Appreciating the everyday

Sometimes I get stuck scrapping big events, particularly trips we go on or big events like concerts or recitals. Still, most of my life is made up of the mundane, so I try to take the opportunity periodically to scrap the everyday. Here's a recent page:

I used a July story starter and sketch from Simple Scrapper to scrapbook my commute, which is blessedly short. It' a positive page, so I used happy colors on a white background to make the colors sing.  Most of these products came from my June Studio Calico kit, though I dug into stash to fill in the blanks.

And here are some details:

I decided to curl the edges of the papers to add some texture and extra color. I stamped and stitched to add some more texture and color as well.

See the blue smudge on the 1? That's an accident from when I stamped the word LOVE. When I saw it, I cursed silently then did the same to each number, pretending I did it on purpose. Heh.

I love the word bubble stamp--I cut it out and adhered it with dimensional stickers. *Note* I wrote the wrong time on the journaling--I actually end of leaving at 6:40 because my boys are slow. I'm going to write the correct time on another piece of paper and glue it over the wrong time, which I time I always shoot for.

Thank you for checking out my page! How often do you scrapbook the everyday? Do you like to scrap the everyday? Share!

Scrapbooking the everyday

Happy National Scrapbooking Day! Also Happy Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You) and Free Comic Book Day. Today I'll be editing photos, using a gift card at an LSS, and seeing Iron Man 3. Life is good.

On to scrapbooking...

Confession: I don't do Project Life. I can talk more about that later, but from what I understand, one of the selling points is how you can use it to scrap the everyday. well, I do that now, so I don't want to start a new system to do something I do already. He's one of my latest installations of scrapping the everyday, as seen in the Write Click Scrapbook gallery this month:

My husband had been away for much of April helping his dad prepare to sell his house and move to assisted living. That left me as the shuttler-around-of-boys. I took photos of these various boy errands that make up my week and that I had to plan my time after work around and scrapped it.

I used Studio Calico's April kit Spencer's. The bright colors seemed suitably boyish. I LOVE the Cosmo Cricket woodgrain background paper. And the collection of embellishments was fun. I think I used these arrangements on several layouts from the kit.

Here's some details of those embellishments:

 

It took me a couple layouts from the kit to realize the cork camera lens and flash could be punched out. I added an enamel dot to the center just because.

  

Here's the embellishment cluster I loved to make: acrylic frames from Basic Grey, die cut speech bubbles, Basic Grey stickers (some I de-stickered with my embossing buddy and lifted with dimensional stickers), and cork camera.

 

I love cutting apart journaling into strips. For me it's a little more organic, fitting into the design of the page any way I want. To do the journaling, I type it out, measure the space I want to fill, hit "ENTER" at the end of the line to make sure it's not too long for the space I have, then set the line spacing at 1.5. After I trimmed it, I also inked the edges with stamp pads.

Thank you for sharing my page! Tell me, what are you doing this (inter)National Scrapbooking Day? Anything for Star Wars or Free Comic Book day? Do you scrapbook your everyday?

Belated New Year's welcome!

The New Year has come and gone, with lots of news and events:

• We enjoyed very cold but fun sledding as a family over winter break. As always, I jumped the moguls the highest. And almost swore every time. #scary
• I'm preparing for a student teacher. It's been a few years since I've had one, so I'm making the mental adjustment. Very much looking forward to the teamwork!
• I had fun over winter break scrapping with some Studio Calico peeps in Rochester, including Sweetsierra, Blbooth, and Amyscalze.
• I pulled out my Cameo for the first time and used it! Note to self: it cuts better with the blade in. Heh.
• I had some pages picked up for publication: 4 for Scrapbook Trends Embellish, and 1 for Scrapbook Trends June 2013.
• My regular scrapping group, the Scrapping J's, met and scrapped in full for the first time! Terrific fun.
• I ran the Commitment Day 5K on January 1st with my family in Minneapolis. It was -6 when the run started. Cold but fun. We were so proud to have completed the race, and we enjoyed coffee and cocoa after.

My biggest news? I'll be at CHA this weekend, and I'll share some of my favorite products and projects through The Scrap Review and on my blog.

Here's an end-of-year layout that I love to do every year that I completed with the Scrappin' J's:

I got a photo template a few years back for this, accidentally deleted it and then made my own to keep up the design. I used Studio Calico's December kit for this.  Here's some details:

 

I love breezing through the photos from the previous year, reliving the experiences, and picking the photos that make me smile the most!

First weeks of school

 I've just finished my second week of school, as have my boys. Busy, busy busy!

