random reflections

Color Hues #22

The Color Hues Challenge has a new duo for you:  Lime Green and Aqua.

 

I love this bright and cheerful color combination, but it took me awhile to come up with a design I liked. As I often do, I turned to dies and ended up with The Greetery's "Inside and Out Berry Branches."

I die cut the branches in two shades of lime green and two shades of aqua, arranged them in a bouquet and "tied" them with a gold ribbon from the "Fit to Be Tied" collection, also from The Greetery. The next step was to find the right background and again The Greetery had the answer--a "Nordic Frame," one of my favorites. 

The sentiment from an old, and loved, set by Papertrey Ink "Autumn Abundance" was embossed in gold. Either lime green or aqua would have worked as a cardbase, but I liked the lime green better.

I hope you'll hop over to the Color Hues Challenge and join in the fun, checking out the cards made by my awesome Design Team members, and our Guest Designer, Rosemary.

 

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 

 

 

The Last Pages of the Christmas Journal

The day after Christmas, we loaded everything into the van and headed off to Chicago. Much to our surprise we were there for dinner, and were able to celebrate Christmas with Sarah, Adam, and Caleb after dinner.

I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted a car with a Christmas tree on top to embellish the journaling card. I didn't have any dies or stamps that worked, so I went to the Silhouette shop and quickly found this cute car. It had been so long since I used the Silhouette, that the software had changed (and the whole interface), so getting this cute car on the journaling card turned out to be quite the time-consuming process. I was happy with it, although the state of my workspace was pretty awful by the end of the process. Lesson learned: use your tools regularly!

Nothing much happened on the next two days. Everyone was tired, and happy just to hang out together. On the 29th, though, Tracy and I decided to take Caleb to the Chicago Botanic Garden to see Wonderland Express. We'd gone last year, and loved it, and were lucky to get early morning tickets this year so it was a lot less crowded. This year Caleb was able to find all the items on the scavenger hunt which we all enjoyed.

Caleb celebrated his fourth birthday on the 30th. His first "friends' party" was on the 2nd of January so that will go into my Project Life album. We kept this day pretty low key, opening a few presents off and on during the day. The photo of Caleb on the bottom left is on the annual poster that Adam makes each year. When Caleb wakes up the poster is there to greet him. This year each of us wrote a message to him. There was enough snow that Caleb was anxious to go outside, and he and Adam had a fine time in the front yard.

I guess one advantage to being behind in the process is seeing what other people do in their Christmas albums. One thing I've always liked, and saw repeatedly this year, was an end of the year review. I've never taken the time to print out all the photos for one before, but I loved going through all the photos from 2015 and trying to decide which ones to include. It also made me aware of some I wish we'd taken! In the end, I could have filled another page easily. I love that you can see in just two pages how much my grandchildren grew during the year.

Now, once I get the Valentine Day's projects completed, I need to get back to last year's Project Life pages. I promised myself I'd never get this far behind again, but we're just too busy for me to keep up, and it's not going to improve any in the next couple of months. I'll just keep snapping the photos, and keeping my daily journal, and eventually I'll be caught up again. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

 

Christmas Journal: 19-25

Last Tuesday, I finally finished my Christmas Journal, but I've been waiting for time and sunshine to merge in order to take decent photos of it. Over the next day or two, I'll post the rest of the pages. Every time I finish one of these, I'm so glad I put the time and effort into it. Every year is different, and yet some things remain the same. Capturing those traditions and special events are my reason why.

This year Skylar was old enough and very interested in helping bake Christmas cookies. She came on Saturday to bake, and again on Sunday to help decorate the sugar cookies. She caught on very quickly, and was quite efficient in using the rolling pin to roll out dough. 

I used a photo for the Dec. 21 layout that I had taken earlier in the week from our neighbor's back patio. They live at the top of the hill, and have this amazing view of downtown Rochester. I took this day to type up a list of all the social events of the month. (Tracy found a small typo in the list, but I wasn't upset enough by it, to redo the page. It's the first time I've ever managed to create a page with all digital elements without struggling through the process!)

Betsy and her sisters planned a wonderful Christmas party for family and friends on the 22nd. I used one of Cathy Z's 6X8 templates for this page.

We celebrate Christmas with Matt, Betsy and the girls early since the Walker family Christmas starts so late, and goes so long. It's a bit overwhelming as well, so it's nice to have a quiet dinner and Christmas with just family.

Christmas Eve Day has traditionally been a quiet one for us, and a good chance to rest up before Christmas and the travel right afterwards. The story of the necklace is one of those stories I want to capture so I can remember exactly when it happened. Looking back over earlier Christmas Journals, I was surprised at how much I had forgotten.

