Happy New Year! Here's to more scrapbooking

Hello! My first trimester this year has come and gone. Unfortunately, it corresponds with December. As a church musician, I find December to be particularly busy, so I apologize for this late post. Here are the pages I made for Simple Scrapper:

The theme this month was circles. I used the inspiration to scrap a memorable game we attended this year. I put my ancient Coluzzle to work for this page.

The next page was from a sketch. As usual, I added more photos to scrap my son's and my typical Thanksgiving:

Thank you for visiting! I spent December singing, prepping for Christmas, and being sick. I'm still sick (bronchitis), but I did manage to scrapbook over winter break. More posts to follow!

Going back in time: Scrapbooking photos across years

Hello! The school year is over. Aside from preparing for the next school year, I am filling my time with gardening, reading, and scrapbooking.

One thing I have done this past month involves scrapbooking photos of my boys across the years. First: I had printed some photos of my boys recently posing next to the statues of Harmon Killebrew and Kirby Puckett outside Target Field. It dawned on my that the boys' heads are now OVER Killebrew's bat where they used to be BELOW them. At that point I realized that, since Target Field opened in 2010, the statues have been our growth charts. And so I made this page:

I used a sketch and story starter from Simple Scrapper to help me with this page. I picked bright primary colors because they make me think of baseball. Here's some closer shots:

The two die cuts--the magic is real and the journaling spots--are from the June Simple Scrapper downloads.

Next is a page that I made for Simple Scrapper for July. I had printed these photos of my boys in trees at the Minneapolis Peace Garden, but I didn't know what to do with them. The story starter for July gave me the idea to pair them with older photos of them in trees. Just like trees, these two grow, but not out of this favorite hobby.

The photos were a little dark, especially of Rowan, so the Jellybean Soup frames helped draw attention to them. The basic chipboard pieces from Ali Edwards were the perfect embellishments for this layout.

And then a page about my son and his years of playing violin from kindergarten to today. The recitals at first were in a lounge at an apartment, then for years they were at his teacher's home. Recently they returned to the teacher's apartment, where we can see his growth by the phone on the wall behind him. I printed photos from the past and now to highlight the growth.

Again, I chose bright colors, and I dug into my October Afternoon die cuts to create some bright clusters. The title is from old American Crafts foam letters--and yes, I had run out of an S, so I cut apart an 8.

Thank you for visiting! I have another post to share soon about the boys in my life, including my husband, particularly as we approach Father's Day.

The Twins, a rain delay, and a tree

One week ago today our family went to a Twins game, something we've done before, but this trip was more adventurous.

Weather reports for the evening had been dicey all day, and as we left for the game, I took a picture of what looked to be an Armageddon cloud:

I've never seen a thunderhead building almost directly overhead. Amazing.

When we got to the game, it was sunny, kind of:


It started to sprinkle, so we went under the stands for cover, and we promptly got a rain delay, even though the rain swiftly stopped. Here's why the delay:

Soon after we returned to our seats these greenish clouds came up. And then this sign came up:

So down below we went again.

The clouds were so amazing it made the Star Tribune:

Photo by Kyndell Harkness of the Star Tribune. See the jumbotron on the left? On the far right , about eight rows down, that blob of white is my family. Here's a link to the weather story.

And did it rain:


I saw a little hail too. The boys were happy. The cap Rowan is wearing comes from ice cream:

Eventually (2 hours later) the grounds crew started squeegy-ing the water into the drains on the field (who knew?), so we headed back to our seats, only after we noticed this:

Yes, a rainbow.

We were treated to a stunning sunset when we got back to our seats.

The game was amazing, after an unfortunate 1st inning home run. Later, Jim Thome hit another home run!

It was late, though. The 5th inning happened at about 11 P.M., and the boys were fading fast, so we left. The rest of the game was quick, for they were finished by the time we got home, where unfortunately we found this (photo taken the next day):


My beloved pink crabapple tree split down the middle. I loved that tree. It was mature and stunning. Apparently our town only got about 7 minutes of violent wind, but it was enough to take down our tree, which we spent Saturday morning dismembering. How beautiful was the tree? See for yourself:

Ah, well.

We'll let the stump rot out this season, have it ground down before winter, and plant another one next spring.

At least the Twins won. Woot!

Warm weather memories

I met someone at CHA who had been to Minnesota a few weeks ago. She was so funny, saying, "I knew it would be cold, but the wind just hurt!" Well, today is one of those days where the wind hurts. You just sort of have to cover your face up or you will be in pain.

