...and in other news:

I feel like my entire personality has been taken over by student teaching.  It's pretty much all I've been thinking about, so it's pretty much all I've been talking about, too.  However, school has been cancelled for today AND tomorrow due to the "extreme weather" so I've decided that I need to spend time today working on "Caroline" instead of my "Ms. Davis" alter-ego.

First up: Blog post!

Last week I had a layout up on the Silhouette blog that I never shared here, and now seems like a good time to rectify that:

I really like the concept of the two matching pictures (taken three years apart) but I'm not going to sugar coat it: the difference in the tonal qualities really bugs the heck out of me.  Blech.

I really don't have a whole lot to say about the layout, but I did want to mention the rhinestones.  Silhouette sent me their rhinestone setting tool and a variety pack of gems and I'm in love.  First of all, I'm sucker for gadgets, but I'm also a sucker for things that work.  Compared to the tradition gemstone set up with the line of adhesive that needs to be broken and always has an awkward tail, these are AMAZING.  There's no tail.  You put the singular, tailless gem where you want it and apply heat using the setting tool.  It melts the adhesive on the gemback and the gem STAYS PUT.  I put that in caps because with the traditional kind I feel like a week later they're all going to be pooled in the bottom of the page protector, whereas these feel really firmly stuck down.  This is a good thing!

Moving on to other news:

• I hardly think that 2 denotes a trend, but I seem to have taken up baking.  Last Sunday I made soft pretzels and yesterday I made Parker House rolls.  The pretzels were mainly because I had a weird but incredibly strong hankering for them.  The rolls were mostly because I had two more packets of yeast that need to be used before May.  And, honestly, I think I wanted something to really concentrate on.  I feel like my brain slips back to school every couple of minutes no matter what I'm doing.  But if I'm really focused, I can escape for a little while.  So doing something that's a little out of my comfort zone is a great distraction.  Plus: rolls.  So I guess it's win/win.  And I still have a packet of yeast left to use up.  I wonder what's next?  Maybe more pretzels, because there were amazeballs. (I don't even say amazeballs, that's how amazeballs there were.)

• I decided that I needed to go on a mini shopping spree to add some teacher clothes to my wardrobe.  LLBean sent an email offering 20% off my entire order, but I couldn't find anything I like.  Which is odd, because I really do like LLBean.  But here's the deal (and I'm talking directly to you, LLBean): as a plus sized woman, I don't want to dress like I've given up.  Or that I bought all my clothes 15 years ago.  Waistlines have moved down, and for good reason.  But the ONLY lower-than-the-natural-waist offering they had was corduroys.  Now, if you're plus sized and look good in corduroys, then God bless you and more power to ya!  But I'm not going to wear pants that not only add volume but also make weird noises when I walk.

Okay, rant over.  At any rate, I took my business to Lands End, where I found a bunch of lower waist options and they were on sale.  Yay! I love a sale!  And yeah...I bought two pairs of pants in colors that I never would have considered had they not been the only option in my size, but seriously, when they arrived I fell in love.  And then there are these lovelies:

Now, I'm considerably taller than the model, so my 27 inch inseam does not (unfortunately) come down that far (oh, the heaven I would be in if they did!) but I LOVE THESE LEGGINGS.  First, I can't believe that I bought leggings: no one needs to see all my lumps and bumps.  But here's the thing: there AREN'T any lumps and bumps to see.  And that's not because my body miraculously changed, it's because the fabric is wonderful: thick and comfy and stretchy and MATTE. None of that icky spandex sheen. Blech.  By the way, I bought that top, too.  I'm not wearing this to school obviously, but it's adorable and I will happily wear it on the weekends.  Probably both days.  ;)

• Last Monday was President's Day and Kerig and I both had the day off.  For most people I'm sure this sounds like no big deal.  But for the last gazillion years we've both worked retail, so we've rarely had a day off together.  But now that we're both "working" in the schools (in quotes because it's not like it's an actual job.  This is technically a class for me.) we have a weekends-and-holidays-off schedule that jives up.  So anyway, we took advantage of $5 Mondays and saw August: Osage County.  It was more serious than I had expected, but it was a great story.  Meryl Streep always blows me away, and this was no exception.  I can take or leave Julia Roberts, but I must admit that she did a great job here as well.  I love a movie that doesn't tie up every loose end, and Kerig and I had lots to discuss about the characters and what happened next over dinner.  I love that we can watch the same movie and interpret things differently.  I constantly have "Huh, I never thought about it that way" moments when we talk after a good movie.

Okay! Thanks for allowing me this ramble.  I think the rest of the day involves scrapbooking and CAMEO'ing and otherwise not obsessing about graphing systems of linear inequalities and composition of functions.  Yeah. Good luck with that.  Me. Not you.  I'm pretty sure you're not going to be too worried about either of those things... :P

Thanks for stopping by!  

Kicking and screaming towards the holidays...

