Hey, everyone. I don't know where to start writing this post. I found out tonight that Anita passed away today. For those of you who don't know who Anita is, I encourage you to click on the link and read about this amazing woman. Anita was only 36 and she leaves behind a husband and three beautiful children. This has hit me really hard and honestly, I think I've been sitting here in shock since I found out.

I do, however, want to leave you with a post for today. I think, if anything, knowing Anita has taught me that I can't waste a single minute that I have on this planet and that I need to grab hold of what's important to me. This blog is important to me. It's my outlet, my connection and so many other things.

Now, on to my tip for today:

I know that a lot of you have kids, grandkids or maybe even just know some kids. I have kids and one thing I've realized is that having kids seems to mean you go through a lot of plastic sandwich bags. It seems like everything you send to school gets put into a ziplock bag. Of course, then those sandwich bags get lost or thrown away which just means filling up landfills. So, I have a little tip for you. Instead of sending in those soup labels, boxtops, lunch money, book order forms, etc in ziptop bags, save the envelopes that your bills and junk mail come in and send them in those. That way, you're not spending money on so many bags and you're reusing something that you would probably just toss into the recycle bin anyway! Plus, once the teacher is done with them, a lot of schools have recycling programs so the envelopes get recycled. Double bonus!

And, that's my tip for this Saturday. Now, what's your challenge? I think we're going to go up to the bedrooms today. I want you to take just a few minutes and look at your nightstand. Just yours, don't worry about the hubby's, wife's or anyone else's. Just yours. Is it filled with things you love? Or is it like mine gets sometimes with a stack of books that's waiting to fall over any minute, dirty cups and sometimes..ewww...dirty tissues? If it's in the second category, I want you to take care of anything that doesn't belong there. Then, run a quick dust cloth over it and put it back together with only the things you love or need on it.

And that's it! Easy-peasy and I will see you back here on Monday with updated pictures of "The Wall" and my menu plan for next week!

So, what to do when you're sick and curled up on the couch? Scrapbook, of course! So I sat down today and finished my final layouts for Anita. I have never, ever done anything in a landscape layout so this is new for me. On top of that, I made it a 2 page layout!


I love these snowflakes!


I don't know if you can tell from this pic, but the 'o' in snow is a snowflake!


The completed layout!

Now, I just have to get these all envelope'd up and get them sent off to Corinna!

I finally got the time to work and finish the 3rd layout for the lovely Anita. This one is really simple, but I am realllly happy with how it turned out. What do you all think?

Since I started this blog, I'm not sure that I've actually ever posted any layouts. That's probably because I haven't done any serious scrapbooking in about 4 years because of going back to school, my marriage ending and then moving and continuing with school. Well, no more excuses! I decided that the time had come to get back into "the habit" and right at that same time, Corinna came to us girls and told us that she wanted to help make a scrapbook for this lovely woman who is battling cancer. You can read Anita's story over at Corinna's blog. Since I am in school and really rusty at scrapbooking, I only took about 8 pictures to do. Some of the girls are doing way more than me, but it is so very much worth it.

I would love to be able to deliver the album to Anita, but I'm not 100% sure where she lives other than in Ontario. I do live less than an hour from some parts of Ontario, so maybe I will get lucky enough to be able to see her open this.



The pictures aren't great, but I'm hoping that she really enjoys the layouts.