Scrapbook Update

Here is the 3rd of 4 Christmas Layouts for this album. This one focuses on the holiday activities we did that year since we stayed home for Christmas.
Here are the stats:

• Some embroidered paper I have had for years for the top of the page
• Rub-ons for the title and cut the @ out of cardstock
• 5 poetry dog tags (metal tags with words). I can't believe I bought these things. They cost like $20 at the time but they were all the rage so I had to get some too. I think I had used one before this layout.
• Red snaps to affix the tags
• I used my own handwriting for the journaling. I of course hate the way it looks but I think adding more paper with journaling would have looked bad too so I went with the handwriting. It is all the rage again to write on your layouts. If only my printing wasn't so boring.
  

I was pulling out the photos of this weeks layout and it looks like I have about 4 to go and I am done with this album. That is pretty exciting. I am going to finish the last Christmas layout this week. Here are some close-ups. Sorry the photos aren't so good. We are having a lot of rain and overcast days lately so I didn't have very good light to work with.

***Once again this is posted by Greg while I am on Jury Duty. Thanks Honey!

Happy Mother's Day

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day if you are a Mother and for those of us who aren't I hope you had a nice day honoring your moms. The photo at the left is a picture of the gift I sent my awesome mom for Mother's Day. It is actually a mixed media colleague made by Claudine Hellmuth. She is an artist in Florida who makes these "Poppet Sketches". If you send her photos of your loved ones she will make them into a custom college like this one. I love the way it turned out and my mom apparently loves it too. Take a look at her site or her blog if you get a chance. She was great to work with and it was so cool checking her blog and one day seeing our picture posted!

Greg's mom loved her gift too. Remember that I sent her the mini explosion book that I made for the craft club class. She has never received a handmade scrapbook type gift from me yet so I wasn't sure how it would be received. She cried when she thanked me.

We wish we could have been in Seattle to really treat our moms on their special day but we settled for some nice Mother's Day phone chats.

Here are some fun Mothering quotes that I found:

Mothers of teenagers know why animals eat their young -Unknown

I want my children to have all the things I can't afford. Then I want to move in with them-Phyllis Diller

There's a lot more to being a woman than being a mother, but there's a hell of a lot more to being a mother than most people suspect. - Rosanne Barr

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. -Peter De Vries

It kills you to see them grow up but it would kill you faster if they didn't. -Barbara Kingsover

Happy Mother's Day! I love you Mom!!

Garden Update - May

The little plants in the greenhouse are growing like crazy and it is about time to get them into the ground. Greg and I spent a couple good hours in the garden last Sunday and got it looking more like this:
Several beds are clear and ready and we even got the aisles weeded thanks to the scuttle hoe we found in the shed. Right now we are concentrating on one side (the sunny side) in hopes that we can get it planted this weekend (if I don't have to work that is). It still could use a ton of work but honesty last weekend I almost just gave up on the whole idea of a garden. We have just been so busy and gardens take a lot of care and daily commitment and I was really doubting our ability to do that. But Greg reminded me that there is more work up front than there is maintenance to do so we plowed ahead. I will be happy once it is all planted and things start growing. Speaking of which I need to find some good pickle recipes. Not the canning kind necessarily. I guess more like fast pickles that you keep in the refrigerator. We buy some like that at our grocery store. If you have a recipe please share.

I am in jury duty right now so Greg is posting this for me. Thanks Honey! Everyone have a great weekend!

Scrapbook Update

Here is the layout I created last weekend. That seems like forever ago, sorry for the delay. This is one of 4 Christmas layouts for the album. It is about the new Christmas decorations I created that year. Here are the stats: I dry embossed the red paper to look like berry clusters (goes with the journaling) and I gilded the stars with gold leaf and covered them with diamond glaze (again goes with the journaling). I used 2 gold metal frames I have had for ages, gold wire, gold brads, and instead of photo corners (can it be? No photo corners!) I used photo anchors after Alice and I saw some on another layout on Saturday. Oh, and letter stickers and rub-ons for the title. I am working on another Christmas layout for this weekend but it is slow going with the dreaded jury duty. Here are some close ups.

Jury Duty!!!