I don't mind hearing Christmas music at the grocery store.
I don't care if you put up your tree the weekend before Thanksgiving.
When someone says "I'm finished my Christmas shopping" I'm happy for them and more than a little bit envious.

But, for the most part, I'm not one who gets into the spirit.  I'm not cranky or bah-humbug, I just...I just like routine, and Christmas (holidays in general, in fact) really messes with that.

So you can imagine my reaction when I found out that I had to create a Christmas decoration using Silhouette's Advent Calendar.  I was centered somewhere between a knot of dread in my stomach and full on panic.  And that lasted for days.  Every moment in the shower, driving to work, loading the dishwasher and folding laundry was spent wondering how I was going to pull this off.  Surely, I thought, my Christmas non-spirit would show through, and everyone would know I was a big, fat phony when it comes to Christmas cheer.

And maybe that was true in the beginning.  Maybe I was faking-it-til-you-make-it, but just as that implies, somewhere along the way a switch got flipped, and I started to have fun. Then I started glittering stuff and then I started having a LOT of fun.  And then I noticed glitter in Kerig's beard and, well, you just can't get any more fun than that!

Maybe you're asking yourself "So what did you do with it??"  Or not.  But let's proceed like you were actually curious, shall we?

After all the thinking about how I was going to do this, I finally came up with the idea of combining two of my favorite childhood Christmas traditions.  Our family didn't decorate the tree until Christmas Eve (I know, right?  Ridiculous!) so we didn't have the same level of daily anticipation that "kids these days" have. We did get the cardboard Advent Calendars, and the best part of them was hunting for the day.  What was behind the door was never really all that great, but there was something about looking at all the numbers and finding the right one - that was the exciting part to me.  The other thing that I liked was this thing that my aunt made for us.  It's too hard to explain, but it suffices to say that it had 25 peppermint candies tied to it and every night after dinner we got to untie one and have our mint.  Twofold greatness: candy AND getting to watch the line of mints get shorter every day!

So my thought for this was to combine the two elements I liked best - the hunt for the right day and candy.  On December 1st, this will be nothing but rows of numbered bags. On the first day, we'll find the number 1 bag, and have the Hershey's Nuggets that are inside, and then rehang the bag with the decoration side out.  Every day we'll repeat this process, and as Christmas approaches, it will go from boring rows of numbers to lots and lots of sparkling Christmas and winter scenes.

 Here's a couple of the decorated sides:

Ok. I'm not going to pretend that I don't have favorites.  And this snowman and that penguin? They're the favorites.  You can't tell in the picture, I don't think, but the snowman's eyes and coal buttons are actually black glitter.  Who knew there was an actual use for black glitter??  Well. Now you know! Adorable.  (That is so not humble. But I'm just so pleased with them!)

These are distant runners-up in the favorites category, but it doesn't matter, because the cumulative effect of all these little boxes is sheer Christmasy goodness.  This is going to stay on the shelf behind the sofa, where it'll get seen a lot and is easily accessible to for bag-flipping-and-candy-retrieving.

Be sure to stop by the Silhouette blog to see the other girls' ideas for the Advent Calendar.

And if you're wondering about supplies:
Simple Stories Snowflake-Chevron paper (for the bag)(I *love* this paper and wish I had some left over.  the black/grey chevron is fantastic)
Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love 6x6 paper pad (for the little patterned bits)(except the snowman's and penguin's nose - that's a scrap of BoBunny paper.)
Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love Mixed Sequins  and Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love Snowflake Sequins are the random bits here and there.
The glitter could be from Silhouette or Martha Stewart, and the penguin's hat is glittered using Doodlebug's Sugar Coatin Chunky Glitter
All the shapes except the bag are from the Silhouette online store.  You can see the Silhouette blog post for clickable links for those.
The bag itself is something I made so it would fit perfectly within the structure of the advent calendar and be wide enough to hold a couple of Hershey's Nuggets.  If you're interested, ask for it in the comment section and I'll send it your way.
And, ohmygoodness, is that another aflairforbuttons flair? Why, yes. Yes it is.  And I'll tell you another thing: that link takes you to the set of flair that has the one I used, but I didn't buy that.  I actually did the 12 custom buttons option.  I just didn't have a need for 8 (eight!!) Christmas themed buttons.  So I picked a couple of Christmasy flair and then mixed in some more Caroline-friendly themes.  ;)  (No. I'm not in the aflairforbutton lady's back pocket.  I just love these flair pieces.)


Thanks (as always) for stopping by! I hope your December is off to a great start!

Halloween Prep, y'all.

(I don't know what exactly the "y'all" is about.  I'm feeling sort of punchy at the moment, I guess.)

A couple of weekends ago our big Sunday fun was carving pumpkins.  Here's a little full disclosure for you: I hadn't really planned on carving pumpkins this year.  The kids spend the week with their dad so it seems sort of silly to go to the expense for something they'd see twice.  Plus, they're getting to that age where holidays just aren't as big a deal as they used to be.  Or so I thought.  So when Molly asked if we were carving pumpkins I didn't think to consult Kerig, I just said no.  It was a decision I'd already made.  Although, Kerig had apparently made his own decision about the situation, and as soon as he heard me say no, he chimed in with "Yes, we are."  Well, okay then.  It hadn't occurred to me that maybe he was looking forward to this.  So I was happily overruled.

