WITL 2015 - Monday

Ahh, Monday - you kicked my tail, but I got some good photos.

Here's breakfast - coffee + blueberries, granola and yogurt - yes, I eat the same thing every day and no I don't mind.  Love this table cloth that my friend gave me - it is loud and happy and never looks dirty - even when it is (smile).

Elsie couldn't be happier about being a pet owner.  She gets so excited when he shows her some attention.

Goodbye house - off to work.  Don't forget to close the gate and the garage door.

New dress - fun pattern.  This photo was unplanned.  I had my camera on and when I looked down I saw this - why not.

Mom's closet cleaning this weekend yielded three huge bags of clothes and I am the kind of daughter that runs these errands for her mother.

This is a usual haunt.  The man at Goodwill on Holcombe knows me by name.  I am forever cleaning out.  There is always a donate bag on the dryer.  It's a process.

While mommy was at work - the kids ran errands and did one of the last things on their summer bucket list - rock climbing at the Rock Gym.

He rang the bell - four times - Go Wyatt!

Meanwhile, back at work.  I took a walk and had a healthy lunch.  Even ran an errand.  The life of a multi-tasking momma.

We found a new dance store now that Leapin' Leotards has left Rice Village. Great place and wonderful stuff - found a lovely leotard and a dance wrap for Elsie - now she is all set for ballet in a few weeks.  We fit this in before the 3G back to school dinner at Mia's later that evening.

It's getting real - Jarad will soon be a Captain - he's kind of excited.  Check out his new sweatshirt - note the GOLD thread. Watch out!

There are more - but they are on the big camera . . . .till tonight.  Amended just the one to add:

Second grade girls back to school dinner!  They were so excited.

Jarad and Wyatt went to Berryhill for a father son dinner. Wyatt said he would have one of these with his dinner - ummmm, no.

So far so good. I am not taking enough pictures. I am out of the habit.  Practice.

Week in the Life - I'm In

Week in the Life  - I love this project by Ali Edwards.

It's amazing to take a focused look at life through the camera once a year.  Plus this project falls during the week that school starts - yes . . .

Call me a rebel, but I'm following this project in a hybrid fashion - I don't make a mini book or project based on this - I just take tons of photos and enjoy being in observation mode during this week.

I find that I use these photos in a few ways:
   In my regular scrapping as I capture the stories
   In my Project Life
   For documentation
   To use with similar photos from the year before to show change or continuity

So here it goes - I am thinking of trying to gather a daily post this year as I work on this project - we shall see what the days bring.

Here's the first one of the day - I took a photo of the passenger seat each day last year.  I enjoyed watching the changes and then similarities each day - part mom, part work, part wife, part daughter.  Let's see what happens this time.

Good luck on your WITL project if it is something you are choosing to do.

I see
  coffee - my staple for the morning drive
  glass for water - I am trying to hit my 60+ ounces per day
  my camera for the WITL project
  My purse full of stuff including phone charger, sunglasses, keys and such
  Elsie's lunch bag that I borrowed to take my snack to work
  St Thomas magazine - to read in my "spare time"
  A random necklace that Wyatt gave me
  The sunroof is open - that's my favorite part of the drive (that and music)

That Trip I Took . . . 26 Years Ago

With the help of a challenge from the Stash Bash class over at Simple Scrapper, I stumbled (and I say stumbled as it was purely happenstance that I scrapped this picture that ended up being a lovely potential title page for an album?) into starting a long overdue album project.  The pictures and memorabilia have been hanging out since 1989 just waiting for me to have the time to sort and scrap them.  And here we are (clearing throat) 26 years later.  Not sure how it has been that long ago that I took an amazing two week trip with my Cadette Girl Scout troop.  The main purpose was to attend a session on the last year that GSUSA owned a piece of land that we referred to as National Center West.  

So what is making this possible?  A few things:

  I have the time - well, sort of - I guess I should say, I am making the time 

  The pictures (both mine and my mother's) are all together (she is helping me sort them)

  We saved the itinerary - so I have a great guide to follow

  Someone - I assume Patty Adams wrote a summary of the trip - day by day - of which I have a copy

  A random challenge led me to this photo and here we go!  

  My most recent Cocoa Daisy kit is totally working for this album so I hardly have to pick any supplies which is really helping.  

Let's get started - here is the page I created for the challenge - it screams title page, right?

So I used a sketch from July on the Simple Scrapper Site to create this two pager.  

The photos aren't amazing, but I am just keeping them to document the who and the changes in nearly 30 years.

I am even including photos I had that lead up to the trip.  We had to raise a lot of money!