I love jury duty, I love jury duty, I love jury duty. That is right, this is what I have been reminding myself each day that I travel to the most boring place on earth. The Bronx County Courthouse. I just finished my 3rd day of jury duty which is why I have been MIA from posting. The courthouse even has a computer room where I attempted to post on my blog but after my entire post was lost once and then I tried unsuccessfully to upload 3 times I gave up. So here is my report....

Day 1
Not so bad, kind of novel really. There are about 500+ people in the pool. I get assigned to a civil case involving a police shooting late in the morning and spend several hours in a courtroom marveling at how bumbling lawyers can still have jobs. I would have sworn they had never done jury selection before but I was wrong. They were just really bad at it. Luckily my name was not randomly drawn before they had enough jurors so I was sent back to the pool. Done for the day in time to go shopping before BSF. Not a terrible day, just kind of long and boring. Lunch options were really bad so I will bring my own lunch tomorrow.

Day 2
Did you know that the Bronx County Courthouse does an annual emergency evacuation drill? Yes, just once a year. Well today was the day. I spend most of the morning walking down the stairs with thousands of other people, standing out on the street for 45 minutes and then standing in the security line for an hour waiting to get back in. Fun! Then I found out that there was a major crisis at work. I tried to deal with it the best I could from the little computer room. Did I mention that the little computers (which are glued to the tables) automatically close down every 5 minutes? Sometimes mid-typing! Why is it that my job can be slow and boring for weeks on end but then when I have to be away for a day or two all hell breaks loose? Well, I had my lunch from home (best thing I did) and was slowly pulling out my eyelashes one by one because of the sheer boredom of waiting around. I mean it is so boring in the jury pool that I was too bored to read or do the things I brought to do. I was too bored to do anything to alleviate the boredom. But it was all worth it because if I could just last 1 more hour I was free to go home and would be done with my service. Well, that is when they called my name the second time and assigned me to a supreme court criminal case. After the first wave of questioning when they let 3/4 of the people go I knew they were going to pick me for the jury. I mean I am a perfect juror. I have never been arrested. I don't know any cops. I am not suing anyone. I have no documented scheduling problems. I couldn't say yes to a single one of their questions. But we didn't get that far. I can see why the wheels of justice move so slowly. It took us 2 hours to get through the first wave of questions. I have to come back for day three. By the time I get home I am so stressed out with the work thing that I yell at my husband and lock myself in the bathroom (it is the only door we have in our apartment to slam!). I love jury duty.

Day 3
My train is stalled because of congestion down the line. I start to get stressed that I will be late for court. I of course forgot how slow things move from my first 2 days of jury duty. Once I finally get there I end up waiting 2 hours to get called back by the judge. I had told my boss I was sure I would be done after the morning. Silly me. The remaining jurors get questioned by the judge and the attorneys. One attorney in particular talks to us like we are idiots (granted some of us probably were kind of slow) which really annoys me. The more I hear people answer the more I realize I am sure to be on this jury. Again, I am the perfect juror. During my lunch break I continue to battle the crappy court computers and make phone calls to the National Science Foundation to try and sort out this work problem. After lunch the decisions are made. 4 of the remaining 14 jurors are selected and I am one of them. Do I win a prize? Yes, I get to come back for more of this! They are giving us Thursday off while they find the rest of jury (it is the Bronx, the pickins are slim) but I have to be back on Friday.

Greg and I made up and the work situation has been sorted out. I may have to work all weekend on another crisis that emerged today but that will depend on the judge. If this trial starts on Monday then I will have to work all weekend. If not than I won't. And they wonder why people make up reasons to get out of jury duty! I for one love jury duty!

Mental Break Down

I am sorry there are no new photos for the last couple days of this week. Greg had a big presentation at school yesterday (which went great by the way! He rocked it!) so Greg had the jump drive which means no photos from my blog.

I have been insanely busy today. I have dreaded jury duty on Monday in the mighty mighty Bronx county so I have been trying to tie up every loose end at work and with BSF. Unfortunately it is almost quitting time and I am no where near being done so now I am ranking things from least likely to most likely to get me fired if I don't finish them today so I can get home and clean my house.

My dear friend Alice is coming over tomorrow for some craft time and I want to at least clear a path for her to get to my scrapbooking area. No really, it isn't that bad but I would like to vacuum tonight.

