Week in the Life - Saturday

Sitting here listening to a hard rain and ordering prints for all my planned projects for National Scrapbook Day this weekend.  Nice relaxing night around our house.

In honor of NSD weekend I have a post planned for.....wait for it......EVERY DAY THIS WEEK!!!!  I believe that is an unprecedented timeline for me, and it may never be repeated, but it should be fun while it lasts. 

First, a little catch up.  Here are some photos and stories for my Saturday of Week in the Life:

Our day was derailed by rain. I had a surprise day-trip planned for Saturday,
but it involved too much outdoor activity for the cold, rainy day. So, I started
with a slow, oatmeal kind of morning while Crystal slept in.

Saturday was my worst day for remembering to take pictures.
It was mid-day before we made it out of the house to run
some errands.  We did some dreaming (that's a very dreamy
price tag for us!) as we wandered the store.

After our errands we came home, did a quick
change and dog walk, and then went to a
murder-mystery dinner theatre show. This was
my long island iced tea. Have you ever met a
bartender that didn't know how to make a long
island iced tea? Well, there's a first for everything.
And this first tasted terrible.  I'm not one to let a
drink go to waste, but this picture was taken at the
end of the night - I just couldn't do it :).

A polar bear in a murder mystery?  I had to have a picture after the show.

Junior, all tucked in with a toy.

I spent some time catching up on the week's
project as I got ready for bed.

One more day to show, and then it's time to get it all tied together. I edited, resized and ordered my prints tonight, so they will be all ready for this weekend. Do you have any projects planned? If so, remember to check the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog for some fun that day!

CKCB challenge 3

Here are my pages for today's Counterfeit Kit Challenge to use Washi tape. Don't see any Washi? Well, that's because I don't have any Washi! I know it's all the rage, but it usually takes me about 2 years to decide I like something that is "all the rage," so sometime around 2014 I might decide I like it :).

So instead I cheated/counterfeited/substituted and used some fabric tape (the alpha tape on the right page and on the left page over the "happy" card) that has been in my stash for years. Felt good to use it. I tried to use it in ways like I've seen washi used, so I hope it's not too far of a stretch.




On the first page I journaled about our hobbies and Crystal's newest hobby, tai chi.
I haven't been doing many 2-page layouts lately, or at least not ones that can accommodate those big title letters, so I was glad to find a use for those large letters.  



Journaled on my page about starting my blog and how I excited I was to start doing work with the Counterfeit Kit Blog!

Added some of my first Zen tangles, a newer hobby, and an old (old old) Wild Asparagus tag.



I recruited Crystal to help me take pictures of my layout. As you can see, she was super enthused to lend a hand.  That idea didn't work out very well, but I'm so glad I got this shot for my Week in the Life pages!



Thanks for looking!

Week in the Life - Thursday

Here are today's pics and story highlights.  I am loving this project and can't wait to work on the actual pages for the week!  I had a thought yesterday about doing my Mexico vacation album this way. I have all the notes and all the pics to go along with it, so I just might get two projects finished in the near future.

Rainy morning.



We were running a little late, so it was a doing-makeup-in-the-garage

sort of morning.








The work of the office prankster. At least they have the good
sense to stay away from my desk :).




Set up for the morning - breakfast and Paperclipping
Roundtable qued and ready to play.




Staff meeting time




Tonight's walk. The pic is a bit staged;
I may have had a big piece of
chicken in my hand :).



Week in the Life - Wednesday


A few pics and stories for Wednesday:



Fuzzy first pic of the day




Doorhandles




Surprise thank-you flowers on my
desk this morning!




Leaving work. I pass through
this garage to get to the next garage
where I park. I walk this way any time
it's raining.





Evidence of the primo parking spot

I managed to secure today.



Crystal put together and used the new vacuum.




Tonight's snack.




Awake way too late,  I've been taking these screen captures
from the nightstand app on my ipad at different times
each day. I like it because it gives me the weather along
with the date and time.



Week in the Life - Tuesday

And here are some highlights for Tuesday:

I often stop at McDs to get a $1 large unsweetened iced tea.
I know Susie Ormon would suggest that
those $5/week (and usually more like $2-3/week) could be saved
instead and turned into $1 million by the time I retire. 
I say phooey. It makes me happy.

