Sharing Some Saskatchewan Sunshine

Is it spring yet?

2011-03-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

I am tired of waiting for spring.
On facebook my friend Julie hinted that I need to update my blog.
I did a few more layouts so I thought I would post them here so she can see that even though my mojo took a long holiday, I did find it for a little while and get something done!
I am almost at the end of my fulltime job contract and so will have more time at home again, that will be nice, especially for spring. I am thinking total revamping of my backyard garden would be a good thing to tackle this year, only, I have no idea where to start!
So here are the layouts I did in the past couple of days. Amanda loved running through the maze at the local garden center, Grandpa chased her through a couple of times I think, his chasing is done at a much slower pace than her running though! Then we had some posing for photos for Grandma of course. She is pretty good with posing for me now!

She is such a helper in the garden! I am not sure what she was attempting with the hoe, I don't think there were weeds on Grandpa's back, but what do I know?

This look was priceless! I had never seen it before this day! Wonder where she learned that one?

Actual glaciers,not snowbanks!

2010-08-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

So,
we drove by this little piece of snow that the sign said was a glacier, Les and one of the other guys decided that they needed to check it out alittle more closely. I had to put on my 70-250mm lenses to get in closer but left the faraway photos to show perspective!

Some more photos

2010-08-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Jackson Glacier

More Mountains

2010-08-26T21:24:00.001-07:00

There was the prettiest little waterfall behind the campgrounds in Waterton. I took about 100 photos of it from all different angles but this one shows almost all of it in one frame!

Then a couple of days later, we did the highway to the sun in Glacier Park, in the States. It took us pretty much the whole day, we started at 10 am and I think we were back at our campgrounds by about 5 pm. There was some construction going on so there were a couple of waits but there were also many places to stop and take little walks to see waterfalls and glacier creeks, I guess you would call them.

Frustration!

2010-08-26T19:51:00.000-07:00

We were enjoying our first day of a long awaited holiday when my cell phone rang and interrupted a perfectly fine morning of coffee and beautiful scenery!! We were at Waterton National Park, away from work, phones, computers, and any other problems associated with them!! OR so we thought!! The first phone call came from dh's sister, where are you, are you okay, everything cool in your world?? Why do you ask, we say. Oh, just got an email saying you were in London and having some trouble and needing some money!! WHAT!!!! Well, that just threw my lovely holiday into a stress coated mind meltdown!!! Not only had someone taken over my email account, Hotmail had locked me out as well!! Which, I suppose, was a good thing at the time but it has taken me until tonight to convince them that I am the real person that belongs to this account. In the meantime I had started a new account and reasked all my friends on facebook to become my friends again because, facebook is hooked into your email and I was locked out of there as well!! We had many phone calls over this email, most of them from very concerned family members and friends. My biggest concern was that whoever got into my email could get into other things as well, and I had myself quite stressed over this for a day or 2. We finally got to a place where I could plug in my own computer and not use a WI-fi tower and I managed to set my mind at ease in regards to other things.

So now I am sort of back to where I was but with all my passwords changed and I hope a smarter outlook on how easy it was for someone to hack into my email. I will be much more cautious now about where I am when I log in!

Now, for some really pretty pictures:

Some new layouts

2010-06-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't really been doing them in chronological order but here are some of the layouts that I have done for my travel album. I included the itinerary page because I wanted to show just how much we saw in the 2 weeks!!

There weren't alot of windmills in Holland, apparently they are going the way of the elevators here on the prairies.

This guy was worth taking the tour for all by himself! He was great, informative, interesting and funny!!

Another member of the tour group got this photo and kindly sent it to us as we didn't leave the same time as them, we stayed an extra week after the tour was over. They took this in the morning when they left the hotel, we were still sleeping!

I have sooo many photos yet to go through and make a decision of which ones to print and put into the album. It 's going to take me a long time to get this album put together. As well, I have alot of "stuff" that I saved over the tour that needs to somehow be fit in! Like tickets, and maps and things like that!

Sorry for being MIA

2010-05-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being totally off the blogging world map but it's something that I just don't think of doing for myself. I love stalking, er, I mean looking, at other people's blogs but I just don't think that I have anything very interesting to blog about so I don't!!
So we have been back from our whirlwind european tour for about 3 weeks now. The tour company does not lie when they say the word "whirl"!! We saw alot of things in 2 weeks. There were many places I wished we could stay little longer and some places I was glad we were getting back on the bus in 45 mins!! I have finally started going through the photos and deleting the really bad ones and seeing what I could do with the others. I had bought PSE8 before we left and I got the book PSE8 for Dummies, so that I could figure out how to use this program abit more. I am still in the learning process, so alot of my photos have been touched up with Picassa instead.
I have around 3000 photos to go through so bear with me!
I decided the other day, I really should get started on
scrapping some of them before I totally forgot what and where
they were about. I also did a couple of layouts of our sweet little
granddaughter.

We sometimes have her here with us for the day and there is nothing more fun than playing with a 2 year old! Teaching her all the ways to have fun in the snow!! Just watching and listening to her chatter and learn new things. Or to listen to her tell her stuffed animals stories or instruct them on proper etiquette!! It's hilarious.

Another Try at Digital

2010-03-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I tried another lesson with the digital scrapbooking CD. This time we started from a blank page instead of using a template so it was alittle more involved. The concepts are starting to make sense to me now but it is taking along time for me to remember all the little details involved in making a page. I really think I enjoy the actual physical actions of glueing and cutting and arranging to the digital versions. I am thinking maybe hybrid might be a good way to go and I have done abit of hybrid already because I have the Print Artist program and have done up journalling for my pages for along time now and in the beginning I made titles and printed out some graphics alot, before I started buying all the cute,matching stuff! Sooo, I think I will continue to learn because I like learning new things, but whether or not I will go digital remains to be seen. I am looking forward to learning more things on PSE8 in regards to photo manipulation though. There is a whole new world out there I think!!

I did it!!

2010-03-05T14:41:00.001-08:00

Well, this took just about all day to do!! I broke down and bought Photoshop elements 8 yesterday out at Costco and today I spent pretty much the entire day, watching the extra CD on introducing scrapbooking with PS8. I followed along with the instructions, watching most of the stuff twice before it soaked into my poor, aching brain!! But I have now officially made my very first digital scrapbooking page!!! I did take a few breaks to throw some laundry in and take a run to the library but other than that, I have been at this pretty much all day today! I am not all that sure I like this enough to totally immerse myself in it but for a page every now and then, it could be an okay thing to do!

New Project

2010-03-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

I have doing a different project lately. My reason? Monkeyface is getting her own "big girl bed" so I thought that I would do another one of my many hobbies and make her a quilt. I chose a simple one because I didn't want it to take too long or me to run out of steam before I got it done!! Sometimes I think I suffer from ADD because if something doesn't come together easily and quickly for me, I lose interest and start something else that looks like it might be more fun. The result?? I have a house full of unfinished projects!! Oh, I have lots of finished ones too but I do have quite afew unfinished ones as well. One of my New Year's resolutions, every year, is to finish up some of them!! And I usually do get a couple done before, yes, you guessed it, I lose my focus. Anyway, I digress. Here is the lovely Princess Quilt to go on the Princess's new bed. She has a lovely, freshly painted room with all the things in it that a little princess would need. The other grandma helped out with that too!! She has a little princess deacon's bench with baskets underneath for toys and a princess picture for on the wall!! Her mom bought her princess sheets for her bed too!! She had her first night in her bed on Saturday and apparently did very well. She stayed in bed all night!!

And then I went shopping last week to the LSS and
bought some new MME paper. I know, I know, I am supposed to be
using up my stash but this stuff was sooooo pretty, I couldn't resist! We babysat Monkeyface last week I think it was and Grandpa took her outside to play with her. She was soo cute in her little snowsuit and she just loved being in the snow. Grandpa made alittle hill for her to slide down and she just had so much fun with that! We really should get a toboggan and go onto a real hill with her, I think she would have a blast!! They built some snowmen too and made snow angels but those will be on other layouts!!

A New Education

2010-02-18T03:35:00.001-08:00

Okay, so if you would have asked me a year ago who Dora and Diego were, I would have looked at you and said, huh? But this year, I know exactly who they are and I have probably watched most of the episodes of Dora, more than once! So when I read a poster in the mall that Dora was coming to town I asked my dd if she thought Monkeyface would like to go and see them. So yesterday, off we went to the mall. I got there before the designated time and I saw a very long lineup. Now, I have always said it isn't what you know but who you know that counts in this world and again, I was proven correct!! There, in the front of the line were 2 of my scrapping buddies and they called me over and told me to stick with them, they are the pros of children's stuff, they had been there since 8:30 waiting, had even packed a picnic breakfast!!! Now, my hat is off to these ladies, they knew their stuff. Monkeyface seemed alittle overwhelmed by all the people and I had been alittle nervous about taking her into the mall as she tends to like to run, usually away from me!! But she stuck right close and when she saw Dora coming down the hall, she was sooooo excited. As they lined up for photos and there were a few others that had won contests I think, that got to go ahead of the lineups, she talked a mile a minute about Dora and Diego and where was Boots, and look she had her backpack on and oh grandma, there's the map, you get the picture, right? then, came time to go on stage and get her photo with them, guess what, no way was she going, no, no, no, so I hauled her up there and stood with her almost glued to my leg!!! And, then as we left, she turns around and waves and says, bye Dora!!!! Fear seemed to be forgotten already!! oh well, she didn't really like Santa either!! When I asked her later why she was so scared of them, she said, "Diego, too big!!!" So I guess, from afar, they looked okay, but up close, they were just too big! All in all, it was a great day spent with my dear little Monkeyface. I got to have her for the entire day and she is soooo much fun. She seems to have learned something new everytime I see her.

