The World According to Jeanne: What Do You Mean, Layouts?

Yes, you read right! I'm back, with new layouts to share. I haven't gotten many pages done in the last year, what with all of our house renovating and moving, so I have to make up for lost time!

All four of my babies went back to school a couple of weeks ago, and I harassed them until they agreed to let me take their pictures! Caroline is a freshman in high school. I know, it's crazy! Here is the layout I made for her.

My little Mattie-Moo is in Kindergarten! He had very "mixed" feelings about going back to school. He had such a good time in Pre-K that he wasn't real sure about leaving. After a bit of a bumpy start, he's doing really well. Thank goodness!

Anna-Banana is officially a middle schooler! She's at the same school, Catholic High, but in the middle school building. She's got a locker this year, and lots of different teachers. So far, so good!

I once read somewhere that it's perfectly okay to use the same design over and over. Good thing! This page is about Matt playing on the swingset at my grandmother's house. This swingset has been enjoyed by Bienvenu kids, grandkids and great grandkids since the 1940's!

We went to Gulf Shores in July, and in less than a week, Jack went from being petrified of the water (despite 5 years of swimming lessons) to being a boogie boarding master! I had this same picture enlarged and printed on canvas for my studio wall!

I wanted to include lots of pictures from our trip, so I used a divided page protector (American Crafts, I think) to add them in. I then added this page of pictures to his album right after his "Slick Lizard" layout. Pretty cool! I will probably go back and add little captions to the individual photos.

This layout for Anna is the first one that I made in my new studio! I wanted to keep it simple (shocker, right?), and ease myself back into the scrapbooking groove!

Finally, finally, finally! We've been in the blue house since June 4th, and my studio is finally taking shape! I've moved my desk, three tables and lots of supplies to my new space. It must be said that my new studio is about 1/4 the size of my old one. But it's all good! The new studio is on the first floor, right next to the kitchen and living room, so I can sneak in time to play while dinner is cooking or the kids are hanging out. My other studio was on the second floor through the attic and totally isolated. Don't get me wrong, it was over 400 square feet of scrapbooking bliss, but it was almost impossible to get up there unless the younger kids were with me, and then they usually "distracted" me to the point that I couldn't really get anything done. So this new studio is working out great!

This is the where I stash my cardstock and patterned paper. It still needs a bit of organizing, but it's okay for now. I love the canvases on the wall! I want to go all around the room with my favorite pictures of the kids and Gil.

More paper with jars of goodies on top.

Here is my Cricut table. I spend lots of time here!

I love all the jars of buttons. To me, they look like glistening jewels! I plan to hang the fishy canvas in the boys' bathroom, and the butterfly is for Anna.

Baker's twine is totally hot in the scrapbooking world right now. It comes in lots of gorgeous colors, and I'm all into it! It can be used to tie buttons, to stitch with, to tie around packages . . . I love it! The spools fit perfectly into sugar dispensers. I got these at Walmart for $1.00 each! The computer isn't cooperating, so I can't give you a clickable link, but I ordered the twine at whiskergraphics.com.

I hung my beautiful stained glass stars in my studio windows recently. In the old house, they hung in the kitchen windows next to the table where we ate our meals. They are so pretty! One day I'd like to learn how to make cool things with stained glass. Anyway, when the sun shines through the windows, the stars come to life! These come from Kurt Knudsen's etsy shop.