I had a conference to attend all day. I had a few minutes to kill,
so my tea and I hung out in the car and listened to
Sirius Channel 28 (The Spectrum) until I had to move inside.

After my conference I again had some free time before I had to
pick up Crystal, so I ran some errands.
This sign at Target caught my eye.

My dinner: Salad and hummus.
I made this big bowl of salad yesterday,
so I had it for the week.

Ding dong....UPS delivered our new vacuum.
Crystal was very excited. And I am going
to be in trouble when she sees this picture!

Junior's first night at his new rally class.  We like
our new trainer. But it's a long night - Crystal goes to tai chi class,
back home to pick us up, half hour drive to dog class until 9pm....
we have no choice but to stop
at Dairy Queen on the way home after such a long night!

I have lots more pictures on my iPad that can fill-in the holes of Monday and Tuesday. And I tried to take some pictures of the pretty moon last night; Not sure if I can edit that picture into something useable or not, but I'll try.

Week in the Life - Monday

I'm actually kind of keeping up with the Week in the Life project!

This post includes my Monday highlights. I only took a handful of pictures (remembering to take pictures is a constant issue for me, not just this project). But it's also the most boring day of the week, so I'll just consider it my warm up day.

Leaving the house, running late.

I had to run some work errands this morning, and just happened
to find myself next door to a Cord Camera. So I stopped in to see
about getting some special prints made.

After dinner and dog walking, I snapped some photos of layouts.
Crystal was extremely happy to help
(can't you tell by the look on her face???)

Junior's hiding place. He has recently developed
some sort of anxiety problem and this spot
 seems to be his new retreat in the evenings.

How I spent my evening:
strawberries and cream and reading The Blogess's new book on my iPad.

I have good notes of the day, too, so between the notes and the pics, I think I'm off to a good start.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge 2

Just a quick post with my small picture challenge page.

I had an odd sized piece of memorabilia and needed a page that size for the back of the protector. So these small photo booth prints were a good choice to fit on the small, narrow page.

We were trying to spell O-H I-O with our arms, and you can see how that turned out.

Thanks for looking!

April Counterfeit Kit LO#1

A couple of weeks ago, while looking through older scrapbooks, Crystal made a comment about how I never finish what I start.  I have a few pages throughout the books where I've dropped a stack of photos in the protector expecting to finish later or where I saved a page for something but don't have pictures yet. But I never go back snd complete the pages.

After that last comment I developed a "well I'll show you" attitude and decided to finish all those missing pages.  I made a good dent in that project last weekend, including these pages that use my April kit. I was so jazzed about all those bright colors, and then I went and used the neutral B sides on this one. It just seemed better for the pictures.



It has been so long, I don't even remember which trip to The Wilds produced these pictures, so I journaled a little bit about all the times we visited the park.  My goal is to get done, so they're not all pretty, but - well, they're done!

December Daily - Finally Done

Well, it was a project. And it is finally done.


 May I present - my complete December Daily. 

Here's the link to a Flicker album with all the pictures. It just seemed easier to load them there than to put them all here on the blog.

I used Simple Stories 25 Days of Christmas throughout the book.  I love it as much as I did when I first saw it.  I used a stamp-holder 3 d-ring album from Hobby Lobby (8 1/2 x 6, same size as the album used in the AE Studio Calico kit), and I made my own page protectors by cutting down 12x6 protectors to 8 1/2" high. Perfect!

Will I do a daily project like this one again?  Maybe.  It was fun. It was a lot of work. It took me away from other projects (like my Counterfeit Kits).  The project lost it's luster somewhere around day 13, and it took a good bit of work to fill in the holes of the boring days throughout the month.  But it made me get better (or at least think about getting better) about taking pictures of ordinary moments in the moments, and I hope that carries through into other projects.  And it is a lovely keepsake.  But my goodness it took a lot of time!

I modified as I went along:

• I planned individual pages for the week between Thanksgiving and December; I ended up doing a couple of summary pages instead. 
• I planned to insert extra pockets between each day; Why??? I didn't have that much content or time, so I cut a lot of that extra work. 
• I planned to use vellum dividers and decorate them with all sorts of techniques; I do love vellum and all the fun things you can do with it.  I did a few, but never got around to the rest.  I may print some Christmas carol and song lyrics on them.  But if I don't ever get around to it, it won't matter.
• I planned to use lots of smaller pictures; I didn't have time to make lots of size adjustments, so I generally made 4x6s work. 

