Blog Goals, Project LIfe 2013, and a Giveaway!

It is hard to believe that it is already 2013, and yes we survived the end of the world, per the Mayan calendar. I don't know about you, but towards the end of the year I quickly wondered if that might be the case, and then I took a deep breath of air, laughed, and just went about my day.

My blog has been severely neglected since mid-November, and I apologize, but I am changing that starting today. You might be asking yourself what has been going on over here in beautiful North Carolina the past two months? Well, I will tell you, and hopefully you want to know, right?  :-) First of all we moved. We bought our dream home and spent most of November packing, negotiating house prices, shuffling around our closing date three times (yes three, sigh,) Thanksgiving, and just life in general. We had so much to pack, and the month just flew by. The first half of December was a whirlwind of holiday choir concerts, packing, moving, packing, moving, packing, cleaning, returning keys, cleaning out our storage unit, cleaning, more packing, and finally a Christmas tree. Then everything was finally in our new house in Rollesville, NC (just 10 miles from our rental townhome in Raleigh.) We unpacked, started to take a breath, and then crash, my hubby totaled our van. He is fine, thank God, but the van is gone and now we are a one car family (at least for the time being.) The same evening the van died (may she rest in peace, ) my parents, nephew, and cousin arrived from Washington State to stay for two weeks. Thank goodness for airport shuttles and family that is totally okay with your house being only partially unpacked. Our family was here, the holidays were wonderful, then poof they were gone. About two days after Christmas I caught a cold and it will not go away, but I believe I am FINALLY on the tail end, but do not judge me because my Christmas decorations are still in boxes in our living room. Anyone else still have theirs in the house? Kind of a long paragraph, but not to bad for 7 weeks of information if I do say so myself.  :-)

Before I get on to Project Life, I have some goals for my blog for the year that I would like to share them with you.

Blog Goals

1. Add a link to my Instagram feed to the blog
2. Giveaways (on average) 1 tie
3. Blog followers up to 200 people
2. Open a Facebook account just for this blog
3. Link the blog Facebook account here
4. Open up a Twitter account
5. Link the Twitter account here
6. Customize the blog and jazz it up a bit :-)
7. Add a personal signature
8. Update regularly with new blog posts 4 times a week, every week.

• Project Life
• Traditional scrapbook layout
• Organization (scrapbooking or otherwise)
• Another project (could be another layout, cards, crafting, home decor, but on that idea)

9. Link up blog e-mail
10. Link my pinterest account to the blog.
*I plan on checking in with y'all bi-monthly to see how I am coming along on my blog goals.

Now on to Project Life, without further ado: 

Title Page

Week One (January 1- January 6, 2013)

Left Side

 Right Side

Supplies Used:

All of the cards and most of the embellishments are from the first-ever Studio Calico Project Life kit! It is so great and I just loved working with it. Here is a close up of all of the greatness that comes in this one little kit.

I am really loving stamping a lot lately, so much fun to play around with them and be creative. I also used a lot of digital brushes. Most of the phrases were Ali Edwards digital brushes and some words I typed in using American Typewriter font. I did a ton of stamping on these spreads, using largely the Studio Calico Project Life Stamp set, card kit stamp set, and the main kit stamp set. I also used the Noah outline stamp set sold by Studio Calico and a food stamp set also by Studio Calico.

• Studio Calico Project Life Kit for January
• Studio Calico Block party Card kit
• Studio Calico Block Party Main Kit
• Becky Higgins page protectors Design F for left side and Design A for right side
• Becky Higgins date stamp
• Versafine in Onyx Black
• Stayz-on in black ink
• American Crafts adhesive 
• American Crafts precision pens in black, .01 & .03 tips
• American Crafts slick writer in black
• Veneer trees, hearts, circles, and cameras Studio Calico
• Noah outline stamp set Studio Calico
• Tim Holtz tiny attacher
• Digital Brushes-Ali Edwards So Love You, Game Time, and Go Outside 

Now on to the Giveaway!

I am giving away one American Crafts Valentine Dates stamp to a blog follower, to enter, please follow the blog and leave a comment here letting me know you did so. I will draw one random winner on Friday evening (or more likely one of my kids will, ) and I will post the winner next week. **I will ship anywhere**


Happy Tuesday and thank you for stopping by.

xoxox
Toni