Good-bye........Hello!

Monday 10 November 2008 at 8:08 pm Our blog is on the move. We are saying Good-bye to this blog and Hello to another. If you want to see new updates and exciting pictures of our family you will find them at http://bretnlaura.blogspot.com/. Click on the web address and it will take you to our new blog.

First Place Photo

Wednesday 05 November 2008 at 8:21 pm
Bret (psst... he doesn't know I am posting this ) won first place in a photo contest at work with this picture that he took in his parents backyard a couple weeks ago.

I thought it turned out really cool so I decided to share.

Happy Halloween

Sunday 02 November 2008 at 7:25 pm We had a wonderful Halloween this year. Maddie was a pretty princess and Max was Thomas the Train. The kids were so excited because they got to get all dressed up twice. Last Sunday, Grandma and Grandpa Nicholson had a Halloween party at their house. Everyone wore costumes, we ate soup and played games. We had a great time.

For Halloween we went to Manti for Trunk or Treat. In Manti, they block off Main Street and everyone comes with their cars and passes out candy from the trunks. The kids had so much time playing with their cousins and collecting lots and lots of candy!

School Pictures

Tuesday 21 October 2008 at 12:55 pm Max got his pictures back today so I thought I would share them. I think they turned out very cute. He really loves school. Starting tomorrow, I am going to be helping out in his class once a week, I am excited to go and be there with him to see what his Kindergarten world is like.

Snow in October!

Saturday 11 October 2008 at 2:34 pm We looked out the window this morning to find snow! Max and Maddie were so excited. They couldn't wait to get out there and play in it. As soon as Maddie saw the snow she ran to get her coat. The kids had a great time, playing in the snow. Maddie thought it tasted pretty yummy and despite both Bret and I telling her not to eat snow she would sneak a bite whenever she could.

Bret and Max decided they wanted to build a snow man before all the snow melted.

We had a lot of fun rounding up things to decorate our snow man. I think he turned out pretty good.

We are really glad we build him when we did because now it is mid afternoon and all the snow is melted, but our snow man is still standing .

Recipes

Monday 06 October 2008 at 7:20 pm Last week, I participated in a recipe collaboration. It was put together by a very talented scrapbook designer named Pamela (digitreats). She made a 4 x 6 recipe template card and asked for people to use her scrapbooking kits to design recipe cards with some of their favorite recipes, then she put them all on her website to download. You can have them printed like you would a 4x6 photo, then put them in a brag book or photo album and voila, you have a new recipe book. She is allowing them to be given away as gifts or sold for charity (but not on the internet). Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the post to download, there are 8 downloads. You can pass these along to others but do not email them, refer them to her site to download them. I contributed these 5 recipes:

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So, go download, and enjoy. I looked through them and while I won't print all 328 of them, there are some really good recipes in there.

Digital Scrapbooking - Where do I begin?

Wednesday 01 October 2008 at 10:45 pm I have had several people ask me questions about digital scrapbooking. I have promised a few people that I would send them and email with some "How to begin" instructions and some links to some good sites to download free supplies. So I started writing emails and I decided it would be better to put it on my blog, so that if I get questions in the future I can refer people back here.
First, I will start by telling you the reasons I love digital scrapbooking.
1. Photos - If you have a digital camera, your photos are already in digital form, also you can cut, crop, rotate, flip, resize any photo over and over again.
2. Flexibility - Everything is digital so you can use and reuse the same supplies over and over, Also you can make the pages any size you want (8.5 x 11, 12 x 12 8 x 8).
3. Quick and Clean - For me it is much quicker than paper scrapping, and you don't have the mess. Often times I will leave it up on my computer and work on it whenever I have a chance during the day.
3. Cost - While it is true you can spend a lot of money on digital scrapbooking supplies, you don't have to. I have hundreds of kits, templates, and other supplies that I downloaded absolutely free. Besides the software I use, I have spent nothing to make a ton of fun pages. I just had our 2005 album with 40 pages printed, bound into a book and shipped for $30. Although I have two other years complete I am just now having them printed. I think it turned out really good, especially for the price.