That's all ok. The book is THICK, and I'm happy with everything I accomplished.

If you're really interested, here's a daily breakdown of the book:


November - Intro page with hidden journaling, Thanksgiving and Black Friday pictures, and my 2Pease 24 Days of Thanksgiving thoughts.

1 - Decorations
2 - Christmas in the Village
3 - Selling our truck, and a holiday party
4 - Homemade decoration
5 - Journaling about our 5th Christmas in our house
6 - Decorations around my building at work
7 - Journaling about a Cricut cartridge my dad sent to me
8 - Hot chocolate day at work
9 - Friday night napping with our dog
10 - Holiday shopping trip with friends
11 - Junior's Rally Obedience class
12 - Our holiday card
13 - All the pictures we received from other people in cards (I highlighted a few and tucked the rest into one of the stamp storage folders that came in the album)
14 - Gas prices
15 - Neighborhood dinner at the 94th AeroSquadron restaurant at the Columbus airport
16 - The weather outlook for the month (printed from weather.com), Junior getting a bath, and journaling about the unseasonably warm weather for the month of December.
17 - Visiting family, meeting my first great-niece
18 - My love of Brach's Christmas nougat. And how did I not know that it came in cinnamon and mint flavors, too?!?!
19 - "In loving memory" pages - I wasn't sure how or if to include this info, but we lost two friends in the month of December, so I decided to note it on this page.
20 - Favorite "new" radio Christmas song and some journaling about finishing the final page of the book.
21 - A neighbor's house decorations
22 - A card from my dad
23 - Some fun journaling about all the last minute stuff we did that day
24 - Making hot chocolate on a stick
25 - Some decorations and journaling about the day
26 - Out to lunch and a movie
27 - taking a walk/nice weather
28 - Back to work (some projects we did over the long weekend)
29 - Football bowl season
30 - New iPad and apps addiction
31 - Our annual dull NYE
Back page - My Year in Status print out from Facebook

Just in time to start a Week in the Life project (Wait....did I just say I'd do ANOTHER big project?!?!).  It never ends! But first, I'll be catching up on this month's Counterfeit Kit.  I have a couple of pages done, I just need to load the pictures.  Thanks for looking!

April Counterfeit Kit

I’m back! I have been scrapping in dribs and drabs, but it hasn’t been much to blog about. It’s definitely going to be a challenge to get back into the blogging work, but I’m ready!

After our vacation and busy March, I’m back with a Counterfeit Kit for April. The original kit photos and details are listed on yesterday’s CKC blog post. As soon as Meridy and Bethany passed along the details of this month’s inspiration kit from Kits de Somni, I was thrilled by the colors! It’s a real awakening to go along with the spring that’s popping up all around us. And these are the colors that I’ve been drawn to in recent purchases, so while I don’t have these exact items, I do have lots of these colors!

And here is my take on the kit:

Papers are MME, Kaiser Craft, Jillibean Soup (had to throw that April 2012 piece in there,
even though it’s more pastel than my other papers),
Bella Blvd., and a couple that I don’t know the origin.



Alphas are Jillibean, AC Thickers, and Pebbles.I pulled some colorful ribbons and made some flowers from some silk flowers I had on hand. I don’t use a lot of flowers – mostly I just wanted an excuse to use those little bunny-head brads as the flower centers.



I found this sheet of cut-outs in a DCWV Snapshot Stack, and I thought all the
yellows and blues, and the cameras and tickets would work well in my kit. 

 Not pictured are my doilie embellishments - sorry, minor technical difficulties there.  But I've started working on some Zentangle flowers to add to the doilies. Have you ever heard of Zen Tangle?  I had heard of it, but after a meditation/zen tangle class last weekend, I'm hooked.  If you haven't heard of it, just google it; You'll find all sort of tangles, a meditative, artsy form of doodling.  I'm a constant notebook doodler, but this form has a bit of structure and focus on peace that I like.  Like I need another hobby!  But as soon as I started one, I thought I could work in some doodling/art journaling into my kit this month.  I'll add that picture later today when I get back to my work computer (where the pics are :)).

Looking forward to getting back into the kit world. Thanks for looking!

ETA:  Eek!  I forgot to post the directional information......If you're hopping through all the Master Forger kits, your next stop is Susanne at Snaps and Snippets. Happy hopping!