My goal on Christmas Day is to try and get a photo of everyone who is here that year. This year there were 18 of us, and I think I did it, although I didn't have close-up photos of everyone. Thanks to my sister-in-law, Jill, there's even a photo of me this year!

And the last, and favorite spread, with these cute photos of  Skylar and Ella "playing" the piano with Sonora. Sonora, of course, is playing Christmas carols, while the girls are accompanying her. 

Back soon, with the rest . . .

 

Christmas Journal: Days 9-11

Creating a Christmas Journal gives me opportunities for experimenting. Most of the time, I'm pretty happy with the results and I have another technique up my sleeve for Project Life pages. For December 9, I tried printing on one of the patterned papers that came with the Ashley G. mini-kit offered by Ali Edwards. Can't say I'm thrilled with the results since reading the text is more difficult than I'd like, but I decided to go with it anyway. The idea for the page originated with the Ten on Tuesday posts that I discovered on Honoré's blog. This one was to record ten things you love to do around the holidays. 

You can't tell from the photo, but the little dots are a beautiful gold, so the only embellishment was the 9 from the American Craft thickers I used on the cover of the journal. This list records ten things I love about Christmas: time with family, celebrating with friends, decorating the house, listening to Christmas music, entertaining, making Christmas cards, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, creating a Christmas Journal, and sitting by our new gas fireplace enjoying the lights on the tree and mantle.

December 10 records our trip to "meet" Santa at the George Eastman Museum. They always decorate the mansion beautifully, and this is the first time I've ever visited during the gingerbread house display. I have a lot more photos from this trip than I could fit in the journal, but even so I gave it three pages!

I wrote about Skylar's hesitations around meeting Santa, and you can clearly see that in the photo with Grandpa. I blurred the face of the little girl talking to Santa since I don't know her at all. I'm not sure I would have thought to take a portrait of Grandpa with the girls on the staircase, but it seemed to be a pretty popular activity, so we joined in and I finally got a shot without anyone's feet going up and down the stairs in the photo. The left-hand page is a free photo template by Cathy Zielske.

On this page, I included the two photos I shared yesterday for Pairs, one of Matt showing Skylar some projects on his phone while we were waiting for dinner, and one of the many gingerbread houses on display.

Day 11 documents our book group meeting. We meet at someone's house and discuss the book, then go out to dinner. That night we went to Lemoncello's, one of my favorite Italian restaurants. I decided to include a list of the books our group read in 2015.

I read all but one of them. Fortunately, there's no pressure in this group (Tracy, Mary, and I have belonged to this group since 1990!) to read a book that doesn't speak to you, or if you're just swamped with other commitments. Although most of our group liked Gutenberg's Apprentice, neither Mike nor I could slog our way through it. As you can see, we don't manage to meet every month; some years we read more than eight books---it all depends on peoples' travel schedules. (Lovely to be retired!) I'm planning to do a post of the best books I read in 2015, but I can recommend any of these except Gutenberg's Apprentice (which you might enjoy since others did) or Bury Your Life (a murder mystery that just had too many evil characters in it for my taste.)

The journaling card is from One Little Bird, and I colored the books with TomBow markers after printing it. As you can tell, the embellishments are pretty minimal. They take me the longest to figure out, and since it's the photos and stories I want to get done, I often give up after a few minutes and say, "Good enough." Maybe I'll come back after the holidays and reconsider, but I think I'd best get back to my Project Life pages!

Christmas Journal: Days 6-8

Day 6 in the Christmas Journal is all about getting Christmas cards made and in the mail. I know most of the cards have reached their senders in this country, but I'm not sure about those "across the pond." At any rate, there's a spoiler here if you haven't received yours yet.

I cut the front off from one of the Christmas cards and punched holes in it to add to the album. I enrolled in Ali Edwards December Daily Workshop this year, and have gotten several ideas from the lessons, including this one.

I covered the back of the card with a piece of patterned paper from Ashley G's mini kit. December 7 documents the first Day of Little Candles in our neighborhood. One of our new neighbors is from Columbia, and introduced us to this annual tradition. Anny had hundreds of tea lights lining her sidewalks as well as the little angel at the corner. We lit luminaries and lined our sidewalk, but I decided to include Anny's Facebook invitation instead of a picture of our sidewalk. It's events like this that make every Christmas Journal unique.