Only in Saskatchewan!

2010-01-13T13:39:00.000-08:00

I think it was just last week that we were at -35 C with a -45C windchill and now today, as well as the past couple of days it is +1 or 2 with snow melting everywhere, mud splashing on my van and everything looking like spring is just around the corner. Of course, all of us older Saskatchewanites know that this is just a teaser. There will be more snow and cold weather, guaranteed. It's like taxes, it will happen. However, we will enjoy it while we have it!! I won't enjoy the extremely filthy van I am driving but I guess it comes with the territory! I ran out of windshield washer fluid the other day. Dry as a bone! Barely made it to Canadian Tire to get some more! The shelves were looking pretty empty so guess there were alot of people in the same boat! I stocked up with a few bottles of it, just to be sure. We have more than 1 vehicle so I figured I should be prepared.

I was surprised this morning!!

2010-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

This is one of the layouts that we created in a workshop that I attended at Saskcrops this past fall. This event is put on by our own Leica Forrest here in our own little city. The workshop was taught by none other than Vicki Boutin. Now, I am always in for learning new things and I love mini albums so I signed up for pretty much all of her classes, and I fell in love with everything we made!! So I started stalking her blog!!!

Another lovely layout that we created.

And the ultimate mini album, that was way too taxing on my brain for sure!!! We almost worked up a sweat during this class, we had no time for much small talk during this one!! Anyway, what I am getting to is this.... I was perusing the realtime thingy on the side of my blog (I am sooooo very technical when it comes to computerland you know!!!) and I am wondering why I have all these hits that are orginating from the Vicki Boutin site so I go over there and OMG!! there is my name!! She has picked my name for the RAK that she had on her blog last week!!!! WOW, me, that's fabulous!! So, I am getting something from her in the mail!!!! I forgot that I had even left a comment, it's that age thing I think, out of sight out of mind. I should almost leave a list of where I have been because I am so bad for just hopping around and admiring everyone's blog. I really need to find out how to fix mine up alittle cuz everyone else's looks so neat and mine, well, mine is just what it is because I have no idea how to change much. I just learned about linking stuff to it not that long ago. I try to mention if I scraplift or use a sketch but I have a hard time doing the link thing so I hope that everyone is tolerant to some degree for us technically challenged people!!! I really don't think that I have the most interesting blog but it is something new for me and I do like to try and learn some new things now and then!! And it's a way to share some of things that go on in my life. Facebook is getting used abit more I think nowadays instead but I do try to keep up here as well. Some weeks I don't do very well but I do try!! and then there's today, 2 posts!!

Some new layouts

2010-01-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

I don't really make resolutions for the New Year because that just gets me into trouble because I can't maintain them past the first week, but I did have a talk with myself and I told myself that I really cannot buy anymore scrapbooking stuff until I use up some of my existing stash. so I did do a few layouts during the christmas week and am now posting them here.
The layout of us under the falls is my second attempt at making a collage with multiple photos and then printing it out as an 8x10 to scrap. I kind of like how it turned out as it was easier than trying to fit multiple photos on a page. And it gets all the photos that I wanted printed onto 1 page instead of 2 or 3!!

I do windows layout was inspired by a sketch from the Scrapdango's site, they do kits and have a forum that I hang out on sometimes.

Helping my grandpa layout was inspired by a december sketch on pagemaps. I am liking how it turned out as well

The layout of monkeyface helping with the dishwasher was the first attempt at putting together a collage and printing it. She was so funny that night, she looked so serious as she punched the buttons on the dishwasher and then turned and said to me "ta-da" which in her lingo means there I's done and it's ready to go!

The Princess is 2!

2010-01-03T05:54:00.001-08:00

Our little girl is growing up so fast!! We celebrated her 2nd birthday yesterday. She had a princess themed party complete with a castle cake made for her by her auntie. She had the concept of blowing out the candles down pat but couldn't quite get it done all by herself, she needed alittle help! I have about 300 photos of this momentous event but have pared it down to 3 for downloading on here! I will have to go through them again and find the good ones for a scrapbook page next!

Grandma to the Rescue!

2009-12-15T13:23:00.000-08:00

Got a phone call at 6:30 this morning wondering if I could babysit a sick monkeyface! She actually isn't all that sick, just sounds awful when she coughs and dd wanted her to be little more quiet than she might be at the daycare. She was up when I went to pick her up and when I asked her if she wanted me to stay there or if she wanted to come to grandma's house, she was up and heading for the closet saying, "boots on, coat on, let's go"!! That gets repeated a few times before we get out the door. I am so happy for an insulated garage on these fridgidly cold days! My vehicle is not at all cold to get into early in the morning. And by the time I got over to my dd's house, it was toasty warm and not too bad for sick little girl to get into. She has been entertaining us all day and other than a runny nose, hasn't acted too sick at all. But she has been playing quietly and not running around with other kids! She has been having a long afternoon nap as well, guess I should go and check on her. I did do a layout of us with her at the pumpkin maze they had out a Dutch growers too.

I used my Slice to cut the flourish, I don't seem to use that little guy too much but there are alot of things on those little cards!! I use the alphabets quite abit but I don't seem to think about what else is available on them. I have a few more photos of that day to get onto layouts as well. I should get going on that as the Christmas ones will be here before long and then the birthday ones shortly after!!!

Cleaning windows!!

2009-12-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

So this is what happens when Poppa and Monkeyface play by themselves. They get to clean the windows after they blow on them and make drawings in the fog that is produced!!!! Monkeyface is going to make a good housekeeper later on in life because she really liked doing this!! Imagine, someone who likes to do windows!!

Happy Halloween and Some cards

2009-10-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

We have been invited to a couple of birthdays in the next month and both are for little girls that are turning 2 and 3 respectively. So I thought with the snow today I would stay home, warm and cozy and make a couple of cards. I thought while I was at it, I would make a get well card to have on hand as they usually are needed whenever I am not able to sit and think about what to make.

The birthday I made this one for is going to be Teddy Bear's picnic theme.

And I don't think there is a theme for the 2 yr old's party so thought a clown would be good. Maybe I will come up with another one that is better before the party but for now, this one will be it. This is another attempt at using up some stash!

Beautiful sunrise this morning

2009-10-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

I was sitting and drinking my coffee and reading my book and I happened to look up and out my kitchen window and saw these gorgeous colours. I grabbed my camera and ran outside, stopping only for a moment to set my shutter speed alittle slower. Kind of nervous about doing that because I still am not secure shooting in anything other than P mode. But I am happy with the way these turned out.

I took a couple from different spots in the backyard. I think these are some of the best ones.

By the time my dh got out to the kitchen, all the colors had gone, so I was glad I had proof of why I was outside in my housecoat and slippers!!

Keeping up, sort of !!

2009-10-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

I am trying to keep up with my personal goals of doing a layout every day this month, use only my stash and get my old photos scrapped. I have been doing fairly well with all those goals even though I haven't posted all my pages here, I am getting some done. I haven't necessarily been doing layouts that are fancy and full of new techniques but I have been getting the photos on paper with some memories documented with them, even if it is only a date and people's names. This is one that I did of my dd when she turned 2, she just turned 32!! So, needless to say, I am a bit behind!! When I look at these photos, I can see all the things I did wrong while snapping the picture, but then I think, at least I have a picture of the event! I mean, just look at that ugly ironing board propped against the wall, it could have been moved and maybe my eye wouldn't immediately wander over there! I realize that I have learned alot about photography in the last couple of years and I do know that I can learn alot more!
I am hoping that the weather forecasters are correct and we are going to have some nice weather soon. I am tired of the snow, we need some sunshine at least!

Some scrapbook pages

2009-10-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

I have a goal for October, and it is to do 1 layout everyday. I didn't make this goal until just the other day so it wasn't the 1st day of oct. that I started. So far I have managed to do this. And my other goal is to only use my stash, nothing new. So we will see how I do.

I decided that I would really try and mix up my older photos with some of the newer ones, that are of course of my dgd, monkeyface!

so I dug out photos from the 90's. These ones are of Harvest Days in Les's hometown. The fields were "stooked" just like in the early 1900's and an old threshing machine was brought in to show people how harvesting was done in "the olden days" It was a great demonstration and it showed how it really took a team effort to get the harvesting done then. They started out with horses pulling the hayrack but I think the loud noise of the old tractor running the threshing machine scared them , so they converted to a tractor pulling the hayrack. Or maybe they were just running out of time, I can't remember. But I thought this was a great memory to have in the scrapbooks. I am going to try and find some photos of actual threshing in my mother's old albums. If I do, I will add a page of them to this set.

