Throwback Thursday: Three Wishes

Looking through my old layouts has really helped me understand why the Silhouette was destined to be my best mechanical friend:

This layout is from 2003 and looks like it's been through the ringer.  But that title...  Even back in the day, the title was the thing for me.  If I was feeling lazy, I'd print something out on the computer, but most of the time I'd find an appropriate font, get it sized the way I wanted and print a mirrored version on the back side of my cardstock and cut it out with an Exact-o knife and micro-tip scissors.

Molly just turned 14 and I just shared the layout about her making her cake, so this seemed appropriate to go along with that.  She was such a beautiful little girl.  Blond hair, chubby cheeks, big brown eyes...  And dear lord, was she feisty!  Well, some things haven't changed.

I'm going to put the journaling here because it's really hard to read, even on the layout itself.  At least this way if it continues to fade I'll have a record of it.

Three wishes, one for each candle on your cake.  Health: I want you to be strong and healthy, both physically and mentally...eat healthy, exercise, get lots of rest.  Be confident in who you are. Trust your judgement. Know who to trust in life (hint: Mom and Dad! We always have your best interest at heart!) Happiness: I want you to know joy on a daily basis.  Some days will be hard, but even in the toughest times there is pleasure if you remember to open your eyes and heart to let it in.  Laughter: Let humor be your safety net. Take yourself seriously, always try to be the best you can be, but don't forget to laugh often.  Find humor in everything you can, including yourself! If you can manage to laugh , health and happiness won't ever be far off!

Thanks for stopping by!  

Taste the Rainbow

Molly turned 14 earlier this month.  Specifically, five days after I broke my arm. Lucky her.  (#sarcasm) She'll just have to wait to get beat at putt-putt golf.

Instead, we had a DIY b-day celebration.  I picked up some Duff's Tie-Dye Cake Mix from Target and crossed my fingers that little Miss Moody, er, wow, did I say that outloud?? Yikes. I crossed my fingers that little Miss Molly would find the idea of making her own cake acceptable.  Luckily, she did.  Plus, her sister Maggie hung around to help (thank goodness...I was in my very helpless days back then).  But Maggie's presence always helps Molly's mood.  (I feel like that's one m-word away from being a killer tongue-twister)

They set to work in the kitchen, I curled up on the sofa with an ice pack and Kerig took over photographer duties.  God bless him, because if there's food being made, he's there to document the shit out of that occasion!

The cake prep involved no less than 12 small bowls for tinted cake mix, 200 hand strokes of the batter, and 13 readings of the directions.  I was bracing for a hot mess and had to remind myself that even brown Easter eggs make tasty egg salad.  And let's face it: chocolate cake is brown, and no one has a beef with that, right?

Guess who was wrong?

The cake actually turned out very cool looking!  There was probably 4 times as much frosting on there than I would have preferred, but it was apparently necessary for the overall design aesthetic.  Or something like that.

I wanted the layout to convey the same joyful exuberance that the cake did - lots of colors and sprinkles everywhere.  Had I thought about it at the time, actual sugar might have been used.

I used tons of Bella Blvd papers from their Scattered Sprinkles, Summer Squeeze and Classic Calendars line.  The font for "rainbow" is called Blackout and I've gotten a lot of use out of it.  (See: here  & here)  The font comes the way you see here - with the blocks already cut out around the letters.  I've used the letters themselves as well as the negative space frame, like here.  I love it.  I used my old standby SNF Lollihop  for the word taste.  Truth be told, I don't love it here.  The word taste should be - well, I don't want to say smaller...I think I want to say "less bold".  It's just so visually large, but honestly, I did the title towards the end and I was just plain and simple running out of steam at that point. I did cut it out with a rainbow of cardstock colors for underneath, but you had to be viewing at just the right angle and have perfect close up vision to see it.  Lord knows, that detail is lost to me, but my daughter swears she can see it.  Either way, the word is too big, but I give myself a sold B for the effort.

I also used a very old Heidi Swapp mask and some new(ish) Heidi Swapp color shine sprays to break up the starkness of the plain white background.  I was on the fence about how it came out, but on the finish page, the actual design gets lost (probably a good thing) and you're just left with some blobs of color...and that's okay.

This layout has EIGHT photos on it.  Holy cow.  That's a lot.  And I haven't done a two page spread in years and years.  it was weird, trying to remember how to work all of this.  But I like so many of the photos and I had a hard enough time working it down to just these few, so I'm really glad I came up with a way to squeeze them all on.

Thanks for stopping by!

This Year...

So I mentioned being a part of the community at Paperclipping. I love it there!  It's so nice to have a little home on the internet to talk about scrapbooking.  I also mentioned in the Christmas in July that we're doing some challenges...and that I love me a challenge!

