Home again, Home again

Thanksgiving was abundant and busy for us as we traveled to Virginia. Our action packed trip was made in Henry's car, affectionately known as Bruinhilda because she can be a bit witchy at times. Recap: 1200 miles, 25 relatives, countless hugs, extravagant feasts of the traditional and shell fish variety, and ridiculously cold weather for this Florida flamingo... We are grateful for a safe and happy journey.

Kaleidoscope Your Layouts

Thanks to digital manipulation we can create scads of gifts and projects from layouts already assembled in our scrapbooks and photos we have on our computers. The samples above show a layout from my scrapbook inserted into the Kaleidoscope Kreator 2.0 and transformed into a completely different layout.

The generous folks at KK gave me a copy of this software when I was active as a designer in the industry. They now have a new version scheduled for release in January. http://www.kaleidoscopecollections.com/ The software was fun and easy to use. They usually use just photos in their samples but I loved the look of doing an entire layout. Plus I feel like I get more bang for the effort since I can keep one and give the other away.

Other gift ideas

My friend Paula sent me a link today for Scrapbook.com. I have no affiliation with this site but I immediately loved a couple cool things there. First they have a fun Christmas contest/promotion going with prizes and great deals. http://www.scrapbook.com/blog/view/133083.html

There's also a great blog entry about making holiday gifts from scrapbook supplies. I really love their photos and the instructions make it seem doable. http://www.scrapbook.com/blog/view/130843.html

Hopefully we'll clean and decorate our place this week. We had every intention of starting before Thanksgiving, but just couldn't put that in motion. Our neighbors up the street have already done scads of outdoor lights, blow up figures, and other festive regalia--we just can't get going that early. Perhaps we'll leave ours up until Valentine's day....smile.