random reflections

California: Part 1

It's hard to believe, but we've been in California for a week now. I've deliberately taken time off from browsing blogs and posting while we've been here. This is a recap of the first part of our trip (lots of photos). We left Rochester very early (a 6 am flight, meaning we were out of the house around 4:30). Luckily we had great flying weather. Our layover was at JFK and we had a great view of Manhattan as we left.

 

Our flight arrived in San Francisco an hour EARLY! Tracy and Matt kindly waited for me as I ran into the Scrapbook Expo in Pleasanton to meet Howard and Laura of Scrap-Mart. They were just as wonderful in person as they are through the internet, and I got a short look at the fabulous booth they maintain at the scrapbook shows. I also got a demo of the new eclipse electric cutting machine from Sizzix that will soon be released. It's quite impressive!

We arrived at Sarah and Adam's around 3:00. Early the next morning we headed out for Disneyland, making a stop at the Getty Center on our way. The Getty Center is truly amazing, and we didn't begin to see all of the art and exhibits. The architecture and gardens alone are worth the trip, but we also enjoyed the photography exhibits and the small, but lovely, collection of Impressionist art.

 

 

 

 

 

It was time for dinner by the time we finished at The Getty Center so we drove up to Malibu and found Dukes. We had an window table, a delightful waitress, and the food was great.

 

We spent the next two days at Disneyland and California Adventure. All five of us had a great time, proving that you don't have to be a kid to enjoy Disney! I'm not a big fan of amusement-type rides, but the kids actually got me on Space Mountain which I have to say was my favorite ride of all. I did skip the big roller coasters, the very tall Ferris Wheel, and the Tower of Terror in California Adventure, though.

The entrance to Disneyland. Everything about Disney is clean and well-maintained. The flower gardens everywhere were beautiful.

 Believe it or not, this is NOT the Tower of Terror, but it sure would be for me! The rest of them thought it was just fine.

 

There were plenty of rides that were not at all scary, but delightful even for adults.

 

 

The family portrait in front of Cinderella's castle.

The first day I was quite disappointed as we saw no Disney characters. When we were at Disney World many years ago, Mickey, Minnie, and friends were everywhere. Finally on Tuesday, we got to see quite a few of them, but only Adam (who had to leave early to get home for a meeting) got his photo taken with one.

Sarah, Tracy, Matt, and I stayed on in California Adventure until lunchtime. We had a lovely lunch in Disney Town, and then drove over to the coast. It probably wasn't our best idea as it added several hours to the trip home. We did have a great dinner in Morro Bay and were there for the sunset.

And my two great kids. It's been so nice to have everyone together. They are great travelers, make us laugh a lot, and are truly flexible and easy-going. It's been a great trip so far. More to come . . .

Gift Box

One of my good friends celebrates her birthday while we're away. We're having dinner with her soon after we return. One of her gifts (she doesn't read my blog) is the set of cards in this post (which due to user error did not post in the correct order). I made a gift box for it, and wrapped her other gift in a piece of the patterned paper.

 

Cardstock:  Papertrey Ink "Ocean Tides" & "Vintage Cream," patterned paper: Papertrey Ink "Tea Leaves," ribbon: Papertrey Ink "Ocean Tides" satin.

Happy Birthday, Tracy!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of you, and Happy Birthday to Tracy! Here's his card:

New Papertrey stamp, "Luck of the Irish," and Hero Arts sentiment. Jillibean patterned paper and New Leaf (PTI) cardstock and black twill (PTI). The inside sentiment says, "You're my pot of gold." Truly.