I am trying out the method of grouping my embellishments in 1 area like I have seen on alot of the scrapbook blogs and sites. I am not sure I have the knack for this but I will keep trying and see how I like it. I still prefer simple and minimalistic but I have to use up some stash so will try to add alittle more than I usually do and see how it goes.

On the weather topic, it is still snowing here and I don't like it one bit. It is way too early. And with the wind, it feels like winter, not fall. We had a long cold spring and now an early winter, it just isn't fair!!! But we all know the answer to that one, don't we????

Say it isn't SNOW!!!

2009-10-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

Arghhhh, Look at what it is doing this afternoon in our neck of the woods! This can't be, it's only the 8th of October, we just got finished with snow, didn't we??? Where was summer??? Where was Fall??? What happened to global warming??

I can't take it anymore!!!

I am really hoping that this is going to go away and we will have some nice weather until Christmas. Maybe if I rub the little lamp, a genie will pop out and grant me a wish, just one, that's all. I am so not ready for this.

Cupcake Ectasy!

2009-09-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

Our little monkeyface loved these cupcakes or "cakes" as she called them. She licked every little bit of icing off her fingers and really seemed to enjoy every little crumb! We all enjoyed them but she seemed to enjoy them the most. Thanks again to Saucy at Saucy's Sprinkles!

It took a long time for her to eat this one little cupcake!

Look what was delivered to my house!

2009-09-28T16:37:00.001-07:00

Look what was delivered to my door in the afternoon on Saturday!! They were the most scrumptious cupcakes ever!! I had mentioned on Saucy's blog that I would be sharing them if I won them. Well, I did share them with my family on Sunday. My little monkeyface was here with her parents for supper and we certainly enjoyed them right to the last crumb. Monkeyface is starting to talk, some of it we understand quite well and some, well, we just guess!! Anyway, "cake" is one word she understands and says very clearly!!! The icing was fabulous but tucked inside was a strawberry cream mix that was heavenly!! Saucy, you are just the best!!!

The awesome colours of Fall

2009-09-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

I went down to the riverbank yesterday to see if there was anything interesting to take pictures of. I didn't get too far and my ankle started to hurt but here is one that I took. I tried to frame the beautiful blue of the river with the pretty colours of the trees. I kind of like it.

Beds, Haircuts and Living Life!

2009-09-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

So, today was the day that I decided I had to get on with the next item of my to-do list and that was go bed shopping. We NEED a new bed, this one is getting soft spots in it. My husband has given me the "I will be happy with whatever you chose, dear, just go do it" speech, so I decided that I must get this crossed off the list. So, I rambled around the city today, looking at beds, listening to salesmen talk to me about beds, laying on beds, and trying to make a educated decision about a new bed. I would personally like a king size bed but unfortunately, our bedroom isn't set up for one. There are many kinds of beds out there!!! I did come to a decision however, based on information given to me and keeping in mind our budget that we had for a new bed. Sears has a sale on right now and I think we got a good quality bed, firm but comfy and we have 60 days to decide that we really like it and will keep it. So that was done, crossed off the list! I had an appointment to get my hair trimmed, to me a trim means just alittle off the ends, however, to a hairdresser, it seems to mean, cut off as much as you can get away with!! I do like my hair alittle shorter but it always seems to be just about where I like it when it becomes alittle unruly and I think, just alittle off the ends would be good, so I go for a trim and almost always come away unhappy. Thank goodness, hair grows!!
We have windows that have wooden frames, that was the thing to get when we built our house, now there are vinyl clad windows, they would be so much better, but when I inquired about how much it would be to get our windows done, it was very expensive, we could amost put in new windows for what it would cost, so today I went to the paint store to find out what I could do with them. I found some stuff to paint on them, after I wash them with bleach and the tsp! It's going to be alittle bit of work methinks, to get them looking good!
I started my fall housecleaning this week, I am almost through all my cupboards, washing, re-organizing and purging! I have a few boxes to go to community living. I have been through most of the closets too. I am really thinning things out. I am being ruthless!
I have been trying to get some scrapbooking done as well. I have picked up Stacy Julian's PhotoFreedom book again and am trying to organize my photos as well as get a few pages done. I am not getting much done for either task!! I signed up for a class on-line at Big Picture Scrapbooking, doing a book about myself. My dh and I had a road trip to Lethbridge this past weekend to see his brother. We had a few hours on the road to discuss alot of things, we were just about at Lethbridge when we realized we had gone the entire way without the radio on or any other distractions!! We had alot to talk about! He has been so busy this summer that we haven't had our usual times to relax and enjoy each other's company. We did have our little vacation to Niagara Falls, but that was different, there were other things to talk about and we were doing the "tourist stuff" as well. anyway, I digress, we started talking about leaving our stories behind for future generations and of course that lead to my scrapbooking and how I scrap our kids and our vacations but I don't really do anything about us and our childhoods. so we thought we needed to do something about that. He really doesn't have alot of photos of him as a child but he has lots of memories that we could write down. We are going to try and get something done about that this winter when he has alittle more time. It has been put on the to-do list. The one for both of us!! We are working our way through a bucket list too! We have our trip to Europe booked and sort of planned for March 2010. That was close to the top for the bucket list and I am quite excited about going.
Well, this post has become quite long and if you have stuck with me this far, I thank you. If you got bored and left, well, I do understand. I just needed to get some of my thoughts down, if you know what I mean. I am doing a mini photography course on the Flickr site and I need to do a study of light for this week so I must go think about that now! It's cloudy and cool outside so today might not be ideal for this little assignment! But I can plan.

My little princess

2009-09-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much the only thing I got done this summer that would qualify as creative. I did a photo shoot of my little princess and her cousin at the end of June, for their 18 month pictures. We had them outside and I took about 500 shots of the 2 of them. This was one of the best head shots that I got. We tweaked it abit because she had some scratches on her nose and chin but it is mostly as I took it. I had some help from the ladies at JSI as I took everything in there and asked for the help. This is my first attempt at doing a canvas and I don't do much 3 dimensional stuff either. So with their help, I glimmermisted the canvas with 2 colors of glimmermist and a butterfly mask. The flowers are prima, the paper is from Webster's pages line. the swirls are cut apart from the big package of swirls and the butterfly on the top flowers, I found at Michael's in a package of butterflies. I glimmermisted a couple of extra white prima flowers so that they matched up with everything and glued it with zipdry and fabric tac. Oh yes, and the lacy ribbon around the photo was from JSI's wall of ribbon!! The masking on the canvas doesn't come through very well here but IRL it looks quite pretty. I was quite happy with the final results.

Gobsmacked!!

2009-09-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

Isn't that just the funniest word you have ever heard? I am reading Barbara Taylor Bradford's book, "Being Elizabeth" and she uses that word in place of stunned or speechless! Everytime I read it or I think about it while I am going about my daily routine, I giggle. I think it sounds hilarious. The book is based in London so i am guessing it is one of those english words like spanner, torch, knocking someone up. trolley, etc, etc. that we find so unusual when we hear them. There are probably some words that we use that they find funny too! But I just have to giggle when I think about being gobsmacked!!

I am trying to get my mojo back, still. I really need to start doing some scrapbook pages and I have almost used up all my cards in my cardbasket, so with all the birthdays and things coming up this fall, I really need to find it, wherever it went. I signed up for an online class with BigPicture Scrapbooking. It starts September 3rd and I am really hoping that it will jumpstart my creativity. Wish me luck!

Flutterby butterfly

2009-08-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

I took alot of photos in the Butterfly Conservatory, and also of the Botanical gardens. I am not sure how I will scrapbook them, I think I may try to do a collage page. The gardens were so beautiful and lush, I was so envious, we just can't grow gardens like that here in dry, hot Sask. We certainly enjoyed looking at all the flowers there, or i guess i did, I really can't speak for dh, although he didn't complain and he carried my camera bag too! What a great guy!!

We celebrated our 35th Wedding Anniversary!

2009-08-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is only a small view of what the streets look like in Niagara on the Lake. It is the most beautiful place, but having said that, it is quite expensive! At least, during the tourist season.

My dh wanted to see a play at the Shaw Festival. So we booked tickets for King Charles' Golden Days which meant that we had to stay an extra day here, hmmm, not so bad an idea. We walked the streets and checked out all the little boutiques. Lots of art galleries and little stores with pottery.etc.

This was our spectacular room at the Hilton's Embassy Suites for our stay in Niagara Falls. We stayed there one night, our anniversary night and then we moved onto Niagara On the Lake. They had alot of B&B's there, but unfortunately they had no vacancies. I had wanted to book on line but dh wanted to "wing it" for this holiday and the only room he let me prebook was this one. I am not a great "winging it" kind of gal but I did it for this week. We actually had pretty good luck with finding rooms when we wanted them.

And this was the view from our suite. It was breath taking. We did go on the Maid of the Mist ride and that took our breath away too, but because it was windy and extremely wet!! We stood on the top and in the front, probably the windiest and wettest place to be on the entire boat, but we did get a good look at the falls!

