This and That

1. Woke up Saturday morning to get the most perfect looking winter landscape. I'll replace my banner photo when I get the photo tweaked. ETA: I changed the banner photo. Isn't it gorgeous?

2. The Olympics are here! We leave the TV on all day, and the boys have become enamored with snowboarding (hasn't been on yet, but OK) and Nordic skiing. I'll post photos later of how they're demonstrating their love. ETA: Here's my athletes. Check out the sign at the end of the kitchen (I'm trying to ignore the fact that Rowan tacked it to the wall. My beautifully painted wall.):


3. Speaking of love, Derick took me to Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis for Valentine's Day. Wonderful menu. We're going back sometime, though without the boys again; the art is kind of creepy. It is Hell, though. What can you expect? ETA: Here we are at the restaurant:


4. My mom is here visiting. The boys are having much fun producing paper art for her and providing her with many photo ops. Dominic also loved her glasses. He insists he now needs some. He keeps putting on her glasses, then leaving them somewhere else. No wonder she keeps losing them. ETA: Here is Dominic, looking dapper in reading glasses.


5. Friday night Derick and I went to a Minnesota Wild game, our first hockey game. Tons of fun. We were very close to a goal, so saw some nice action. Alas, the Wild lost. Two dates sans kids in one weekend for us, though, so Derick and I won. Thanks, Mom, for babysitting!

6. I've made more than 50 layouts on my road to completing 100 without new product (except adhesive and basic cardstock, both of which I need to replenish). LOAD is helping a lot. I'll post layouts here later. ETA: Here's the layouts from the last few days:

This last one is based off this week's Sketchy Thursday sketch.

7. Why not post now? We are in the midst of changing computers. My old PC was so full of photos, it w o r k e d s o s l o w l y . . . So we replaced it with a Mac. After leading me through many Socratic dialogues to help me understand how he was right, Derick has purchased software to migrate our old files onto the new computer. The problem may be Windows: the newest form (the only one we can buy) may now work with PSE 7, which I'd just bought last year. We just tried installing the old PSE on the Mac, so I'll see later today if it works.

What this means for me...I'm using the new computer for writing and surfing and posting, but I'm using the old computer for editing. Twice the process means twice the time. Ergo, I will post photos to accompany this post later today!

ETA 8. Rowan lost another tooth randomly yesterday. So this is what he looks like now, post-haircut:

Funny Sunday

I spent much of church this morning snickering. During the children's sermon, which linked the peace of Jesus to Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr., the pastor started saying, "So if someone hits you, you should not..." At "If someone hits you" Rowan looked at his brother and GLARED. Derick and I tried really hard not to laugh, but we couldn't help it.

Later, the same pastor in his sermon mentioned, "So if you are distracted by thinking about the Vikings game tonight..." and Dominic raised his hand!

Finally, Rowan turned to Derick after the new members were welcomed during the service and said, "Hey! When there's new members, we get cake after!" He's still learning the Lord's Prayer, but he sure as heck remembers what happens during the service for him to get cake afterwards.

I mention this because I learned this weekend I get inspiration from words more than any other source--fitting, since I'm an English teacher. This week in Inspiration Defined at BPS, we are sent a word a day to take inspiration from. Here's what I did with "tires":


I miss that scarf. Yes, that's me 16 years ago in college.

And here's what I did with "spoon":

(This layout, BTW, was a true Stacy Julian moment for me. I thought of this story right away for "spoon," but I didn't want to take photos for it. Then I thought of these photos, which had been around for a couple years. Voila!)

I found it much easier to draw inspiration from these words than I have from any assignment so far dealing with design inspiration from everyday objects. Interesting to note.

Here's two more layouts I did:


This one was a design challenge from a grid. I took inspiration from a grid in a gardening magazine.


I redid this layout. The old one was much too busy, and green to boot. I like this one much better--the analogous colors work better with her red fur.

Other creative ventures

I've been scrapping, but I have a couple pages that require computer journaling sitting around--you know how that makes me feel--so I took a break from scrapping to take on other creative ventures.

• I finished Audition, Barbara Walters' book. Pretty good. Quite dishy.
• Rowan was his first grade class' Star student this week, so I helped him make a poster for it. We used leftover photos that had never been scrapped. I also let him play with my scraps and my punches, to his delight. And to the best of my ability, I resisted the urge to organize those punched stars in a visual triangle. He put them on in any order he pleased.
• I visited with some college friends over the weekend and enjoyed talking with them. I also enjoyed learning we have Saturday afternoons free and may be able to make those conversations a habit.
• I went sledding with the boys. Wow, did they have fun. Now that I scrapped.
• I celebrated my not-yet-fortieth birthday and enjoyed dinner at Buca's, some scrappy goodness from the fam*, and a lovely Hobbit teapot from my MIL. Now I just need to learn how to brew tea the old-fashioned way.