We went to the local pumpkin patch  nursery garden center and chose our pumpkins. Ted, Kerig and I chose moderate sized pumpkins - something big enough for carving room, but not so large as to be a pain in the neck to carry upstairs.  Molly, on the other hand, bought into BIGGER IS BETTER and picked out one of the biggest ones they had.

At home we washed them off, spread some newspaper, cranked Pandora's Halloween station and went to work.  Molly had already picked out her design from the pattern book that came with the tools - a ghoul at a graveyard spookily raising his hand.  Since I really wasn't super into it, I just went with a standard jack-o-lantern face, with rounded features.  Kerig contemplated his design for quite some time and settled in on a menacing jack-o-lantern face with sizable fangs.

Ted, however, was the man this year.  I don't think of Ted as being super artistic, but he's very good with the fixing/building/figuring out of things.  He decided that he wanted to do Snoopy asleep on his doghouse.  He asked to borrow my laptop and searched google images until he found something suitable to use as a guide.  And I'll be darned if he didn't make it work!

It's really nice having Kerig around.  He's quick to pick up a camera and he's good at it, too.  He stepped right in, made certain there was a picture of everyone working as well as final product shots, and lots of other details.  It was hard to not use all the pictures, but I managed to whittle it down to just 6 pictures and then printed them relatively small.

And then I carefully crammed them all onto one page:

Since I struggle when using more than one picture on a page, I feel rather triumphant that I was able to semi-effectively cram 6 pictures on here.  Go me!

Hey, so, uh, this was up on the Silhouette blog yesterday.  If you're so inclined, you can click this link and check it out again over there.  Cuz yeah. Why not?
.

Lesson learned.

Good grief.  I'm really glad that I cleaned my desk off on Thursday.  This is a tale of before, during and after.  And I'll cut to the moral of the story: Don't be stupid, Stupid :P

So, this is a picture of my desk shortly after we got settled, taken in the beginning of July:

And that's basically the set up I've been running with. I took the Ott light off, because I just didn't need it.  I also don't ever put my laptop on top of the desk anymore.  Real estate is just too precious, so for entertainment I use my Kindle instead, and I put the laptop on a tall chair off to the side for my Silhouetting.

My desk is a vintage drafting table that I got about 18 years ago when we lived in Indiana.  My oldest had sort of taken it over and trashed it, and when we moved I reclaimed it and refinished it.  For weeks I couldn't walk past it without running my hand over the top and asking "Isn't she pretty?"  Yes.  I love it.

BUT, it's a drafting table.  It's meant to have a couple of sheets of paper on it.  NOT all the stuff that I had piled on top of it.  And, as a drafting table, the table can be raised and lowered and the top swings up - drafting is often done  with the table top angled up.  The combined affect of these facts is that the whole dern thing shifts around.

So I've put stuff across the back part, which has probably put more pressure there than it can handle. And over the last couple of weeks I've noticed the whole thing dropping down a little bit at a time.  So I asked Ted and Kerig to lift up the top, and I was going to put some old kid's building blocks under the legs so that top couldn't drop down again.  For whatever reason, I didn't think I needed to take everything off the top.  The good news is, I just cleaned my desk on Thursday so it was very close the way it looks in the picture up there.

The bad news is, this was a stupid decision on my part and everything ended up on the floor:

Oops.  Fortunately nothing broke.  And I would have preferred to just raise and reinforce the desk as we had originally planned.  But instead, I got to reorganize.  Never mind that I had just done this on Thursday.  I did decide that I needed to get a lot of weight off the back side of the desk, so now it looks like this:

One of the things that I love about my table is that it's tall enough for me to scrapbook standing up, which I prefer.  One of the benefits of scrapbooking standing up is that you don't have to have everything right there - walking four feet is no big deal when you're already up.  So tonight I just reevaluated what I needed at my fingertips. The black thing is a lazy Susan thingee (TJ Maxx $10 - l♥ve) and it has scissors (multiple pair, because they're so easy to lose), basic hand punches, tweezers, pokers (like for making a hole for brads), Zig glue pens, my Basic Grey file set and my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher.   The red box has current pictures and a my (teeny, tiny, minuscule) collection of acrylic stamps.  They don't need to be at my fingertips, but I hope to remember to use them if they're there.  The round silver thing is my small bucket of flair.  My Fridgebinz box of adhesive is a must-keep-close item for certain.  The white Making Memories thing has all kinds of pens, paint brushes, lens and stamp cleaners, my ATG gun, SEI buttons that rarely get used but make me happy, and then the little drawers hold extra blades for my trimmer, CM circle cutter blades, Tiny Attacher refills, o-rings and teeny bits.

