Guess what I bought???

Aren't these photos just gorgeous?? I broke down and bought both a macro and a zoom lens. I have been having a great time taking pictures of everything around here!! I must say that I learned more things about my camera and these lenses from the guy at Don's Photo than I have learned in all my reading over the past few months. They are just great there. Anyway, I am hoping to find some more stuff to photograph in the next few day.s I spent the morning at the playground with our granddaughter and my zoom lens and got some great pictures there too. I am loving these 2 lenses for sure!!!

Fast scrapbook pages

Anybody want to make 4 layouts quickly and with no or minimal scraps left over? I know I really like this idea. If you would like to see how, go HERE. Amanda over at Just Cre8 is going to be doing "recipes" for fast pages every month now. She started this during our last on-line crop and there was such a favorable response, she has decided to do this every month. It's a great way to get some fast layouts done.

New Photos

I am finding that I really like the macro setting on my camera and I look for things to take pictures of that will need me to use that setting! I am thinking seriously of getting a macro lens but I also want to get a larger zoom lens too so am going to have to decide what I want to have the most, my birthday is coming up so even though I would actually like to skip that day I really want a new lens so maybe will have to celebrate this year again!!

The light was filtering through this honeysuckle tree so nicely, it looked so pretty on the leaves and flowers, I was crawling all over the ground to try and find the nicest shot. Between this bush and the dandelions, I think I took 100 photos!! Ya just gotta love digital!!!

Conversation with a toddler

I really don't have much to blog about, there really isn't much going on, but on Sunday I had our little granddaughter here to visit and I am really amazed at how well developed her sense of humor is. Our conversation went sort of like this:

"Bamma, appos?" while she is looking at the grapes on the cupboard. Everything round is either a ball or an apple to her. "No, Amanda, those are grapes" "Bapes" "Yes, grapes, would you like some?" She nods her head. "Mo appos" "Grapes" Now she looks at me, giggles and says "Bappos, tee hee" I think this is one of those moments that should be scrapped and put into her album so I will have to think about that for awhile.
Then later, she was standing on the chair, "Amanda, sit down" "No" "Yes, please" "No" "A-man-da" said by me in a warning voice and then her, in a sing-song voice, "Nan nan da" giggle, giggle. The little shyster!!!
We have such a good time with that little tyke, but man can she tire me out!!! She never walks, always runs and has done a few face plants onto the ground, but has learned to put her arms out and turn her head now!!!
I am still having problems with my ankle and the dr. is still keeping me off work with minimal activity, which I am finding to be abit of a problem because there is so much to do around here. I really try to stay still but I must not be doing well because my ankle and foot still hurt quite abit in the evening and during the night and that is with regular doses of Advil on board. I will have to try harder I guess. Maybe if I go on a vacation where I can't see the work, yeah, maybe that is the answer!!!
We finally have nice weather and I really like being outside, I have cut my garden down drastically this year because i can't be in it, dh planted some potatoes, mostly because he likes them so much. And I didn't really plant any flowers, mostly because of the weather being so cold but also because I am not supposed to be out there!! I put a few petunias in my front bed because it can be seen from the street and I thought it needed something.
Well, must do my 15 minutes of something now and then it will be back to sitting again! Hope everyone enjoys the nice day today.

My Early Beginnings as a scrapbooker

If any of you have been reading the blog of the old Simply Scrapbooking team, they are writing about their beginnings as scrapbookers. And on the forum at Just Cre8, there is a question about how long have you been scrapping and what kind of scrapper are you. So I thought today that I would be brave and show some of my beginning pages on my blog and talk abit about how I got started in this wonderful hobby. So here it goes!

This is the very first page I ever did as an offical scrapbooker. I had come back from our trip to Mexico with alot of photos and I wanted to put them in an album so that others could see how much fun we had while there. I had heard many things about how bad the magnetic albums were for your photos so didn't really want to put them in one of those albums. One day I walking through the mall and there was a table set up in the center walkway and they were asking people if they were interested in taking a beginner scrapbooking class. It was a promo for one of the LSS's. I signed up and took my required 6 photos relating to 1 subject and that, my friends was the very start!! I look back at these pages and smile but when I read the journalling I remember all the things that we did and I love reliving those fun times.