It is looking to be a busy weekend. After Alice leaves we are meeting some old friends at the beer garden for dinner and a chance to see their ultra cute twin toddler boys (yes it is a beer garden but it isn't what the name implies, totally family friendly and a nice outdoor local). Then on Sunday we are hoping to pick up some free compost at the Bronx composing center. Then church of course. So I am hoping to get some scrapbooking done but the garden is our number one priority. We spent about 3 hours out there last weekend in the sunshine (yeah!!!) but we still have a long way to go and my little plants in the greenhouse are growing like weeds! Hopefully they can compete with the real weeds in the garden.

Have a great weekend!

Another Layout - I'm on a roll

That's right, I finished this puppy this morning. Here are the stats: Back in 2003 I saved all the holiday stamps that came on our Christmas cards because I saw a BH layout that used salvaged stamps and I was inspired to do the same thing. So when I pulled out the Christmas card photos we received in 2003 there was a big old pile of stamps there too. That made my job easy. I used the stamps to make a cute border then cropped the photos to fill the page. Do you see your photo there? If not then you should really think about sending me your picture THIS year so you too can be honored with a spot in the Cruikshank family album. I also used metal photo corners (did you doubt I would use some photo corners?) a vellum tag, rub on letters for the title, and some red ribbon. I actually have 3-4 more Christmas layout to do for this year.

To clarify something about my scrapbook progress and goals. When I say I am almost done with this album that means I am almost done scrapbooking the year 2003-2004. I still have 2 years to go after this album is done and this only covers my married life. I have no high school or college pages done. Not sure I will even attempt that since I hope to eventually have kids to scrap and am sure that will take up a great deal of my scrapbooking time. We'll see though. I often dream of doing a quick and simple theme type book of my formative years. My mom did an excellent job of arranging my childhood photos into albums complete with cleaver little sayings and info next to each photo so I feel absolutely no need to re-do any of that. In a perfect world I would like to be able to scrapbook in present time. Meaning I take some photos on Saturday, order prints on Sunday and then make a layout that week. We'll see if that ever happens. I think if I keep up the pace and meet my scrapbooking goal for 2006 I may be caught up into the current year and that would be awesome. But of course my goal isn't to get caught up as much as it is to use up my stash of hoarded supplies! So I must scrap on!

Scrapbook Update - HALFWAY THERE!

This weekend I actually had very little time to scrap but some how completed 2 layouts. The first one I had been working on in bits and pieces during the week which meant on Saturday I just had to do the journaling and I was done. The second layout came together in my mind quickly and was done in about an hour which was great. The best part is that they bumped me up to 26 layouts completed which is half way to my goal for the year! And since it is only May that means I am ahead of schedule. I am also almost finished with the current album I am working on which is also encouraging. Oh, I have been using a new product for adhering vellum. Glue Dots brand has come out with Vellum Dots. So far I love them. You truly can't see them at all once you apply them. I will let you know if they hold up over the long run.
Last weekend in the mail we got an invitation booklet from the Asia Society (we are members-long story). The booklet outlined these dinners you could buy tickets too as a fundraiser. The tickets were $500 each so there as no way we were going to buy any so I was about to pitch the booklet in the recycling bin when I thought to myself how nice some of the pages were. They were such pretty colors and patterns so I ripped them out and used them on this layout. The patterned paper is actually 9 pages from the little booklet all glued together. I added my photos, journaling and some colored brads. The paper was kind of busy so I kept it simple. I used the chipboard letters from my recent kit and broke out the tube of paint that came in the kit also. It was a pearl color. Painting the letters went much faster and easier than the glitter fiasco. This layout will be the final page in the album.
This layout features Greg's 2004 gardening efforts. I used photo corners (Yippie!), my velvet letter stickers yet again, rub-on letters for the subtitle, some leather flowers I got a long time ago but always loved to much to actually use (I know it makes no sense!), and a brad and a snap for the flower centers. A simple layout but I love the photos at the bottom. Greg had the foresight to take pictures of his garden every 1-2 weeks so you can actually see it grow in the photos over the summer. So cool! Good job Honey!

I am already 50% done with my next layout for this week. I am on a roll! Here are some close-ups (sorry, not the best quality):

Happy Birthday Suzan!

(Wow, I am looking at Friday's post and the plants I photographed are already 4x larger in just a few days.)

