April Simple Scrapper pages

My Simple Scrapper April pages went live in Spark Magazine, so I wanted to share the pages I made. Here's the first:

Here I journaled about the changing season and how my thoughts turn to my garden a little bit each day.  I dug out as many sprint like products as I could for this page. (I think I had run out of E's, so I curled a C to make do. Heh.)

Here's the next page:

Years ago I made a page about my mom called "The Dish Fairy" because of her habit of washing every dish as soon as it is dirtied. I put Heidi Swapp acrylic wings on her--do you remember that product? Memories. Anyway, I have since learned that I am now becoming the Dish Fairy myself and made this page to commemorate it. I dug back into my mists for this, which have been lately neglected, and I added my favorite embellishments, buttons. That is my motto, "Put a button on it."

I did mention that these were published in Simple Scrapper's Spark Magazine. Yes, every month Simple Scrapper publishes a magazine for members. If all the other perks are not enough for you, that alone makes the membership worthwhile. I love getting inspiration from it every month. Here's a link again with membership information.

I'll be back later this week sharing the pages I made at my scrapbooking retreat. It may be next week though--my boys have tech week for dinner theater at our church, and they perform this weekend, so things are a little chaotic. Fun chaotic, though. It's all good.

Reclaimed pages, post-hard drive crash: part 5

These are my final pages that I'll be sharing that I lost due to my hard drive crash, but was able to reclaim because of our online back-up program. I've been posting these not just to share them, but also to remind you that you need a redundancy program to back up your photos: disks fail, hard drives crash, even external drives. Consider an online program too!

Now the pages:

This one I had made last spring but never posted, I'm not sure why. I think the design bothered me, for some reason? Not sure. If I go to a game, I generally keep the ticket and put it on the page, like I did here.

This was a very basic page remembering spring. I kept it simple and used kraft as a background since spring in Minnesota is a little washed out. By the time it's colorful, it's almost summer. I cut apart the die cut that came with the kit to use it in many places on the page.

Another spring page, probably the last egg page I'll make since the boys are getting older. I did a lot of stitching, die cutting, and inking for texture here. More color, since it was later in the spring--heck, the grass is almost green!

Thank you for looking at my reclaimed pages! Please take some time to explore online backup options so that you do not have to worry about losing your photos.

Write Click Scrapbook May sneak!

This has been a busy month. My husband traveled to Idaho to help his dad prepare to move to assisted living, and I've been a single mom for the past three weeks. That alone is stressful, but add on top of that snow on top of snow, including the snow day we got yesterday (It's April, Mother Nature! April!), and I am beat. Whoosh.

I've managed to sneak some scrapping in a bit every day after the boys go to bed--it's how I maintain--but I had to relinquish jogging (I just couldn't bring myself to jog through snowwater at the side of the roads) and updating my blog or galleries. Here's a sneak of what I did these past few weeks:

This is a bit of a page that reflects on this past month. The page made me happy because of the colors, mostly, but also to relive the goofy, happy days of this past month. That said, I am SO happy that Derick is finally coming home this weekend. Even though we got almost a foot of snow yesterday and almost two feet of snow while he was gone, it feels like Spring is here. Complete and utter joy.

Long time no see!

Hello, spring. Thought you were going to skip out on us this year.

Evidence of spring in my garden:

My muscari bloom, then die back, then sprout in the fall. I never cut them back, but they always come back in the spring. Even this spring, oh-so-late in coming.


These are parrot tulips, I think. There was one beautiful one in the garden when we bought the house; after a few years, I split it. Now look at all these beauties. I still have one errant one in the big garden that I can never seem to move. I always leave part of the bulb, I guess.

These are peony tulips. I got them from John Scheepers, planted them in 2002 a few weeks before Rowan was born, and look at how great they still are. I thought tulips were supposed to die after a year. Guess not! (At least from Scheepers they don't seem to die out.)

More John Scheepers tulips from 2002. I learned to take photos of flowers from my MIL: get close and eye level, if possible.


Here's an interesting thing: those last tulips seem to be naturalizing. They popped up this spring by my daffodils, clear on the other side of the garden. No clue how that happened. But I'm enjoying it, though anal-retentive me is wondering if I should dig these up to put them by the other tulips.I think I'll just let them be.