All in all, it was a great holiday, we enjoyed our time together and even though it was very hot and humid, we did get to see alot of countryside.

2009-08-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

So Sorry everyone. I haven't been a good blogger lately. I really don't have an excuse, I just haven't been keeping up with this. I really haven't been doing any scrapbooking either. I just can't seem to get myself motivated to do anything crafty. I have, however, been reading alot of books!!

I am getting excited though. We are going to go to Niagara Falls on Sunday, my dh and I, to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. I may have mentioned this previously but now the time is actually here!! We would have left earlier than Sunday but dh is involved with the German Club and he has to be there for these 3 days of Folkfest. So that is why we are leaving on a Sunday.

We did manage a short visit with friends at Tobin Lake last weekend and I had my camera with me, with my trusty telephoto lens, so I did get a few good shots of a friendly little squirrel they had running around. These friends have been building a log cabin on their lot. Last year, they moved out the old trailer that they have been using for many years and they started on the cabin that they have dreamed about. Our friend retired last June from the department of highways and he had made the decision that his first year of retirement would be building this cabin and then maybe he would look for a parttime job after it was done. They just have some varnishing to do yet but basically it is all done. I will post a photo on here and not feel guilty because their kids have it posted on facebook so they probably won't mind that it is on my blog. The cabin.....The cute little squirrel......This is a woodpecker that visits the birdfeeder hanging in a nearby tree at the cabin. There are

2 of them and our friends know what the proper names of them are, one is quite abit bigger than the other one.

And finally my patience won out and I got a couple of shots at catching the ever elusive hummingbird!! I sat for quite awhile to capture this little guy. And he kept coming into the feeder from the tree side so when I snapped the photo he blended in with the tree. He finally decided to try the other side of the feeder and I got a couple of snaps in, but he was pretty quick with his snack!!

Thursday already?

2009-07-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

My how times flies. I can't believe it is thursday already. I have been doing nothing in particular and everything in general, you know, the laundry, regualr household chores, etc. I did have someone over to look at our main bath and I am hoping I get a reasonable quote for renovating it. So then I went and looked at bathtubs and sinks. We have an older home so it has quite a small bathroom. which may create a problem for switching out the tubs but when we moved the house from the farm the tubsurround separated from the tub and I think water got behind it and the drywall now looks alittle crumbly. anyway, we are going to replace the tub and sink as they both are chipped and rusting alittle. I also want to replace the livingroom carpet. I really wanted hardwood floors but dh says absolutely not so i have finally given up on that ( I have put it off for quite awhile hoping that he will cave, but it's not to be). So I went and looked at carpet samples as well. And I looked at the newest duraceramic tiles for the bathroom floor. I quite like them. So then, I looked at new blinds for the windows, and while I was measuring them, I noticed that the wooden frames look alittle water damaged from frost melting and pooling on the ledges, so now I have to visit a paint store and check out what I need to do with them before i get any new blinds on them. Probably will paint them instead of stain and varnish. I hear there is a new kind of paint that will protect against any mold forming and gets rid of any that is there now. So I must go and check that out. I may as well paint the entire livingroom them too, right? So guess we have to get that ball rolling now and I think it is going to pick up some speed as we go along. I am thinking maybe new furniture too!!!! Argh!!!! What have I started???? Will there be no end? It could go on and on and on!!!! Stay tuned to future developments!

I have been reading Stacey Julian's book, Photo Freedom and trying to imagine having no guilt about my ever growing pile of photos. I have decided to embrace a part of her philosophy. I will start just pulling out photos and scrapping them, and not care if they are recent or as old as the hills! So I did that. I just went through a pile of older photos of our girls and picked 2 out of the pile. Then I made this layout. The paper and embellies are from the July kit from Just Cre8. I decided it would go into an album named "everyday life". Maybe someday I will get to the part about sorting the photos into her 4 categories, but for now, I think this is how I will start!

I have done a few other pages from one of my old albums but because it is of dh's sister's wedding I don't think I should post it here, there are too many other people in the photos and I don't know how they feel about being in my blog. Suffice to say, I did alot of cropping and got many photos onto a page without losing anything but alot of white background! My old photography skills sucked bigtime!! The cheap camera probably didn't help much either!

Oh and if you want a smile for today, you should go to the Just Cre8 forum and look for a youtube video about a wedding procession, it is priceless. I would have posted it here but i have no clue how to do that so you will have to do the work and go find it. maybe I can put the right post here with a url, I will try and see if that works.

http://justcre8.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8489

okay, here is the post in the forum, enjoy.

Photography Road Trip

2009-07-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we decided to do a road trip to look for things to take photos of, just for fun!! WE started out around 9 a.m. and headed north toward P.A. By Rosthern there is a deserted farmyard that has a car ( a Cadillac I believe) that has a tree growing out from inside the motor compartment. There is also a falling down shack and a bunch of old machinery.

We left P.A. and went east towards Choiceland, stopping here and there along the way if we saw something that we wanted to photograph. We found old churches, flowers galore, abandoned yardsites with falling down houses and old granaries. It was hot and the flies were everywhere!!! We had a great time and then towards evening we ended up at St. Louis. From there we travelled along the river back to Saskatoon. All in all we were gone for 12 hours and we travelled close to 600 kms.!! I took over 300 pictures and I am including some of my favorite ones here.

This is a frog in one of the churchyards we were in. I was taking photos of flowers with my macro lens at the time. this little guy wouldn't stay still for me very well and was hard to get a focus on him!! Patience paid out though. I think he thought he was hidden from me here!!!

The St. Louis bridge. It was around 7 p.m. and I set my shutter speed to get this lighting. I can't remember what setting I used but I know that I wanted it to look different than what I was getting so I played abit to get the look I was trying for.

This was alittle later and the evening light made the canola field look so bright against the old granary and the green trees. The fields during the harsh sun of the day looked way more washed out.

This is my absolute most favorite photo of the entire day! I just love it and it was taken on a whim with no pre planning at all!! Isn't that just how it works some days????

This elevator is at Hagen and we just laughed at all the different angles all the separate pieces were leaning at!!

A prairie lily. It was one of the things I was specifically looking for today.

We looked all day for a lane that would photograph this way, like it went on forever. I took quite a few photos of this and with different lenses to see what would give me the look I was aiming for. This one is with the 17-85mm lens.

I don't know how I got 2 of the same photos on here, and I tried to take one off but I couldn't figure out how to get one off and leave all the others so this one got left! There was a radio tower that I could see in my frame and I tried many views to get it not to be there, finally found this one where the church steeple hid the tower perfectly!!! There's that try every angle tip that I was told about in the one and only photography course I have taken!!

I am going to put more of these photos on my Flicker site next, so if you want to see more, try going there and looking. Thanks.

Someone tell Mother Nature it's summertime, please

2009-07-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

I took this photo with my macro lens at the end of June. My dd wanted a photo of our gd at 18 months. I think I took around 500 snaps and I got quite a few good ones but I think this is one of the best. I then "warmed" it up, added a glow and softened the edges abit. Oh yes and I used the little brush to take out afew red spots on her chin. I think it turned out pretty good. She is such a doll right now, trys to repeat everything you say to her and is starting to love playing with the girls old cabbage patch dolls, she kisses them and hugs them and lays them down, puts a blanket over them and tells them nighty night, pats them on the tummy and leaves!!! It is priceless!

And then, there is the weather, not nearly so endearing!! I am not really a beach person so I don't need sun for that but if I wanted clouds and rain, I would have moved to the west coast!!! I need some sun just for mental well-being!! and one day every 2 weeks is just not going to cut it for me!!

We had a family reunion this past weekend and would really have like some nice weather for it. Sunday was nice but we were all busy packing up and getting home during it! We had a good time anyway and it was great seeing all the nieces and nephews and their little ones. My how times have changed, we used to be the ones with little kids and the older aunts and uncles sat around reminiscing and now we ARE the older aunts and uncles!!! There are very few of the original aunts and uncles left and the ones that are,don't travel very far away from their homes these days. (This reunion was on my husband's side). On my side it is much the same, I think there are only 2 uncles and 1 aunt still alive and they are quite elderly.

Nothing else too much exciting has been going on around here. I haven't been scrapping much. I am going to try to get at some older photos this week and see if I can do something with them. We will see how that goes!!

Guess what I bought???

2009-06-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-19T15:29:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-06T19:17:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-03T05:52:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

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!

Did we miss Spring?

2009-05-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

Seems like overnight it has warmed up and the trees are green!! This morning was sunny, then it clouded over and now it is trying to be sunny again. We had a little sprinkle of rain yesterday and that will really green things up now, I am thinking!!