Days like this I like to scrap summer photos, so I dug into my pile to scrap a baseball game we saw last summer. The layout includes a lot less white space than I prefer, but I think I stayed true to my linear self regardless:

I had four photos I wanted on the LO. I probably would have made a two-pager, except I will also scrap our first game, and that one will definitely be two pages. So I did what often needs to be done: I trimmed the photos down to 4x4 to make them fit easily.

My second design decision involved product: I don't have baseball product, nor do I want to buy such specifically themed products. I have done that in the past, and I love those layouts, but I don't like how limited I am in using those supplies, so I tried something different. I picked happy, bright colors, especially the baseball green background paper. I had some red to go with our shirts (go Twins!), but I needed to make it a little less Christmasy, so I added yellow. A plethera of round things (patterned paper, brads, buttons) are suggesting baseballs without actually going there.

One final thing I did was typical for me: I included the tickets, which had some lovely pictures on them, each one different. I didn't want to adhere them, and I wanted them to be visible, so I made a little pocket (sort of) out of Grafix craft plastic. I inked the edges with Stayzon to make it visible, then I adhered it with brads.

And what made the game memorable? Some severe weather had been heading our way, so Carl Pavano did his duty and pitched a complete game win in under two hours. When we left the game, the rain came down, hard. Perfect timing!

Busy weekend

Our weekend was filled with three things:

1. A camera-use class from National Camera Exchange;
2. Baseball with the Twins Saturday night; and
3. Chores.

The camera class was free, and basic, but it served its purpose: it made me more comfortable fiddling around with the menu, and it gave me permission/motivation to experiment before I go on vacation this year. I LOVE National Camera Exchange: it's a local company, longstanding, and you get to take the class free if you buy a camera from them, which I did a couple weeks ago, upgrading my Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot to a newer model with good action bursts. (I am calling that the "Dominic and Rowan" setting). The instructor was fabulous, and funny too: she was terrific at using analogies to make her point.

And the bonus: a little me time.

Next came tailgating at church and a group bus ride to the Twins game, a big one against the division leader. The weather was ominous:


Any cloud that bubbles on the bottom is scary. Those clouds sent forth lightning and rain when we started for the game, but the weather was perfect all through the 9 innings.

We were in the upper level in the Very. Last. Row. You know what? Terrific seats. We could hear and see everything. The Twins fended off the Sox in the 9th to pull out the victory in less than two hours.

Why was it so important to finish early? Because what followed was a scary-@ss storm. Seriously, the bus ride home was terrifying. The windows steamed up since we couldn't put the windows down. Our bus driver appeared to have gotten us home via Braille driving, according to the man in the row before me. The most scary moment came in Brooklyn Park, when the highway lights went out and we noticed the trees were parallel to the ground. Yikes.

But when we got home, we saw this:

A sunset rainbow, right over the church. Hooray.

The chores this weekend were many: cleaning the car, vacuuming the house, watering the plants, helping the boys clean their rooms and put away legos, doing laundry, and trimming a bush. And at the end of the day, when I went to scrap, I tripped on my tool bag and stabbed my foot with my paper piercer.

Back up two days ago: I misplaced the cork I keep on the top of the paper piercer. I remember thinking, "Maybe I should put this in a separate place so no one gets hurt." But I didn't. I just left it where it was and got hurt. I need to listen to those inner voices.

The last time it happened was in 2009, when a friend of mine cut off the end of her finger trimming some bushes. I thought, "Wow! That's terrible!" I never thought, "Wow! That could happen to me, since I garden as much as she does!" And sure enough, while gardening on Good Friday last year (irony), I cut off the tip of my pinky finger while gardening. It was repaired, and all is OK now, but I remember that same week going to Urgent Care again to get my finger glued shut when I sliced my thumb replacing my paper trimmer blade--the Fiskars I-blade, a very minor blade unless the safety plastic comes off when you reach for it. When I went to Urgent Care that time, the nurse asked me suspiciously if I was in a safe relationship. I told her, "Yes, but my hobbies use sharp tools." Which wouldn't be a problem if I listen to my inner voices.

Going scrapping this weekend at The Scrapbook Shop in Blaine with Jing-Jing--she is so talented at minis, maybe she can help me get off my duff and start scrapping last Christmas!

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.