We had some photos taken by a professional photographer at a restaurant that we went to for supper one night and they probably should have been on page by themselves, I would do that now, but they are okay like this as well



As you can see, I tried to get as many photos that related to each other on the same page!! I remember bringing back about 15 rolls of film that got developed and for some reason I thought that all the photos, good or bad, had to be on those pages!! I have learned so much since then. But I can definitely track my progress as both a scrapper and a photographer by looking through my old albums. I figured if the gals over at write.click.scrapbook could put their beginning pages on here, so could I!!!

So, after I finished up our Mexico album, I thought it would be nice to go back and take the photos out of the magnetic albums I had put them in and redo them in an acid free one. About this time, I had been invited to a Creative Memories party and bought a starting kit to try out that method. I sort of liked it, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. However, there were some aspects of it that appealed to me.

These are a few of the pages I did for our family Disney trip. We had taken this trip in Jan 1988 and I had put the photos into an album but there wasn't much journalling to go with them. I had to really strain my brain to come up with what we did while there.

So here is a page that I did yesterday. It pretty much shows what I do now as far as a method. I am doing way more handwritten journalling than I used to, I used to use the computer for almost all of my journalling but decided that unless I needed to tell a lengthy story, it was far more convenient to handwrite what I needed to! I don't tend to use alot of embellishments, mostly flowers and buttons usually. sometimes I will try something new, but then I will find myself going back to my tried and true methods!! so this has been a really long post but I hope you enjoyed reading my story and looking at my first pages and seeing my progress as a scrapper!

Too cold to be outside, so 2 more pages!

I decided I might as well scrapbook because it is just too cold to be outside for too long without a winter coat! this layout I did with one of the sketches from Just Cre8 as a starting point.

This one was using the June kit from Just Cre8, and the sketch from 52 weeks. I thought that the pp with the birds would be a good one to use but once it was done I didn't really like it, it is way too busy for my taste, but it is glued down and done so into the album it goes. One more set of photos done for the year. More memories set down.

I was outside and working on the flowerbeds but it was with my early winter jacket on! I was putting compost into the beds from the bin, but I couldn't get myself interested in going to any of the greenhouses to look for plants, it is just too cool. Best let them sit there rather than in my garage! So pulled a few weeds and then decided to come in where it is warm and play in my scraproom instead, lots warmer there!

This is getting Ridiculous!! BRRRRRRRRR

Well, I am almost ready to pack my bags and head out for warmer climates!!! Oh right, it isn't winter and we aren't planning our winter holiday to Mexico!! It is late spring, almost SUMMER. mother nature, are you listening?????? I was forced to turn the furnace back on last night, I was freezing. I can't believe this weather. I have been working in our flower beds alittle bit but I haven't even been to the greenhouses yet because it is just too cold, I don't think anything will grow anyway even if I did plant it. We have had frost overnight a couple of times in the past few days as well. I fluffed up the compost bin today after I had taken out the bottom part to mix in the beds and pulled some weeds, all while wearing my winter jacket!!! I have planted potatoes but that is about it. I don't think I will even bother with much else, it won't have any growing time. DH was driving around this last week and he said the crops look terrible, alot of canola got hit hard by the frost, it will come back but it will be late. Here's hoping for a late fall. Ha!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

The sun is shining and it looks like it might be a gorgeous day outside today! I have been puttering in my garden off and on, vegetable as well as flower, but I haven't really had an urge to do anything because of the weather. We had frost the other night! A few of our trees got blasted, hopefully they will come back. We have plans to travel abit this summer so I am actually wondering if it would be worthwhile to plant anything or not if we won't be around to water and weed. Can't make up my mind about that yet. I think I might put in a few potatoes because I just love the taste of those fresh little ones with some dill and butter!
Anyway, I don't have anything new in the scrapbooking department to show today but thought I would send you over HERE to look at the sketches and layouts for this week. Have a good day.

Fan of Simple Scrapbooks? Check this out!

www.writeclickscrapbook.com
If you were a fan of Simple Scrapbooks magazine you should check this website out. They have some good ideas going on there. They are just new but have a gallery of layouts already posted!