This was not how I had planned to spend my evening.  But that's okay.  I've been meaning to make some adjustments and this helped that.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to have some thing more directly scrapbook related soon. ☺
Have a great week!

And don't forget: Don't be stupid, Stupid ;)

New Routines

I've taken to jokingly referring to myself as "the happy homemaker."  I'm not certain about the accuracy of the statement.  I do work pretty close to full time (my school work keeps me at about 36 hours a week - enough to keep me eligible for health insurance, but not so much that being a student and a mother becomes overwhelming)(at least not this semester.)  But then, aren't people who make dwellings into homes "homemakers"?  I cook and I clean and I keep chocolates in the candy bowl, so therefore I must be a homemaker, right?

I'm getting up earlier now that school is in session, and I find that keeping the same schedule every day makes getting out of bed earlier easier.  So by noon today I had done and put away two loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and dusted the bedrooms and the living room.  Thank you RockStar. You're awesome.

I gotta say: I was pleased.  I hate cleaning as much as the next person, but I do love when everything is neat and tidy.  Thank you, Mom.  I was paying attention.
When I was done I decided to try to get inspired. I watched a couple of Mercy Tiara process videos.  I absolutely love watching her videos.  I love that she fast forwards her videos and stays on point.  She's really good at explaining her thought process and different things she considered doing, and how she makes her decisions.  She's also got a great photography set up (very important for me) and a good voice.  Plus, she's Canadian, so I like to play a drinking game for every time she says those cute Canadian oo's, like in "about".

And then I was inspired and deflated all at once.  I want what the cool kids have. Kits.  I want the gosh darn kits.  I want new stuff delivered to my door each and every month.  I want the Simple Stories cute newsprint paper with the fun, colorful hearts.  I want the whale stamp, even though I haven't been to the beach once this summer and the only thing I could use a whale on is ...  nevermind.

So then I put on my big girl knickers and decided that I have plenty of everything I need to scrapbook.

So I made a page.  And it's funny that I watched two of Mercy Tiara's videos to get inspired and used nothing that inspired me:
I didn't stitch.
I didn't stamp.
I didn't layer.
I didn't use vellum.
I didn't use multiple photos.
I didn't use adorable newsprint paper with adorable, fun, surprising colored hearts.
I didn't hand journal.
I didn't even fussy cut.

Although, she did use a "I ♥ summer" title thing, that I inspired me to make the "NEW R♥UTINES" title.  And that worked out great, because when Kerig looked at it later he said "New buttons??"  Oops.

So yeah.  What does any of this have to do with being a happy homemaker?  Or the better question - given that this is a scrapbooking blog - is what does being a happy homemaker have to do with the layout. Well, nothing, I suppose.  But if you stretch it, I love our new routines. I even like cleaning our little apartment.  And cooking, even though I've always said I've hated cooking.  (Which is why, Mama Du, I will never make homemade granola bars. ;))  All these new routines are making me happy these days.

Yeah. I know.  I want to throw up a little, too.  Give it time. ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

That Pinterest place is A-Ok.

Today the Mr. built me something:

No.  Not the sofa.  (Although that would be a handy little party trick!)  He put up the shelf behind the sofa for me!

We (HE) used this as the guide/inspiration:

It's just a board from Lowe's stained and attached to the wall with L brackets.
The board, stain, sanding paper, tack cloth and hardware all came to about $30.  After the board was sanded and stained it took him about 20 minutes to put it up.  Now I have some space for framed pictures and tchotchkes, as well as a little extra storage space below the shelf.

An amazingly simple idea that would have never happened if not for Pinterest.

It also wouldn't have happened without a certain guy and his cordless drill.
(This is not to say that it couldn't have happened.  It just means I never would have gotten around to it.  Lazy, lazy, lazy)  Yay, Kerig!

Some thoughts on vertical scrapbooking.

(Which seems so less weenie than 'scrapping standing up')

I recently said I had some kinks to work out with my new scrapbook set up.  And that was true.  The major hang ups were that the laptop was taking up too much space on the drafting table, and while the kitchen table chair is the perfect height for the drafting table, it's sort of awkward.

I should really take some other shots to make this make more sense, but I still have some tubs of stuff that need to be hauled to the Salvation Army, and until those get dealt with I'm not taking anymore shots of my space. :P  But just to the left of this set up is a school desk that I bought for $5 (score) that has two white paper cubes from Michael's on top.

I really love these - they're sturdy, hold a ton and not awful looking.  Plus, I really prefer to store my paper flat, and these allow for that.

I used to have my wide format printer on top of two of these positioned side by side.  I'm not 100% certain I'm keeping the printer though.  It prints beautifully, but since switching to 8.5x11 I rarely print anything larger than 4x6.  Of course the wide format printer can do that, but since space is at a premium, I'm sort of lusting after a nice, compact Epson PictureMate.  Because yeah, I have money in my budget for another printer.  I need my head examined.

So anyway, I have two of those things side by side on a child's school desk, and over the weekend I realized that my laptop could easy sit on them.  Having the laptop nearby is necessary for both journaling and designing and cutting dies on the Cameo.