1. Labor Day weekend we traveled to Two Harbors to wish my grandmother a happy 94th birthday. She looked gorgeous!
2. We've started taekwondo every evening for the boys. I have to pick them up from school, then drive them immediately there (so far, the boys have done their homework in the car). Rowan's TKD is two nights a week, Dominic's the other two. Me? I will use that time to grade.
3. This past weekend we took the boys to the Lions Parade in Osseo, where they marched with TKD. Gorgeous weather, though we did not get much candy for them. The floats don't really hand it out to grown ups. 
4. Sunday we went to the Renaissance Festival, where we had an awesome but dusty time (I'm ready for a week of rain). I splurged on earrings, the boys got swords, and Derick got a new wallet. 
5. I have really enjoyed teaching my students. I always teach the best in school.

This weekend we're looking at attending Dominic's violin recital--he's playing Bach's Minuet 1, and since he's getting his hair cut before that, he should have a nice spiky 'do for it. And the boys will help do some yard work to earn Lego money.

Now I'm just tired. I have worked on little bits of creative stuff here and there, but not finished anything. Right now, though, I'm inspired to do something I got ideas on from Pinterest and another page pairing an old and new photo, which I thought of while listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable while I was mowing the lawn last weekend.

How have your first few weeks of September gone?

Where do you get your inspiration?

Like most scrapbookers, I get most of my inspiration from the stories I want to tell and the photos I print to accompany them. I know there are other sources of inspiration; I just don't use them as much. I also get inspired by sketches, Pinterest, and occasionally by product, like here:

I had these photo strip stickers from K & Company for a while, but I didn't know what I wanted to use them for until I found some random photos my husband took of me and my boys around Christmas last year. I printed them in the right size, but still, no full inspiration until I saw the stamp with my October Studio Calico kit: You Are Here. That made me think of a phrase to finish it off: and it is good. The page was born in full.

Rarely, though, life itself gives me a page before I even get a photo. Case in point: this fall.

My son is preparing for his black belt test in taekwondo. As part of that, he needs to run a 5K. God bless my son, but no way did I trust I could just tell him to run and expect him to. He's a little like that dog in Up: "Squirrel!" Since my son had to run, I had to run, and I brought along my other son too.

It's been tough. At first, they complained the whole two blocks we started. Then I thought to play music on my iPhone. We ran happily to Queen, and later Green Day, but mostly Queen. Fat Bottomed Girls is surprisingly a great song to run to.

Slowly, we increased the distance until we ran 2.3 miles a week ago. We ran again today, going 2.66 miles, though Dominic ran an extra big block and did the entire 5k (3.1 miles). WTG!

As proof for Rowan's black belt, we signed up to run the TD 5K in Minneapolis this Thanksgiving. We are very excited for our shirts and the hot cocoa or cider after. Plus we want to see a turkey run. You never know.

This is definitely an event I want to scrap, so I asked my husband to take our picture after we ran last week:

I plan on calling the page " A black belt, a 5K, and Queen."

I'll post the page after I make it.

Welcome, summer!

We had a wonderful first week of summer break. Here's the evidence:


Rowan sent his first email this weekend to his friend spending the summer in China. He told him about going to see the Green Lantern. While typing, he asked me how to spell "guess," "usual," and "went." I only chided him about having to ask about "went," but after all the tricky words with u's in them, maybe he thought it could be spelled "wuent." English spelling is tough.

Derick got himself a brisket to BBQ at Osseo Meats. Apologies to Vegetarians, but for Derick, grilling something all day long while having a beer and watching baseball is life perfected.

While Rowan was at taekwondo, Dominic and I went to meet Scott Baker of the Twins. He's way taller IRL than he looks on TV. And he pitched an awesome game on Saturday a few hours after we met him!

(That's Dominic's new swim shirt, a la Target. He would wear it every day if I'd let him.)


On Father's Day, Derick played Go Fish with the boys. Old fashioned fun.

For Father's Day, we went to eat brunch at Famous Dave's in Calhoun Square. They have an AMAZING Sunday brunch. We hadn't been for years, and it was still good. Sadly, the hash browns didn't seem to have brisket in it anymore, but they still had the huge fruit tray, a variety of breakfast meats, and (my favorite) waffles with apple butter, praline sauce, and whipped cream. Mmmm...

We had a bit of a wait, so we went across the street to Magers and Quinn and got a couple books for the boys. The one that hyped them up was this one:

The Book With a Hole. That's the title. If you have boys, get this book. Girls would probably like it too, but boys definitely would.

Dominic got balloons at Byerly's, just because he was wearing a Twins shirt. Nice.

This was an almost dream for Lola. Look at the size of the bones she found! Sadly, Mom (me) didn't buy it for her.