There were afew challenges on the Just Cre8 on line crop this weekend that I had time to participate in. The first one was to use bright colors. This layout is alot brighter than I normally would do!! Hot pink isn't a color I use often!!! But it matched amanda's new bike helmut, so I used it!Then we had to do a layout in under 30 mins. That includes picking your paper and embellishments! I had bought this Pink Paisley paper with this photo in mind, so it was fairly easy to whip a simple layout together. The most time I spent was looking for the alphabits to use on it!!The we had to do a layout with no patterned paper!! That one was alittle difficult too. But I think I managed to do a fairly decent layout doing that. It even turned into a 2 pager bacause I just couldn't get all the photos onto one page and have it looking right. I love using circles so I did that and lots of inking of the edges.
We had quite afew social things to do this weekend and I did end up watching Amanda for the kids on Sat. afternoon while they ran around getting some errands done. Things that they could do with her but would be faster and easier if they were on their own. Poor little one is cutting her eye teeth and she is not the happiest camper these days!! She isn't sleeping well and isn't really eating well, and those are 2 things that she usually does very well!! She is being picky and a little more clingy than usual. It looks like she could be getting all 4 of them at once too! That can't be comfortable. Her fingers are in her mouth and she is drooly again, hasn't been like that for some time. I feel for her and her parents, especially at night, they aren't getting alot of sleep. Been there before!!! Hopefully it won't last long, it looked to me like they were close to poking through so maybe this week, sometime. Anyhoo, hope everyone has a good week and if I get any more layouts done I will try to share.

Flip Book

2009-05-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't been able to get my mojo going lately. My solution was to surf the net and see what there was to try and stimulate myself. I ran across this mini photo album made like a flip book. I have quite a few kits laying around and thought that maybe that would be a good start as there would be everything that I would need in the kit. This book is on Amy Celona's U Stamp 4 Fun stampin up website with downloadable instructions. It is very easy to do and i was finished the book in a couple of hours. http://ustamp4fun.com/ProjectGallery/flipbk.htm

Everybody Ready to Scrap?

2009-05-22T08:16:00.000-07:00

So today is the day, the Happy be scrappy crop begins on line at Just Cre8. I have never done this before so it will be fun to see how it goes. You don't have to be here on line all the time they say, just pop in and out now and then. Stay a long time or just a few minutes, it just doesn't matter! I have things to do today but Sat. and Sun should be good. The laundry is done, the groceries are bought, weather isn't all that great so staying indoors shouldn't be a problem!! So join us if you like, even just to see what goes on during an online crop!

Ever do an on line crop?

2009-05-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

http://justcre8.com/blog/ There will be an on line crop this weekend here, come and join us, it will be fun. It starts tomorrow and goes until Sunday evening. There will be challenges and tutorials to do, come join us and create some fun!!

Spring? maybe, maybe not!

2009-05-16T04:57:00.000-07:00

I am not sure where all the time goes but it has been quite awhile since I updated this blog! This is what we woke up to yesterday morning here in Saskatoon!!! SNOW, in the middle of May. While this is not unheard of, this year because we had such a long cold winter, it was totally unappreciated! We have had snow in June, but not often. The snow yesterday was gone by noon, except for alittle on the north side of the house that is totally in shade all the time and it did give some much needed moisture to things, but really, I mean it's supposed to be spring.

This lovely chalet is where I stayed last weekend for a crop, it's called the Shekinah Retreat and we were there for the entire weekend, scrapping our little hearts out! The weekend started on Friday and went until Sunday afternoon. I drove up there Friday morning and it was cold, damp and cloudy. I was thinking what a good weekend to be inside. However, the weather improved by Sunday and I was ready to go home by then. I had most of what I wanted to get done, done so was ready to leave. I didn't take any photos of our rooms but they were dormitory style on the lower level and the upper level was where we scrapped and ate our meals.
Here is one view from the deck outside the doors where I was sitting for the weekend.
This is taken from the highest place in the chalet, up by the chapel. This retreat house is run by the Mennonite community north of Saskatoon, by the North Saskatchewan river.

The long brown table in the lower right corner is where they served our meals, which were fabulous by the way, and then we had tables to eat at under where I was standing to take this picture.
I did 2 mini albums, played with my new Tim Holtz inks and stamps and did a couple of pages for my daughters' scrapbooks. I will try and take some photos of what I did and get them uploaded later this week. We are off for the weekend to visit with friends and bug our adult kids while they camp in this crazy weather for their annual camping trip that they do with their friends. The temps are supposed to be fairly nice until monday so they shouldn't need their ski pants to sit by the fire!! LOL

more scrapbook pages and a bridge

2009-04-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we had a funeral to attend, our son in law's grandpa passed away so even though we really didn't know the man, we went to support our daughter and her hubby. We do socialize abit with our in-laws as well so it was for them as well. We don't really know Nipawin and on our way to the cemetery, we got lost!!! We lost the cars in the procession because we were behind a tall vehicle and we didn't catch which way they turned at a 4-way stop!! We did stop and ask someone about the cemetery and they sent us to the wrong one!! Anyway, we saw this old bridge across the north sask. river and I thought may as well take some pictures

Finished up a couple of pages that I had started at the last crop day I attended. They are made with the kit from Just Cre8, totally, Just added some inking to the edges of some of the paper and I did the journalling on the computer.

This photo was taken with my point and shoot last spring. I was taking pics of the apple tree, it was the first year that it had bloomed since we planted it. I saw the bee in one of the flowers and put my camera on the macro setting to see what kind of photo I would get. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out.

Getting projects finished!

2009-04-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

This is a page with one of our group photos (taken with my camera on the timer function) of our trip to Mexico this past January. I have a whole bunch of photos of that trip that need to make it into an album. I am thinking maybe a mini album though because we go every year and I really don't want anymore 12x12 albums of Puerto Vallarta! The paper and embellies from this layout are from the kit that Just Cre8 puts together on a monthly basis. This is a page that I did with a photo from Jenn's wedding, it is going in the album that I am trying to get finshed that is her album from a baby on. I started these albums a long time ago and decided that I really need to get them up to date. As I have said before, we had a poor camera and not so good photos from the girls' early days but the memories should be preserved so I need to get them down soon in the albums. I, of course, would much rather scrap the new photos but I need to get myself in hand and do up all the older photos!!

And, finally finished up my jean rag quilt this weekend and got it all washed and fluffed up. I am thinking of taking a picture of it for proof! The clipping of the seams almost took as long as the sewing!! And what a mess around my chair when I was finally done!

Now I have a couple of baby quilts that are close to being finished and those are kind of next on the list to get completed.

There is a scrapbooking day planned for saturday for National Scrapbooking day that I need to get organized for as well as an entire weekend event that is out of town. So I really have my work cut out for me for the next little while, as far as scrapbooking is concerned, anyway! I find it so hard to organize for crops outside of my house so I must get on that now so that I can be alittle more efficient at them.

We had both girls here for supper last night with their families so I need to tidy up abit and then straight to the scrap room!!

Outside fun and easter

2009-04-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

We don't make a big deal out of the easter bunny at our house but this year he did visit and leave a chair and a bike helmut for our little gd. Grandpa dug out the old trike that we kept and showed her how it worked and then we let her run outside. She hasn't really had the chance to just run freely yet in her short life, if she is put down outside, someone is holding her hand. She had so much fun outside here on Easter sunday. Shrieking and laughing and running. I can see some fun summer days ahead with her!! I am constantly amazed at the new things she learns during the week and then shows to us when she visits. She is just too smart for her own good!!! And she is getting so tall, everything that was safe on the countertop before, now she can stretch and reach the edges and grab it!! So we have to remember to push things back alittle farther now! Not much fear either, she will stand on anything!! She is better with stairs now but still makes me nervous. So that is about all my bragging for today!

Here she is in the back of the truck with her uncle's hat on!! She won't usually leave hats on! This one stayed on for quite along time, I think she forgot about it, she was having so much fun.

Trying out the trike. More practise is in order I think!! But she liked being pushed around by grandpa and below, trying out her new chair. She really liked it, it is just her size!

I did do a fantastic scrap day with the ladies from Just Cre8 on Saturday. I didn't get alot done but then I don't usually. Had a good time visiting and laughing with all of them. I had to leave alittle early but am looking forward to the next time we get together. I have a couple of pages done too but will share them in a different post. I am hoping to read Stacey Julian's Photo Freedom and get my photos organized and ready to scrap in a guilt free manner in the next while. I need all the help I can get!! Soon will be time to get outside and do yardwork. I have so many ideas percolating around for things to do differently this year, I can hardly wait.

