One more

After I posted yesterday, I remembered one more technique for creating a two page layout:

Build from the inside out. Put the big, harder-to-place photos in the middle of the two pages, then fit the smaller photos around it. And this LO may be a personal record for me: 29 photos.

Two page layouts

I don't consider myself a person who tends to do a particular kind of page, one or two page. I choose the number of pages based on the number of photos I have. When I have many photos, especially ones I can't trim much, I make two pagers.

How do I make them work? I have a few tricks:

Line them up. I see nothing wrong with doing the easy thing: line up photos across the pages to add cohesion. I do it evenly


and unevenly.


Cut the photos the same size. This makes them easier to grid, like I did here (I think I trimmed them 3 1/2 x 5).


Don't use a focal point photo. This might be sacrilege, but if I am scrapping an event, and there is not one significant photo, why do I need a focal point photograph?


I'm sure I have some more tricks with creating two page layouts, but these are some principles I follow to design two pagers. Works for me.

Over the pig

I am just about totally well. Dominic got a bout of something, maybe flu, so I stayed home with him today, but he seems better now.

The weather is gorgeous, and the sun is shining. I can't tell you how happy I am for that. I was starting to think the vampires were leaving Forks and coming here to Minnesota because we have had so little sun this October. This afternoon I went outside to cut down more of my gardens, and Dominic went outside to play with a ball he got at Rowan's birthday party.

Happy fall.

Happy Birthday

Rowan turns 7 today. 7 years ago, after 47 hours of labor (no lie), he finally came into the world. Though he didn't seem to want to get away from me at the time, I think he's been on the run ever since--running, jumping playing, climbing, building, exploring...my boy is a verb.

Here's one of my favorite pictures of him, 2 months after he was born (ignore my hair):


Yep, he played the baby Jesus in our church's Christmas program. He wasn't yet on the move; in fact, people thought he'd been drugged, he slept so calmly in the manger. (He wasn't drugged, BTW.)

I think I'm going to print the photo I took of him this morning and scrap a LO about him. Maybe about him being a verb...

Oink

Well, I'm in bed with the flu. I got a flu shot a week and a half ago, so I'm guessing this is H1N1. I've been lecturing my students to stay home when sick, so I'll do the same Monday.

Chicago...my kind of town

Last week was MEA weekend, a couple days off in October for teachers to go do some professional development. Since Derick was working outside of Chicago and my parents were visiting from Maine (free babysitting!), I got to visit.

First, how great was it that I wore my happy socks to the airport? Made taking off my shoes alright.


Next, I learned that I ADORE Chicago. This was my first visit, and what a great city! Here were some of the reasons for my new love:

1. Everyone is super helpful. One young man, for example, spent about a 20 minutes helping me figure out where to park and how to pay for it.
   
2. Everything in the downtown is conveniently located. The El was so easy, and even when I walked, nothing seemed horribly far. True, I wore a hole in my shoe, but I think that says more for my shoes than the city.
3. The city had varied and interesting sights. I went to scrapbooking stores (more on that later), visited the art museum, and went to the Natural History Museum, the Field Museum, over the two days I toured. I also look forward to going to the history museum, the architecture tour (especially to see Frank Lloyd Wright's house), the Tower Formally Known As Sears, the Aquarium, Navy Pier...and so on. What a trip.
4. Great food. And I didn't even have pizza or hot dogs.
5. Terrific trees that hung over the sidewalks, all the more important because it rained while I was there. Sad, but considering it snowed in Minnesota last week, I consider rain an upgrade.

My first day I was lucky to meet a scrapbooking friend, Alexandra, whose blog I visit and whose work I've been a fan of for years:

She took me to a couple great places, including The Paper Source where I got these for the boys

and Windy City Scrapbooking, where I blew my scrapbooking budget for the rest of the year, willingly. I also did that more than a little in Downers Grove at Memories and Beyond.

Alexandra is a terrific ambassador for the city. Seriously, the city should hire her for that job. Because of her enthusiasm and help with looking at my tour guide, I look forward to returning to Chicago with my boys.