So this is for another challenge.  It's a sketch challenge with a twist: it's supposed to be about us.  Here's what I came up with:

and it's based on this sketch:

I had to adapt the sketch to make it 8.5x11 friendly, which means I just lopped off the the space on the right side and moved the thought bubbles into where the circles are.

I chose to drop the journaling into a glassine envelope behind the pictures.  I used a library card, ran it though the printer so the top says "quite the adventure" and then hand journalled the bullet points of the year.  Frankly, I didn't want to cover up the math paper, which may be my favorite paper, ever, of all time.

I found this to be hard one for me. I knew that I wanted to use these pictures, but when I printed them I realized they were really dark...the kind of dark that meant I had to chose my papers wisely.  It also rained on Wednesday, which usually I love, but it really sucked the life out of me.  But in the end, even though it seemed to take 3 times as long as it should have, I'm okay with the end result.  :)

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Throw Back Thursday: Are you ready for some football??

Ted just had football camp last week, and you know football season is fixin' to start!  Last year Ted played JV, which meant that his games were on Saturday mornings.  Which means I only got to see two games. :(  (BUT, they were two really great games!)  This year it looks like he's playing varsity, so I'm looking forward to seeing him play a lot more!  (I'll need to do a Kickstarter campaign just so I can afford to see his games though. :P)

So when I was flipping through my album this morning this layout seemed timely for my TBT Layout:

I *love* the "Oh snap!" part of this!  First, I made this layout in 2007, back when "Oh, snap!" was something people actually said.  Second, I knew that Ted played center back in the day, but I had no idea what a center did.  Yes. I am this clueless.  When it finally occurred to me that he was the one to snap the ball every play it was like a million watt bulb turned on for me!  And -- yay! -- that position is nice and easy to take pictures of!  No messiness - no pesky defensive players in the way...just a nice straight shot and there he is!

This year Ted is a vying for the starting quarterback position.  I still don't know that much about football, but I know what a quarterback does, and I know that starting any position on the varsity team in 10th grade is pretty darn good.  I have my fingers crossed for a good season!  But man...I miss the days of watching 9 year olds play...it was so much less scary!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you're ramping up for a great weekend!

Christmas in July

About this time last year I floated the idea of making one Christmas tree ornament every week for the rest of the year.  The idea quickly sank.  I barely tolerate Christmas at Christmas time, the idea of voluntarily taking on that kind of project was ridiculous on my part.  Laughable, in fact. Ha ha ha ha. I'm still laughing.

And yet, here I am, in July, sharing a Christmas tree ornament:

I'm mentioned my love of the Paperclipping Roundtable.  When 2Peas announced they were closing they scrambled and created a message forum to fill in the void that was created. While I was never really an active participant at 2Peas, I am really enjoying this new community that's forming at Paperclipping.

One of the things that's come up is challenges.  And I do love me a challenge!  I think it's so fun to work within some restriction, have a deadline, think outside of your box.  Love it.  And this one was to do some Christmas in July - finish a December Daily album (psssh. I never started one of those, so that was out!), work on some cards (oops.  this is an area that I'm terrible about.  Every year I vow that I'll send cards...and then they never get done), and the last option was do anything Christmasy - a project, ornament, a layout, etc.  Okay, now we're talking!

I'd like to say that I whipped the Santa ornament out in a matter of minutes, but it took almost two hours.  Just riffling through my scraps to find appropriate papers took an hour. :P  But once they were picked it was fun and straightforward.

And in the interest of full disclosure, Santa was not my first attempt at this challenge.  Last night I spent far too much time working on this:

The whole thing is just dreadful, but the lump that the brad creates to the left of the nose is just terrible.  It looks like maybe he has an infection of some sort.  Poor, sad, short armed reindeer. :P

And with that, Officer Taylor is home.  Time to think about food! Later! Thank you for stopping by!

A walk to remember

I have a confession to make: I really dislike Nicholas Sparks' stuff.  I could expand on this, but this is a scrapbooking blog and you didn't come here to have me blast your favorite author for his simplistic style and cheap antics meant to both minimize your current relationships and make you cry: blech.

So it pains me that the title that got stuck in my head for this layout happens to coincide with the name of one of his books.  But here's the thing: I went on a walk on a very beautiful day and broke my elbow. It seems that "a walk to remember" sums it up pretty tidily.