Especially since I finished the book, which was due at the library today (guiltguiltguilt), I now feel energized enough to go back and do some scrapping, particularly finishing the computer journaling.

*My big guilt involves those scrappy birthday gifts. I didn't buy them, so I haven't really borken my New-year's res to make 100 layouts before buying new supplies. Still, should I hold off on using them until I make the remaining layouts? Decisions...

Scrapping with purpose

I'm taking a Big Picture Scrapbooking class now called Inspiration Defined. One assignment was to do a page about why we scrap. Here's my take:


I used some index prints--my first time using those suckers. And I truly enjoyed using those orange flowers for the first time. Some misting on the background too.

I mean what the title says, though: scrapbooking helps me live with purpose. It helps me see the significance in my life, not just the big things (family trips, holidays, etc.) but in the things that happen everyday. Even the bad and scary stuff.

Yesterday was one of those moments. Like most days this week, I got to school sort of numb and tingling. (This is Minnesota.) It never went away, though, in my left arm and leg. I called my doctor during my prep hour, who told me to go to the emergency room. After many tests, I was diagnosed with paresthesia, which in a nutshell is a numbness and tingling not really caused by anything, but possibly caused by a nerve problem or stress.

Stress. After I had listed the stressers I've been through--my MIL's pancreatic cancer, my dog's death, stressful teaching conditions (over 30 in a class plus multiple differentiations in each class), department chair demands, husband away on business, stolen credit card number--that the doctor said, "I know what this is." The diagnosis is not complete; I have an appointment on Monday with my regular doctor, and I need to have an MRI too, but I do have a sense that too much srtess in my life is affecting me physically. Badly.

I sat down to think about what I need to do to reduce stress in my life. And since I scrap, here's what I did:


Again, pulling out the pretty papers, pairing it with a photo, and writing what I need to do right now to eliminate the stress that's within my control--that is scrapbooking. Plus, it's living a purposeful life.

Hello, January!

When we woke up January 2, the temp on TV said -15, which is the temp at the Minneapolis airport. That made my husband and I flinch, until I realized that is about 40 minutes south of us, so it's probably about 5 degrees colder here.

I was wrong: it was 6 degrees colder. Yep, you can see in the picture how cold it was this morning.

The evening news said we made it above zero--to one degree above--but I think it didn't get there in Maple Grove. When we got home from IKEA at about one o'clock, the same sign said -7.

So what does that mean? It means January is here, the month where we here in Minnesota insanely look forward to the temps reaching the single digits--below zero.

New year's is also a time for resolutions. I made mine last year--to edit photos before printing them. I also took a couple classes to improve my editing skills and got a newer version of PSE. So what am I going for this year? Mainly, to reduce--and to help that, I'm not buying new supplies (exclusing adhesive and white/kraft cardstock) until I create 100 layouts. I may give up scrap shopping for Lent again. That helped my creativity a lot. Finally, I will probably do this again. Doing LOAD in October helped me destash a bit.

To make the task of no-buy more difficult, I got a Sale-a-bration catalog in the mail yesterday. I found three things I love--two stamp sets and a punch. To get them I would have to buy $150 worth of SU supplies.

So my resolve entered in: The first set I really wanted to go with the curly punch--which I can get anytime. The second--a set of houses--is cute, but not essential. And the border punch? In small print underneath, it says that it will be available next year to buy.

I can resist.

To record this year's resolutions, I am taking inspiration from a notepad I got in Chicago.

I checked the stuff I want/need to do the most, plus stuff I already do that I think I should keep doing. I'll narrow it, then turn it into a layout for my album. Which means I'll take another extend-a-arm photo of me. Nice.

My least favorite scrapbooking task

I hate to journal on computer. I love to write, mind you, a lucky trait since I am an English teacher and all, but I HATE to sit down at the computer to scrap. Not sure why: maybe because my least favorite tasks with teaching involve the computer too.

I had a pile of pages I had to add journaling on yesterday, so I finally bit the bullet and journaled. I do not spend a ton of time selecting fonts; I tend to use Times New Roman, Gill Sans, and Arial, all of which come with Word. And learning about text boxes and leading (Thank you Cathy Zielske) has made my journaling look nicer.

One I'm submitting for publication. Here's the other two.

Sorry that I look like I'm possessed by Legion in those photos. I love my title for this LO though.

Don't read the journaling if you don't want to. It is a little sad. And thank you, Mous Earz, for the quote from the Little House book. It perfectly matches how I feel.