It's Friday and the weekend is officially upon us! It's a perfect 71 degrees here in sunny southern California (no kidding :) I just checked the weather on my iPhone) and it's a crime that I should be indoors at the moment. I have a perfectly good excuse though - my daughter is getting ready for her nap. Which means its a perfect time for me to work on some projects!

And speaking of projects, I'm posting pictures up of the layout I worked on several days ago. One of my favorite manufactures, October Afternoon, makes some of the most gorgeous papers (and since we all know how addicted I am to paper!)  it's no surprise that I reached for their Christmas line when I decided on a line for our 2008 Christmas photos. This particular layout is one of my daughter receving/opening her gifts that year.

We always take a ton of pics during Christmas and this particular year was no exception...Bazzill creates a scrapboooking method called "Lickety Slip" Albums, designed to cut back scrapbooking time by using a pocket system (term I completely coined myself, so don't quote me on this one! LOL) to slip your pictures into 12x12 sleeves -- but what I love about it is that you can still mix and match your 12x12 standard scrapbook pages with the sleeve pages. I think I'm going to incorporate this particular system to document my Christmas photos. Other companies have systems similar to this. I think the first manufacturer to come out with this system is Creative Memories (again, don't quote me on this) a long, long time ago. If anyone knows for a fact otherwise, please correct me! Other companies have since jumped on the wagon including American Crafts and Pebbles, Inc...however, I do prefer Bazzill because their sleeves can accomodate both vertical and horizontal 4x6 photos....I never understood how other companies manufactured horizontal only sleeves; not everyone takes only "horizontal" photos?! At any rate, adopting this system into your existing photo documentation process really helps w/ all those thousands of pictures you just can't seem to leave out of your memory albums. And while my favorite system will always be the standard 12x12 page layout, I too find myself having a hard time weeding down my photos and this is the perfect solution to the problem (because I CAN'T possibly scrapbook every photo I have into a 12x12 layout, single or 2 page regardless!)

Scrappers -- what's your personal solution to all those endless photos you can't possibly leave out of your albums? Do you force yourselves into actually weeding it down? Do you just go ahead and scrapbook it all anyway? I bought this book from Stacy Julian called Photo Freedom several years ago and she has a lot of wise tips on organizing your photos so that they actually make it into your albums. Its a really inspiring book and serves a great purpose for every scrapbooker (begginer or otherwise) out there :) I suggest picking it up if you can. It's especially helpful for those individuals interested in picking up the scrapbooking hobby.

One of my favorite online retailers called Scrapgal was having a 25% off sale on all their Bella Blvd & Fancy Pants products (sale thru 3/21) so I immediately jumped on and participated in some online retail therapy! And here's what some of the mailman brought me yesterday :)

I just can't get enough Bella Blvd! They are in my top 3 most favorite lines. I especially love their Bits a' Bella papers! I can't wait to start playing with all this stuff -- I also ordered a few pieces from Jenni Bowlin, Little Yellow Bicycle, and My Little Shoebox...just some odds and ends for existing projects I'm working on.

Thank you for allowing me to share and for visiting today :) I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

XOXO,

Karen