Thinking About Spring

2009-04-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am still in my cast and still having to sit more than I am used to, so I have been spending wayyyy more time on the computer than I ever have. Most of the blogs that I visit are talking alot about spring, which I can understand because we have had such a long cold, snowy winter this year, or at least I think so. So, along with me going through alot of older photos and trying very hard not to become overwhelmed with the amount of them, I have been thinking of growing up on the farm in the 50's and 60's in the spring. I grew up in southern Sask. and we had black gumbo dirt there. What that means is, when you walked across the yard you were about 6 inches taller by the time you reached your destination!!! The mud just stuck to your boots and never fell off until you scraped it off!! When you drove a vehicle, the mud clung tenaciously to the tires until the wheelwells were clogged and you had to get out and dig some of the mud out so you could continue on your way!! Anyway, where I was going with this is, I remember, very clearly, playing with my older brother outside in the spring in the mud, of course. Mom had told us not to play behind the house because that is where the "grey water" from the house drained out (we didn't have indoor plumbing yet, that treat was yet to come). So along with the grey water was the normal spring runoff in the yard and everything was positioned to sort of drain into that same area thus leaving the rest of the yard alittle dryer (in theory anyway). so off we went to play, in the area we weren't supposed to play in of course!!!! I was traipsing along after my brother and of course got stuck in the mud and water and he being the chivralous sort, offered me his hand to pull me out, and guess what????? I came out but my boots stayed in, firmly rooted in the mud!!!! So now we knew we were in trouble, not only were we where we were NOT supposed to be but now I am covered in mud and soaked and cold and we had to face mom. My dad was outside and must have heard me crying because he came to the rescue, laughed himself silly and carried me into the house. Mom was mad, Wayne was gone who knows where, he wasn't staying around to be punished and dad was laughing. I don't really remember what Wayne had to do but I had to wash out my socks and pants myself and I wasn't really all that old so it was abit of a challenge to scrub them on the old washboard and tub. I did not go near that area again that I can remember. My challenge to you is to tell a story about growing up and springtime on your blogs and leave me a comment so I can read about it. Thanks for looking.

More pages from the crop.

2009-03-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

This cute little one is Jennifer, my daughter!!!! I am going to get their (my daughters) albums done yet!!! I realize that I am pretty random with the pages but I am finding it hard to think of things to do so I have resorted to checking out the sketch sites to help me. Leica has become a member of the design team at Just Cr8 so I have been on their site quite abit. They have lots of pages in their gallery and they have tutorials and sketches to try, it's a good site. They were at the Crop Sask. on the weekend, a whole group of them doing PR work for their group. They are the ones that talked to Rambling Dave on C95 last week and again on Monday. There is an entire discussion forum on what went on with that!!! Suffice to say, Rambling Dave has admitted that scrapbookers are not just glorifed sticker collectors!! They are apparently Certified Nutbar Hobbyists!!! This page was alittle more work for me. It is a page of my niece's wedding that we attended this past summer. I have a whole bunch of family and wedding photos to do but this one was sent to us as the thankyou card for the wedding gift. So I just turned it into a page before I lost it in the pile!!!

This double page layout was fairly quick. I was browsing a site that Leica had mentioned on her blog called Glitz, and they have a bunch of tutorials on doing quick pages on their website. I looked at a few of them and one was called a 4 cut page. You basically take 2 sheets of patterned paper and do 4 cuts on both of them, arrange the pieces on 2 pieces of cardstock and then add your photos and embellishments. These 2 pages were done in record time for me!!

So, those are all the pages that I got done this weekend. I was hoping to get more done but I had to put in some shopping and socializing time as well!!! And, I did take those 2 classes so that took a few hours out of the day, and then there was eating time as well. Leica's mom, Gwen did a great job with the lunch and all the snacks that were provided. all in all, a great weekend!

OOps, just realized that I didn't crop these photos of the pages, sorry. Also, my posts got mixed up alittle and this one should be after the other one, again ,sorry. But all the pages are here!!!

Crop Saskatchewan was great!

2009-03-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

We had a great weekend at Crop Saskatchewan. My daughter and I went together on Saturday, I had gone as well on Friday evening. I took a class on colorblocking with Jill Hildebrand, she is from Manitoba and was one of the teachers on the Crop and Cruise that is organized by Allison Orthner from Calgary. The other class I took was the photography class by Allison. She had some good tips for taking pictures, some of it I already knew, some of it was new information. She ended up with the tip of "always have your camera handy and take lots of pictures"!!

So these are the pages that I did at the colorblocking class. It is a great way to do up pages quickly, especially if you just can't get going with your scrapbooking, like when your mojo just totally disappears. And I can see it as a way to use up a whole bunch of scraps. I am going to try and get some of my older photos done up this way, just to get them done. These are school photos of my 2 daughters that are now 31 and 27!!! Took me about 10 mins per pages to get them done. Now that's quick, for me anyway.

More Winter, Yuck!

2009-03-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

We have had a few days of nice weather and I was hoping spring was here, or at least close but alas, more snow this morning. Oh well, can't really do anything about that, but I am looking forward to the weekend ( and it's only Monday!!) because it is Leica's big cropping weekend here in Saskatoon. I need to get organized for what I will be doing because I can only carry so much with me as I can only walk so far with this cast on my leg!! Hopefully I will find a parking space close to the school!! Anyway, in keeping with my promise to myself I did up 2 more pages using stuff from my stash here at home, I have soooo much it's just a matter of hunting and searching to find coordinating things to use. My photos aren't too old, from the last year but they were ones that are printed out and in the stack!! I am hoping to get a few of the older ones done this week as well as organize what I will be doing at the crop.

I did edit these pics and crop them but I don't know where they went to!! I will have to go and find them and put them in the correct folder. Computers!!!! They have a mind of their own.

WOW, 2 posts in one day!!

2009-03-13T13:08:00.001-07:00

These are the pages that I have done in the past couple of days, I am staying with my plans to get some of the old photos in my files into pages and thus into albums. I am all over the place with the ones that I am choosing to do, but I have so many that I really don't think that it matters where I start!! This first one is based on sketch #8 on the 52 weeks website. It is Amanda learning to climb the stairs at the age of 10 months. Now if only she would learn how to go down them, it wouldn't be so stressful having her near the steps!!!! This page really needed to be done!!! I am going to get our wedding done, hopefully soon!! My brother took the pics because we were so young and so broke when we got married!!! So they aren't professional but they are photos of such a memorable day!! We have beat the stats in that we are still married to our original partners after 35(in august) years!!!

I do have some pages of my babies done but there are afew pics just hanging around, so I may redo some of the older pages just to have them looking alittle more in tune with the ones that I am doing now. The photos aren't great, we had such a poor camera in those days. I am loving my new camera when I take the pics of our granddaughter!!

Another family photo, we did take them lots while the girls were growing up, and I am glad. They are much more formal than the photographers are doing now, but they are great to have anyway.

Also, I have been cleaning and purging alot of the stuff in my scraproom. I had alot of stuff that just wasn't going to be used no matter what, stuff that was getting crumpled and the glue was dried up and was just plain not going to be used by anyone, ever!!! I made room in 2 more drawers in my rolling drawers but filled them up with stuff from on top of my table!!! Oh well, made more room on top of the table now!!! That probably won't stay for long!!! Time to get back at doing things, or maybe it's time for a cup of tea now!!! There's photos to sort too. Oh man, it's going to take forever!!! My new mantra is, I will make some progress,even if it is just alittle progress!!!!! See ya later.

Keeping busy

2009-03-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

So, you may be asking what I have been doing to keep myself busy while on my enforced rest. I promised myself that I would finish up some of my unfinished projects that are lying around the house. This steppingstone was one of them. I had it basecoated for a longtime and I had promised my daughter that she could have it but I just never seemed to get around to doing it for her. Well, it's done and she is thrilled. I have alot more projects to get done too. I made a list so that I would have motivation to cross stuff off and see my progress. Hope that works!!

Resting is not all that much fun!

2009-03-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally got into see the specialist about my sore foot. He looked at the MRI results and tells me I have an inflamed peroneal tendon in my foot and because it didn't get better while on holidays (of course, I was resting it then!)and while taking anti inflammatories, the next course of action is complete immoblization of the foot!! So here I am, resting my foot for the next 6 weeks while in a beautiful red fibreglass cast!!! I did take a photo of it this morning but my camera is upstairs right now and I am downstairs so it will have to wait.

I have spent quite a few hours already in the last couple of days reading ALOT of information on the DPS website and have gone through my holiday photos with a more discerning eye. I can see so many places where I could have done things differently to capture a better image, but que sera, sera Most of the info is lost already and I have had to go back and re-read some of it!! I have a good memory, it's just alot shorter these days! All I know, is there is sooooo much more to learn!

I will share some of our sunset photos that we took from the top of a seaside hill restaurant in Rincon de Guayabitos. I took these over the course of about an hour I think and the last one was a try at a night photo of the lights of the village

Home from Mexico

2009-02-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

We arrived home from Mexico yesterday but it has taken me until now to catch up with the mail, the laundry, shopping for groceries and the banking. And there are still quite a few things for me to do but I am tired so am sitting down for alittle rest. I downloaded my pictures and there are quite afew of them but I thought I would post a couple that I took while fiddling with my camera one day by the pool. I had my instruction book with me as I find it difficult to just lay by the pool and do nothing. I was changing settings and taking pictures of the hibiscus flowers. I also figured out how to take photos with the timer on!! That actually took me awhile and that frustrated me because I could do it in a couple of seconds with my little point and shoot camera. But I am so determined to learn how to use this new camera and all it's settings. I have decided that it will be a long learning curve!!! So, these photos were taken one right after the other but on different exposures. The darker one is more the truer colors but I was experimenting. I wasn't going to take my new camera with me but then thought that I would have lots of time to take photos. I don't really know where the time went but I didn't have as much free time to waste as I thought! I ended up taking alot of photos on the auto settings because I didn't want to miss them and I would need too much time to try and figure out what settings I actually needed. I really need to practice. So, Julie, we will have to get together sometime and do a "walk about" but now that I have become conditioned to warm, sunny weather, guess we will have to wait for spring!!!! Our evenings clouded up regularly so I didn't get a chance to take alot of sunset pictures. I was really looking forward to that because there are some phenomenal sunsets in Puerto Vallarta over the ocean. We will have some beautiful sunsets right here in the prairies too so will have to catch some of those.

hola from mexico

2009-01-23T15:17:00.000-08:00

I don't seem to have a lot of time to blog while here in sunny and warm mexico but thought that I would leave a photo with you that gives a statement I think of how relaxing the time here is.

