Eye Candy Friday and other stuff…

Better than roses…  my honey brought me fall stuff and it's beautiful!  Thanks, baby!

So it's Friday afternoon.  Tomorrow Denise, K and I are going to Ft. Collins for a girls' day, leaving at 8 in the morning.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Then Sunday we'll all be home, sprucing up and doing yard work, in prep for a visit from Guh/Umpa, who are coming on Monday and staying through Wednesday.  The boys are very excited!  Should be a fun weekend.  I have to run up and get the traditional Labor Day/grill stuff in a little bit and I'll be set.

Thought I'd also share the last few pages that I finished up, from the virtual crop last weekend.  I kept this first page pretty simple, cause the paper is lovely and busy…just the way I like it!

I resorted to butterflies.  When a page needs a little something and I'm not sure what to do, I usually reach for butterflies.  (shouldn't have told you that, huh?)  I love this chalkboard looking paper.  

I revamped this whole page, background paper, size, everything.  I wasn't happy with where I was originally going with it.  Love the buttons and the photo…  nearly ended up just buttons and a photo.  Who knows why you struggle with one page and another just gets thrown together and is awesome…

And last but not least, I just wanted to record something funny that Will said to me, on his way into school.  "Mommy, you can have a party or get a good night's rest while I'm at school."  Ok, thanks, Dood.  Is that what he thinks I do all day?  lol  Oh, I love that boy!

That's it for me, for now.  Hope you have an awesome holiday weekend.

The Ali Album, Section 2

Section 2 of my Evolution album covers the time we lived in Iowa.  Our boys were babies in Iowa.

Thankfully I was also introduced to scrapbooking while in Iowa, so I have lots of pictures to remember everything by! I began scrapping right after Bee was born, summer of 2002.

Seems like a lifetime ago that I was the mother of an infant…  They've been big boys for so long already…

We both miss Iowa.   We miss our friends and the places, our little house.  We really loved our time there.

Life was really good in Iowa! 

I refuse to be sad about this!

I've come to a decision this week and, I don't know… I'm really at peace with it.  I didn't expect it to be this easy…  I've decided to have a hysterectomy.  Previously when faced with the possibility that this might have to happen, I was overcome with sadness, at the end of my child-bearing time, losing pieces of my body, and fear of the procedure itself…  Over the last year, things have gotten worse and worse in the female department and dealing with the pain and suffering of monthly "curses" has become too much for me.  I'm having a consultation with a surgeon in Colorado, in September and surgery probably the following month.  I'm going to celebrate an improvement in my health and lifestyle and I'm really looking forward to a lovely, period-free fall!

The tree in my picture today is already turning red, in anticipation of fall.  I've already noticed the daytime hours getting shorter in the evenings, but I didn't think the trees knew it yet… 

Monday afternoon already?

Been busy today with Mommy stuff…  you know:  post office, groceries, taking kids to school, laundry, bank, lunch with hubby,  which was very nice, by the way.

Can't believe it's already nearly 2pm.  I still want to downsize toys in the playroom before I pick up boys at 3!

Here are a few more pages I got done over the weekend.  Still have sections 2 and 3 of Ali's album to share too…  By Friday, we'll all be tired of looking at scrapbooking and ready to move onto knitting again!!!  lol  

So, I love transparent pages and this one was a no-brainer, but sometimes it can be tricky to figure out how to cover up the back of stuff.  Can't forget to scrap the front and the back…

I took these silly pictures in the car one day, waiting for Scott and the boys to come out of McDonald's.  I had no idea what I'd use them for…  thought maybe cards for the boys…  Glad I had them to play with for this challenge.

This challenge was to use more than one copy of the same photo on the same page.  Since I'm not a Photoshop Wiz, I layered two photos, color on top of black and white.  Got the effect that I wanted.  And what a cute boy!!!

This challenge was to use 7 embellishments on one page.  And look…  it's another irresistibly cute boy! Speaking of Bee, I had fun "stalking" him this morning.  Just decided to drive by his school and see if his class was perhaps, outside on the playground…  and sure enough.  I got to watch him play for a few minutes.  He looked like he was really having fun!  It made me giddy. 

I better get on that playroom.  I hope you're having a nice Monday!

I cropped all weekend… jealous?