The next day I visited the Art Institute:

My favorites: an exhibit of Caldecott winning art (Flotsam and Knuffle Bunny!), Renoir (those beautiful blues), and the collage exhibit of art by 19th century women (I think it was only women) who merged photographs with other mediums. Sound familiar?

That night I met another scrapbooking contact, Grace from CKMB:

Another person whose generosity and talent impress me. What a great city.

Derick and I then moved into the city to stay at a hotel called The Wit, a place I probably am not cool enough to be in. I still tried, though:

The hallways at night play crickets and owls (no lie), and in the morning, birds.

That night we went to House of Blues, perhaps the one time I was happy the service was a mite slow. All the better for us to enjoy the music.

Before our flight left, we visited the Field Museum, where we went to a pirate exhibit (it was amazing--I had trouble dragging this boy away):

and where we met someone named Sue:

She smiled for the camera.

So again, a wonderful weekend at a place I plan on returning to and spending more time, this time with the whole family.

And by the way, a week ago it was snowing. And yesterday?

I was outside in bare feet. Gotta love autumn in MN. Snow is coming back this weekend, though.

Tomorrow I'll post some pages with a mission: how to make multiple photos pages.

The weather outside is frightful

Monday was a picture perfect snowfall: huge flakes, not too cold, plus some accumulation. I drove through snow to take the boys to school, then snapped some pictures as I dropped them off. My boys were so excited about the snow:

Dominic looks sort of funny because he was throwing snowballs. He had outgrown his gloves, so his first snow day was barehanded. I hurried after school to get him mittens, because this snowfall stuck. Not hugely, but we still have snow, and should get more tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the last day of school before a long weekend, and I get to fly to Chicago to meet friends (hey, Alexandra!) and visit Derick as he works. My parents get to take care of the boys. I can't wait to see what the boys convince my parents to let them do. Last time it was climb up the cat furniture.

Here's a couple layouts I've done for LOAD:

Brrrr...

I knew it was coming--I am a weather junkie--but it still was a little shocking to wake up yesterday to this:


Might now seem like much, but that would be accumulation, about an inch.

Roswell seemed a little pensive:

As I walked her around the yard, I heard what seemed like rain--patpatpatpatpat. It was the leaves, mostly the elm, dropping leaves one after the other, all green.

That's not grass under the trees, but a pile of green leaves.

Now that the cold has really come, it's time to cut down my gardens, no small feat. I have to do the South:

And the North (ignore the garbage can):

And the East:


And the big bed:

And small beds 1-4:


This takes me weeks. And I usually have to finish it up during the inevitable January thaw.

But though I dreaded the snow a bit, one person in our house was excited. Dominic, a February baby, has been incessantly planning his birthday party since summer. Fed up, I told him he couldn't talk about his birthday until winter. When he looked outside yesterday morning, he pumped his arms in the air with glee and shouted, "It's winter!"

For a creative sign off, here's the layout I made with the colors from Friday:

Inspired by colors

Sometimes I create layouts based on colors I see around, mostly in my shopping cart. One time I put some varied papers I liked in a cart at scrapbook.com. After they came, I thought they would look good in a layout together, so I made this:


Since they looked so warm, I made a warm layout about my boys not fighting this summer. A rare treat from this past summer, let me tell you.

Another time I went scrap shopping at a local store, Scrapbooks Too. They were having a sale on Pixie Stix glitter, so I picked out the masculine glitter. And darn they looked good together, so I used them on this layout:


I stamped with a glue pad (which works a lot better when you put the glue on the pad, LOL!), then spread the glitter on. I put the glitter into a funnel, then poured it back in. And to remove the glitter from myself, I stood outside on a windy day.

I am in process on another layout. I have a roll of American Crafts ribbon with the days of the week on them. Inspired by the color, I pulled paper and elements thinking about making a layout about what our family does every week.


To make it even better, I have some leftover calendar paper from Flair designs. I'm not overly frugal (some of you know my stash), but if I get more than one use out of patterned paper, job well done.