We found out this weekend that she had worms--the only down part of the start of summer--so we had to take her to the vet, which is why we were in the Bone aisle. It took a few times for her to get the medicine down, but she's feeling better, as you can see:


Just a thought: If you haven't done a page about your life right now, maybe try doing a little recap: things that make you happy, things that went well, things that are driving you crazy right now, and so on. I could easily turn these photos into a grid and do a quick page on my life right now. What memories!

Random May bits

I have been a pathetic blogger this week, undermined by business: end of the school year, projects for Ella and GCD Studios, and a busy as you-know-what week that will doubtless show up in a page about me soon.

But count my blessings, at least this didn't happen in Maple Grove yesterday. My prayers are going out to everyone affected.

We went to a wonderful wedding this weekend at the arboretum. The readings were terrific, including Oh, The Places You'll Go!, and my son was the first to recognize the recessional as a song from Kung Fu Panda (Oogway's Ascent):


(Note: same clothes as Easter. I don't do dresses.)

Here's the wedding card I made using GCD Studios Simply Surrender:


I liked layering all the different papers (that's me), but this time I also trimmed the die cut paper to layer too. I haven't done that before, so it was nice to see other ways of using die cut papers aside from the whole sheet.

Back later this week once my head comes up for air!

The brick doesn't fall far from the tree

Like his father, Rowan has a serious love affair with Legos. I thought this trait was a reflection of Derick, until I thought about Rowan's creative process.

First, you should know that the biggest family battles in our house involve Legos being left all over the floor. After the last battle, which involved the boys frantically picking up Legos as I approached ominously with a running vacuum, they're mostly off the floor, but Rowan still has piles around the living room, like this:


And this:


When I saw these piles in particular, I almost called for him to clean it up, but when I looked closely, I realized he had left these Legos out because it was a project he was working on, and he didn't want to lose track of his supplies.

Which means his Lego building doesn't make him like Derick; it makes him like me.

Further proof:


I have a couple pages in process that I left on my lap desk, in addition to some photos and sketches for future projects. Can't put those away, the ideas are still churning around in my brain!


Here I've taken out every spring paper, plus some new rub-ons, to look through in the future for a page I'm doing about spring.


These are just random supplies I'm intending to use soon and projects I'm planning to finish eventually. Plus my tin that I keep scraps in until I recycle them.

So I guess I have to respect the creative process a little more with my son, since I too seem to resist putting away my toys before I'm done playing with them.

Here we are this past week before it snowed today (grrr):


(Another shot using the extend-an-arm technique. I didn't crop it like I usually do, just so you could see how easy it is to take a shot of yourself, in case you don't already do it.)

Why today was a terrific day

1. When I did my weekly weigh-in this morning, the scale showed I lost 3 pounds this week. Woot!
2. I am officially down one jean size. Wore them today too.
3. Further proof the stars were aligning in my favor today: Eddie Bauer was having a 30% off EVERYTHING sale in their store. (I'd stopped by as my boys had another Lego club experience at the MOA today. It was Star Wars. They didn't miss me.) I got this shirt in aqua and this shirt in purple and a tank close to this tank in grey and this sweater in brown and these jeans in charcoal. Plus two small lab stuffed puppies for the boys ($3.50 each!). Rowan named his Starburst and Dominic named his Black Dragon.
4. I was able to reason with Rowan regarding his birthday list. He wants the Hogwarts Lego castle. I pointed out it was expensive ($129), and it's designed to be used as a playset once built; he NEVER plays with Legos for very long once he builds them. He deconstructs them once he builds them and builds something new of his own design. He agreed and wished for something else that was cheaper and had more interesting parts. Score one for Mommy logic.
5. The weather is gorgeous. 64 degrees, nary a cloud in the sky. Perfect for planting the tulip bulbs that some anonymous tulip fairy left in my PO box at school.
6. Enjoying spending time with my mom. We enjoyed pomegranate-oolong tea from Caribou coffee at the mall and went to Target together to shop for essentials.
7. Finished my September page for project 12. I used Studio Calico's kit Back 40 for it. This takes me to about 14 pages, so I'm ready to break apart the kit (I had also gotten one add-on). I'm ready to start using October's kit with a vengeance because I am planning on buying two add-ons next month from Studio Calico. I don't know how--I may have to use my womanly wiles on my husband (those include chocolate chip cookies) to persuade him to order for me, since I'll be working when the pre-order starts. Wish me luck!
8. ETA: I had a good hair day today. Everything flipped in the right direction and stayed smooth.
   
9. ETA: The Yankees lost. Sorry, Yankees fans, that's just how I feel.