Rainy days...

We've had some pretty nice days this week, a nice exception after tornado weather last week (not in Maple Grove, thank goodness). Today the severe weather came in with power. No hail, not lost power, but TORRENTS of rain. 2.5 inches in a little over an hour. The rain and hail (elsewhere) was so bad my husband's flight back from a work week in Toronto was diverted to Green Bay until the weather passed. It'll be a late night for him. As long as he avoids Route 169 (flooded) on the way back, he should return before tomorrow.

Here were layouts I finished (and photographed) before the sun disappeared for the worst thunder and lightning show imaginable (all were done with June's Studio Calico kit, and maybe a few other random bits):


This was the first one I did earlier this week. I can't decide if I like the floating on the page, maybe because I've had hammered into my brain not to let elements on a page float! Excpetions made for bubbles.


This photo was rediscovered. It had slipped into a notebook and I just found it, months after I scrapped like photos from the Renaissance Fair last year. The story I told this time was different from what I had originally planned. I used a Becky Fleck June sketch for this.


This was the last family photo with the brothers taken with my MIL before she died. My husband asked me to get the image as good as I could and print it in 8x10 for his dad. I did, but I couldn't leave well enough alone and scrapped it too. I used an older Color Room scheme for this.

Same photo using this week's Studio Calico sketch. The title says it all.

This is the same sketch. I slightly regret not keeping the paper 12x12, but it still looks nice. Lots of fun with the bright colors.


A little more humorously: I had pulled these photos from vacation last year, thinking of scrapping them to try for the Ella ezine cover with them. These two didn't make it on the page I submitted, but my son saw them and we talked about them; that conversation became the journaling.

Like, wow...

I mentioned cleaning out my closets has made me feel old. This is mainly because I found a box of stuff I've wanted to keep--memorabilia, if you will. Some of it has been a trip down memory lane, technology wise, but also fashion wise. Here's an example:


Various newspaper clippings I wanted to keep, mostly my name in the paper for various things growing up. The one on top was for All-State choir in Maine. Check out the dresses and the hair! Not me, BTW. My hair never could do that, though I desperately tried. (I am not sure what to do with these clippings--should I scrap them? Any ideas out there?)

Here's a trip down memory lane: mix tapes!

I love that I called one "Love Songs and Other Myths." I don't think I can get rid of these, at least because the list of songs reminds me of certain times in my life.


This one is funny: I have kept almost every paper I've written since junior high. When I discovered that, I bought a 3-ring binder and some page protectors to put them in.

The one up here? A paper on Invisible Man--which I now teach. I am a little nervous to read it. It's probably tripe.

My first driver's license and all my ID cards in college. Don't you love my perm? And that the driver's license was typed and laminated? After my photo was taken, they typed and laminated it right in front of me. This makes me feel super old.


This one makes me nostalgic. Write.click.scrapbook had a posting on friendship bracelets last week, and look what I found.

Back to the papers...remember dot matrix printers?

And along the same line, ditto machines?


Here's a treasure: my commonplace books. I never kept diaries, but since high school I've kept these books to write down quotations in. I have one by my bedside now; these 6 I finished since high school. They're not only a record of my readings, but they also show my thinking, based on the quotations I was drawn to.

And my trip through time with my commonplace books? The first one I wrote in different colors of magic markers.


Evidence of my religious scholasticism: this book is dog-eared and lightly annotated. Can you tell I was afraid of the public examination?

Another treasure: when I was in the St. Olaf Choir one year, we toured the Southwest, including California. While there, we met Betty White, who autographed my itinerary. Betty White, the coolest person in America right now. Nice!

Back to the "I feel old": Remember Apple Works? Here's the command codes for back when floppies actually flopped.


For some reason, I have all sorts of clippings for my parents too. That's them right there--aren't they gorgeous? Not sure what I'll do with these either, but I enjoyed this trip down memory lane, bad hair and all.

Neglected

A few things have reduced my scrapping:

1. lack of photos
2. closet cleaning
3. prepping for publication in a couple places (Woot!)
4. getting ready for Derick business travels

As a result of these "impediments," I haven't used last month's Studio Calico kit much recently. Which is bad, since the new kit comes out this weekend. So I needed to get to work. Irrationally, I like to have used up much of my past kit before I get started on the new one.

Here's three I did these past few days:

This one came together quickly. I used all the blues and browns I could find to scrap about my boys' love of waterfalls. I get it--I loved them too. I almost put the papers in a downward fashion, but it was too literal, so I made it horizontal.

This one is for The Color Room--I am not a pink gal and ignored the last time I saw pink (I think it had purple too, so I can be forgiven, I think). This time I went all out--little girl explosion all over the page. Two weeks ago 2 peas had a sale on Jenni Bowlin Chipboard, and I got them all, thinking to use them as misting masks. And so I did. I loved journaling on the inside of the mask; it added a nice definition.