So here's my Weekly Gratitude a few days early:

Photography Walk

This was the last week of Moving Into Manual at BPS. I was a bit disappointed in the class which was billed for "advanced" students. I don't consider myself advanced, but I have taken several photography classes and have a good understanding of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. I KNOW I have a lot more to learn so I figured it would be good to push myself. The first three weeks were pretty basic information. Things, in fact, that were covered in Barbara Carroll's Photography 101 class at BPS. This last week, however, where Elisha "put it all together" did produce some "aha" moments. For the last couple of weeks I've shot everything on full manual. I need to keep it there so it becomes automatic. I know what to do, I just forget some of the things in the "heat of the moment." Thank goodness for instant feedback on digital cameras so you can quickly take another shot. Getting a really sharp focus is still a goal as well.

Tracy and I walked over to the Highland Park Conservatory this afternoon so I could take a few photos. Here are the best of them. I had to choose one of them to post on the critique gallery. Which one would you choose?

 

 

 

 

And a few I didn't consider, but liked anyway:

These are water chimes, and I liked that I finally got a photo of a water droplet falling from one cup to the next. I've tried several other times when I've been there, but never managed to get one. Here's another shot of the water chimes.

The light was really tricky here, but I loved this turtle standing on the back of two other turtles. I think I could improve this photo in PSE 8 using some techniques I recently learned from the tablet course with Jessica Sprague, but it will have to wait until I have more time.

 

On our walk through the park, we kept remarking about how wonderful it is to see the blue skies again after a week of rain.

Something From Nothing: Patterned Paper

Despite all I have cleared out, I have tons of patterned paper and find it hard not to buy any more. But I didn't cut into one new piece of paper for either of these projects. They both were done with scraps that I keep in a plastic baggie.

The calendar templates, (created by Celeste Smith), I found on Pebble's blog. I thought it would be fun to have a perpetual birthday calendar hanging on my bulletin board. I haven't quite decided how to bind it yet. I don't have a Bind-it All so perhaps I'll take it to Kinko's. They've done some binding for me in the past, and it's been quite good and inexpensive.

Yesterday when I was looking for photos for the little metal frames, I found all these little square photos in the envelope with a common theme. (Thanks, Stacy Julian!) I knew right away I'd do a layout with them. Then I saw all the great pages done with punched circles on Shimelle's class forum and thought they'd work well with the photo cluster. This is not my usual "clean & simple" layout, but I'm quite happy with it. Along each side of the photo I wrote where the picture was taken.

 

 I'm off to chair the Youth Ministry Committee at our church tonight, so it's unlikely I'll get any more done today. Chicken Cordon Bleu is next on the agenda, at Matt's request.

Weekly Gratitude

(I really wanted to change the color of the text and lines in the template. I know I've done it before using the "fill layer" command, but I could not make it work today. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm guessing I'm just not clicking on the right tool.)

Scrap-Mart Projects

I thought I'd share a couple of Scrap-Mart projects that have gone up on their blog recently. The first is a layout I did for the Friday challenges.

The patterned papers are all new American Craft papers from the Dear Lizzie and Letterbox lines. I love both lines. The white Thickers are also American Craft. The embellishments are all from my stash:  Prima flowers, Papertrey Vintage buttons and Amuse Creative Candy pearls.

And a card using the same papers:

It's a little busier than my usual card, but it's just the card for a friend of mine whose birthday is in April.

And one more with the Dear Lizzie papers:

The stamped sentiment is also from a Dear Lizzie stamp set. This one was lots of fun to make.

And now for a set of cards I made with the new Just Rite stamp set "Seeds of Kindness." Also for a friend's birthday in April.

 

Each sentiment is different and the colors of each patterned paper differs. Both the cardstock and the patterned paper are from Papertrey Ink. The ribbons are all from Paper Source.

Books

I finished two books this week. The first is a novella, A River Runs Through It, that our church read for Lent. Many of my friends had read it earlier, but it was a new read for me, and I loved it. The language is beautiful, the metaphors thought-provoking, and the story was compelling. We met with a group on Tuesday night to discuss it, and after the allotted hour could have continued well on into the evening.

