Jen Caputo

It's National Scrapbook Day!!! What should you do?

Well I know there are only about 10 billion things you could be doing today as everyone involved in the Scrapbooking world is having events and sales and giveaways and what not.

But I thought I'd post anyway and give you my list of "Jen Caputo Sanctioned NSD Events".

Haha.  :)

No really.. I'm gonna. (Please excuse all the self-promotion)

Up first, go buy my new sketches!

Grab them here. Sample layouts here:

Grab them here. Sample layouts here:

And don't forget about my sale:

 

Shop here: Studio Jen @ Scrapbook Graphics
Sale Dates: May 1st - May 5th 11:59PM CST
Discount: 40% off everything from me w/coupon jc-nsd0830

 

Also, have you seen the Impressions of Motherhood collection at Scrapbook Graphics?

 

I created this template for it:

And here's a few layouts my team did with my template and the rest of the kit:

April

Heather

Stacie

Now you can go ahead and buy this kit (a $15 value) for only $9.99 right here. 

OR, you can take your chances at winning yourself a copy as the Studio Girls will be giving away the kit all day, check out the schedule:

Click here to see all the freebies you could get by hanging out at Scrapbook Graphics this weekend.

Alright, next up - have you seen the totally new re-designed Songbird Ave site?  Or that incredible kit the girls created with all their previous guest designers? Check out this list of designers that came together to create this kit:

Shabby Princess, Dianne Rigdon, Gina Miller, Robin Carlton, Carrie Stephens, Nancie Rowe-Janitz, Amy Wolff, Jenna Desai, Kate Hadfield, Jacque Larson, Michelle Coleman, Shabby Miss Jenn, Susan Bartolini, Kate Teague, Leora Sanford, Meredith Fenwick, Jan Crowley and Janet Phillips

100% of this month's profits will benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

So go visit Songbird Ave, get this gorgeous kit, and know that every penny you use to buy this kit will go to an incredible cause.

Here is a layout I created with the kit and with my templates - sketch collection #25

I didn't manage to get a new episode of Digital Scrapbooking TV up yet, but if you haven't visited and watched all the free tutorials yet, head on over there today!

It's Sale Time!!!!

National Scrapbooking Day is this weekend and of course we love to have sales and new products to celebrate!

Shop here: Studio Jen @ Scrapbook Graphics
Sale Dates: May 1st - May 5th 11:59PM CST
Discount: 40% off everything from me w/coupon jc-nsd0830
Coming soon: 2 new sketch collections!

Yup, i'll have 2 new sketch collections up in by the weekend so check back soon! Here's a sneak peek at a layout by Brandi Barnes using one of the new guys!

 

Pretty cool huh?

Ok, warm weather... I'm ready for ya!!!

Yard work is a horrible horrible thing... who decided to make all kinds of stuff fall off of trees anyway?

Adam and I spent all day Saturday bagging the leaves that the previous owners didn't clean up last fall.  It was really windy which didn't make it an easy task.

Anyway, here's an attempt at showing off our outdoors work.

This is the backyard last summer I guess, they were the pictures the previous owners used in their real estate ad. They took the swing which we were pretty bummed about. Oh well.

And here's what we have now... look, it's raining... and is going to freeze tonight, I had to bring my plants inside... arg. We still have the big round picnic table - it's back in the right corner - you can't really see it in this pic.

I think it's pretty nice for a backyard :)  But i'll let you in our plans to make it even better. See those big bushes right next to the deck - those are getting ripped out this week to be replaced by a Hot Tub!

And what used to be a giant birdhouse (you can see it in the middle of the yard in the second picture) is going to be a fire pit. This one in fact:

And we have two of these (I call them princess chairs - they are the best ever!!)

And I also picked up one of these

And lots and lots of these

So yeah.. it's safe to say I am ready to relax in my backyard... I'm just waiting for the weather to agree :P

Breaking In the Craft Studio

Adam was in Michigan this weekend so I had 2 whole days to myself to break in the craft room and get things organized a bit more... I worked soooo much!  I have giant garbage bags of stuff to throw out and huge piles of other stuff to put on eBay.  So, I'd say at the moment the studio is like 85% organized. Woohoo!

One of the biggest undertakings was getting things like buttons, brads, eyelets, flowers, etc. organized by color.  And once I did that, I needed some place cool to put them all.  I knew what I wanted in my head but couldn't find it in any of my typical places (Ikea, Amazon, Target, Overstock).  But, I did find these shelves at Target in the bathroom section that worked pretty darn well.  (I think it's meant to go over your toilet.. LOL)

Excuse the bad lighting, I just took the picture around 10 pm so there wasn't much to work with.