I had a couple of good reasons for taking this particular walk.
1.) It was a perfectly gorgeous day.  65º, sunny, breezy, blue skies. Beautiful
2.) I had just been to the doctor the day before about an arthritis related issue.  The doctor had given me an NSAID, and everything was feeling pretty good.  I know from experience that keeping everything moving really helps.
3.) The day before I had driven past Charlotte's ice cream shop (shown in the left picture in the layout), and there was a sign out front that said "New! Johnny Football Sundae!"  and I wanted a picture of it.  "Johnny Football" refers to Johnny Manziel - the Browns big draft pick this year.  I try to follow football, but mostly I fail.  But I'm always amused at things like this.  Ironically, the very next day the sign was changed to "New! King James Sundae!" after the announcement that LeBron was coming back.  Fickle, fickle Charlotte. :P

At any rate, I left for my walk at 8:45 in the morning and when I got to the ice cream shop it was closed (duh, I knew it would be) but the sign wasn't out. Drats! I hadn't thought about that.  So, I snapped a couple of pictures (because it was so darned colorful! And I had the place to myself. ;)) and headed home.  And, I swear that I wasn't looking at my phone when I tripped.

I based the layout on a pagemaps sketch:

Aside from not doing the banners across the top and modifying the title placement a little, I followed the sketch pretty faithfully.  It's been eons since I used a sketch - it was kind of nice.

And now...I'm going to whine.

Turn away. It's not too late.

You're still here??  I warned you.

My arm hurts.  This shouldn't be a surprise. And I suppose I'm not that surprised.  But even without the extra weight of a cast or splint, my arm feels heavy.  And I don't have a cast or splint on to limit my motion, and I'm pretty good about taking it easy, but I forget.  Today I washed my hands and went to flick the water off my hands.  I learned on day 1 that this was not something I couldn't do. But I had to relearn that today (day 11).  I'm surprised daily by the things I can't do.  Yesterday I learned that I can shuffle cards, but I can't deal them.  The doctor told me that I can drive.  Today I learned that maybe I can drive, but driving for an hour straight might not be the best idea.

I know I'm whining.  This could be SO MUCH WORSE. I know this.  I get to wash my hands (you have no idea how gross those fingers sticking out of cast get.  So, so very gross).  I GET TO TAKE A SHOWER! And without wrapping my arm in a garbage bag!  And having done that I know how incredibly grateful I am for this.

But when he sent me home with no cast, I think that was part of me that thought "it's not really broken." And I thought that if it wasn't really broken, then it would be fine really quickly.

Apparently it really is broken and it might heal quickly...but it's not healed yet.

And after all that, I wanted to say that I appreciate all the well wishing comments - I agree! I hope I feel better, soon, too! :)

Take care, keep an eye on those sidewalk cracks, and thanks for stopping by!

Have a nice trip, see you next fall!

Do you remember the semi-cruel things that we used to say to each other as kids?  I worked with a girl who used to say "Smooth move, Ex-Lax" every time anyone did anything klutzy.  She was lovely.

So it's been a quite a month in these parts.  I went from being overwhelmed with two jobs, to one job...to no job.  Well, not really on that last part, but...  I broke my elbow last Thursday and I can't lift until I get clearance - so at least until my next x-ray on August 5th.  The weird upside is: when I went to the orthopedic doctor on Monday he told me I didn't have to wear anything (cast/splint) on my arm.  Well, at night, I have to wrap it up...which I love - I feel like I'm putting on my security blanket.  Because Lord knows, with nothing on it during the day I manage to "oopsie" 30 times a day.  (Turns out, I don't need it in a cast, and I know not to lift, but if I rotate it ever so slightly beyond where it wants to go and I see stars.  Twirling, sparkly, stunningly painful stars.)

One of the upsides of dating a guy who's handy with a camera is that if he takes you to the ER, he's probably going to snap a few pictures while you're there.

One of the upsides of being a scrapbooker is that I'll probably make a layout of said photos:

So I broke my elbow on a walk on my day off.  I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and went flying.  I landed on my hands, but the impact caused my ulna to break up by my elbow. The story is sort of funny (I think) and includes elements like flying cell phones, school buses and a broken ego...on top of skinned knees and other boo-boos.  On the walk home after it happened I kept thinking "Have a nice trip, see you next fall." and "Exercise kills"...as well as a couple of other choice phrases.  :P

It looks like there's no journaling whatsoever, but in fact the back side of the layout is nothing but the story.  Normally you'd put two layouts in a page protector, back to back.  I decided that this was a story that was too big for a small space and not something I wanted to hide, per se.  So I'm happy with just sliding this in the protector and letting the story show on the other side.

The day this happened, we came home from the hospital to find a package waiting.  I was expecting a small canvas bag from Lands End so I didn't think much of it.  When I finally got around to opening it I was surprised to find that it was an order from 2Peas.  When they announced they were closing I decided to pull the trigger on my basket - which had a handful of fun/happy/bright papers - most of which were Bella Blvd.  I wasn't expecting the package for a week or so.  So I was excited (so many pretty colors!) and gobsmacked at the timing.  It was surely some karmic joke at my expense: Here, have some time off of work, new supplies...AND ONLY YOUR LEFT HAND...HA HA HA HA.

So when the splint came off I was totally ready to PLAY.

Okay, that's it for now.  Thank you for stopping by!