I don't know what we do but the time sure passes quickly. We did do a tequilla tour yesterday and tasted some delicious flavoured tequilla, I really liked it and I don't normally like tequilla at all, tastes like gasoline smells or rubbing alcohol!! but this stuff was smooth and delicious. We have plans for a 2 day tour to guadalajara next week, but for now, will work on getting all my books read that I brought along!! Loving this relaxing time, see you all in a couple of weeks!! Oh yes, love the wonders of cyberspace, I was able to register for Leica Forrest's crop in march from here, don'tcha just love it!!!

more cards

2009-01-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

Here is the quick and easy one that I made for Valentines Day. They were pretty simple to make. I stamped the background with 4 different heart stamps and then I stamped and colored the bear. I punched out the hearts and attached them with foam squares. The inside verse is a stamp from an old hostess Stampin Up set (retired now) I just went looking through the stamps that I have for an appropriate saying that would work for anyone.

Oops, some of the cards didn't make it into the last post, I am still learning about all this blogging stuff!!! Here are a few more that I made.

Some cards

2009-01-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Today I thought that I would share some of the cards that I have been making. Some are cards that I made on my own and some are copied from the Splitcoaststampers website. I included the ones that I made for Christmas cards that I sent out to family and friends. I had some left over (imagine that) that I will save for next year.

new pages, finally

2009-01-08T11:24:00.000-08:00

This photo of my oldest daughter and her family was taken in the fall on a cool day. I think this one was toward the end of the shoot so Amanda is looking kind of chilly!! The paper is from a kit from Scrapdango as well as the letters and the felt flowers.

So, I finally got myself going on doing some scrapbooking again. I am finished reading the Twilight series, they are fairly good books. I don't think they are as well written as the Harry Potter series but they are pretty good considering they were written with teenagers in mind!!
I am getting excited about going on our trip now. I have been cleaning and sorting too as I take down the Christmas stuff. It is just too cold to go anywhere unless I absolutely have to, like work!!! I have been making some cards as well, as my little box of extras was getting low.
This photo of amanda and santa is on basic grey Wassail paper and the embelishments are from cloud9 design. I used a sketch challenge from 52 Sketches...52 Weeks site.

post Christmas news

2009-01-06T17:55:00.000-08:00

I was reminded today that I haven't posted in a long while, so I thought that I would remedy that. I was busy getting ready for Christmas, I made all my cards to send, I tried to visit with my granddaughter as often as possible, I had to bake this year as we were hosting the family get together here at our house, I decorated alittle more than usual for that same reason, so blogging sort of fell to the wayside. I "stole" Amanda from daycare one afternoon and took her to see Santa, sad to say she wasn't too impressed and wouldn't let go of me to sit with him. I had phoned my other daughter Jenn to see if she was willing to come with me in case I had trouble, so she ended up sitting with Amanda by Santa. I saw so many photos of kids crying or screaming while sitting on Santa's lap and I just didn't want that kind of photo. So here is the photo that we got of our little sweetheart with Santa and her auntie.

I have been playing with my camera lot as well. I took pictures of my decorations one day just because I wanted to play with the settings on it. Here are some of the pictures I took

I have to scrapbook some of the many pics I took over the holidays. Amanda had fun opening presents both at Christmas and then again on her birthday. She had a chocolate cake in the shape of a bear for her birthday cake and we have some great pics of her eating it!! I will have to decide which picture is the best and post that one. Then the poor dear got sick with a cold and ear infection, her first one ever and she is just recovering from that now.

In about 10 days Les and I will be heading down to Mexico for our annual winter holiday. Too bad we weren't there already during this ugly cold snap but c'est la vie. We will still enjoy our time together there because it's WARM, warmer than here no matter what the temperature is!!! I can hardly wait. All my christmas decorations are put away, I have even done some purging in the ornament box. I have cleaned a couple of closets out, (I was on a roll) and so I am ready for a holiday. If I can I will try and do a couple of posts on this blog while we are there. I am not sure if I will be able but if I can I will.
Here we are, the proud grandparents with our little princess. It's going to be very difficult leaving her behind while we go away, but think of the welcome home we will get!!

Another sketch challenge

2008-11-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I found another website called Sisterhood of Scrap and they have sketches there too. They had one this week that looked pretty easy and kind of fit in with my way of doing pages, so I thought that I would give it a try. So here is my take on their sketchhttp://www.sisterhoodofscrap.blogspot.com/

I did another page too that used some of the wild and colorful paper that I have received in my kits that I get from Scrapdango. As I said before, I have a difficult time doing pages with such vivid and bold colors, not to mention the big prints!! But this one was kind of fun, I suppose because it is of Amanda and her auntie and mommy being silly with her and her new baby bans sunglasses!!

This child already seems to have a great sense of humor and even though she isn't a year old yet, can ham it up for the camera when she wants to!!

Isn't she Cute?

2008-11-07T05:06:00.000-08:00

With her little pink nose and pink cheeks, doesn't she just look sooooo very cute? Amanda got to try out her new jacket and hat the other day. I think that pink certainly is her color! I can hardly wait until she sees snow for the first time. She says "wow" quite clearly now whenever she looks at certain things and can imitate a cat's meow too. Do I sound like a proud grandma or what!!!!! I just have to scrapbook this photo but haven't decided on the title yet, any suggestions?

Halloween visitor

2008-11-03T06:02:00.000-08:00

We don't get many trick or treaters out here on the acreage, only a few stop by. But this year we had one very special little visitor show up. Here is our little Amanda all dressed up in her penguin costume for her first Halloween. She was so cute! Unfortunately it was getting close to her bedtime and she was alittle tired. Grampa got a couple of smiles out of her though. I didn't catch them with the camera
but they were there!!

some more about the weekend

2008-10-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

This one is for Jenn's album that I started years ago and then just sort of abandoned. I figured I should at least get their school photos done and into it. I think I have from grade 6 to 12 done but for some reason I didn't get the beginning years into the album. I will get right on that! I am not sure I like the letters on the side but they are going to stay. I need to keep the momentum going.

This photo has that orange tone to it that so many have that were taken in these years. I totally scraplifted this layout from Leica's blog. She had a photo of herself that had this orange look to it and she used the turquoise color with it and I thought it looked pretty good.

This photo is one from 1984, so you see I am going way back in my little pile of photos!!! I haven't even scratched the surface of pics that we took. I do have some scrapbooked but there are soooo many more. I think I will try to do some of the really old photos, like of my grandparents next. I just wanted to get the formal ones done and in an album. Looking at this layout as I write I am seeing that maybe I should have put that little pink flower down lower to follow the flow of flowers down the side of the page. Oh well, guess I can add another one down there, funny what you see after you look at something for awhile!!

So this is another one of the layouts that I got done. I put some scribbles glitter on and so had to lay it somewhere to dry, that was hard because we had lots of stuff on our table!! It went together fairly easily once I sat down and started.
So, those are the ones that I got finished at the crop. I started some other ones but couldn't put them together totally so will work on those this week sometime. I was so proud of myself, I used everything from my own stash. I went looking in the stores a few times but didn't buy anything, that's right....nothing. I convinced myself that I had enough stuff and I didn't need any more. They had some beautiful frames there that you could paint and decorate for home decor, along with huge letters, they were all cut out of MDF board. I looked at those for along time before I could convince myself that I didn't need them. I really wanted the Big Shot that Stampin Up had there, but I have a cuttlebug already, so I couldn't really justify getting it. And someone told me that you can put most of the dies through the cuttlebug so maybe will get the one that I like the most and try it and if it works, well, we will have to see what happens!!! so have a good week everyone, happy Halloween!

What a Great Weekend

2008-10-27T07:29:00.001-07:00

I was at an all day crop on Saturday, hosted by the talented Leica Forrest. This was a precursor to the Crop and Cruise that she will be teaching on in 2009. I unfortunately won't be able to go on that cruise but if Sat. was any indication of the fun that they have on them, it should be a great time. I took Leica's layout class and these are the 3 layouts that we did. The paper is by Kaisercraft, an Austrailian company that she teaches for and this paper is brand new, it won't even be in Canada for 3-4 months!! Cool, eh?