And a close up:

I have 3 jars in each color: buttons, flowers, and other stuff (like brads/eyelets/clips/etc.)  The spice jars are from Ikea.

Inside the cabinet is all sorts of spray paints and glues and stuff. The doors are perfect to hide this not so pretty stuff.

And to truly break in the room, I made a few cards!

I painted the image with watercolors.  The scallop punch is by Martha Stewart... I don't actually remember who made the stamp images, I think the swirly one is by Art Impressions.

Same scallop punch by Martha Stewart, stamp images are by The Angel Company. Stamped the images in chalk inks, flung shimmery watercolors over the image.

The Angel Company Images colored with colored pencils. Scallop scissors.

The Angel Company image.

So while I was working my butt off in the studio, the cats were lounging on their favorite spot of the couch. And in a few mere seconds, they went from cuddling and  bathing each other...

 

.... to an all out war...

Goofballs...

What would you do?

If a 4 foot tall bird wandered into your living room?

Now, if you've been following my blog, you may remember Charlie.

I scrapped about him here:

And shared a picture of him watching us eat breakfast here:

But his most recent behavior is definitely a first.  Charlie lives down at my parent's place on Hutchinson Island. He became very accustomed to being fed bait fish and all these years later, he's so reliant on my parents and their neighbors, that he pretty much never leaves.

The other day, my mom went out to take the trash out and left the door open, she got sidetracked talking to a neighbor, and my dad, sitting in the living room watching the evening news, was greeted by Charlie, looking for dinner.  Charlie is so used to being around my parents that my dad, getting up to grab the camera, didn't even phase him.

Anyway, I thought those of you who remember my old posts about Charlie would like to see how he's doing and hopefully find it as funny as I do that he now feels like enough a part of the family to walk right into the living room.

House Pics

Lots of you have been asking for pictures of what I've been doing with the house and since i had a house warming party this weekend I thought I would take a few pictures while I had the camera out.

So, let's start with the bedroom.  This is what it looked like before:

And this is now:

The bathroom before:

Now:

The Kitchen before:

Now (we didn't do much except to take down that nasty wallpaper and paint):

Living Room before:

Now (we desperately need artwork in this room):

And this is Kitty in her favorite spot:

And how about a few more of the craft room? hehehe  My custom table top arrived on Friday and is now installed - LOVE IT!

I don't think you've seen this angle yet.  Here you can see all my rulers! :)

If you notice the box in the first picture next to the expedit... well it's another expedit! Those tall ugly shelves are going away and will be replaced with a full wall of expedits!  Yay! 

 

Now, who wants to come over and clean my kitchen while I lay on the couch and watch HGTV all day?

More progress

Nothing is really in it's final place as I'm just trying to get boxes unpacked (about 5 more to go... LOL).. but I thought I would update.

The rest of the cubes showed up and so Adam installed the desktop for me (which at the moment is basically just a piece of plywood).  I did decide to go ahead and order a custom full size self-healing matte to cover the entire work service to finish it off which is why I didn't buy nicer wood - it will be here on Friday!!!

Tonight I attached those hanging  metal pails and other side (by the window that you can't see) I screwed in a bunch of cup hooks and they are currently holding my collection of rulers (yes I said collection of rulers... can you tell I'm an Engineer?)

The ink pads are all over the table because I decided to spray paint my ink pad holder :)

Rock

Credits here.

They announced the lineup for Lollapalooza '08 last night! (half of the above pictures were taken at Lolla '07). It's going to be awesome! We already bought our tickets about a month ago so it's nice to see what our money is getting us :)

A few of the acts I'm over the moon excited to see this August:

• Radiohead
• Wilco
• The Raconteurs
• Broken Social Scene
• Cat Power
• The National (my current fave!!!!!!!!!!!!  Listen to Fake Empire - it makes me swoon)
• Yeasayer (another one I'm starting to get really into - listen to 2080)

I'm ready to rock this summer!

I'd call this progress....

I've been desperate to get my craft studio back in working order but with so much else to do, it just wasn't a priority.  As a reminder, this is what it looked like just a few short days ago:

Lovely huh? We spent about a half hour cleaning the room earlier in the week but the rest of the progress we've made so far was totally done on Sunday (minus about an hour prep time on Satuday)

So that means in about 12 hours we:

1. Removed shelves/drapes
2. Stripped the wallpaper border
3. Taped up the molding
4. Cleaned up tiny bits of wallpaper that were everwhere
5. Applied first coat of paint
6. Assembled first Ikea Expedit (seen in 3rd picture)
7. Applied second coat of paint
8. Removed tape to find quite a few imperfections
9. Touched up said imperfections
10. Removed ugly rug
11. Swept Floors
12. Washed floors
13. Assembled second Ikea Expedit (seen in 1st and 2nd pictures)
14. Hung shelves (seen in 2nd picture)
15. Moved Crop-In-Style cubes back into their new home.
16. Unpacked boxes up to the point you see in the pictures.

Granted there is a TON more to do, a lot of things i want to do to pretty it up, and of course, there is still a TON TON TON of purging that must be done.  And organizing... but come on, this is pretty good for 12 hours right?

 

So, to give you the big picture, those weird looking cubes in the middle of the room will become my craft island.  It's kind of a make-shift Pottery Barn project table but I'm using what I had... I think for the cost of the supplies in the long run, you could have just gotten the Pottery Barn table but I already had 9 of these cubes so I only had to buy 3 more.  I'm going to get a table top surface to span them all and then am thinking about a full size self-healing mat for on top of that - would be cool huh?  The new desk is going to wind up being about 40" high or so, meaning I plan to stand while working.  Although I also bought a tall stool for when I want to sit and work. The top two cubes next to where I will be working are the ones that have the 3 drawers in them, below them is the open cubes where I will store my 12x12 paper. Lesser used things will be stored on the back row of cubes.

One other thing I did this weekend is to make a new ribbon holder for my spools and it took forever but I looooove it! You can see it in the top picture kinda... it's in the top right shelf of the bigger Expedit.. ok you can't really see it that well in the pic so I will share detailed pics and a synopsis of how I made it later this week. 

After we moved those two big ikea drawer things into the room (on either side of the expedit in picture one) Adam kept saying how ugly they were and I really didn't think they were that bad but now as I look at them I really dislike them sooooo... am gonna have to come up with an idea to replace them... maybe another expedit and just have it cover the whole back wall? Ideas?

In Love

So have you seen the new paper packs that the Queen of Quirk has been putting out at Oscraps?

I'm totally in love with them!!!!  Someone needs to give her a paper line (or fabric line) because I would love the decorate my house in them!

Check out some of these bad boys:

 

Aren't those the most delicious papers you've ever seen?  Here's a layout I just finished with the last one:

New DSTV Episode, Layouts, and Products!

Wow, I actually have all kinds of scrapbooking news for once!

I posted the new episode of Digital Scrapbooking TV last night! It's my fave ep yet! We create this layout shown here, from start to finish! Beginning in photoshop and finishing under a pile of paper scraps.

(Those are my brothers adorable kittens)

To create this layout we used one of my brand new products - Photo Grids!  These are awesome for hybrid and digital scrappers a like!  These are the ones we used:

Buy 'em here.

This is the second in the series of photogrids - they run $5.25 per collection but if you buy all three sets together, you save over 37%! (So basically you get one for free and then some!)

Buy all three right here.

Here's a digital layout I made using the rectangle grids in set #1 (and a template from Janet Phillips for the right-side)

Let me know what you think of all the new stuff!!!!

Two free templates from Me via Creating Keepsakes Mag!

Ohhh I'm so excited!!! A few months back, the incredible Jessica Sprague emailed me and asked if I would create a couple of templates for Creating Keepsakes magazine!!!  Of course I said yes and the templates are now up and free for everyone!

Go check them out right here.  Jessica even has a video tutorial up to show you how to use them!

yay, first party.... kinda...

So last week I had my first dinner party - 7 people to eat chicken noodle soup (homemade from scratch by me and totally delicious - my Great Grandma's recipe which my uncle doesn't think I could possibly match but I totally can) and to watch Lost. But tonight,  there was about 30 people to eat pizza and play Poker.  (our monthly poker party at work).  And it was so exciting!!! To have 30 people in your house, all saying things like "wow, what an awesome neighborhood, fabulous location, love your space", etc.... so cool :)  One even said "I'm redesigning your kitchen in my head"... which is funny because that's exactly what I've been doing since we moved in (hopefully that meant he saw the potential and didn't just think it was hideous) :)   I painted the kitchen and I loooooove the paint color.  But it looks horrendous next to my fugly cabinets.  HATE THEM!  So I can't wait till we save up the money to gut the kitchen!!!!  It's gonna be the best thing ever!

Anyway, basically I just wanted to say how good it feels to have 30 people over, all who have nothing but fabulous things to say about your brand new house!  YaY!! 

Can't wait till my family comes to visit so they can gush too (hint hint mom and dad and jimmy)

Ok, goodnight :)  Love yous!!!!

One Happy Cat Owner

Sorry for the commercial like post but I'm just so excited!!!!

As any cat owner knows, the worst part of owning a cat is cleaning up their litter box. I've tried for years to avoid this task as much as possibly by purchasing a Litter Maid.  And that worked great when I only had one cat as it lasted almost 3 weeks between cleanings. But when Mr. Meowmers showed up, all of a sudden the container was full in like 5 days. (He goes to the bathroom a ton...)

Well when I realized I was moving into a house with an actual laundry room (not just a closet), I decided it was finally time to give the CatGenie a try. I was a little worried that it wouldn't work as great as advertised or that the cats would be too scared to use it. But a week after we set it up, I realize I will NEVER EVER have to clean a litter box again!!!!!!!!

So what this thing is basically a toilet for cats.  Instead of clay letters, they are washable plastic granules.  The cats use it like normal, but a few times a day (however many you program it for, once up to four), it cleans itself. This thing hooks up both to a water line and a drain. The liquids drain straight out as the cat is going. The solids get collected in the cleaning cycle, pulverized, and washed down the drain. Then the whole box fills with water and the granules are scrubbed and then air dried. The whole cleaning process takes 30 minutes (so you run it when they are sleeping, mine is set to run at 2:30 am and 2:30 pm) and when it's done, the box is crystal clean and brand new and there is nothing to clean up ever again!!!!

Seriously guys, I was skeptical... but both cats took to it within 3 or 4 days (I kept the old litter box next to it but didn't clean it and since they want to use a clean box, they switched pretty quickly). And it works absolutely perfectly. And setup wasn't even that hard!  Start to finish was less than an hour and that included the plumbing hookups!

Anyway, if you have cats and a laundry room, get this thing!! You won't regret it!! I'm so smitten :)

You can also just hook it up to a toilet in a spare bathroom  but then someone actually has to flush the toilet when it's done cleaning and most of the complaints in Amazon's review section are from people who hooked it up to the toilet and not it's own plumbing/drain in the laundry room.

Wow, what a boring post huh? LOL....  Buy a CatGenie!!!

Lebowski Fest Pics, I scrapped, and a freebie!

Hm.. so out of those three things, what order do you want them in?  I'm gonna guess not the order I'm putting them in but if you want the freebie, you have to look at my Lebowski Fest pics first :P

An Uli Kunkel/Karl Hungus and "Bunny's" toe with a White Russian

 

Napoleon with the Queen in her d'undies, and a Dude

   

A Walter (the best Walter!!) and a Dude.

 

And for the sake of my reputation, I voted not to show you my entire costume.. if you can guess what it is based on this picture then you are a goddess/god/my hero. If not, please don't try to figure it out... heheh The guy I'm posing with is of course dressed as The Dude's landlord and behind him is another Walter.

And if you have no idea who any of these people are or what the heck I'm talking about then do yourself a favor: Run to the video store, grab a copy of The Big Lebowski, make yourself a White Russian (or four), and get ready to laugh your booty off at the best movie ever made!!! (But you may have to watch it two or three or six times before you can really truly appreciate it)

Read what the Sun Times had to say about the fest here.

Ok next subject.

I scrapped!!!!  Our friends had a Sushi Party a few weeks back where they basically spent a ton of money on raw fish at the Japanese market and everyone rolled their own sushi. It was so fun and so delicious!

Credits: Amy Martin & Amy Wolff's 5255 Kit. Kate Hadfield's Date Tape, Template by me, Paper tear by me, and the dimensional frame is by Gunhild Storeide.

Ok and of course I'd made a template before I made this otherwise I'd never have gotten it done so you all can have it!  Enjoy!!

Grab it here.

Phone's Ringing Dude

So this weekend is Lebowski Fest!!! Yup, a few days devoted to celebrating the greatest movie ever filmed :)

The fest started out last night when we all went to the Portage theatre to see a Creedence tribute band followed by a late night (11:30) screening of the movie.

Tonight is bowling, costume party, trivia contest, and white russian drinking fun for hours!!!  I cannot wait!  There were a few people in costumes last night but tonight they're going all out.  I will totally share my pics when we get back, you guys are gonna laugh so hard!!!

I wanted to send out a giant congrats to my friend Janet and her family who welcomed their new baby girl, Katelynn into the world yesterday! I can't wait to meet you Katelynn!! I know you will be just as adorable as the rest of your family!

