Goodbye 2013

New Year's Eve always makes me feel sentimental, then regretful and then hopeful. And then all of those things over and over. I promised a friend I'd go out with her tonight, even though I'd rather start 2014 nice and rested.

This was a big year for us in our family with the addition of Madison. She is one charming little girl. She's sweet and funny and super cute. She's loves to laugh and smile. She's pretty awesome.

I've had lots of awesome adventures too - I still never got around to posting all my staycation pics. I've been a terrible blogger. I read 69 books. I scrapped about 150 or so pages. I cut back on karaoke (lame!). I got to see some friends I haven't seen in ages - Amy and David (in the same weekend even!). I did some awesome designing at work - some of my best stuff ever. I went to Comic Con, I got to climb into a giant X-Wing made of Legos and I cried lots of tears - happy and sad - over Doctor Who.

Penny and I are taking lots of walks thanks to my little fitbit. I don't have very big goals for it yet, but it's helping me to be getting moving more. (I should be out for a walk now! D'oh!) I also have to say they have great customer service - I lost my fitbit and wrote to them and they sent me a new one!!!

I have amazing friends and family and I already have some great things coming up for 2014. I hope you all do too!

And before the year ends, here's a look at the rest of my year in scrapping. Thanks to those of you who still visit!

Christmas Eve with the kiddos 2013. 

Maddie's Christmas list. I think Santa brought her just about everything on it!

Starting to eat solid foods - this was avocado. 

 These photos just crack me up!!!!

At a baby pictures screening. 

This is a different Madison making a sad face!

 And Penny making a sad - but cute - face.

 All of the kiddos and Santa.

Some fuzzy hoodie scrapping. Yes, I match a 6 month old. 

That's me in a tree!

And some pics from the Intrepid museum in 2012.

Scrapped. Ordered.

This is a first! I have this year's scrapbooks ordered from Shutterfly! This year, the fam's getting a catch up book with pages from the end of 2009 through 2011. The last two books were Derek's first year and the Disney book, so there were lot of things along the way that never got shared.  I had to do a lot of Christmas scrapping for these books - but otherwise I had t-ball games, dance recitals and birthday parties ready to go.

The Shutterfly deadline is always looming there in December, and being done early, I wonder what I'm going to do with myself now!

Here are my latest pages...

Templates were a life saver for all these Christmas pics! I used some by Janet Phillips as well as Traci Reed's 365 Unscripted templates - which are just awesome - from Sweet Shoppe.  I plan on using those for lots of other events that I want to catch up on! 

Kylie went to see Justin Bieber this summer.

We took Maddie to get her ears pierced. She really was a trooper and only cried for a few seconds. 

I love Maddie's baby jeans. They are so cute.

Crafting with the girls - now I can finally catch up on Christmas 2012.

Target - it's my hobby.

This is a random childhood memory page about the time I had a lemonade stand.

Some scrap therapy after a lousy day.

Penny and me on Thanksgiving.

So for my Process class at Big Picture - we had to do a Project Life style spread so I just scrapped a bunch of stuff that happened during the week. Kind of fun. It happened to be a pretty cool week with lots of fun stuff going on! I don't think I'd want to do this every week.

Taylor's 10th birthday party. I think this was another class assignment.

Fun with Newspapers

Work has been super busy lately, but it's been a lot more fun and even productive. We've kind of reorganized into a mega-advanced news team. We all sit near each other and we're sitting right outside the offices of studio directors. We meet everyday to share what we've got going on and it makes it easier to pool resources, share ideas and brainstorm. We probably have more work to do now - but I think we've been doing some great stuff. If you want to check it out, check out the Design Studio's Facebook page. I am seriously jealous of what my co-workers do!

Here's some of what I've been working on...

 This was the result of someone walking by my desk and saying wouldn't it be cool if the the lap was shining for this IKEA story promo. Sure!

Since we've been working together more, I've had the opportunity to work on some of our other papers. Common core has been a big story for most of our papers. 

We had a lot of coverage of the 50th anniversary of JFK's death including multiple pages inside. As a history major, I like working on this kind of stuff!

I've also been dubbed the studio's official space nerd after these two pages. So much fun to work on! Probably two of my favorite things I've done at the studio.

That used to be the Seaside Boardwalk. So sad! This is a page I did for the Press just this Sunday.

And this was another crazy idea that made it to print! The Vineland paper had a story about a mayoral recall and we wanted to make a really big deal out of it. I think it worked! I was told it was one of the best selling Saturday papers of the year.

What time is it?

I am obsessed with Adventure Time so it just makes me happy to see I'm not the only one who loves this cartoon!

Toys R Us in Times Square had two big Adventure Time displays with awesome toys. I really like the Lady Rainicorn with her babies!

And the one thing I really wanted to see in the Macy's Parade this year. Nope, didn't get to see it. Must have been making bacon pancakes or something.

I found these cool dudes to hang on my tree at Target.

And this one is from Hallmark!

And I'm really hoping Adventure Time has another Christmas episode filled with cozy sweaters and more secrets of Ooo. (I almost wrote Ood. Wrong show!)