This is the Sketchy Thursdays sketch for the week. I challenged myself to use the summery kit on a Thanksgiving LO. I think it worked. I added some extra fancy Prima flowers, and I did some typical stitching.

BTW, this LO shows another trick of mine for bad photos--print them small. One of the most helpful things I've done as a scrapper is create wallet photo templates on a 4x6 document to make it easy to print smaller photos. I use them again and again, as You'll see sometime later this week.

Another things this week? Like, how old I feel after cleaning out my closets and rediscovering relics from my youth....

Closet cleaning

On my to-do list is something that's been a while in coming: cleaning out the closets.

This might not seem like a big deal, except we live in a split entry house--that means no basement, which means no storage, which means closets packed to the gills. Now is the time to clean those babies out and put stuff in three piles:

1. Must be kept at home, so back in the closets (or garage, but that too is stuffed);
2. Not needed at all, so will be thrown away or donated (we're up to 8 bags for Goodwill or ARC); or
3. Set aside to go into a rental storage closet.

I've been holding back on renting a storage unit--when we take stuff in, I try to get rid of stuff too to keep everything in balance. Still, we have stuff we want to keep and when we get a bigger house Someday--say, when the boys get too tall and start hitting the ceiling--then we will want to take this stuff out and keep in the home. I'm mostly talking about rarely used by important kitchen stuff (like my fancy salsa and chip bowl) and Books. Many many books, which we kept in a room until we had kids, and they are now in boxes.

In future bigger home we will hopefully have a library/game room, so the books have a future home. Just not in this home.

The best discovery when cleaning out the closets was the rediscovery of stuff from Derick's and my childhoods/college years. Derick found the title of the truck he'd bought and used on our first date. It was like he'd found the Holy Grail.

And me? I found all sorts of stuff that gave me a good day going through it all. I'll post tomorrow to show you what I found, including my very first driver's license. It made me feel old, but it also made me laugh. Can you say perm?

Project 12 May

The deadline for May's Project 12 was approaching; though I'm not really doing this for a prize, I like a deadline, so I worked diligently to meet it. Here's the sketch for this month:


Not many photos on it, which was fine for me, because there was only one event that stuck out for me this past month: the death of my mother-in-law. I have been scrapping her a bit lately, so I wanted the page to be about her. However, I wasn't there for her passing. Derick didn't make it either: she died while he was in the airport on his way to say goodbye. I felt the month was about her--May is the month for mothers--so I made the page about her and the way I see her in the daily lives of our family. Here's what I did:

I followed the sketch pretty faithfully, using mostly My Mind's Eye, Prima, and Jillibean soup. I flipped the design to show off the most beautiful parts of the die cut paper. The most fun was the stitching, using my beloved Bazzill and Stampin' Up! templates. If you look closely, you can see I used variagated DMC floss. It changes color as it goes.

I have a confession for this page--that wonderful photo on the left was not taken in May. As I said, Derick didn't quite make it in time to say goodbye. Since this month was about her, I felt it would be a crime not to have a photo of her, so I used a grainy photo taken in February when the whole family was there to celebrate my FIL's birthday. This is the last photo we have of her with the family. In this picture she had undergone months of chemo to tackle her pancreatic cancer, and look how gorgeous she looks. What a woman. We'll miss you, Phebe. Rest well with God.

Techniques

I plan on posting some of what I learned about my style doing this May's LOAD, which was super fun. One thing I learned was that I'm not a techniquey gal. I prefer pretty paper and clustered accents to figuring out how to build a flower from my supplies.

Still, every now and then I get all techniquey on a LO. Nothing fancy, mind you, but a little. Take this LO:

I did this one using a sketch at Sketchy Thursdays. As soon as I saw it, I wondered if all the strips of paper had to be paper. I pulled out my fabulous flourish template from Bazzill and used that, then pulled out a new dot stamp from Unity Stamp that I hadn't used yet; I slathered on some paint and added a "strip" of paint.

And in case you can't tell, this is a hybrid LO. I added a few grunge layers to my photo, as well as some flourishes. I mentioned yesterday that changing a photo to black and white helps save many of my blurry photos; I'm also discovering that adding grunge layers masks a blurry photo too. As in this case.

Rainy days

Last week I woke up, looked outside and thought, "Holy cow! We got hail!" Ever the photo documentarian, I took my camera outside, only to discover that what I thought was hail were only really big weeds:

These mushrooms came about because we've gotten a heck of a lot of rain. How much rain? Here's the rain gauge for last week:

Yes, in one week, almost 4 inches. I heard on the news last night that we got 12 days of rain in 14 days of June. (Can I be arrogant and point out my coralbells in that picture? They look so gorgeous.)