So that's one problem solved.  On to the kitchen chair...  In the photo above, I have it sort of pushed to the side with my FirdgeBinz on it.  I felt hemmed in, and eventually I just wanted to sit down because I was still feeling the effects of the move (i.e. everything hurt like a mo fo).   But the chairs are tall - your feet don't touch the ground in them.  So getting in and out can be a bit of a hassle.  Now that everything feels a little better (courtesy of copious quantities of Advil) I can actually scrapbook standing up.

AND I LOVE IT.

These are just snippets of the layouts that I posted yesterday.  They're special because each one of them shows something that I used that I've had for-ev-er but wasn't using because it wasn't within arm's reach of my fat ass sitting down while scrapping.  Stamp stuff? I have some, but I'm not a stamper per se, so it's always been stowed away.  But because I was standing up it wasn't any big deal at all to walk over to my shelves, bring the bin of embossing powders and rifle through to find what I want.  Same deal with the stack of sticker labels and photo corners.

It also made cleaning up go more quickly - I was already up, so putting things away didn't feel like any big deal - just grab a load of stuff and put it back on the shelves.  Piece-o-cake.

I'm still lusting over the file cabinets that I shared a couple of days ago - they would really complete the space nicely.  But for now I think it's going to work out.

Now I have to redirect my attention to my bedroom.  This morning I had a dream that I was packing for a trip and I couldn't find my pants.  I think that's my (not-so-)subconscious telling me to get my stuff taken care off.

Thanks for stopping by!

She's Such a B

I'm moving!
Okay, not today - who blogs when they're actually moving?  But I do have stuff in boxes.  I WE get our keys next Saturday and I have a 17 foot UHaul reserved in my name the following Tuesday.  On Wednesday I'll probably be dead, but...thems the breaks, right?

Yesterday was the day I had planned to start packing.  And I had also planned to squeeze in one more layout.  I figured I'd pack for a couple of hours in the morning, and then set aside two hours to play with paper.  Ted had a baseball game scheduled last night, but it rained pretty hard the night before and throughout the morning.  I got a little cocky, thinking that surely the game would be cancelled, which would mean I could pack more and push scrapping to the evening.

HA.
hahahahaha.

No.  Ted's game wasn't cancelled.  But by the time that became apparent I had already extended my packing time into my scrapping time.  Also, last night was the last night for me to make a meal and have "all" of us eat something homemade together. (all = me, Ted and Molly...which is such a tiny 'all' these days!)  The bottom line is, I got to play with paper for about a half hour before we had to head out to the park.  The game was good - the sun was out at the beginning, and it got a little chilly when the sun went down, but at no point was it unpleasant.  The boys won 6-0. (Yay!)

We got home after 10:30, and even though that's long after I prefer to scrapbook, I was going to finish the page I'd started.  I couldn't bear to pack everything up with this picture and this story untold.  I wasn't excited about where this was going at first, my tired brain just wasn't clicking the way I would like it to.  But in the end, I'm very pleased. :)

*GASP*  I cussed on a scrapbook layout! BAD SCRAPBOOKER!

Oops.  I'm not sorry.  This is our life and our story, and this story includes a bad word.

Ted is the most laid back, easy going, helpful kid on the planet.  He rarely complains, and is always willing to lend a hand.  I'd even go so far as to say he's chivalrous.  This past week I worked to spruce up a drafting table.

It went from this:

To this:

This transformation took about 3 hours of scrubbing, power sanding, detail and finish sanding and buffing on several layers of wax.  The point of this is: my arms were like jelly for the following two days, and when I said something in front of my kids, Ted's response was "Mom.  I would have done that for you."  And indeed he could have - he just won the Applied Tech award at school, meaning, of all the kids, the shop teacher thought he was 'the man.'  We had a little talk about how I like getting that sense of "I did it!" pride, too, and that the sore guns were totally worth it.  But Ted would do just about anything to spare me pain.  If he treats his future wife half as well as he treats me, she will be a lucky, lucky woman.

"She's such a bitch!" is our inside joke.  Whenever I ask him to do anything his usual response is "Okay."  Not "Okay." in a "what-ev-er" tone.  He may not be excited to gather the garbage and take it the curb, but his response is positive -  like he's just happy to be of help.  I love that about him.

So when I ask him to do something and he says "Ok" so willingly, I playfully say "I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking: "She's such a bitch!"**  To this Ted earnestly responds "Mom.  I'm NOT thinking that.  I don't EVER think that!"  We tend to go on like this for a bit.  Ted knows that I'm teasing him, that I know that he doesn't think that.  It's just fun.  And it makes him smile at me in an exasperated way.   We've been doing this schtick for a couple of months now, and the other day I said I was going do a scrapbook page with that title. And blog about it.  He smiled, but protested, saying that everyone would think he was mean.  For the record: he's totally not mean at all.

