, it's super easy to make your own 4x6 cover and dividers using the Primary Christmas collection, available in both digital and traditional paper!]

My friends think I have way too much time on my hands to make something like this, but honestly, I cannot live without some sort of holiday organizer. Yes, it took me a few hours to come up with the templates and instructions, but it will take YOU only 15 minutes to make!

Having all those notes and bits of paper of events, ideas, gifts purchased, receipts all in a neat little organizer that's small enough to tuck into my purse ... well, it just makes the holidays so much more enjoyable for me! So every year I make a new organizer -- and every year my design gets smaller, more portable, and more efficient.

This year's organizer has to be my all-time favorite, and I hope it will be yours too. It can be used from year to year. It costs only about $1 plus a few sheets of cardstock and printer ink. It's completely portable, has room for lots of notes, pockets for holding receipts and such.

The BEST thing about this is that I'm even giving you the templates to print, so from start-to-finish, this project will only take you about 15 minutes!

In my humble opinion ... this truly is an AWESOME GIFT for yourself and each of your friends. Makes a great little hostess gift too, when you're not sure what to bring someone who's invited you over to dinner.

(Be sure to double-click on the pictures to see a larger view).

SUPPLIES & INSTRUCTIONS:

• 4x6 Photo Wallet from the dollar store
• 4 sheets 110 lb. white cardstock
• color printer
• 4x6 index cards
• rotary or other straight 12" trimmer
• 1-1/4" circle punch
• adhesive
• Free Printable Download, available here

Once you assemble your Organizer, just fill the remaining photo sleeves with blank index cards that you can use for keeping track of all your notes and receipts.

I deliberately kept this Organizer pretty open so you can customize it to suit your needs, but here are some of the items I like to keep track of in my Holiday Organizer:

PLANNER:

Calendar for Nov/Dec/Jan

Event info

To-Do lists

BUDGET: (yes, having a budget helps!)

Holiday spending budget for gifts, decorations

Holiday savings or lay-a-way plans

Price comparison notes

Receipts for gift purchases

GIFTS:

Card for each family member with sizes and preferences

Extended family gift ideas

Neighbors, teachers, service providers

Handmade Gift ideas

GOODIES:

Details about cookie exchanges

Lists of family-favorites I don't want to forget

Food Gift ideas

MEALS:

Thanksgiving dinner menu

Christmas dinner menu

Quick meal ideas for busy days/nights

Family Favorites

Freezer guide

NOTES:

Travel plans

Decorations -- indoor & outdoor

For you digital folks, I used the "Primary Christmas" digital kit. Both the digital and the paper kit for "Primary Christmas" will be available from my website on November 1st.

Week #1: A new twist on an old idea

I'm always looking for new styles of wall calendars, and I love to give them as gifts. So I was thrilled to see Creative Memories introduce it's new, fully customizable 12x18 Wall Calendar templates.

Even better, there's a twist ... When the month or year is over, tear off the perforated calendar grid, then tear off the perforated page, and you have a perfect 12x12 page to slide into a 12x12 side-loading album sleeve or adhere to a 12x12 album page. True to CM commitment to quality the calendar is printed on beautiful high-quality, semi-gloss paper, and yes, it's photo-safe.

Each calendar grid already has the month, date, and week text fields filled in and a blank text box for your own custom entries such as birthdays, events, or reminders. The Pre-Designed pages give you a starting point for each month and allow you to enter photos OR text OR both in each individual day. If you double-click on the image below, you can see where I entered some events.

Each calendar is only $20.99 but from Nov. 1-15 you'll receive a 20% discount
when you order two or more calendars. This is a priceless, memorable
Christmas gift at an AWESOME price point that just about anyone can afford!

You will want to start having fun creating your calendars now, and then be ready to order as soon as the ordering window opens on Nov. 1st! You'll have a choice to send calendars to you for mailing or directly to your recipient.

As always, if you need any assistance, I can walk you through the steps in person, by phone, by email, or via an online demonstration!

INSTRUCTIONS: There are TWO ways you can make these custom calendars:

Free version (fixed photos & elements):

1. Download free StoryBook Creator 3.0 software from my website here.
2. Download free 2010 Calendar templates here. (select one on left for StoryBook Creator 3.0)
3. Import pictures from desktop into SBC3.0.
4. Drag and drop photos into frames, add text.
5. Register for Digital Center printing account here.
6. Upload and order calendar (beginning Nov. 1st).