One of Shimelle's recent prompts for Journal Your Christmas talked about the tradition of wish lists. I journaled about the need for wish lists for adult children as well as grandchildren. In the space of one day, I went from being about half done with my Christmas shopping to nearly done---thanks to receiving wish lists from Sarah and Betsy. On the right hand side, is a page protector that I cut down from nine squares to six squares. (Thanks again to Ali's workshop.) Here's a better look at it with a piece of paper behind it.

I finally broke out my fuse tool and used it to seal two of the pockets that I filled with glitter and some star sequins. Here's a look at the back side.

This was a really fun "page" to create, and I may include another one before the month is out.

 

Christmas Journal: Days 3-5

I've been keeping up with my Christmas Journal, and so far it's been a December Daily. I haven't done as well getting it photographed for the blog, but today I had some time to work on that as well. Here are the next three days, and I'll be back soon with a few more.

I always document something about the holiday decorations. This year I decided to focus on the new things in the house. The big one is our gas fire place. We've talked about doing this for years, and should have done it a long time ago. We're really enjoying it, despite the fact that we're having one of the warmest Decembers in recent memory! I also found some tiny white lights for our mantel at a little shop in Indiana in October. I've looked for just the right thing for several years, and finally found them. The silver tray with candles is also new, and a bit fancier than my usual collection on the coffee table. The big red candle is a citrus cinnamon, and smells delicious!

I also like documenting the Christmas displays I see around town, and here are a few that caught my eye this year. Love those little polar bears with their noses stuck in the shopping bags.

December 5th was a busy day. We visited the South Wedge for their Christmas festivities, and hosted a family dinner that night. Skylar and Emma are sitting in a little chair that belonged to my father.

As always, I'm glad to be capturing these bits and pieces of our holiday season.

 

 

 

Christmas Journal: 2015

My first Christmas Journal was made in 2005, and I've documented December in some fashion every year since. Last year I added the pages to my Project Life album, but this year I wanted to go back to a separate journal. I signed up for Ali Edward's class and it was all the inspiration I needed to get going again. I haven't had time to watch all the videos, but I have everything in order to get this year's journal completed. Every year I put out a basket with the old journals. Even without children at home, every Christmas season has its joys and events that make it somewhat different from the previous years. Some years I did a December Daily (Ali Edwards style), and some years I followed Shimelle's Christmas Journal prompts. My intention is for a December Daily album this year, but I'm super relaxed about it, so if there's nothing to photograph and nothing to write about, I'll just move on.

Here's a look at the basket of journals sitting under the window in our living room.

I haven't done a lot to prepare, but I did decorate the cover of my Simple Stories 6X8 album.

I found the "Merry & Bright" wooden sign at Michaels and painted it gold with acrylic paint that came with Ashley G's mini-kit from Ali Edwards. The colors in that kit are primarily black, white, gold, red, and green which really appealed to me. I picked up the black and gold Thickers (American Craft) in Chicago. The glitter tape came from Michaels as well.

I pulled all my supplies together ahead of time, and put them in two separate boxes:

And spray painted a few wood veneer die cuts.

I never have much luck with what Shimelle calls a Manifesto, and Ali calls an Intention page. It always seems a bit over the top, but this year I came up with a three word reason why I create a Christmas Journal.

Just recently (through Pinterest, I think) I found Azzari Jarret's blog. I knew about her work as a designer for Paislee Press, but had never gotten as far as her blog. She had a December calendar as a free download which perfectly fits my album this year.

It might seem to be a strange way to start a Christmas Journal, but my first page documents the memorial service and celebration of life for my friend, Jim. Actually, it was the most beautiful service I've ever attended, and a wonderful celebration. He loved Irish music and craft beers, so the celebration was held at an Irish bar downtown and the Dady Brothers performed Irish music. Three of his daughters sang a song they wrote for their dad on his 75th birthday.

I'm keeping embellishments to a minimum this year and doing all my journaling on white cards I cut myself. The "remember" sticker is from Pink Paislee and the number cards are all from the Ashley G. kit.

I decided yesterday's post for Pairs could be the basis of Day 2 and added two more photos of flowers around the house.

My plan is to complete each day's page the next morning. So far that's worked, but I know for a fact, it will be impossible to do this weekend. Too many early morning commitments! Nonetheless, it's great to back to documenting the holiday.

 

 

March 2014 Papertrey Blog Hop

It's not often I post twice in one day, but in addition to the CASology challenge, today is the March Papertrey Blog hop.

The Papertrey March Blog Hop challenge is high gloss, which leads one directly to Glossy Accents. I have to admit I have an issue with Glossy Accents. I find it nearly impossible to get it to go on smoothly. I did a Google search and didn't find any great tips, so if you have some, I'd really appreciate it if you'd share them.