I would like to mention that I have had those pink circles and that cupcake embellishment longer than I care to remember - yeah for finally finding a home for them. 

A random one off photo.  But I love it because it is a picture of the meeting space, the girls in my troop and provides a snapshot into our middle school selves.  

This one might look a little blank - it is - as I want my mother to journal on this one since these are her tickets. I added one in with photo corners cause reading the back is hilarious. It shows that you could still smoke in designated spaces in the airport and lots of other funny changes in travel since then.

I have a photo of both of my kids first plane rides and now I have mine in the books too. They were about 2 and 7 - I was 13!

These photos also remind me of what a good "documenter" my own mother is.  Love that she captured the ticket counter and inside the plane.

So glad to have this story told of the blue bags (I totally still have mine).  Love it.

As you can see - I am ten pages in to a two week trip and I am loving every minute of it. Maybe it is that it has been so long ago or that my own daughter is now in scouts, who knows but I am excited to keep working on this project.  I'm thinking a troop reunion is in order!  

Note to self for future trips - keep itineraries, keep rosters of who went so you can remember names, and ask friends for help remembering things.  All of this is really helping me.  

Stash Bash @ Simple Scrapper

I finally did it!  I signed up for a class with Simple Scrapper (and just cause it was "free" I also added the membership for three months to try it out).  It just so happened that for the first time ever both my kiddos would be away for two whole nights exactly when the class was going to run.  I just took it as a sign that the scrapbook gods were trying to tell me something and I went for it.

Man, was it fun!  

The community at Simple Scrapper is lovely, and supportive and positive and really interested in getting somethings done. There is a private Facebook page for the class so the space feel really safe and in that safe space there was a lot of sharing - and it was good!  I saw rooms transformed, shelves painted, stashes cut in half and pages made.  Super cool.  Did we whine a little? Yes.  Did we wine a little - um, yeah.  And as a result, my space looks amazing and I am so ready to scrap.  I even started an album project I have been dreading!!

I would highly recommend this class (she does it twice a year I think) to anyone who's space is - not inspiring them, a complete mess, overloaded with supplies.  It is also good if you need a swift but gentle kick in the pants to get your space under control.  

My space was pretty clean, so I was surprised that the challenges still helped me a lot.  Anyway, here is what I did as a result.


Clean space!

Even Wyatt thought it looked nice!

And now for the pages.  I am going to respect the proprietary element of the course by not telling what the challenges are, but did want to share my progress.

I stumbled into starting an album that is long overdue!!!  Here is a potential title page for my Cadette Girl Scout Troop trip in 1989.  So so so happy to get started.  It always feels so daunting till you just make one page.

And a two page spread of the first day!  Paper and embellishments are from my most recent Cocoa Daisy Kits.  Love that Crate Paper floral - but I tend to like all Crate Paper florals - I digress. . .




And a memorabilia challenge - yes, Elsie is currently 8.



These pocket pages go in between the two page spread.  A whole birthday done!







You know when you make a page with scraps and don't cut a thing - yeah - this just happened.



This had been languishing around and now it is all done.  Yeah!



Some page kits all sorted out and ready to roll.  This will help when I scrap next!



And no good stash class would be complete without using really old supplies.  Oh for the love of Sassafrass and Love, Elsie.  Sigh . . .




And an ode to my college drill team days.  The only photos I have.



This was the first page I did for the challenge.  Do you know how long I have been looking at that paper?  Yeah!

Overall, I wished that there had been a few more actual creating challenges, but I get it that the point was to clean, de-clutter and get a handle on things vs. plowing through pages and the challenges were simple enough to just keep doing them over and over since they are less specific and more a thought process, I am over that.  I am very happy I took the class and am looking forward to joining in on the member side to see what that's all about.  Did I mention that Jennifer Wilson is awesome?  She also grew up in Texas and went to Trinity University and was a Girl Scout - what a small world.  

Four Kit Fun - layouts complete

I added up all of the layouts completed with the Four Kit Fun experiment - there are 25 so far.  Here are the most recent ones. These were made by combining my February - May Cocoa Daisy kits plus some items from my stash, of course! The pictures are a mix of old (90's), 2000's and current.  

For this one - I used a lot of scraps from other layouts. The more I use the cloud washi - the more I like it.  

I stamped!  And I used buttons and ribbon. Challenge - met.

John Deere tractors just force you to use up all of the green and yellow you can find!  (please note the ribbon!)

These two photos have been in my "to scrap soon" box for ages.  Finally the make their way to a layout.  Stamping, ribbon, I think I am starting to make it a habit.  Whoohoo!