My friend, Katherine had mentioned an on-line crop that started this past Friday and went all weekend.  She had done it a couple of times before, but I had always been out of town.   She promised me it would be fun…  so I gave into the arm-twisting (hehehe) and played along.  It was fun.  I completed 7 pages of my own and 14 more pages that were challenges presented by the host site, www.acherryontop.com , which I highly recommend for shopping and community.  Seems like a smaller, closer knit group, very nice ladies and forth-coming with warm comments.   It was a really encouraging and inspiring place to be and I hardly left my scrapbook room all weekend!  lol

Scott and the boys were so wonderful, letting me play all day and not complaining too much.

I have yet to unpack from Friday night's crop at K's house, or the crop before that, which I think was last February.  Yet to be unpacked is all the stuff obtained at CKU Provo… 

Yea, I'll get around to it eventually.

 I've got to look for some more bumble bee embellishments… I'm running out of my little quilled bees…

These pictures I just took on Friday.  Yes, that means I'm all caught up on my scrapbooking.  However, I'm happy to say, I've never been a chronological scrapper anyway.  It's never bothered me that I "fall behind"… whatever.  I do whatever pictures strike my fancy and when I feel the urge…  I'm filling up albums with a pretty accurate representation of our lives.

When trying to put this page together, I was thinking of recipes and food and our marriage.  So I asked Scott, "If you and I were a food, what would we be?"  He answered, "Wine."  Is that not the perfect answer?  How'd he do that?  And he answered fairly quickly too, without hesitation…  Love that man.

On that note, I'm going night-night.  Gotta get up bright and early for school and work and coffee and stuff.  More scrapping coming later this week.

Friday morning and getting ready for a crop…

I'm getting ready to scrapbook tonight.  Going to work on misc summer photos, with K.  We're going to play along with a virtual crop at www.acherryontop.com .  Should be fun.  Still have lots of prep to do today, but it's all good!  Nothing really going on other than that, for the whole weekend.  There's a cool front coming in and we're staying home…should be awesome!

Been working on Dood's sweater this week too.  Finally got the waistband attached in a way that doesn't bunch and look ruffly.  But when I started on the cuffs, it started looking a little girly…  too many cables, I think.

So, off came the cuff and now I have a lovely wool book mark…  I'm trying another approach to the cuff now:  picking up stitches and doing stockinette and then maybe a 1-1.5" k2p2 cuff.  I'll keep you posted.

In other news, Ali announced, during a Q&A session on her blog, that she will not be traveling the rest of this year and all of next year…  you know with the new baby coming and all.  I feel so lucky that I was part of her last class for a while!  So, I thought I'd start sharing my Ali album that I almost have done.  (Still have to do the journaling.)

I've always wanted to use one of these little doorknobs!  lol  I finally got to do it and it's adorable!

Are you ready?  I love transparent pages!  I did notice, that the center of my clock, though, kind-of resembles a breast.  Decided to leave it because my husband is a boob man…  lol  (I told Ali that I was going to take credit for this album…  "Yep, I designed it…the whole thing.  Isn't it awesome?"  She didn't seem to mind, smiling and shrugging, "Sure, why not…")

So the album is titled "Evolution" and it's divided into three sections.  I'm only going to share the first section today, allowing you plenty of extra time to laugh at all the early pictures of Scott and me…

This is where the missing journaling will be…  lots of space, see, so I have to take some time and really decide what I want to say.

Love just adding pictures, punching holes in the photos themselves and adding them to the binder.  I'll be in the market for a new 12 x 12 album pretty soon and I think I'm going three-ring binder, so that I can vary the page sizes and add pictures like this…

On the back of those photos, I adhered patterned paper and another, smaller photo… didn't like looking at the back of a picture…

So, I didn't say it before, but this book is meant to document the evolution of our little family…  mine and Scott's.  This first section is before we had kids…  just my honey and me. (mostly) I know we had Will and Scotty was on the way, when we lived in Loveland…  I'll explain when I post the next section, why I included the picture of the Loveland house here.

So this is the last page in my first section.  Aren't we cute?  (and young…)

What a fun, fun album to put together!  I love Ali's design style and I love the book!

Ok, I'm off to do more crop prep.  I hope you have a fabulous Friday!

Wednesday and another taste of fall…

The weather forecast had predicted hot and sunny today, so imagine my delight when I woke to overcast, breezy and 60 degrees…  just lovely!!!

Thought I'd share a couple more CKU projects today.  The first up is a two page layout from Scenic Route.  It was fun, because generally I don't spend a lot of time, making embellishments and we made the little flowers and centers out of naked cardboard shapes:  painting, sanding, gluing text, glaze on top, painting letters, inking paper.  It took some time, but fun, fun process.