I combined an inspiration piece by Stephanie Klauck from the recent Online Card Classes for the Textural Effects Lesson--using Washi tape to mask off the edges of a card to create a frame with Distress Inks. Instead of glitter on the balloons, I used Glossy Accents. 

The "Happy" ("Wonderful Words") was cut from high gloss metallic blue cardstock and the rest of the sentiment came from "Stylish Sentiments: Birthday." The balloons are from "Balloon Bash." Here's a closer look at the gloss. (Excuse the glare; these photos were taken after dark last night.)

The next card was made from scrap pieces I had lying on my desk after playing around this weekend with cards for the Online Card Class: One Layer cards. The hearts and "thanks" are both Simon Says dies and I covered them with Glossy Accents. I do have an easier time covering the smaller pieces. I die cut and trimmed the "Building Blocks" die by Papertrey and adhered it to a Tropical Teal card.

You can find a lot of inspiration for card making on Nicole's blog today.

Christmas Journal: Part 4

This is a photo-heavy post, but I thought I ought to get the rest of the Christmas Journal posted. I finally finished it last night. This might be the first year I ended on December 25th, but given my current "to do" list, it seemed like the appropriate decision.

Documenting a couple of other Christmas paper crafting projects beyond the Christmas cards.

I don't think I've ever copied an entire blog post for an album before, but I loved Rinda's meme and decided to add it to the journal.

My original intent was to take photos of all the beautiful cards I received from around the world, many of which were hand-crafted. But I really wanted to use the stamps, and there were so many that I decided that would be the entry. For all of you who sent me beautiful cards and holiday greetings---THANK YOU. You have no idea how much I appreciate your talent, kindness, and friendship through this blog.

My annual page on the weather.

Matt's first day home and a wonderful visit with Betsy and Skylar.

After setting the table for Christmas dinner (for 18 this year as it turned out), we go out to dinner on Christmas Eve. Matt decided to change clothes for the church service at 11:00. I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to get his photo all dressed up.

The first page of six pages for Christmas. This is when I really appreciate the Simple Stories album. The lower right-hand pocket holds a transparency so you can see through it to the next page.

The end. Jessie and I took over 200 photos in six hours. I narrowed them down to about 100 which I posted on Smug Mug for the family. Once I had a photo of everyone at dinner, I decided I was done with the journal.

The last three days before we leave to drive Tracy's mother's van to Florida for her are jam-packed so I'm not sure if I'll get any more posts up before then. (Although I do have an idea for Sian's Story-telling Sunday. I've never participated with that before and would like to get it up.) I'm sure I'll be checking your blogs while I'm away, but I'll be reading them on my iPad and find commenting on it a bit of a trial. We'll see how I do. 

Christmas Journal: Part 3

I finished culling and editing all the photos from Christmas yesteday so now I can get busy and finish up the last few pages of this journal. If I get a good photo from our small gathering at friend's for the New Year, I'll add that too. Usually I get busy enjoying myself and totall forget to take any pictures. Here are the next pages of the Christmas Journal.

This year's page about shopping, three-quarters or more was done online. The packages on the right were the ones I mailed to Oregon although many of those went directly from the company. Sarah wrapped Adam's and he wrapped hers. 

This month's Take Twelve layout. In the journaling I reflected on the two photography projects I took on this year:  Take Twelve and Capture Your 365. I'm not sure I'll do Take Twelve again, but I'm definitely planning on continuing with Capture Your 365. I'll still trying to decide how to document that in 2013. I'm not going to do the Ali Edward calendars again.

A three-page spread of photos of Betsy and Skylar who came to dinner that night.

This year's entry on baking. Some topics do seem to get repeated because I have something new to say about them. I wasn't sure I'd like this Starbuck cup cozy as a journaling spot but it worked out well.

The hardest thing about Christmas this year was being so far away from Caleb! Yesterday was his first birthday, and we did Face Time twice, once for the requisite cupcake, and one for opening presents. Here's the card I sent him.

And one last photo for the folks who were so surprised to hear we had a snowblower. Almost everyone on our street owns one, although not everyone has a driveway as steep as ours. As you can see, the snow can only be put on the right side of the driveway because of the stone retaining wall. It's not that we don't also use a shovel, but we've never tried to do the driveway without the snow blower when we've had a big snow. It's a pretty long endeavor, even then.

Have a Happy New Year, how ever you celebrate. I'm just as happy at home, but this year we're going to some friend's for a small gathering. I'll be back with more Christmas Journal, but first with some thoughts about the New Year.