Over the weekend Greg and I attended a birthday party for my dear friend and co-worker Suzan Runko. We had fun chatting with everyone despite the chilly conditions (it was an outdoor party that eventually became an indoor party. I love spring but the nights are still pretty darn cold).

Before leaving for Suzan's party I got the grand idea of making her a birthday hat and button. My first attempt at making a birthday hat went so well I had to take photos. And of course I don't have a button machine (though with all the other useless tools I have I am really surprised I don't have one) so I made a birthday badge instead! Some level of humiliation is always required at an adult birthday party, don't you think!

I started by making a cone out of cardstock for the base and then covered it with cute wrapping paper. I used some ribbon tied with craft wire for the plumb at the top (poked the wire through the top of the cone and taped it inside to secure). Set some eyelets in the sides and completed the hat with some thin elastic (used for making bead bracelets) threaded through the eyelets and tied off. It was big hit and drew lots of attention!

I will surely keep this idea in case I am ever in need of hats for a child's birthday party. It was very quick and easy to make.

They're Alive!

As I write this I just realized that I forgot to open the greenhouse this morning so the following may not apply after today when my seedlings are fried but...


They are alive! My little plants are all sprouting. Granted these don't even have true leaves yet but hey, something is happening and it makes me very happy. These photos show our lettuces but I have cucumbers and zucchinis too (multiple types) and I saw that a few other things were getting ready to break the surface as well.

I am not going to say the "g" word this time when talking about my weekend plans. Perhaps that will keep the lovely weather from taking a weekend break. Our plans include:

Greg: Has to attend an American Chemical Society conference on Saturday. His PI pretty much made it known that the whole lab would be going.

Alexis: I have BSF in the morning (just 4 weeks left) and then I will be attending a "townhall" at church where they are going to share progress and answer questions about our recent vision campaign. Greg was supposed to go with me but I have Alice to keep me company instead. We have to hightail it there from BSF so I hope we make it in time. Then in the evening we are both heading to Queens for Suzan's birthday party. Sunday is church and "other" things if weather permits.

I hope you all have a great weekend. I have to run out and find a gift for said birthday girl during lunch. We are having cake this afternoon, shhhh don't tell her!

Look What I Made

In an effort to get some stuff done around the house I decided to multitask last night. While watching Alias last night (Oh great, now Sidney has an evil twin) I pulled out the sewing machine and finally got some mending and sewing projects crossed off my to-do list. I fixed some trousers, sewed some ribbons into my duvet cover so I can tie the corners of the comforter in there and keep it from shifting around on us ( I have wanted to do this for YEARS!), and I made a BED BUDDY. Awhile ago I was looking through a catalogue and came across this:


They call it a Bedside Saddle but I prefer to call it a Bed Buddy. It is basically a pouch that hangs off the side of the bed to hold things like magazines, reading glasses, and remote controls. It is held in place by the mattress. I had to have this thing, it is so perfect for me. Our bedroom isn't wide enough for our bed and 2 night stands (thanks NYC apartment living) and I am not allowed to have the night stand on my side of the bed because I have a tendency to turn off the alarm clock in my sleep and then Greg is late for work (we learned this the hard way.... several times). So this is perfect for my side of the bed. I can keep the things I need handy but out of the way. But the one in the catalogue was $88! For some fabric that hangs off the bed? I can do this!

So when I was at the fabric store last I bought some heavy felt because that is what it looked like in the photo (turns out it's canvas, oh well). And last night I stitched one together.

As you can imagine it was pretty simple to piece together. I did all the parts in double layers of felt to give it strength. And here it is on the bed holding a couple of my things:

Now I have a place to put all the stuff I like to have handy so I can stop bugging Greg to hand me things from the nightstand. I love you bed buddy! And you only cost me about $8!