**Yes, I shouldn't set such a terrible example for my kids, but I'm not saying anything their peers don't say, and we've had extensive conversations about what's acceptable and appropriate.  And honestly, they're not big bad word sayers.  I've scrolled through their texts, and their friends cuss like sailors, but I rarely see anything, and even then, it's damn or crap, so I feel like we're doing okay there.

And that's it.  I doubt that I'll scrapbook again until July.  Just thinking about that break makes me sad.  I've had so much fun playing these last couple of weeks.  BUT, I'm SO excited about scrapbooking in my new place, where I get to be in with the rest of my people.  And on my new desk (Have I mentioned how pretty she is??) And standing up, too!  Yeeeee!  It's going to be so great.

Wish us luck!

Whoops, I did it again.

I really wasn't going to do it.  I was going to be a very good girl.  But when the price dropped to $99 I couldn't resist it any more.  So I bought the Nikon S01.  Am I in love? No.  Is it fun? YES.  I figure that there are tons of times that the manfriend and I do things together and I rarely have pictures of the two of us together.  Yes, I could (and have) use my cell phone for such shots, but I hate it AND I'm bad at it.  My phone requires that you hit a specific spot on the screen and I can never quite get it and when I do I manage move the whole camera such that we're not in frame. Boo.  This little puppy can be held completely in the palm of my hand, has a better flash, bigger sensor and better lens.  It takes absolutely crappy pictures inside with low light, but for outside, it'll be nice.  I've never had an issue with my S4's size, so obviously the S01 will be even easier.  ;)

AND, I used it this past Sunday when we went to sign the lease on our apartment.  So incredibly relieved that this monkey is off my back.  I spent countless hours on craigslist looking for places that fit my price range but were also in a neighborhood that I'd feel comfortable living.  I also needed something big enough for 4 or 5 people - Ted and Molly will live with their dad but will hopefully get to spend lots of time with us. Add Maggie in the summertime and we couldn't get anything too cozy.  So finally finding a place that hit the criteria was a true blessing.

So happy, in fact, that there's a layout about it already:

And just because I think it's fun to see where people get their inspiration from, I thought I'd show a couple of things that caught my eye lately that ended up being direct references.

This one is the white on white title and journaling strips.  Granted, my white on white title ended up being a white on yellow on white because there just wasn't enough separation there - the title was totally lost on the cardstock.  It just occured to me that maybe her white on white title was cut from cardstock?  Sure enough, I checked her supply list and she used vellum.  Hmmm.  I'm putting that in my bag of tricks for next time!  I like it!  (Although, I'll be frank: I've had absolutely no luck cutting vellum...so maybe I'll try it one more time, but don't be surprised if it never makes it to the blog. :P)

Another layout that was a source of inspiration was this one:

I was basically using this for the layout.  Although it's funny how the only thing that really remains is the heavy top and the position of the photos.   I suppose the title placement, as well, but that could get credited to either inspiration layout.

And then there's Wilna.  Wilna Furstenberg is sort of a rock star. Where I am uptight and anal and linear, Wilna says (metaphorically) "Take off your shoes! Feel your toes in the grass!  Smell the flowers!" She's like an "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" commercial - everything oozes love and wheat fields and sun flare.  None of which is who-I-am.  But that doesn't mean I don't want to have a little of her carefree, artsy-fartsiness.  Only, this is what it looks like when I try it:

Those cute little ink drops are not nearly as cute (or carefree or artsy-fartsy) as I was hoping for.  It's like pumpkin cried on my layout.  And they may not be tears. :P Ah well.  I just need more practice at being carefree.  Right?  You can be carefree if you just practice REALLY hard at it. :P :P :P

Thanks for stopping by!

Passions

ETA: It's come to my attention that if you're viewing this entry on Internet Explorer there's a pretty sizable gap between the double yellow line shot and the honey dipper shot below it.  That gap doesn't exist in Chrome or Firefox.  This is my formal invitation to you: C'mon over. Download Chrome.  All the cool kids are doing it.  You won't regret it, I promise.
Carry on.

Today I spent about an hour and a half of my day talking to a 70 year old woman who was dancing with the idea of buying a new lens.  Her kit lenses, she said, weren't sharp enough.  They didn't impress her.  She had spent a good deal of time doing research but admitting that she really didn't understand everything that she read, and she was still new to digital SLR photography. We talked for a long time, we unraveled her wants and her want-nots, we deciphered some lingo, we walked outside and took some pictures. She was so appreciative.  She said she had gotten so much from our time together.  She said she felt more relaxed and at ease talking to me than all the men she's been dealing with. Her words made me feel so good.  I love what I do, and if I can make another woman feel that taking cool pictures is within reach, and break down the language and principles so that they're less intimidating, then I feel successful and fulfilled.

I've been trying to push the shutter more.  I've been looking to SEE lately, not just looking to keep from bumping into things.  It's not as easy as you'd think.  Or maybe seeing is, but translating that into something compelling might be a different story.  But what fun it is to try.

