Super Awesomely Cute Tags

I keep Mishloach Manot pretty simple. Often it's a brown paper lunch bag, with a some chocolate, candy, and a fruit. Oh, and we usually bake some hamantashen. For the last several years, I have tried to make it a little special with a pretty little tag, but I am still all about simple. Some years, I can't get it together to do anything fancy at all.

This year, however, I have made super, awesomely cute, tags. Way back when I first started crafting, hole punchers were my very first tools. They are making a grand come back, and I am glad to see them again. Martha Stewart is really rocking the hole punchers right now (that's her butterfly punch I used). She just releases one winning design after another. But, whatever. She's Martha. That's what she does. Anyhow, these are almost entirely made with hole punchers.






With 2 ways to use them:

With a ribbon:



Or Without:



These little darlings are available on etsy, too.

What about you? What's your mishloach manot approach? Theme? No theme? Homemade food? Or, a plastic bag (that's how I grew up, and I loved it.)

Purim

Seeing as I named this blog People of the Scrapbook, it seems that I should have some Jewish content, and not just pictures of Jews. So, Purim is coming up, which I think is my favorite holiday: It's just fun. It's got a good story, so good I don't even mind listening to it twice. Well, the second one I usually hear about 6 am. That one is less exciting. Kids dress up, everyone's out delivering mishloach manot, and then you get to eat and drink. Oh, and there's making mishloach manot, and baking hamantashen. The kids love it all. It's just plain, good fun.

I was hoping to post my super, awesomely cute tags I made for mishloach manot, but it's rainy today, and way too dark to take anything resembling a decent photo. So, instead I'll share my layout from last Purim. Also, no good pictures of that either. But good enough.

If you read it carefully, you will see that I did not make that scrapbook page till January 2011. Yes, Purim was in March 2010, and I did not scrapbook it till 2011. Here's where I got stuck: There were so many pictures I liked, and I thought I would have to do a few pages to talk about all the different things about the day. But, in a bout of scrapbook productivity, I decided it was getting done, no matter what. So, I just slapped 'em all in one big grid, added a bunch of journaling, some paper to make it pretty, and done. (scrap and slap, I say)

Lists

Here in my home. Nothing is sacred. Everything is potentially the butt (ha,I said butt) of a joke. Sometimes I worry that this is how we are raising our kids, but what can I say? They make me laugh.

I recently made this scrapbook page.



You might need to click on it to read Dave's addition to my to do list. It's at the bottom. This page is not a work of art. It's what I call "slap and scrap," you throw down a photo, or in this case a list, and quickly tell the story that goes a long with it.I threw in a stamp and some patterned paper too, and arranged it all in a nice grid. Memory preserved. Done.

The funny thing is, I realized that this tendency to add to my lists might be genetic. Because Max made an addition to one of my to-do lists as well.



And last week, Sam was VERY angry at me. In his rage, he wrote this note and put it into my bag, so that I would take it out at work, which is at a preschool, and everyone would think that I wrote it:



His anger subsided by the end of the day, and he removed his note before my reputation was sullied.

And just in case you think we only use hand scrawled notes to play pranks on each other, and express our rage, I found this handmade card from Sam, written in 2008:

One Week after Valentine's Day

I don't actually celebrate Valentine's day (if you put the word "saint" in front of things, it's hard to rationalize celebrating it, what with being an Orthodox Jew, and all), but, man, is it hard to be a crafter and not fall in love with all the cute Valentine's themed supplies, ideas, and love stories. And this from a person who does not own one pink item in her wardrobe. But, what can I say? Marketing works like a heart shaped charm.

So here's my NOT Valentine's Day layout:
(If you click on a picture, you can read my journaling. The pictures will make a lot more sense, if you do.)



I was originally thinking of the title "Little Things" for this layout, but everything I wrote after that sounded like a penis joke. That's what being married to Dave for almost 15 years will do to you.

About the page: I am a very simple scrapbooker. I could scrapbook with just plain, solid cardstock, and some paper punches. But, I am trying to challenge myself to include more embellishment without sacrificing my design ideals. This layout is a little cute, but I like it anyway. It's good to leave your comfort zone every once in a while.

For Chanukah I got a new Camera

There's only so long you can look at scrapbook blogs and magazines, and not start to want better pictures for your own scrapbook pages.

As for my old camera, I was tired of having to wonder which buttons would decide to work on a given day. I was not quite ready to delve into the world of DSLR, but I wanted to be able to learn about photography a little bit. This baby, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7, has some manual controls, which is good. I still have the most luck with automatic, which is less good, but I'll deal.

Right now I am just trying to be in the habit of taking more pictures, and getting over some camera related shyness. See, stopping in the middle of the street to take pictures of your feet is, well, a little embarrassing.

Aside from my kids, here is what I like to take pictures of the most. Textures and shapes. Which, like I said, makes me wants to stop and photograph some weird stuff. Here is a sampling. Do not judge based on color and light, because I don't really know how to control those things.





Shabbat Shalom, and back to scrap coming up.

Some Vindication

Even though it's all in jest, I do have some reservations about the last post, so here is a straight up scrapbook post. All joking aside. Seriously. None. Butt cream. Ok, but that's it.

Our Trip to the Statue of Liberty:

Here's what I love about this scrapbooking project. I didn't want to make a mini album, but I had too many pictures to fit onto one layout. And I had a lot to say, too. So, I cut up and sewed some page protectors, and made smaller 6x8 pages to fit in between my 12x12 pages. And also one 4x8 page for more journaling. what a wonderful revelation to discover that I can make pages whatever size I want, and put them all in the same album. How freeing! Also a revelation: That I can sew even though I don't have a sewing machine. I forgot that people did that for some millenia.

So, without further ado: