I tried.  I really tried hard this year, but between travel, uncoorperative printers, pictures in general, etc Christmas cards just aren’t going to happen this year.  I gave it my last ditch effort today but when Costco said I couldn’t pick them up until tomorrow at 11am I quit.  I’m leaving on a jet plane (you’ll thank me later for putting that song in your head) at 6am tomorrow morning and if I don’t take them with me they’re likely to turn into Valentines.  So I called my mom and laughed with her about my catastrophic attempts at printing cards when she finally told me I don’t have to send them.  Apparently I needed my mom’s permission to quit (she’s not big on sending Christmas cards anyway).  She assured me that no one’s Christmas would be any less merry because I didn’t send out cards.  So I did it, I’m officially boycotting Christmas cards this year and going with the “it’s the thought that counts” motto.  So here’s to not putting more stress on yourself than is already neccessary this time of year.  Merry Christmas everyone!  Here’s what you would have gotten in the mail  

I’m playing around with a new technique where you change a photo to black and white and leave a small amount of color in the photo.  I too some pictures of my neighbors playing in the snow the other day and came up with some pretty cute pictures that I thought would be perfect for this experiment.  I used Pioneer Woman‘s B&W Beauty Action did my little color extraction thing then finished it off with her Quick Edge Burn action.  Let me know what you think.

It’s been a bit since I’e posted with my travel schedule.  Which by the way I’m working on a travel blog.  That will likely stay more current since I’m always on the road!  But in the mean time I thought I woudl share with you a few of my new favorite digital scrapbooking sites.  Some of the them have a great freebies if you’re interested in getting started with this fun hobbie.

The Sunshine Girls at Sunshine Studio Scraps have a new kit out.

Here are several other sites that I visit frequently that have great kits, freebies and tutorials to get you started.  Enjoy!

ShabbyPrincess

The Golden Girls Digital Designs

Peppermint Creative

Simply Clean Digi Scraps

Sweet Shoppe Designs

One of the other days was spent taking a walk down memory lane with mom & dad.  We went by their first apartment, first house and the churches they attended during their 7 years here in Memphis.  My dad kept asking me if I remembered but I was 3 when we moved and failed to retain much before the age of 5.  Although we did find out that I had a couple of memories related to dogs that came out of no where.  So we can apparently blame my slight obsession with Tank & Buckeye on Pepper, our friend’s Teddy & Gary’s dog that they had when we lived here, but more on them later. 

While she was here mom brought me a couple of old pictures of the house I scanned into the computer.

This was the house that my sister and I spent the first couple years of our lives.  Surprisingly the neighborhood looks great for it having been over 20 years since we’d been back.  But I’ll be honest with you…mom didn’t have any pictures of the house.  But the old car in front of it kind of makes it look like it might work huh?  So you weren’t fooled by my inexperienced hand in Photoshop?  Well I’ll keep working on it   But here’s what it really looked like sans the attempt to age the photo.

After driving around Bartlett and hearing a few fun stories we met my parent’s good friends Teddy & Gary for dinner.  It was wonderful to see them and get to know the sweet couple I have always heard about growing up but barely remember.  I was getting ready to add the picture of the 4 of them but mom has them   Oh well.  Have a good night!