Scrapbook Update-Layout 24

With all the rain outside it made for a perfect scrapbooking time inside. Just as I was settling in to work on my next layout (a trip to Washington DC) the mail came. Now a month ago I broke the cardinal rule of trying to use up ones stash, I joined a scrapbooking club! I know, what was I thinking? Well this club has some neat stuff and it is a 3 month at a time club so I figured it was low commitment. Take a look at the Jenni Bowlin Studios kit I got in the mail! I decided to challenge myself and use the kit the same day for my layout. Here is how it turned out:

When brainstorming the color scheme for a trip to our nations capital I was of course thinking about red, white and blue but the photos from the trip were all pretty gray in color (thanks to all that marble used the build monuments!) so I figured any colors would work. Why not orange and blue. Plus the stars theme is TOTALLY American right?! I was pleased to have used so many embellishments on this layout: ribbon, photo corners (I had to use photo corners!), chipboard letters and stars, glitter!, and a star stud. The layout is from the BH sketch book and all the supplies except the photo corners came from the kit. I used a couple new techniques on this layout as well so here is my commentary.

Altered chipboard-Chipboard is all the rage in scrapbooking and I did use it once before but this was my first time using naked chipboard and covering it myself. I couldn't help but wonder as I was cutting out the letters from patterned paper (to glue to the chipboard) why I wasn't just going to glue them directly to the page. I mean dimension is nice but is it that important? After they were glued and dried I sanded the edges to clean them up a bit. Overall this process did involve liquid glue which is messier than I like but it wasn't too difficult or time consuming.

Glittered chipboard-This project made me realize I am a lazy scrapbooker. I think this is why I never got into painting on my layouts (a popular trend right now and paint was included in my kit so I will probably try it out eventually). I am to lazy to deal with the mess it leaves, and the time waiting for things to dry. The glittered "D" did not go well at all. I think I used the wrong kind of glue the first time and when I tried to go back and fix bare spots the letter turned out all lumpy and gross. So I scrapped off the glitter to try again but first I practiced with the star. This time I used a glue stick and it worked better so I tried the glue stick on the D as well. It worked ok. I ended up sealing the glittered items with diamond glaze because I didn't trust my glue to hold in the long run. This I may never do again. Really messy and it probably took an hour to make the 2 glittered elements. That is way more time than I am usually willing to spend on embellishments.

Here are some close-ups of the layout.

*******
I also got some new paper trays but am having a hard time incorporating them into my scrapbook area. I really could use some more space BUT that isn't going to happen so this tells me it is time to purge purge purge my area. I do love organizing! But it is nice to have my 12x12 cardstock up off the floor. I was thinking this morning that I could put my 8.5x11 cardstock on the trays with the larger pieces. That would at least free up a quarter of a shelf.

Rain Rain Go Away!

*****I tried to post this yesterday but blogger was down for repairs in the afternoon so I will try again.

When I said it was going to rain over the weekend I wasn't kidding! We got almost 4 inches of rain in 2 days. There were flood warnings for the greater New York and New Jersey areas and apparently the rivers are still pretty high. It is supposed to rain off and on until Wednesday. Here is what happened in our garden as a result!



Well we stayed home and stayed dry. Aside from going to BSF and work for me and the Lab for Greg we hung out at home watching videos (King Kong and Narnia) and worked on projects around the house.

Hopefully the weather will be better next weekend for gardening. The weekdays have been fantastic but the last 3 weekend have been pretty sad and gray.

**** Tuesday: It did rain more yesterday but today it is really sunny and beautiful. There is still a thundershower warning for the afternoon. The garden paths have all dried up and hopefully the ground will be dry enough to stand on this weekend.

Weekend Update

Well I have been a bad blogger this week with few photos and no real information. I got off on a bad foot at the start of the week. I have been feeling very overwhelmed by my life lately. So many things to get done but when I am home I feel too rundown to do anything but sit on the couch. Yesterday after work I vacuumed the apartment and made dinner which that felt like a major victory. Partly I think this is do to poor quality sleep so Greg and I have been working this week on making sleep time more successful for me by sticking to a set bed time, trying to get up at a better time, and doing things like keeping the room cooler and stuff like that. It has been working pretty well so far. I had been having a really hard time falling asleep the 2 weeks prior to this but since we have been making an effort this week I have been falling asleep quickly. Now I am working on staying asleep. I have issues with waking up in the night because I am too hot, my arms are asleep, etc. That has gotten better this week too.

