October Round Up

Oh, October, my love/hate relationship with the fall begins with you.  I love the holidays, the sweater weather (though we don't really have that so much in Houston, till February) and the family traditions.  I hate the rush, the projects, the constant struggle to stay on top of things in the fall with work, school, kids, scouts, dance, soccer, etc.  Six months worth of activities, parties, projects, and volunteer work all wrapped into 31 days - days that contain less and less daylight each evening.  But then you give me that pumpkin patch grin and I cave, loving you more each year.  Really, there should be a 12 step program for this.  There was less scrapping in October than September, but it still happened so I am calling that a success.  Here's the round up - which includes a challenge win over on the Cocoa Daisy Blog - oh October, you get me every time.

This was made my my Cocoa Daisy October Kit with pictures from that day at the pumpkin patch.  Love the fox stamp and those leaves fussy cut from patterned paper.  Fall fabulous colors.  

Next up - you know those pages that linger and linger unfinished until something just clicks?  This is one of those.  After the Simper Scrapper Stash Bash earlier this summer, I was cleaning through supplies and pulled out these ancient plastic flowers, sassafras branding strip and what I have left of the Love, Elsie papers and then it just clicked that I had these two random photos waiting to be scrapped and it came together quickly.  Makes me wonder if the stash kit plan shouldn't be used more to target supplies and use them. Hmmmm, need to give that more thought.  

Here's another that has been idling for some time.  And somehow little bits and pieces of leftovers found their way to this patterned paper that had been used for a circle cut out.  It is kinda plain but at the same time doesn't feel like it needs anything.  

To what is currently sitting on my desk. I had intended on a page about what is happening right now and then right now just started happening.  Guess I better get back to that. . . .

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.