Welcome to the Thunderdome

When the Twins won Sunday, my husband and my dad got online and bought tickets. The game started early--4 P.M.--so I had to take the boys out of school early to get there. Traffic into the city was terrible--50,000 people entering the city at the same time is not a pretty sight. It was also raining, so I dropped my parents and the boys off and parked at the closest spot I could find: the Holiday Inn across 35W from the Dome. I ran to stay in the rain less, and about 5 blocks away I could hear the Dome. What a thrill.

(On my way in, I passed a couple dressed in what looked to be tiger striped polyester/spandex. Right then I wished for Detroit to lose just because of those criminal outfits.)

I got to our seats, food in hand. We were upper deck about 14 rows up behind 1st base. Terrific seats!



Detroit got off to an early lead, but the Twins/piranhas did what they do and kept chipping away. They tied it, they got the lead, Detroit tied it, until we got to the 9th, around which Detroit took the lead. Then we broke out the rally caps:


We lasted until the 10th inning finished, then my parents and the boys, weary, led the way out of the Dome. Again, we could hear them blocks away. Derick took my parents and Dominic in his car (he drove in from work in St. Paul), and I took Rowan across the highway to our car. We listened to the game on our way home, and let out two big cheers: once when Keppel got that terrific final out, bases loaded, and once crossing the Mississippi when Cassia got the game winning RBI.

New York, you are going down.

Crafting around the house

True confessions: my craft is scrapbooking. I cross-stitch too, and I stamp a card occasionally, but I do not seek ways to fill my house with crafts. For one thing, it's impractical. I don't have a lot of space, and I have two pets and two boys. Combine those things, and you get damaged crafts. I can't bring myself to do that.

However, I recently put together my computer skills (creating a table in Word) with my stamps to help my son keep track of his violin practice. How often has he done each exercise and song over the last week? We now can tell:


The bonus is that Dominic does the stamping. He LOVES that. And also note that though it looks like he's choosing random star stamps, he makes sure he uses the same stamp every row. That is so him.

If he practices each song and exercise five times a week between lessons, he gets a reward. For him, he chose going to a local restaurant Three Squares to eat. He adores their chocolate waffles.

I love their breakfast burritos too, so I'm helping him practice as much as I can.

A little left

I just posted this page to flickr:


I did this for LOAD, a layout a day challenge by Laine Ehmann. I loaded it in flickr, posted it in the LOAD group, and have 29 days to go to create 29 more layouts! I am looking forward to it.

When I loaded (heh) the page, I noticed something about the pages near it. Check it out:



I tend to line things up on the left side of the page.

I find this pretty funny. I tend to create asymmetrical layouts, but I'm a fairly symmetrical persona myself. Go figure.

I wondered if it has anything to do with being left brained. I took an online quiz here, and though I doubt its scientific accuracy somewhat (the quiz has a misspelled "then"), I was a little bit more left brained (logical) than right (artsy).

Left brained, left leaning layouts. Coincidence? I think not.

Reuse

I love scrapbooking embellishments, but I worry sometimes about packaging. So much plastic that cannot be recycled. I know the reasoning--the products are often paper and need protection--but that still is a lot of waste (especially with a stash like mine). So I was happy to read a suggestion to use the hard plastic as a paint tray. I have been saving almost every one I've used in this last month, putting them in a Target bag that I hang off a bookshelf in my scrap space.

Lately, I also became concerned with how much wax paper I use to put the things on that I am painting while they are wet. I had a brainstorm as I was taking some Thickers out of its plastic envelope: why not save the plastic envelope to put my wet paint items on? So I have been saving those as well in the same place as the hard plastic, and this makes me happier about reducing my use of stuff (wax paper) and getting more use out of the hard plastic before it gets sent to the landfill.

And I'd like to give a shout-out to Doodlebug for their stickers, almost none of which they encase in plastic. I never worry for quality with those stickers, and I only have to recycle the paper backing when I am done.

Here's what I used these empty packages for:




I had fun playing with a lot of color here. Can you believe it, I used a whole package of paper whimsies on this project.

If you have any hints for how you reduce or reuse when it comes to scrapping, let me know!