Purchased Software version (fully moveable/editable photos & elements):

1. Download StoryBook Creator PLUS 3.0 software from my website here.
2. Download free 2010 Calendar templates here. (select one on RIGHT for StoryBook Creator PLUS 3.0)
3. Import pictures from desktop into SBC+3.0
4. Drag and drop photos into frames
5. Move, edit, add or delete photos and elements to suit your needs.
6. Register for Digital Center printing account here.
7. Upload and order calendar (beginning Nov. 1st).

Backing up your photos ... what's working for you?

I was shocked when I read these stats from the 2009 InfoTrend PhotoPublishing Summit and Digital Imaging Conference:

• 39% of consumers have lost some (30%) or all (9%) of their digital images due to a hard disk crash, virus, or accidental deletion.
  
• Facebook has over 14 billion photos, with 2 billion photos uploaded each month. Yet 70% of Facebook users don't know that Facebook saves only low-resolution photos.

So I'm curious ... Do you have a system of routinely backing up your photos?

Or are you one of those that has a system but just forgets to follow through on it?

Or maybe you don't have any kind of plan or system at all?

Please comment and let me know what's working for you, what's not working for you, or even if you just don't care at all about backing up your image files. I'd love to know what you think!

Top 10 Handmade Christmas Gift Solutions

One of my favorite blogging topics is handmade Christmas gifts and home decorations. I love to scour the blog universe for gift ideas. I bookmark pages, print out ideas, and have sticky notes all over the place in the months leading up to Christmas.

I will plan out my ideas, deciding what gift will be perfect for each person. By October I'll start to gather supplies, and purchase the items I need.

But by November I find that I am knee-deep in work events, school activities, planning the perfect Thanksgiving dinner for my extended family, and then our annual holiday travel plans to Texas.

See this mess?
It's a jumble of a half dozen or so paper projects I started last year and either didn't complete, or I completed and wasn't pleased with. By December 1st, I was drained and discouraged and running out of time, so I gave up.

This year I'm taking on the handmade challenge a little differently.

I'm going to blog about 10 gift ideas that are SIMPLE and EASY and QUICK, because if I've learned nothing at all, I know those are the only kind of projects I can handle. And something tells me there are one or two other Queens of Good Intentions out there besides myself (could that be you?)

So be sure to bookmark, subscribe, or add to your RSS feed my blog ... and stay tuned for my weekly series of Christmas gift ideas!

I love my job.

Custom Twitter Backgrounds Made Easy

I am taking an online course by ATI Attraction Marketing on how to effectively use social media to market your business (I'm learning some fabulous tips!), and one of their recommendations was to make full use of your Twitter background to promote what you do.

This tip is great for business-owners like myself, but hey ... it's perfect for anyone on Twitter! What a great way to express your personality, add a little flair, and tell your Twitter followers a little bit about you.

So I did a google search on custom twitter backgrounds and was shocked at some of the prices being charged, and I've heard that it can take days to have the project completed.

Well, I created my Twitter background in just 20 minutes, and I thought I'd show you how easy it was to pull together using my favorite digital software, StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0.




1. Create a New Project with custom size of 7"wide x 10"long. Recognizing that the twitter posting page takes up the center of the screen, I measured an area to the left and slightly behind the main panel and decided that this was a reasonable size to start with. As it turns out, it looks great on my screen.

2. Drag and drop elements, insert text boxes and shapes. Play 'till your heart's content.

3. Group all the elements and save. Right-click to "Save Selection As" a .jpg image at 96dpi.

4. Upload to Twitter and select a background color that blends nicely with your background image.

That's about it. Seriously! 20 minutes and I had all the materials at my fingertips because I use this software every single day.

StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 -- it's NOT just for scrapbooking!

(All product links direct you to my personal Consultant website where you can learn more about the products and have your purchases shipped direct to your door.)

Shadow Play

I just read a cute blog post from a sweet friend of mine, Jingle, about her Mom's 5'oclock shadow.

I have always loved shadows. Shadows from buildings, shadows from clouds moving across the lawn, Peter Pan's shadow, shadows of the trees, shadows of my own Mom, shadows of my kids.

I think shadows can be an especially poignant photo to include in a scrapbook layout. Here I included a picture my shadow holding my daughter's hand in the backyard. I've used this photo in a number of different ways, but this is a page layout from a digital photo book I made filled with inspiring quotes and scripture.




I encourage you to go play with your camera and take some shadow photos. Another fun idea would be to take a shadow photo of the same subject at every hour during sunlight and string them all together in a collage layout. Could be fun! Post them somewhere and leave me a link ... I'd love to see what your favorite shadows look like!