wright now

1  |  if only they made this in my size...wonder if Victoria will wonder why Mommy was trying to squeeze into her sweater?

2  |  bought this color and the orange-ish color for myself on Black Friday. have i mentioned how much i LOVE turtlenecks? would have definitely bought more, but i already have a black, grey and cream and i don't care at all for that blue. maybe i should count exactly how many i do have now.

3  | wonder if my Bobbi Brown lipstick feels a little snobbish against this lip gloss? i have long hair and every other lip gloss i've tried is sticky and gets "stuck" in my hair. will be ever so sad if they ever stop making this.

4  |  due to Green Mountain Coffee no longer making Kona pods {boo hoo}, I have had to switch. smooooooth. yes, very smooth. we also like this. 

5  |  been driving Gordon's Tahoe this week as he took my Jeep by the dealership for an oil change and tire rotation. ummm, yeah. nice. though nothing will ever compare to my most favorite ride ever, my dear Suburban that I drove for many years. but we won't get into that as i may start sobbing. but this ride feels pretty darn good.

Did you get it?

Wright Now instead of Right Now? 

Monika Wright.

 Am I a goofball or what? 

Don't answer that.

What are some of your Right Now's?

52Photos | cup

my 52Photos capture

For a girl that didn't drink coffee until a few years ago, I've grown to love, LOVE, LOVE a hot, steaming cup of coffee. More than once a day. I prefer a porcelain mug over a stoneware mug, so when Gordon brought home this new cup, I wasn't sure it was for me. I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore, but he seems to know what I'll like more than I do for myself. I love that. And him. Oh, yeah, and my mug, too.

next week's theme

in my bag

the wrap-up

I had not posted a 52Photo in such a long time, so I e-mailed Lisa just to make sure I was on track. I wasn't. Oddly enough though, I had taken this photo yesterday morning, sharing with my Instagram and Facebook friends my new favorite coffee cup. And here's the Sticky Bun recipe.

planner . organizer . mini album | my mind's eye

It's Mini Albums with Monika time again over with my friends at My Mind's Eye. I hope you'll have a chance to hop over and check it out. I couldn't decide if this was a planner, an organizer or a mini album. See that large grey brad and the decorative tape in the upper right hand corner you can't see here? Big boo boo's. I hole punched my cover, which had already been embellished, on the wrong diggitty dang side. Grrr. Double Grrr.

So I did what any crafty Mama would do...cover it up and pretend it never happened. And I kinda like the decorative brad peeking from behind the crocheted doily. What boo boo?

After counting it all up, I believe I've used paper and embellishments from over sixteen different My Mind's Eye collections in this mini album. No worries, though, there's a PDF with mini tutorial and complete supply list to help you recreate one of these cuties for yourself on the MME blog today.

ornaments | the mini album

While your tree is up and decorated, remember to snap a few pics of your most favorite, treasured and oldest ornaments that make up the story of your family's keepsakes.

Once you've done that, you'll want to print out these free journaling card downloads. Trim them and then record your stories before slipping them into a 4x6 photo album for a simple way to always have those quirky recollections as to why "this" ornament is even in your family's collection.

On my agenda for the day...snapping a few more photos to add to our album. I'll probably get a little teary thinking about the stories that go along with ornaments I'm photographing. When we unpacked our ornaments to add to the tree this year, I remembered why I am so thankful that we take the time to make homemade ornaments with the kids each year.

Luckily, I have little notes I've written that are included in the baggies that I use to keep our handmade ornaments together which makes my job easier as I record details and dates. Some of the notes are even written in Zach's handwriting. Yep, I shed a tear. Or two. Maybe more. So, this year it's a must that the girls write notes about our ornament making sessions so that years from now I can tear up again.  Here's our ornament making session with Zach and Ruth while they were in town before Thanksgiving. He kinda, sorta made sure we made ornaments. Makes me think that maybe he actually liked the time we spent doing that. We used this salt dough ornament recipe, if you'd like to make some with your kiddos.

NOTE  |  I wanted to share this free download with you again. I noticed that there was a ridiculously large amount of traffic coming to the blog from Pinterest. One Pin alone has been re-Pinned over 1200 times. Yes, I said 1200 re-pins from just one Pin. Here's the original post from 2010.

cyber monday mania

Have you begun your holiday shopping?

Gordon and I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon and were able to finish up 90% of our gift purchases for the girls. I had the great idea to hide those packages in the bins emptied of their Christmas decorations that we store in our crawl space. They will never, ever think to peek there! Now why didn't I think of that years ago?

the wheelwright shop

designed and built by Papa for the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center 

in honor of his parents who met while their families lived in Cades Cove

black friday sale

While you're relaxing on the couch letting those Thanksgiving leftovers digest and settle before you head back for {another} piece of Pumpkin pie...hop on over to the shop and browse. With the coupon code BLACKFRIDAYETSY you'll receive 15% off your total purchase. Yes, even custom and personalized art prints.

Click here for...

|  mini books & journals  |  

|  seasonal & holiday art prints  |  

|  kid's art  |  

|  family & home wall decor  |  

|  love & marriage  |

|  custom & personalized art  |  

|  cool craft supplies  |

Don't forget to use coupon code

BLACKFRIDAYETSY

at checkout for your 15% discount!

he's 21!

Happy Birthday to my first born child. My only son. The light of my life for so many years.

 1991

And then came his sisters, whom he adored.

2005

And they smother with him with love, snuggles and adoration whenever he gives them a chance.

2012

I love you, Zach. And I happen to adore you, too.

happy thanksgiving

december gallery | write.click.scrapbook.

It's official.

Sneak peeks of December's write.click.scrapbook. Gallery layouts are on team members' blogs today and will be featured all day over on Facebook as well. Full reveal of all the scrappy goodness will happen December 1st. Oh yeah, you're going to see lots and lots of My Mind's Eye and the All is Bright collection on my layout this month!

Can you guess what this month's theme might be?

proud mama

A whirlwind weekend that revolved around a 4-day visit with Zach.

+  Lots of home-cooked meals.
+  Too many homebaked desserts.
+  Lots of playtime for the girls with Zach and Ruth with leaf sledding, video games, board games,
    bedtime story reading, snuggle time, arguing about who gets to sit next to Zach on the couch
    and at meal times and tent-making...this morning as they ate their breakfast under the
    blankie tent.
+  A few tears shed as they realized that Zachi wasn't home for good.
+  So much laughter.
+  Overheard conversations.
+  Super quick photo shoot.
+  Marathon salt dough Christmas ornament making session. Said photos will be present in my
    December Daily even though it happened in November. Scrapbooker's prerogative.
+  And a birthday party for my first baby who turns 20 on Friday. Here's where you're free to
    comment and tell me that I couldn't possibly be old enough to have a 20-year old child. Thank
    you very much.

And I just found out last night that Zach and Ruth celebrated their one-year dating anniversary...aren't they cute!

Hoping you were blessed with a weekend as full of happiness as ours was.

leaf sledding with big brother

handmade holidays 2012 | blog hop with the twinery

Welcome to the 2^nd Annual Handmade Holidays Blog Hop

Calling all crafters! We’ve gathered designers from some of our favorite manufacturers to show you ways to create something from the heart this holiday season. This 3 day Hop includes over 60 stops with inspiration brimming from every corner. Explore all of the thoughtful and beautiful handmade gifts you could create for the holidays, all in one place, during our second annual Handmade Holidays Blog Hop!

I'm so glad to have you all here with me today and had so much fun crafting and creating with the awesome punches and scissors from Fiskars. Here's the perfect gift wrap idea for those on your list that like to sneak a peek before Christmas Day...ahem, not that I ever did anything like that. Okay, maybe I did.

Here's how you can recreate this same project for yourself, using three of my favorite shades of The Twinery baker's twine.

1. Using the Ornamental Large Squeeze Punch from Fiskars, punch multiple ornament shapes from patterned cardstock.
2. Wrap several of punched shapes with Marigold baker's twine from The Twinery to mimic the shiny gold ornament tops you already have hanging on your tree, using everyone's favorite craft scissor.
3. Wrap gift box with coordinating colors of baker's twine {Maraschino and Ocean are seen in sample} in a criss-cross pattern stringing your desired number of ornament shapes on your baker's twine as you wrap the gift box.
4. Layer the ornaments embellished with the Marigold baker's twine to the top of your strung ornament shapes using dimensional foam dots as seen in photo below.

And your finished! Wow, what an adorable greeting card this would make as well!

you should have arrived from the blog of Diana Gonzales

your next stop on the hop is with Gretchen McElveen

To sweeten the Hop, we’re offering a prize for you! For every comment you leave on the blogs in the Hop, you’ll be entered to win a prize pack from one of the participating manufacturer sponsors! Use the Rafflecopter widget on the Clearsnap blog to gain extra entries each day: http://clearsnap.blogspot.com/

3 spools of winners choice $48 value 

Visit The Twinery for a complete list of blogs and leave a comment on each by November 27, 2011 at 11:59 PM PST. Each day we will be sharing a brand new list of blogs with brand new projects for you to explore, be inspired by, and create from!

sei | guest blogger

Repurposed clearance bin canvas with die cuts, washi tape and some jewels from the December Club SEI Scrapbooking Kit...as seen on the SEI blog where I was the Pop-In guest blogger yesterday.

Love that vintage Santa die cut!

2,190 days

Happy 7th Birthday to our vivacious, energetic, spunky, sweet Victoria Monika. And she's a pretty darn good hugger, too.

How can it be that 2,190 days have flown by so quickly, Baby?

Thankful For | A Mini Album Download

'Tis the season to be thankful.

Today I'm going to share a cute and quick mini album project that I shared at The Crafting Chicks during their Gratitude Challenge and involves the whole family. Well, you'll be doing the crafting, but the whole family gets a chance to record their thankful thoughts in their own handwriting. Here's what my mini album looks like...

...and here's how you can create this little cutie yourself. Gather your favorite patterned papers, embellishments and washi tape, I used several collections from Indie Chic by My Mind's Eye, download your mini album pages and trim, and also round up your favorite embellishments, adhesive and a length of twine. Your download is sized to print on a 12x12 sheet of patterned paper. If you don't have a large format printer, you can also use this letter-sized "thankful for" download.

After trimming your mini album pages, line up the bottom edge of one page {the one on top} and the top edge of another page {the page on the bottom} and apply your washi tape so that half the tape is on the upper page and half the tape is on the lower page. Smooth the tape to adhere together and flip your page up to align another page beneath and repeat the taping technique again and again. After all pages have been joined, trim the excess washi tape from the sides of your mini album.

Use one of these metal rings to organize your washi tape rolls like I do!

These close-up shots of the front cover and inside front cover show more detail. You'll see that I embellished the twine that wrapped the inside cover with a paper doily and a chipboard sentiment for a finished look.

See how the tape joins the mini album pages together? So, so easy and these days, who doesn't have at least a roll or two of washi tape in their crafty stash? To finish off the front and back covers, I used more washi tape going from the front over the pages and then to the back cover to form a binding. I finished it off with a floral cardstock sticker. 

I hope you and your family enjoy these downloads and have a moment or two to record your thankful thoughts. When I created a similar project a few years ago, my then teenaged son even participated, which made his Mama thankful. 

Find more journals to help you document your thankful thoughts and grateful moments.

thanksgiving

Yesterday kicked off Thanksgiving Week at write.click.scrapbook. and it promises to be filled with great ideas and tons of inspiration. Just like every other week, I know, but it bears repeating.

| banner download |

veterans day

a girl's best friend

sei | guest blogger

I was recently invited to return to SEI as a Pop-In guest blogger. I've had the privilege of being a guest blogger on the SEI blog before, so it was a nice surprise when they remembered me. I shared a Holiday mini book using their Club SEI December kit and sharing with their fans how to use their scrapbooking supplies for something other than layouts.

Told you it was good stuff. The die cut accent pack is awesome, the paper is perfect for the season and there's even a song note fabric sheet included in the pack. Hmmmm, what could I make with that?

Drop in and check out the rest of the mini if you'd like.

thankful for | featured at the crafting chicks & a giveaway

The Crafting Chicks are hosting a Thanks a Day Gratitude Challenge and I shared this Thankful For mini book created with the Indie Chic collection from My Mind's Eye and a free download. It's so, so easy...just print, trim and add some washi tape and you're finished creating and ready to record your thankful thoughts!

Stop by and enter the giveaway for either the Gratitude Journal or the 13x19 House and Family Rules print in your choice of 14 colors! Remember, only entries left on this post eligible to win.

project life?

I have been toying with the idea of somehow incorporating the concepts of Project Life into something that would work for me without setting myself for those feelings of being behind. My idea is to document when I want to, not worrying about recording each and every day of our lives, each and every week of our lives. What I do want to include are those words of kidlet wisdom that I soon forget, handwriting samples, drawings, snapshots that might be blurry but that tell a story. You know, our lives. On our schedule.

I have such a stack of papers, bits & pieces, tickets, programs, drawings and such that would fit well into scrapbook albums for the kids, in their school albums or in our family photo album, but somehow they are not there. Instead they are in stacks, kinda organized but not really, ready to be placed in the proper albums and layouts created when there is time to play.

I'm still working on the size issue, not knowing if I'll go 12x12 or 8.50 x 11, but do know that I plan on using what I have in my stash for the embellishments. Having said that, I did purchase some 4x6 and 3x4 Project Life cards from Amazon because I'm a sucker for grids and the price was right. 

top row | My Mind's Eye stamps and decorative tapes

bottom row | stamps, EK Success punch and washi tape

top row | stamps Today Was, scallop circle, Martha Stewart punch, Studio Calico wood veneer camera

bottom row | washi tape, baker's twine from The Twinery, McGill tag punch

All created in a span of about 20 minutes and keeping it clean and simple which allows me to journal, add a small photo or even embellish a bit more if I so desire. You can find more Project Life inspiration from my teammates on the write.click.scrapbook. blog, too. 

Becky Higgins even has Free Stuff she shares with us. Oh, and there are tons of other awesomely awesome printables out there on the web as well. I created some 4x6 and 3x4 Project Life cards for write.click.scrapbook recently but used mine on a layout since I'm not a Project Lifer. Yet. Still thinking, not 100% committed, but leaning toward making it work for The Wright Family.

Your thoughts?

welcome wool sweaters

love it | statistics

Although I've only posted one other 'love it' reflection, I decided that I need to do this more often. And no, I'm not a fan of statistics and really did not love the class when I took it for my college major in Marketing, but I thought the title would get your attention. Did it work?

one

Welcome to my 800th post! The I Love It All blog has over one million page views and 1300+   followers. Thanks for reading and commenting and pinning...makes me smile! I'm still giddy that you want to sit awhile with me as you drink your morning coffee.

two

If someone were to have told me that I would have had the number of sales in my Etsy shop that I fulfilled for the month of October, I would have rolled on the floor laughing my not so little tushka off.

Seriously? I guess there really are people out there loving it all and I continue to be humbled by their, and your, support of my little shop. As a thank you, use the coupon code BEHAPPY for a 20% discount on your purchases through Friday, November 2, 2012 at 8pm EST.

three

There are 75 pounds of paper on the way to my house {aka I Love It All headquarters} so that I can continue cranking out those Gratitude Journals are so very popular. The Supersized Journal I've been working on creating will soon be available, but I'm not sure how many of these I'll be able to stock as they take considerably more time to create than this one. I'll make the announcement when they're ready on Facebook, too. 

four

Unrelated to this post, but I'm totally going to make it work by saying I love this scarf so very much that when we were at Target to pick up Isabella's prescription for Strep Throat {yes, again} I picked up two more. One will be in Oma's stocking and one will be used to embellish a Christmas gift for Nana. I know that Oma doesn't read my blog, so I feel safe reporting this news, but Nana I'm not so sure about. She has her iPad now and is getting pretty good at getting around on it. {Hi Nana, are you out there?} 

found online and in stores | best $10 I've spent in a long time

And there's still time to enter this giveaway!

one adorable baby | momenta

I had the honor of creating a few crafty projects for the Momenta booth at CHA Summer 2011 and I forgot to share. Here it is, one big, layered, chunky, full of sweet goodness mini album for one adorable baby.

For the cover, I used the Top Note Die from Stampin' Up and lots of cute Momenta epoxy stickers.

Love this photo of layers and layers of dimensional pages.

Often when I punch a shape, I back the opening with some patterned paper. The die cut shape from the cover backs the page. A few more epoxy stickers embellish the shipping tag on the right.

I trimmed the 12" epoxy border sticker to fit the page.

Another Top Note die cut and some vellum and epoxy stickers.

I nearly always include an envelope in my mini albums. It's a great feature to have for those little tidbits that you want to include but don't necessarily want on display.

Using just a bit of The Twinery baker's twine here, too!

Added a few of stickers to the back side of a page and to the embellished card stuck inside the glassine envelope, which I folded in half.

Another sticker.

When I make mini books, I like adding different sized pages and tags to add to the visual appeal and well, just because it's fun to do!

Have you ever added a manila shipping tag to any of your mini books or layouts?

My days of having adorable babies are over, but that won't stop me from making mini books celebrating their cuteness!