Another Thursday, another throwback layout

I love this photo.  Technically, it's a dud.  In fact, I had it enlarged and mounted and when the lab got the negative they called to verify that I wanted it. It's blurry, they said.  Surely you must want the frame to the left or right of it, they said.  Yep.  It's blurry.  Nope, I didn't write the wrong frame number.  That's the one I want.

It hangs in my home now, and I still love it.  

This layout is so incredibly simple.  I used an Exact-o knife to cut the red frame.  I printed my title and journaling on vellum, and used the Exact-o to cut it into wonky chunks.  The only other "design element" was using pops of red in the journaling.  

Why this one? Why now?

Well, I'm not really sure.  I flipped through an album and there were a couple of layouts that I could have used, but when I got to this one, I stopped flipping.  Molly's 14th birthday was yesterday, and of course birthdays always make you aware of the passage of time.  Molly's only two in this photo.  They ALL are so young here.  And so perfectly them. The journaling - which is too long to transcribe - talks about how there's so much commotion (yep) but also how wonderful having siblings is because they all know your journey and understand you so thoroughly. 

(Oops.  I just realized that this photo is slightly different than the one I have hanging here.  In the enlargement, Molly's head is showing.  But it's still blurry. :P)

Alright.  I'll have a current layout up tomorrow.  It's been quite a week around these parts.  Stay tuned. ;)

As always: Thanks for stopping by!

Throw Back Thursday: Layout style

The other day I was looking for a layout.  As it turns out, I don't have it...one of the casualties of divorce. :P  ANYway, I flipped through 5 or 6 albums in my search.  And I'm struck by how many layouts I still like.  So until I get bored (which is likely to happen sooner rather than later) I've decided to share a new, OLD layout on Thursdays.

First up:

How lucky am I that on Ted's first day of school he did a beeline for a computer in front of a big window?  I swear that I didn't steer him there.

I made this layout in 2004.  TWO THOUSAND FOUR, y'all!  TEN YEARS AGO! And look at Ted!  The pictures are actually from 2003, when Ted was only 5.  He's getting his driver's license in a couple of months. *sob*  I love my big kids, but I'd give my right leg to relive a day with each of my kids when they were 4 or 5.

Things I like about this layout: I didn't do anything special with the cork, per se, but I like that's just a casual element of the page.  I have never been a big stamper (honestly, I'm not very good at it, and I'm scared of the expense), but I like the white stamped circles.

And I really like my use of the old index print.  Remember those?  Back in the film days you'd get the index print with the tiny, unhelpful thumbnail prints.  I don't know about everywhere, but where I got my stuff done you actually had to pay a dollar extra for it, so I'm glad that I was able to (just this once) put that bck to good use.  And just look at Molly!  That sweet blonde bob, and her perfectly round cheeks! *swoon*

Ok! So that's it for my first installment of TBT:LS! I Hope to have a current day layout to share soon, but I don't can't say when.  Cuz I'm unpredictable like that. :P

DTW and Scraptastic

Have I mentioned that I signed up for Scraptastic's Kit Club?  I did.  I also signed up for Studio Calico.  This was back when I was finishing up my student teaching and I felt the need to reward myself.  Also, I thought I was returning to my job at the camera store.  So yeah, I've since cancelled the Scraptastic kit.

In the meantime, I did get a couple of kits.  I dreamed wistfully of these kits, but alas, for the most part I've just been "eh" about them.  And while that may sound mean, I merely mean that they're not "me."  I drooled about these kits based on what other scrappers did with them, but once in my hands I realized that they aren't quite at home there (in my hands).

And then the Summer Nights kit came and first I was like "What?"  And then I was like "Huh?"  I was expecting to not really like it, but the photos of the kit didn't really do it justice.  Plus, the packet of embellishments from Simple Stories was just yummy.

Let's see.  The blue border was actually cut out and laid on top of the white sheet of cardstock, so there's a very thin white border around the whole layout.  And that grey bit of ickiness at the top? That's the matboard that I rest the layout on for photographing it.  It's not supposed to be there and it's going to drive me nuts. :(

The pictures are from a walk I took around downtown Willoughby, which the locals refer to as DTW.  DTW is only 2 blocks long, but it's chock full'o bars, restaurants, galleries, antique shops and boutiques...all of which are closed on Sundays.  Which makes it the perfect day to pull out the camera and go for a walk. ;)  In the fall we did a ghost walk, and we were taken off the beaten path to hear stories.  I've been wanting to go back to some of the spots, and that's what I did one Sunday in early June.  I did it by myself, which makes the photos somehow less layout-worthy...  Does that even make sense?  I didn't take this walk with my family or boyfriend, and therefore it doesn't rate a scrapbook page?  Hmmm.  Oh well.  I made a page anyway. :P

Thanks for stopping by! ☺