This weekend I was planning to garden (am I sounding like a broken record yet?) but it is supposed to rain all day Saturday unfortunately. That means my plan is changing to include my weekly layout, getting my mother's day suprises packaged and ready for the mail, and reorganizing my scrapbook space to accommodate some new paper trays I bought and received this week. I also bought the stuff to make a tofu cheesecake so I may do a little baking too. I actually have to come into work on Sunday to help with a really big experiment in the lab. They need as many extra hands as possible. I don't really want to but I didn't have a real reason to say no since I go to church at night. I also have to help with the same experiment all day Monday. I usually spend my lunch on Monday preparing my bible lesson for BSF so that means I have to be 100% ready by Sunday night. So I will add that to my weekend goals.

Speaking of baking, the weather has been gorgeous here. We made it into the 80s this week and it has been glorious because the humidity hasn't set in. I wish all of summer would be like this week! What does that have to do with baking? Well, now that spring is officially here it means we won't be able to use our oven much longer (we NEVER use it in the summer) so when I did my meal plans for this week and next Greg and I dug some of our favorite oven recipes to enjoy one last time. Last night was an enchilada casserole and tonight Thai seitan curry in filo dough (my favorite). This weekend we will have our last homemade pizzas and next week we will finish up with a pasta based casserole. Plus the cheesecake! Maybe I should bake some cookies and freeze them for Greg. Hmmm. I love meals from the oven, I will miss them over the summer!

I hope you all have a great weekend and I will be a better blogger next week!

Garden Update

Well Greg was a dear and spent the afternoon yesterday clearing weeds and debris from the garden. We still have a lot of work to do but it really helped a lot. We also found a scuttle hoe hidden in the shed which is a big help.

The big news is that as of this morning all the seeds are planted in the greenhouse. Well not all the seeds, some are direct sow but all the ones that can be started early are planted. Hopefully we will begin to see some growth in the next few days.

Yippie!!!

Scrapbook Update & T-Shirt Instructions

Greg and I were sick during the Easter weekend with a nasty stomach bug but I managed to get this done the afternoon before it hit. This is a layout of the New York Botanical Garden train show. I managed to use photo corners (of course!), printed ribbon that I have had forever but have NEVER tried before, ribbon slides, stick on brads, letter stickers, and a pre-cut tag. I also pulled out some new Basic Grey paper that I had drooled over when I was with Katie over Christmas and finally broke down and ordered a month or so ago. I think it gives this layout a classy look. This is of course a modified BH layout from the latest sketch book.

And for those who wanted to try the T-shirt instructions here they are. Of course this photo is horrible and impossible to read (hey, it is a photo of a t-shirt for goodness sakes!), but you are in luck because my dear friend Alice found out these instructions are on the Martha website and you can view them here. Happy Folding!!!

Random Thoughts

Well I had to post this picture of my parents taken last weekend in the Tri-Cities. They are just the cutest couple! I love you guys and miss seeing you all the time!

It has finally warmed up here in NYC. I think spring is officially here. We have had several warm days in a row (in the 70s yesterday) and I am confident that my heavy coat will stay in the closet for good. I am hoping that this weather holds for the weekend so I can get out in the garden.

There is no BSF this weekend because of the Easter holdiday so I am planning on making Saturday my garden day. We'll see how it goes. No matter what I am going to get those darn seeds planted if it kills me!

On the Martha Show (airing right now) she told us how to clean our stainless steal cookware using a product called Barkeepers Friend. I found a can of it at Kmart last night and took it home to use on my pots. These pots are so stained they are black on the bottom (I think from using too high of heat on our gas range). Pretty bad! Well this stuff really works! I have gotten the worst pot about 90% clean on the outside (the inside is brilliant again) and one of my smaller pots is back to looking new. I didn't think it was possible. I would check this stuff out if you have stained/charred cookwear. For copper cookwear she recommended squirting ketchup on it, let it sit then rub off. I have also heard of using salt and half a lemon. I don't have copper cookwear but if I did I would give it a try. Also another funny thing I remembered about our visit to the show. Martha likes Eminem! They played his album during the commercial breaks!

Well, it is Good Friday and I am heading to church at 5pm for service and then possibly out to dinner with my dear husband (who I never see anymore). I hope that you all have a wonderful Easter Holiday as we celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

OH, the magic of television!

Well, yesterday I took the day off of work and went with my friends Alice, Connie, and Sandy to a taping of the Martha Stewart Show in the afternoon. We met for lunch before hand and then headed to the studio.