This weekend the manfriend and I took a ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.  We rode from Independence to Akron and back up to Peninsula before getting off the train for lunch.  We waited for about ten minutes to get shots of the train pulling away from the station.  I love the trainman signalling up the tracks.  By the way, the railway is 100% volunteer based.  That's pretty cool.

Note how the sign says "RESTAURANTS".  If one of the restaurants closes down, they're going to have to make a new sign.  (Get it? There's only two restaurants. Rim shot, please.)

There's also a "Gallery" in Peninsula.  I'm not positive what constitutes a gallery, but there was lots of very cool stuff from local artisans for sale.  I felt like a royal schmuck for taking pictures because it was all too rich for my blood...  Although, I did try to go back later in the day when beer had lubricated my wallet some, but alas, they were closed...

 Today my thighs are killing me, and I couldn't figure out why.  We sat on a train for 3+ hours and downtown Peninsula was about two square blocks.  However, it occurred to me after looking at these photos that I did spend the better part of our two hour layover squatting and climbing on top of every bench I could find to  get a better vantage point.

 More squatting.  Kerig has a very flattering picture of me taking this.  I must say, I didn't realize my knees could still do that...


Lunch consisted of a salad and two very large lite beers.  We came across this flower and I felt like I was drunk off my gourd. I wasn't, but the flower was swaying in the breeze and macro really requires a tripod.  I was moving, the flower was moving, the camera was moving, the focus point was moving...  I'm amazed that I got anything.  

 We will not go into detail about this lumber yard and that gorgeous golden hour(ish) light.  Suffice it to say: there was a cooler set up for this shot, where I was patiently waiting for the light to cooperate (the sun was in and out of clouds all afternoon) when I was informed it wasn't coming back out.  Liar.

But I can't be too irritated, since he did point out that popping the flash makes the sign really light up for the railroad crossing.  I wish that I had gotten at least one shot of the red flashers going.  

And you have to love a town where you can meander into the middle of the street, set your camera down on the double yellow line and take a couple of shots. Also, you have to love a town where you can do that and at the end of the double yellow line there's actually something picture worthy.

And this is my favorite shot of the day.  I'd like to shrug my shoulders and act all nonchalant, but I love the bokeh, the those hexagons make me a little swoony. And there's the light, which is just lovely without being contrived.

And there's one more shot that I want to share, but not from this weekend.

 This house only has crank out windows. I'm not exactly a fan, since it means that adding a window A/C window unit isn't an option.  And apparently, shelling out scratch to fix the central air "isn't an option" either. Right.  Whatever. Moving on....  Well, it's been a super hot summer, and the windows have been open constantly since June.  We have a couple of cob webs, but I'm in no hurry to go knock them down, since ...well...spiderwebs perform a specific function, and I'm a fan of that function.  So the webs stay. We've also been super dry this summer, and the rains finally started a week or so ago.  It's been wonderful. It's really true what they say about absence and the fond heart.  So it was finally a dark and rainy day and I was sitting at the table eating my lunch when this spiderweb in the crank-out window caught my eye.  I had to gingerly take the screen out of the window to get this shot, and the house is brown (not purple) but I had so much fun shooting this wet web.  And then playing with the shot in Lightroom to make it pop out.  I realize it's kind of gross, but I think it's the best kind of gross.  

As close as I come to decorating...

I would like you all to think that I live in an austere, dust-free environment.

Sadly, I do not.

However, I do aspire to that and because that's how I'd like to live, I have made the conscious decision to keep tchotchkes to a bare minimum. It's not that I don't like knickknacks, but I don't like dusting and I don't like dust.  So keeping the trinkets at bay helps - at least a little - to keep things a little less...yucky.

A couple of years ago I made a little banner for my apartment door.  It was a fun little Saturday night project with my girls and it came together so effortlessly - which is NOT how things usually work for me.

I have to say: coming home to this on my door made me happy for an entire month.

I have moved and no longer live in the cute apartment with the cute door.  The home I live in now has a front door that wouldn't keep this dry.  Also, no one would ever see it.  Except the guy who stopped by today looking for donations for St. Mary's Church...but that's neither here nor there.  However, the door that leads into the garage is both dry and viewed daily.  And in desperate need of some "spruce."  So the banner thing has sort of grown.  there's a "Luv U" banner and a "JOY" banner for Christmas.  But if you think about it, that means that the door has something seasonally appropriate October through February.  Only the Luv U banner stays up until October.  Because heck, I Luv U...or them, that is. This brings Molly great distress though, and I have been told more than once that I needed to fix that.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I'll get around to it.

Ok. Disclaimer: the door to the garage is too ugly to actually show. :P  So this is a section of the living room wall. This is the Saturdays collection from Little Yellow Bicycle.  And the fun the patriotic colors and patterns begged to be made into a summer banner.  This'll last us from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Molly!  :P

Testing 1,2,3 Testing 1,2,3

I was poking around on the world wide web today and I came across another top ten list for sprucing up your blog.  The very first bullet point was "use a light background."  And then she went on to say "I won't look around a dark blog - it hurts my eyes."  And then she backed it with studies.  Hmmm.  I guess I can take a hint.  Or a kick in the pants.  So white.  Boring, but clean.  With a couple of my favorite colors to make ME happy when I visit.