Two things happen with rain, aside from a hard time getting out and mowing. One is beautiful gardens:

The other is indoor scrapping time. Here I got started on this week's Sketchy Thursdays sketch:

I don't buy themed products much anymore, but I am a slave to Making Memories and October Afternoon's travel papers and Christmas stuff. Here I also used some Collage Press.

This next one is fully inspired by product. The paper has a bird flying in to feed two hungry babies. My mother-in-law was named after a bird, Phebe. I had two photos from summer vacation left over of her feeding my two boys. Perfect combination of product and story.

Honestly, during LOAD I almost killed myself trying to fussy cut paper, but here I am doing it again. With such gorgeous paper, I don't want to cover it up, so to make it shows when I'm using 4x6 photos, the only option is fussy cutting. I'm glad I did, though. It's a pretty LO for my wonderful MIL.

The end is the beginning...

Today was my last day of the school year, spent entering grades, cleaning up, and figuring out what I would have to come back this summer to do (tweak a couple units and file my masters). I think of it as the end but it really is the beginning. I teach juniors, so it's really the beginning for them of being the senior class, even though technically they haven't started their senior year yet. For me, it's the beginning of the new year too: I plan for next year, meet with colleagues, and do projects I don't have time for during the school year.

Projects I definitely have. Tonight I made a to-do list. I know I won't be able to do all of it (there's 18 things on it, and two involve painting or staining). Still, if I do a couple things a week, I should make it.

What's on my list? Here's a few things, in no particular order:

1. Stain the deck.
2. Wash the living room walls and paint them.
3. Get rid of lily-of-the-valley (or try to, at least).
4. Transplant four plants a little pinched for space.
5. Clean closets.
6. Clean out my car.
7. Sweep the garage.
8. Make Christmas mini album and my me-mini. (Those have been in the works for a while. Must. Get. Done.)
9. Do photo book for my retired colleague.
10. Get started on my sons' school albums, maybe by purchasing Cathy Z templates and doing it hybrid.
11. Avoid my husband while the Mariners play. (That really wasn't on the list, but it will be if their season doesn't pick up.)
12. Put together my recipe book.

Most of my hobbies aren't on the list because I don't dread doing them--they are for fun. Still, some scrap projects become Obligation if too long delayed, so I want to get started on them as soon as I can. I'm a started: if I get started, I MUST FINISH or it drives me insane, which is not that bad a thing.

BTW, I've read you are more likely to achieve your goals if you make them public, which is why I put the most painful and dreaded tasks in this post. Truth be told, I should probably do a LO of them too--especially if I give myself permission to cross off what I've done at the end of summer and post the page then! OK, I'm on that.

Speaking of starting, here's a couple reunion LOs I made as the reunion season starts here. One was from last fall:

It's not a great photo--blurry, and we've all looked better. Still, a three-generation photo is special and must be scrapped. I used May's Studio Calico kit for it, the last I made with it before I broke apart the remains.

The next is from last weekend at the Nelson family reunion:

Again a slightly blurry photo, but that's why God made black and white. I used the color combo at The Color Room for this, as well as that glorious Bazzill stitching template, which is my best scrapping friend right now.

Getting ready for summer

My new Studio Calico kit came in the mail Monday, so I dug in and made a page using this week's Sketchy Thursdays sketch.

I used more techniques than I normally do. A short list:

1. I misted, using a chipboard sun as a mask.
2. I misted the chipboard title.
3. I stamped a photo.
4. I stamped starbursts using paint.
5. I added fabric and paper clouds. (Note to self: use less glue.)
6. I stamped the banner border and used watercolor crayons to fill them in.

I love the color. Can't wait for more summer shots.

I guess I have some photos...

Taking a break from grading, I found a couple photos I had printed last week for a sketch challenge at Studio Calico. Using this sketch:

I made this page:


All the patterned paper are scraps I got out of my scrap soup basket. The chipboard bubble square came with May's Studio Calico kit; I had honestly had no idea how to use it, but April used it so beautifully in the sketch, I copied what she did. I also used some October Afternoon Fly a Kite stickers. Fun to use bright colors on a white background.

True confessions: I didn't like where I had put one flower, so I gently pulled the sticker up to put it elsewhere. Bad idea: OA's adhesive backing is much less movable than it used to be. Hence my cluster of flowers to cover the rip.

I will never learn.

Papers, papers everywhere...

So I have a little over a week of school left, and I am swamped with grading. I actually fell asleep grading a paper yesterday. For the next two weeks, I'll be busy busy busy, too busy to do what I have to do for scrapping, which is edit photos. Yep, I have officially run out of photos to scrap. LOAD wiped me out of photos.

I had a great time and learned a lot about myself as a scrapper in LOAD, but my mind will be fully occupied this upcoming week, so much so that my scrapping will be crimped. Rats.

Oh, well, it will give me something to look forward to!