After a long stint in the "holding room" where we had refreshments (NOT homemade by Martha), signed release forms, and got "pumped up" by the audience wrangler we headed into the studio. We were seated in the very top row. The audience prep guy was a commedian who entertained us while we waited for the star herself to show up. He was pretty funny.

The set looked just like it does on TV but it was cool to see in real life. I always thought her show was live but no, it is taped before a live studio audience. Our show will air on Friday. The special guest was Wynona Judd but she couldn't be there for the taping so they did her segments earlier and were going to add ours in. In the end I don't think they got us on camera at all. They didn't do very many audience shots. Probably because they had 2 different audiences and they don't want anyone to notice.

We watched a segment on decorating lamp shades (ugly and a really short segment), cleaning cookware (could have been useful if the segment was more than 2 minutes long), and making a passionfruit souffle (which I don't eat). It was more fascinating seeing how a show is made than seeing the show itself. There were about a million production assistants in the studio doing who knows what, at one point they held up little signs that said speed up or slow down in addition to the teleprompters, and we saw the stage managers instructing Martha on what to do for each bit during the commercial breaks. At one point the director was in the kitchen set and started eating some of the props in the background (jelly beans in a giant vase). The segments were REALLY short. Probably because they air at the end of the hour where segments are shorter and commercials are more frequent. At one point in the souffle making Martha put the suffles in the oven and then when she went to pull the cooked souffles out they weren't done so they stopped production so the food could keep cooking. So to kill time Martha took questions from the audience. Alice asked a great quesiton about cakes.

When it was all over we each got a cheesy T-Shirt as a free gift. I was hoping for a new car but hey, beggers can't be choosers. The only good thing (no pun intended) about the T-shirt was that on the back they had printed Martha's instructions for folding T-Shirts. I loved them. I refolded all of Greg's T-shirts this morning (like 50 of them) using her technique in under 10 minutes. It is fast and easy and they take up a lot less room and look great. I guess that made the whole trip worthwhile.

Garden Update

Ok, in my defense it did rain ALL day on Saturday so our garden was a giant swamp. I probably could have weeded a little bit but when the paths are all flooded and muddy it really makes it pretty difficult. So how did I fair on my goals:

1. Buy soil at home depot and price wood and compost.
Turns out Greg had a whole bag of potting soil left over from last year so I just used that instead of buying anything new. We will have to deal with the wood and stuff next weekend.

2. Make the paper seed pots. (we have a paper seed pot maker. They are nice because they can go right into the ground and they biodegrade)
I did this! See above. I actually made 2 trays worth which Greg thinks is way more than I will need. I even filled one trays worth with the potting soil. It was a little damp from being outside so it will need to dry out a little. I hope to get some seeds in the soil this week. Right now I am sorting all the seed packets to figure out which should be sown directly to soil and which can be started indoors.

3. Spend a few hours cleaning up the garden beds.
Remember the rain? I of course didn't get to this part but I did take a picture of the garden on Sunday. Sort of a before photo:

I know what you are thinking. "How wonderful that you planted grass in your pathways". Um those are weeds, not grass. We are debating right now what to do about the pathways. They have really poor drainage so they flood really easily. We had wanted to do newspaper and straw which the garden books recommend but we can't find any straw in our area.

Next you are thinking, "what a lovely chain link fence, and in such a warm brown color!". Yes, the rusty fence is a pet peeve of mine. As you can see all the neighbors put up newer fences next to ours but of course we can't take it down. So really nasty weeds grow between the two and cause all kinds of problems and are impossible to get out. I have a secret plan on how to handle this. We will see if Greg goes for it.

Next thought, "Wow, you have your own shed for storing your gardening tools and such. How lucky!". Nope, the shed is a giant metal junk holder that belongs to the landlord. All of the gardening supplies and tools sit out under our porch, hence the wet bag of soil I got to dig in.

Scrapbook Update

Well I taught the scrapbook class on Saturday but by the time I got home I had a pretty bad headache (perhaps because of the rainy weather) so I had a quick lunch, took some drugs and hit the bedroom for a nap. Greg came down with a cold on Friday so he spent a couple hours at school and then came home and took a nap with me. When I woke up I felt much better but chose to have dinner and watch a movie (aka relax) instead of working on any of my other weekend plans.