So this is a test post and I really don't have anything new that I can share.  I contemplated sharing something very, very old, but that got ruled out.  Not from embarrassment, but from the sheer pain in the neck-ness of photographing or scanning 12x12 layouts.

However, I did download the Instagram FOR ANDROID app yesterday.  And yes, that's yelling.  Don't even get me started on the whole thing.  I have one word for you: Sneetches.  Ok, that's too vague.  I love the Dr. Suess book The Sneetches - you remember it, right?  There are the Star Belly Sneetches and the Plain Belly Sneetches.  Of course the Star Belly Sneetches are the cool ones! Duh!  And one day a man comes to town with a machine that will put stars on the bellies of the plain belly Sneetches.  And OF COURSE once the Plain Belly Sneetches have access to stars, stars instantly fall out of vogue.  The man re-jiggers his machine and makes it a star-off machine.  And then (of course) all the Sneetches are running through his star-off/star-on machine, throwing all their money at the man until they're broke and exhausted and no one can remember who was cool to start and who wasn't.  And I'll leave it at that...  ;)

So anyway, I loaded Instagram yesterday and suddenly everything needs to be photographed.

Like this cute and rusty Bug.  Which is cute enough already, but the little smiley painted on the window pushes it right over the top. CUTE.

And then we dyed Easter eggs today.  I am 43 years old and I don't think that I have ever ONCE dyed a good looking Easter egg.  I think every good looking egg I've ever seen must have been PhotoShopped.  Even the pictures I saw in 1979.  I don't think dying a good looking egg is even possible.  Aren't Easter eggs supposed to be pastel colored?  And no...the jewel tones are not an effect.

Did you notice the weird spot on that red one? (Ted said it looked like a buckeye. And damned if that's not an accurate assessment).  Well, we had 12 cups that were deep enough for the eggs, but that wasn't enough colors according to Molly.  The little Pyrex condiment dishes really aren't deep enough and that's what happens when the egg isn't fully dunked.

Maggie, the overachiever and artist that she is, looked at that wonky pale spot and said "That would look cool with a silhouette in it."  Um. Ok. I guess?  Well, no need to guess:

And can't everyone have a thought like that then pick up a fine point Sharpie and freehand Victorian woman's silhouette on an egg?  Hell, I couldn't even do the ovals she did around the lady's head.  Oh, and there's a matching Victorian man, too.  You'll just have to take my word on that.

Okay.  That's the end of my mic check.  Let me know if you like it.  If you hate it, pretend you didn't stop by. :P

Week in the Life Project

These are all from Wednesday. Hopefully I'll be able to organize and share some from the rest of the week, too.
Just before pulling into the store's parking lot. Should I be taking pictures while driving down Mayfield Road? Probably not.

Having some cream cheese on saltines while doing some photo editing between customers. Someone needs a damn manicure!

The view from my "spot". This is our classroom, you can see the LCD projector we use for PowerPoint presentations. I taught our Digital 101 class at the end of this day.

We currently have well over 30 tripods, probably close to 40 if you count monopods. It's becoming a bit of a running joke, so I had to get a shot.

Things are pretty casual at Dodd. I'm grateful that comfortable shoes are okay! Out the window you can see my Jalopy and beyond that is City Hall. The fire department is in the same complex, so we get a front row view of the trucks quite frequently.

My coworker Ken. He may be one of the loudest people I know, but he's a really good guy and fun to work with. God, I hope he doesn't see this... ;)

The Thomas the Train Engine table doesn't get a ton of action, since our clientele seems to be mostly older, but it's a great thing to have when we do have kids.

After teaching the class, which went really well, I stopped at the Speedway to get a beer. I probably make this stop twice a week, so it was a must get shot.

I got home just after 9:00. The little kids go to bed at 9 and read until 9:30, at which point it's lights out. This is Ted...

....and this is Ted's homework notice that I had to sign informing me that he forgot a homework assignment that day. Ooops!

This is Reba helping me make the rounds. As soon as I went into the girls room she assumed this position.

And this is Molly doing her bedtime reading. It was a joke book. She shared that she didn't get all the jokes. Like: "What happened when the garbage man went back to school? He got thrown out." Ba-dum-dumb!

Maggie doing her history homework in her dad's room. Molly put our old paintings up all over his wall. I love these paintings. But not enough to sleep with them!

Once I said good night to everyone I headed back downstairs for that beer. Reba had already made herself comfortable in one of her two favorite spots. Frankly, i think the fabric of this loveseat suits her perfectly.

And then there's this. Holy sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln, this sight just drives me nuts. Throw the soda bottle away! Throw the gross bananas away! Why can't we stack the dishes in the sink?? Usually I'd clean it up, but tonight I just took a picture and drank my beer. :)