Yesterday, the church rented the neighborhood cinema, and I saw the movie which I think I did see when it came out in the 90's. Brad Pitt was so young! I really enjoyed the movie as well, but the book (as usual) was so much richer.

  

I also read Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin. I've read several of her earlier novels; Father Melancholy's Daughter was my favorite. Although it took me awhile to get into it, I ended up enjoying it. The story is set in a girls' parochial school in the mountains of North Carolina and goes back and forth between action set in the 1950's and reflections of the headmistress looking back from the early twenty-first century. It's a book about friendship, memories, tangled relationships between classmates as well as mothers and daughters, forgiveness, and guilt. It would also make for good discussion, although not in my book group which is a couples' group. I don't think it's a book that would appeal to most men.

Next on the list is The Help as soon as I finish my book for Lent.

Something From Nothing: Metals

It's been a particularly productive week, but finding time to get to the computer to blog has been difficult. I broke down and decided to take Shimelle's class Something From Almost Nothing for two reasons. One, several of my blogging friends were taking it, and second, I have plenty of stash to work with even after cleaning out and giving away a LOT of my supplies since the holidays.

The first prompt involved using your metal stash. I have several little drawers filled with metal letters, words, and frames as well as a little box devoted to brads. One items I saw used in the prompts was bottle caps. Ever since I bought them (probably 3-4 years ago) I have wondered what I was thinking. So I pulled them out and this is what I came up with.

Matt thought this was a particularly cool card--"Wow, a card with beer bottle caps!" Well, not exactly, but it sure is the idea.

Three very similar cards, but all with a slightly different shape and size.

These cards will need to be hand delivered or put into a padded envelope, but I like the flowers.

And a card with brads. I saved this paper when I cleaned out earlier this year and cut it into little squares. But then didn't know quite what to do with it.

I have quite a bit of it left for another project or two or three.

When I was perusing my metal goodies, I found a set of Making Memories metal frames. Then I started going through the little square photos I have in a drawer (a tip from Stacy Julian's Photo Freedom). I found a set I have piled on my desk for a later layout, but these four fit the frames perfectly. Since the three of us were just talking about Kiawah the other night at dinner, the journaling came easily.

I have a lot of ideas for prompt #2 (patterned paper), and hope to get to some of them this week, but the days are pretty filled with appointments and errands that need to be done before we leave for California early Saturday morning. I knew when I signed up that I would never be able to keep up, so I'm pleased to have created a few things for the beginning of class.

Weekly Gratitude

I'm slowly catching up after several very busy days. Here's last week's Weekly Gratitude page.

The photo was taken Saturday when we were in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario with our good friends, Karen and Mike. It was our annual spring trip to pick up tickets for the Shaw Festival in October.

We'll be seeing The Ideal Wife by Oscar Wilde this year. Some years we see two plays, but this year there was only one that interested all four of us on the weekend we'll be there.

We had a fabulous lunch at the Irish Harp . . . bangers and champ for three of us while Tracy ordered his favorite, Shepard's Pie.

We always visit our favorite wineries:  Strewn for their Semi-dry Reisling, Jackson-Trigg for Shiraz, and Vineland for Baco Noir. Karen took our photo next to the ice wine barrel outside the Jackson-Trigg Winery.

Although it was still quite chilly in the wind, it was warm enough that neither Tracy or Mike wore their jackets most of the day.

We also made a stop in Port Dalhousie to enjoy the beautiful day and the numerous waterfowl in the harbor. There were lots of ducks, gulls, geese, and swans gathered by the walkway where folks were feeding them.

We finished our day at The Pie Plate in Virgil, but I forgot to take a photo. We almost always bring home a pie, (this time it was cherry which I froze for our book group this Friday), but Saturday we all enjoyed dessert and coffee before we headed home. Crossing the border was amazing. The average wait is usually about 20 minutes, but we've waited as long as an hour and a half. Saturday there was NO ONE in front of us, and we breezed right through thanks to one of the friendliest border agents ever.