I really like the Kaisercraft paper, but I am a swirls and flourishes lover, along with the flowers, I love the flowers. Anyway, I had a hard time focusing on Sat., I just couldn't get going, so I tried a make and take, maybe that would help. nope....so I tried making some cards at the Stampin Up booth (these ladies travelled all the way from Alberta!!!) Or maybe they just blew in!!LOL, joke about the wind on Sat, wow!! Anyway, that didn't help so by then it was lunch time, had to go and eat. Yummy salads, followed by cheesecake, and yes Julie, I forgot my camera, so there are no food shots!! I know you were wondering where the food shots were!!! Go over the April's blog, she has some!!!LOL Finally my daughter said, will you just sit down and DO something, anything!!!! So I tried for awhile, then it was time to start the classes that I had signed up for. One was by Trish Ladoucer(spelling???) with prima paintables, not finished that one so can't show it to you , maybe later, it was on canvases and with Glimmermist and masks. Then right after was the layout class by Leica. So I didn't get too much done. I am working on my older photos though and maybe that is what is stunting my mojo I don't know.

it's friday!

2008-10-24T06:29:00.000-07:00

I have had alot of time to surf the web and check out a few new sites. Here is one that I found the other day, any of you card makers should check it out....... www.tayloredexpressions.blogspsot.com It's got some good ideas.

starting some of those older photos!

2008-10-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am into some of the older photos, however, these are not taken by me!! These are some of the studio photos I had taken of the girls when they were growing up. This is number 1. I have been keeping my sore foot up and getting some scrapping done while also getting totally overwhelmed by the number of pics I have floating around in my scraproom!!! The first wave hit me and I had to just grab the top photo and leave the room!! There are so many pics in there. Not only my own but I inherited my mom's albums and shoeboxes after her death because I was the one who was"into" scrapbooking and other crafts. I did pull put out pics of my brothers and sister and I made each one of them albums of their pics that mom had. I did that quite a few years ago already. But there are soooo many more to go through. I had forgotten how many until I started going through them again today. Now I remember why I decided procrastination was a good option!!! However, I am again determined to try again. So here is a layout of Jenn when she was 17 months old. She is 27 now!!! I don't wait too long do I? The papers are from a kit from Noel Mignon. They are from Fancy Pants and Imaginice in the Madeleine Kit.

Not my regular style!

2008-10-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

I must say that these pages are so not my regular style of scrapbooking! I am a very plain paper and few embellisments person. However, with subscribing to the kits from Scrapdango, I receive paper that really stretches my abilities to coordinate patterned paper. Lucky for me they have already put together coordinating colors, it is just a matter of putting them together in a pleasing fashion. I have used sketches from page maps for these pages, no idea which month they are from. I am really liking any of the sites that have sketches to try. I am really going to try and get some of my old photos scrapbooked, just the fact that I have sort of said this outloud publicly on this blog is going to be my much needed push (I hope anyway) to get started on this gigantic task!!! When I look at some of the really poor photos that I have I get alittle discouraged but I keep the thought that it is the memories that need to be written down and preserved. Well, I am off to the scrap room to see what I can get organized for the weekend.

card challenges

2008-10-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

I decided that since I make most of the cards that I give away for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc, that maybe I should try some of the challenges on Splitcoaststampers to get ahead of the game and have a few extras lined up in my card box. So this past week I did just that. I have developed a tendonitis in my foot so have been trying to take it alittle more slow this last little while until I can actually get into a specialist and see what they have to say.

So here is 1 that I did and uploaded onto the scs website. The other thing that I did this last week that probably didn't do my foot any good because I was walking alot outside on uneven ground was empty out and clean up the fish pond. I had to drain it all, vacuum it out and refill it after catching all the fish (by net not pole!!) But my little buddies are all safely settled inside now for the winter. I seem to have lost afew of them over the summer, maybe to some hungry animals that live around here???? I have not fished any dead carcasses out of the pond so don't know where else they would have gone.

I tried to take some photos of the beautiful full moon the other night but I guess I need a tripod for nighttime pics. It sort of turned out but was pretty fuzzy because of the slow shutter speed. But on the other hand I have never been able to take night photos before so I was pretty excited even with the fuzziness. And this gives me something to put on my Christmas list that everybody says is usually non existant, mainly because I really don't need anything and my wants are all too expensive for my kids to afford!!!!! I will try and get some more scrapbook pages done this week. I have a Crop and Cruise to go this coming weekend so have to save something to do there!! I have so much trouble getting pages done at these things because I am usually too busy visiting and looking at everybody else's pages!! I am trying to be more organized that I usually am and only planning a certain number of pages to get done. I will try to have everything that I need only for thoses pages and not take my entire scraproom with me!!LOL It is a plan anyway!! Julie is inspiring me by doing her pages up year by year so I am going to start organizing my photos yet again and see if I can manage some pages from years gone by!

2008-10-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

okay, I have discovered the world of sketches, well, I knew about pagemaps already but i have actively been looking for new sites of sketches to try. I discovered Pink Sketches from April and decided maybe I should try it and maybe submit it to the site. So my plan is to put it here first and then try to link it to their site. Wish me luck, I am new to trying this stuff http://pinksketches.typepad.com/ . So this is my take on their sketch #8

some more photos

2008-10-07T07:40:00.001-07:00

obviously I have to learn more about adding photos to my blog and the writing about them, I can't seem to have them match up. Anyway, here are some more of the pics that I took of the leaves with the sun on them. I tried to get the glitter of the frost. I can see it on my screen when the pics are bigger so maybe it will show up on the actual blog. I will have to make a trip to my LSS to check out all the new papers that are coming in and see if there is any for fall foliage pics. If I am going to take all these photos I guess I should scrap some of them!!!

pretty fall colours

2008-10-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the kitchen, drinking my first cup of coffee and gazing out the window when it struck me that the sunlight of the sunrise was just beautiful on the remaining leaves of our apple tree, and since my blogging buddy Julie has told me to "just get out there and take pictures" in order to learn about my wonderful new camera I dashed out the door into the frosty morning in my housecoat to take some pics of the leaves on the tree, I changed the aperture and the shutter speed afew times, going by the light meter(just like you said Julie) and then I looked for some other things to take pics of. There's not much except trees and the way the light fell on them and with the frost glittering abit, I tried and few overexposed and underexposed just to see what it looked like. Here's a couple of the tries.

New Camera!!

2008-10-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

I have been walking around my yard trying to find things to take pictures of with my brand new Canon EOS 40D SLR camera!!! Julie, you were so very correct in saying that it is great to have one of these cameras. I need alot of practise though, I will be taking many more walks around the countryside trying to get the hang of all the different settings. I spent most of Monday reading the instruction manual and then I had to work yesterday,sigh, so started out this morning wandering around looking for things close by to take pics of. Here are a couple of macro shots, with the auto settings on the camera, I haven't been brave enough (or smart enough) to try setting the manual stuff yet.

Amanda again

2008-09-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Amanda and Grandpa checking out bugs on the deck!
Doesn't she look like she understands everything that Grandpa is saying to her? She pays such close attention when you talk to her, it's like she's taking in everything you have to say about something.

so this is one of my really quick and simple pages, and i do alot of them!! I think the photo printing guys know me by name. I really should get one of those photo printers so I can just print them here at home as I need them! I tend to go and get a few done at a time. I have so many older photos to scrapbook, doing this way makes it less overwhelming to me. I have a few hundred photos on my computer but they aren't cluttering up my scraproom or looking for places to rest while I scrapbook the newer pics instead of catching up with my old ones. I admire you Julie, you are starting to do that. I keep up with our trips usually but other than that, I have fallen way far behind. I started scrapbooks for my 2 daughters years ago but I haven't really kept going with them either. I am probably the queen of procrastination when it comes to really big projects like that. And also, because I started them when I first started this hobby, I don't really like the pages that I did. Well, I am never totally satisfied with any of my pages but I am learning to just get it done, for the memories, not the artwork. I must go and get a few things done around here so that I can play this evening, DH isn't at home so I have the entire evening to myself and my scraproom. See ya.

some of my pages

2008-09-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, here are some of the pages I have done with some of the many photos I have taken of my cutie pie. Don't ask me what company the paper is from, I know some of it is basic gray, some of it is from my stash, and alot of it is in the kits that I get from Scrapdango, an online kit company that I signed up for(like I need more paper!!) sigh. Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking!!! The last page is a scraplift from Leica Forrest. And I think the middle one is a sketch that I saw on pagemaps. I don't usually scrap 1 photo to a page but I only had alittle bit of time yesterday so I took pics of these pages first. I will try and get some more done this week.

about the last post

2008-09-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, I haven't quite got the hang of adding pictures yet. My comments didn't match up with the right photos, but I will learn! Just go with it for now. We had a great walk, I got some really nice pictures. Someday I will have a better camera to take pictures with, I am saving up for it and almost have enough money for the one I want! Have a great weekend everybody.

autumn walk

2008-09-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

This is Amanda, she was excited to be going for a walk.

I decided that it was time to go for a walk along the riverbank yesterday and convinced my daughter and granddaughter to go with me. We started at the new riverlanding behind Persephone theatre and walked to the 25th street bridge and back. It was beautiful.

Starting something new for me

2008-09-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

I never thought that I would start a blog, I am quite content to lurk in cyberspace and read everyone else's but a blogging friend said I should do this as yet another way to brag about my sweetheart of a granddaughter! Oh ya, and to show off some of the scrapbook pages I have made about her! So here you go Julie, I am officially blogging now!!! We will see where this goes.