The Trouble with Greens . . .

The February Cocoa Daisy Kit "Journal Entry" started off like this:

And when I finished:

Clearly this kit and I were friends. The limes - ugh - I am tired of lime and green in general - there were so many colors of green.  You will see this theme again latter in this post. But aside from that, I did really well on using this kit.

The March Cocoa Daisy kit "Hello Again" started off like this:

I also got the "Guten Tag" paper add on this month:

And when I finished:



Pretty happy with this, especially considering that I got the paper add on and have no full sheets of patterned paper left. I think the colors of this kit just really worked well for me. Thinking the leftovers will get used up on PL.

And the April Cocoa Daisy Kit "5 O'Clock" started like this:

And when I finished:

I struggled quite a bit with this kit.  There were too many triangles, the lime, soft greens and Kelly green clashed to me and the yellows just didn't add up either. I worked really hard on this one to make it work. Don't get me wrong, I am really really happy with the layouts I made with it, but I had to push myself to find things to go with this kit to tone it down for me or make it work with my eye. Though clearly, the pink thickers were NOT a problem! I did use the stamp set several times.  (editorial - the tags on the far right and the lime letter stickers don't actually belong in this kit!)

On to the May Cocoa Daisy Kit "Sage and Mint" which looked like this:

And when I finished:

I used the b-sides of almost all of these papers on my layouts. Watercolor is not my style and please no more green!!!

Below you will see how I worked with these four kits all at the same time. For a while I had them in separate piles and then, as I used more of them up, I just layered them all together. I still have a few layouts ready to start with a few of these papers, but so far the count on layouts from these four kits is a whooping 25 pages!!!  So yes, I still love my kit subscription, but like everything - you love some, you like some and some you struggle to use - but it keeps me scrapping, keeps me and keeps me challenged.

The June kit is sealed up to take with me in September on scrap retreat for the Greece and Turkey album so I have a bit of a hiatus till the July kit arrives next week.  Ah, who am I kidding, there is always stash busting to be done!  Off to finish the five layouts that are in various stages of completion.

This Weekend's Progress - On a Roll!

So happy to be back to the routine.  Finally got adjusted to CST again after the two week trip to Greece and Turkey.  I have downloaded the camera chip - all 3,000 photos.  And have starred about 750 of them.  Now to start figuring out how to make that into an album . . .

But before I tackle that, I got to work on some photos I had printed just before leaving. It was nice to just start with what was on my desk. To start, I spread the four kits I had left out on two tables and just starting mixing and matching.  I find that I use the bits and pieces if I take them all out of the packaging and put every piece where I can see it.  So far I have nine layouts complete. I need to print some more photos - I have plenty of paper left.  

This B&W paper was a struggle for me to use, but I like the result after I cut it down and layered on top of it.  I added some bright color to help and even stamped and used the ribbon (a goal of mine this summer).

I had to hunt through my stash for just the right color of cardstock for this floral, but man does it pop!  I forget that using a solid and just a dash of color is always a good combo - especially when you love a pp so much you want to stretch it as much as humanly possible. 

This one was easy and feels kinda matchy matchy, but I kinda like that today. I got some ribbon and stamping on this one - yeah for setting goals and making it happen.  

This one is really outside my box.  I just starting placing stuff on the page and just keep building till the 12 x 12 was full.  Then I added more little bits on top.  It is good to push yourself sometimes.  I've been in a rut with one photo and layers.  So this got me to thinking about what else I should try.  Hmmmm . . . I may go looking for some sketches.  

Love this Crate Paper Line.  I added die cute dollies (by stamping up and sizzix) to make this page come together a little better - it needed some dark grounding.  Excited to use up some more bits from the kit.  And I am working hard to use those phrase stickers.  I struggle with those. 

Lifted this slanted horizontal edging from MercyTiara (I love her you tube channel!) I keep thinking it needs a little pink splatter . . . 

Me and my big brother.  So rare to get a photo of us these days - we both have kids and spouses and such - but he's still one of my favorite humans.  So cool watching him brew awesome beer.  

I used the leftover piece of yellow pp for this one with the scraps of the hearts also.  And for something different, I added yellow ink.  Brown or black just seemed too harsh.  Love that I found a home for that flamingo.  

I pulled this picture out to post for Father's Day and then I just decided to scrap it too.  I used clear photo corners.  I have a loose personal policy that I use photo corners for photos before 1980.  That way I can scan anything I need or Photoshop them if they start to fade more. This striped paper was baffling me so I added washi between the stripes and also used the space for my title.  Seemed to work out ok.