Finding the photos to use on this project was easy.  I can't believe summer break is already over!  Looks like our boys had an awesome summer, though.

I must admit, I was a little disappointed when I heard that Tim Holtz was altering a mirror this year…  What am I going to do with that?  But turns out…  Tim can do no wrong!  Isn't it great?  It's sitting in a prominent place on the bookshelf in the living room now and I love it!  Ranger's classes are usually pretty messy and complicated-ish.  This one was too and FUN!!!  Loved it.

So the only thing remaining on the Ali album is for me to do the journaling.  I'm completely done with the rest of it.  Hopefully will have it done this week.  I have to be in the mood to do journaling…  I like to take my time and think about it.  Also a little more than half way done altering Will's moose sweater.

I have the whole waist band knitted and sewn on now…still have to decide whether or not to sew the sides closed or leave them open and I'm nearly done with one of the cuffs.  I'm kind-of excited about getting this one done with the cool spells we've been having.  Can't wait to see it on my handsome Dood.  Probably won't feel like doing anything much today, though…  I have an awful, scary dentist appointment in half an hour.  I hate going to the dentist!  HATE IT!  And I get so stressed out that I'll be wiped out by the time I get out of there.  I'll be making little boys give me lots of hugs this afternoon!

Have a great Wednesday!

Back to School

Yesterday was the first day of first and second grade for our boys!  For a couple of weeks, Bee's been whining that he wasn't ready to go back yet, but when the time came, he was excited and happy…  Will too  (but with Will, going with the flow is a way of life.  lol)

They both liked their teachers, which is a huge blessing.  And they're just fine with going to different schools (a situation that bothered me all summer and continues to kind-of piss me off…  WHATEVER.)

I think eventually I got a hug from both boys, at the end of the day, but this is what happened immediately upon picking up the second child…   You think they like each other?

So we're diving back into normal life, with guitar lessons having resumed yesterday and boy scouts gearing up again next week…  Bee's already had homework and I think we're all ready to get down to business after an amazing summer break!

 

Monday Mosaic About Me…

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Mosaic about me, originally uploaded by doo010101.

What you do is answer the following questions as they pertain to you and look up the answer in the search engine on Flickr. See what comes up. Kinda fun.

The questions:
1. What is your first name? Tina
2. What is your favorite food? Pizza
3. What high school did you attend? Rocky Mountain
4. What is your favorite color? purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Jason Thompson on GH
6. Favorite drink? Diet Coke
7. Dream vacation? Alaska
8. Favorite dessert? Chocolate cake
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? A Mommy
10.What do you love most in life? Family
11. One word to describe you? Loving
12. Your Flickr name. There was nothing for my Flickr name, so I searched for Johnstone

Suggestions please…

So the pictures today are of the little book we made the first day at CKU.  These pages are what they used to refer to as "make-and-takes" but are now called… ready?  "Inspiration Station" projects.  Love that you don't have to clamor about a giant ballroom with 400 other women and try to get them all done.  Rather now, the students stay put, in one classroom and the instructors and supplies come to us.  Lovely, lovely change!  So everyone gets to do all the projects.  No one misses out.  Cool, huh?

The first picture is Ali's page, for those of you who can't recognize her style…  (I bet you could, huh, Tracey?)  This cute page with all the flowers and buttons, of course is the Making Memories page. (They're always very generous.)

Love this page too, I think this was Lisa Bearnson's page…  We left before she got there and just assembled the page later…

Not wild about the Rusty Pickle page, but I can dress it up and make it my own.  I think he could have done more than just paper and 4 brads…  ya know?

This page was sponsored by a new acrylic stamp company, whose name I can't even remember because I didn't care for them.  Cute page though…

And rivaling Ali's page for my favorite is Tim Holtz's (Ranger) page.  He always has fun, complicated -sounding techniques to show us and I love the vintage look.

And finally some more Little Yellow Bicycle stuff.  I didn't follow their instructions exactly.  They did the cover sheet and the last page and I made the extra, here on the left too.  Hoping I have an extra page protector around here somewhere so that I can actually use the additional page…

So my question is:  This was intended to be a scrapbook about CKU.  And since I've always thought scrapbooking about scrapbooking is silly, I don't want to use the book for that purpose.  I already have a "book of me", so don't want to do that again.  Does anyone have a suggestion for a theme for this cute, eclectic, little book?

Ugh…coffee cup's empty.  Gotta go fix that.  Looking forward to hearing your suggestions.  Please do share!