Running the Holy Week gauntlet

It's been a busy week. Not just for my faith, but also for teaching: conference night and midtri grades. We also had spring finally arrive:


Followed by snow:


Typical for April snow, it disappeared by the afternoon, much to the delight of my lacrosse players at school.

Holy Week is always challenging. Since both my husband and I sing in the choir and the Chorale, a smaller group, and my husband plays trombone, we attend every service Holy Week. This includes Easter vigil and every Sunday service. Don't get me wrong, this sustains our faith, but it is tiring, especially for the two boys, who also must attend. The best decision my husband and I have ever made regarding Easter was not cooking a meal, instead finding the best Buffet around. Today was Maple Tavern. Mmmm...

Another thing that sustained me this week:


A package from GCD Studio! This box was packed with goodness. It was so heavy I thought I would tear a spleen carrying it in, but tear a spleen in a good way. And look what was on top:


The mustache I fell in love with at CHA. My son Rowan begged for me to take it out of the packaging. Photos coming soon, as well as much varied scrapbooking projects.

Holy daffodils, Batman!

We have had a big heap of snow here in Minnesota since November. Now that it's starting to warm up, and we've had some rain, the snow is going away. It completely vacated my back garden this past weekend, and while I was washing dishes in the kitchen, I looked out and saw these:



Those are my daffodils, coming up strong. Hello, spring. I wasn't sure you'd make it to the party. (In the center ring is a big peony; I split it last summer, so I look forward to seeing what it looks like this year.)

In addition to the daffodils, my backyard hosted a robin fiesta:

There were at least 10 robins feasting on worms. Looks like spring is finally coming.

I say coming, not here already, because it's supposed to snow tonight. The state basketball tournament starts tomorrow (Go, Maple Grove Crimson!), and that usually means snow here in Minnesota. Spring here is a bit of a tease. Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer.

Spring

Today was our first day here in Minnesota above 70. It sure didn't feel like it: strong wind made it seriously unpleasant to be outside, especially if you have longer hair like I do. Still, I went to church to cut down the garden I tend. Nothing is yet blooming in my church garden, but it sure is blooming here at my house.
I made a layout using the colors from Stacy Julian's color challenge to scrap my crocuses. I don't really like to scrap purple, but I had an old piece of Autumn Leaves paper, so decided to go for it. Sorry for the dark photo--I finished at about 6 P.M. (ETA: I replaced it with a better lit--and better focused--photo):

I should mention that I am trying to use as many green buttons as I can--my jar is overflowing. These buttons are magic, though--whenever I empty the jar and refill it with the remaining buttons, it's fuller than the last time. Terrific.

I scrap a spring garden photo every year. Here was last year's:


I am partial to quotations, maybe because I'm an English teacher. I got many from Quote Garden. The one on the first layout is by Anne Bradstreet:

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

The second layout took a quote by Osho:

"Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are."

If you want to be happy, go outside, take some beautiful pictures of spring in all its potential, google Spring quotations, and make a layout with as many pretty products as you can. Play, and enjoy the spring.

Welcome, spring!

A week ago I took this photo outside. That little piece of art and craft you see peeking out of the snow drift is the snow measuring gauge Dominic made in preschool a couple years ago. I had totally forgotten that it was out there, it was so covered in snow! Please note, the gauge is about 2 feet tall. Those were mighty big drifts. But spring is coming, and they are almost completely gone.

As exciting as spring is, I am not excited about taking pictures of the change in season. Here's why:

Note how dirty that melting glacier is at the end of my driveway. Bleh.

Even worse: see the white fuzz in the matted down, yucky grass? That's called snow mold. I don't even want to know what it is.

These outdoor photos demonstrate very clearly why I will not be buying scrap products like this to reflect my spring. It will take two months at least before I see color like that outside here. Instead, I will make do with this product, which perfectly reflects the colors I will see outdoors for the rest of the month. Except we may see a bit more white, if a March Madness blizzard comes as usual.

Still, my garden is finally completely free of snow, and my plants are responding appropriately:

These will be daffodils. You go, girls!