Ok. Now I am starting to feel like a salesman . I wanted to explain what I like about it for those of you who are still on the fence.
Now, how to begin. The first thing that you will need is software. I use Photo Shop Elements. You can download a free 30 day trial here. They have just came out with Version 7 so you can get version 6 at a really good price right now. I saw it on Amazon for $50. There is also PaintShopPro which is similar to PhotoShop but I have never used it. Those are the 2 most popular. I would recommend one of these photo editing software as opposed to a software specifically for scrapbooking. I started with software called Scrapbook Factory and I was able to create pages but I got frustrated with how slow it was and when I tried out PSE, I realized that it is much more flexible. (For example, I could add shadows to my pages which made them look a lot better) Just for comparison. Here are a some pages I have done, the top 2 are using Scrapbook Factory and the second 2 are PSE






The next thing you will need is supplies.
You use your own pictures obviously, but what about backgrounds, papers, elements, etc? Most of these types of supplies are sold in "kits." Many digiscrap designers will offer free kits as a way to get you to like there designs so you will buy the kits that they sell, there are other designers that design as a hobby and offer their stuff free because they are generous. Some designers have full kits free to download and some will offer new kits all the time for a limited time or they give you pieces of the kits little by little so you have to follow their blog to get the free kits.
Some of my favorite designers that offer a lot of free kits for download are:
Shabby Princess, she has 22 free kits to download!
Summertime Designs, you have to scroll through her blog to get them all, I think there are 15 or so, very cute stuff.
A Work in Progress Designs by Vicki, I think I counted over 40 free kits for dowload.
Peppermint Creative gives away a free kit per month.
That should be enough to keep you downloading forever and then you can check DigiFree when you can. It is a search engine that pulls from the blogs that give away free stuff and lists them altogether in one place daily.

The next thing you want to do is look at some tutorials that will show you how to get started.
Here are some good tutorials to begin with.
Shabby Princess Tutorials
Misti Cato Designs Tutorials

The last basic supply that you will find helpful especially at the beginning is templates. These are a basic guide, or page design. Some of my favorite designers that gives away free templates are: Racketty Scrappety(she also has some links on her blog for good sites to download free fonts), Kenzi Dawn Designs, and Templates by Erica.

To give you an idea about what a template is, here are a couple templates that I designed and the pages I made with them.





Well there you have it! I think the best way to learn is to just dig in and explore, that is what I did and I am having a lot of fun. If anyone needs help or has questions, I am happy to help.

Happy Birthday Bret!

Tuesday 23 September 2008 at 10:33 am I hope you had a great birthday Sweetie, I love you!

Last Saturday was Bret's birthday, he turned 29 years old and the Cougars helped him celebrate by beating Wyoming 44-0! Grandma Anita and Gracie were in town for the weekend and Ben and Christina came over and we had ice cream and cake. The kids put the candles on the cake so they were a little crooked but he managed to blow them out

Last week Bret went to Palm Beach, Florida for 3 days on a business trip. During his down time he was able to spend some time on the beach and do some snorkeling. Because of all the tropical storms they have been having the water was pretty stirred up and not as clear as usual, but he had a great time.

On Thursday night we were talking on the phone as he was walking on the beach. While we were talking, he saw a huge sea turtle come out of the ocean and crawl up the beach. He ran up to his room to get his camera so he could get some pictures. The turtle walked up the beach and found a place to lay her eggs. The first picture is the turtle digging down into the sand and the second is turtle's trail back to the sea the next morning.

Wii Weekend

Wednesday 03 September 2008 at 09:38 am Last weekend we went up to Bret's parents condo in Midway. It was great to go and spend time with Jodi and Neil and Grandma and Grandpa Nicholson. Max was so excited to play the Wii. He played it a lot while we were there. As I am sure I have mentioned in several blogs, Maddie loves to do anything her big brother does, she is becoming quite the little copy cat. She had a great time playing the Wii with her brother (even though she wasn't really playing, she didn't know that !) Here are a couple pics Bret took of the kids playing in their PJ's.

P.S. I decorated a couple more blogs if you want to check them out. I re-did Joni's and then I decorated the Codella's blog.

First Day of School

Friday 29 August 2008 at 1:40 pm Max started school on Tuesday. He was so excited! He had a rough day the first day, he always kind of struggles with new things. But the other days he has had a lot of fun. He loves his teacher Mrs. Stowe. She is great and has been very understanding and willing to work with Max. She put him in a class with another child that can read and they are going to start a reading group so that they can work on their reading level while the other kids are learning the basics. Today he sat down with me at lunch and told me all about what he does at school. His favorite thing to do is the art projects. Here is a picture from his first day. He is also sporting his new glasses. Lately I can't get him to smile with out scrunching up his face .

The band aid is covering a sore on his head that started as a mosquito bite but he kept picking at it.