Before I go, I wanted to let you know that Audrey is retiring all of her goodies at Oscraps and is having a big sale to celebrate!

 

 

Go stock up!!!

Back from vacation

Boo... coming back to this Chicago winter pretty much sucks.  But vacation was great :)

Since I didn't really know where we were going when we left, I thought I'd fill you in that we did indeed go on a Princess cruise which traveled to St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and the Bahamas. We had 4 days at sea so it was one of our most relaxing vacations ever!  We went with Adam's parents, brother, and his brother's girlfriend.

I didn't upload most of my pics yet but here are a few of my faves so far.

These were all taken at Coral World in St. Thomas.  Loved this place! So cool :)  Adam lost his wallet in the cab on the way there.. ay yi yi.  (He managed to get it back later that afternoon some how)

Up close and personal with the Pelican in the pic above.

 

My favorite part was the Lorikeets.  This is Adam's brother - they loved him!

And Adam holding a pair.

I have lots more pics to share but they are still on my camera... that would be the 40D that Jan made me so jealous of I finally had to up and buy in St. Maarten ;)  Thanks Jan.. hehehe

So I haven't scrapbooked in about 2 months or more. I miss it so much!!!  I just feel guilty everytime I sit down since there is so much to do around the house. Does it ever end?

Before I leave for vacation

I have to remind you that you only have a few days left to pick up the February Songbird Avenue kit.

The girls teamed up with Susan Bartolini to cook up something extra sweet for Valentine’s Day! Checkout the gorgeous “Open Your Heart” kit. 100% of this month’s profits will benefit the Minute Man Arc Early Intervention Agency.

Be sure and pick it up before the end of February!

See ya next month ;)

I know you guys won't believe this...

I know it's going to be a stretch to believe this... but I'm going on vacation tomorrow.  hehe..  Come on... you know how much I love vacations :)  This one I haven't really had time to get pumped up for with all the moving stuff but it will be soooooo nice to get away from this insanely freezing/snowy weather.

To tell you the truth.. I don't even really know where we're going.. I know we're going on a cruise.. but I don't know the line or the ports... somewhere in the caribbean I believe... either way, it should be fun and relaxing!

I've bought so much stuff for the house lately that I thought I needed to treat myself and since Macy's is having a big sale and I need to keep my platinum card membership up ;)  I decided to buy some dresses. I loooove dresses, wear them almost every day.  And since green is my favorite color, how could I possibly have passed these two up?

 

That dress on the right is gonna look way better on someone with curves I think than it does on that skinny model ;)

Alright, gotta run! See you all in a little over a week!  I'm gonna switch up my deal of the day items before I go so don't forget to check them out!

There's a Cat in my Wall

I've been told I need to update y'all :)

So, as of yesterday (Friday), I no longer have an apartment!!!!!  I'm 100% home owner, 0% renter!  The big move was on Thursday and we finished cleaning out the fridge and storage closet last night.  Since we spent Thursday moving instead of being romantic for valentine's day, we're going out tonight (Yes I'm aware it's already 9:30 PM  but we had a late lunch).

As the title may have indicated... I have a cat in my wall. Mr. Meowmers is absolutely petrified of the new house.  He hasn't even been on the main floor yet. The basement is finished but the area around where the water shutoff is, is still open.  We plan on putting a cabinet door with some hinges over it but we didn't realize we needed to do so in a big hurry... ay yi yi.  After spending about 45 minutes looking for Mr. Meowmers, we finally hear him crying... in the wall!!!!  We coaxed him out and covered the hole with cardboard and then slid a chair in front of it - no way he could get back in there right?  Well this morning when we woke up, again, we went on a hunt to find him.  This time we spent probably an hour or so, checking all over the house, not even thinking to look in the wall again... but as a last resort we checked, and sure enough he was in there.  The cardboard and chair hadn't moved though and he's a BIG cat!!! So I have no clue how he got in there.  We have since definitely secured the hole and are pretty sure there's no way he can get in... fingers crossed. 

As a contrast, check out Kitty... who couldn't possibly be any happier with the new house.  She is rolling around on every surface, purring like a maniac, and has totally mastered the whole house. She loves it here.  Ok, maybe she doesn't look thrilled in this picture, but trust me, she is!

Alright, one more view... check out the current state of the craft room... LOL Yup, I can see lots of projects happening in this room soon :P 

Don't worry I have a plan and it's gonna be awesome!

Ok, time for dinner! We're gonna try out one of the fun places in downtown Arlington Heights to celebrate our new city (and valentine's day!)