On Sunday I threw this layout together and it was so perfect because all of the little squares at the bottom were extra pieces I had taken to the class on Saturday so I used them all up on this layout. I also challenged myself to use 5 embellishments and I think I did it. I used photo corners, letter stickers, paper flowers, ribbon, staples, brads (2 different kinds). Whoo hoo that was 6-7. This layout was really quick and easy because I copied the color scheme and stuff from the explosion book I just taught AND because it is a direct scraplift of a BH sketch from her newest book. Here are some close-ups for your viewing pleasure (they won't fit side by side)!

Craft Club Success!

Well, my explosion book class went great! It rained all day Saturday which meant it was a good day to stay in and do crafts. 6 woman showed up for the class so we had plenty of room to work in Kelly's apartment. Everything went really smoothly but what do you expect from a room full of BSF leaders! They follow directions, I mean GUIDELINES, really well! Ha! I think the most challenging part was making the covers for the albums but all the ladies did a super job. I set it up so they could make a book exactly like the sample but several woman chose to do their own thing with the colored paper and embellishments and really made their books unique. It was great to see. The whole project took about 2 hours which worked out perfectly because a couple ladies had afternoon appointments to get to and I was worried they wouldn't finish.

Rachel Hocking said she was sure that her mom would cry when she opened it. To me that makes the whole thing worthwhile! It means that someone found it meaningful.

We had a great time and everyone kept thanking me but I felt like the one who should say thank you. I loved teaching the class and when you love doing something (like scrapbooking) it is a privilege to share it with people. Maybe someone will fall in love with paper crafts and I will have a new cropping buddy!

Next month Alice is going to teach us to crochet coasters! I can't wait!

And don't worry, I still completed my own layout over the weekend to keep on track with my scrapbooking goal. More about that tomorrow.

Happy Birthday R-chle B-chle

27 years ago my little sister was born. I thought it was great but hey, I got a Hippity Hop out of the deal! Apparently I loved to pick Rachel up and carry her around until one day she was old enough to hit me and let me know she didn't appreciate that! I have tons of fond childhood memories of playing dress-ups together ,riding around grandma's house on the Big Wheels and so many others.

As kids and teens Rachel had always marched to beat of her own drummer and it seemed we had nothing in common and as such we fought a lot and didn't get along as well as sisters should.

I guess some times you just need to grow up in order to appreciate people (I know that is true of parents!) and as an adult I have come to appreciate and love the unique and beautiful woman that Rachel has become. We have never looked that much alike (which is why I was able to convince her as a child that she was adopted) but I realize now we have so much in common. We are both creative and love making things. We have the same weird sarcastic sense of humor. We are both equally as stubborn (though we show it differently). We have the same childhood memories and experiences. And it is strange but when I hear my voice recorded and played back to me I don't hear my voice, I hear hers. Now if only we had the same metabolism, I would be so much happier! She is the only sister I will ever have. Why is it when my mom would say that I thought it was no big deal. It is a big deal, it's huge!

Sister-I love you and I hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Love,
Alexis

Garden Update/Plan

Well yesterday I spent my precious time writing an entry about the garden and my plans for the weekend and when I went to post it Blogger hiccuped and lost my post. Argh!!! So here it goes again.....

I was walking home for work the other day and I notice that several of our neighbors down the block have already tilled their soil and have it prepped for planting! I thought I had all the time in the world (perhaps because it snowed 2 days ago!) but apparently I am behind. I had decided that I would go out and weed last night for 15 minutes but by the time I got home it was just about dark and Greg called to say he was on his way home from school so I opted to get dinner started instead. I would give it another try tonight but I really need to prepare for my scrapbook class tomorrow, SO it will have to wait for the weekend.

I did bring home some trays from work to put in the greenhouse. The ones from last year practically melted. It gets pretty darn hot in there once summer officially starts and they couldn't take the heat. These are a little heavier duty and should hold up better. So my plan for the weekend is to:

1. Buy soil at home depot and price wood and compost.
2. Make the paper seed pots. (we have a paper seed pot maker. They are nice because they can go right into the ground and they biodegrade)
3. Spend a few hours cleaning up the garden beds.

We will see how this goes. I am still a little concerned that even in the greenhouse it isn't warm enough to germinate a lot of the seeds. Some require 75-80 degrees to germinate. I may need to start those in the house where it is at least 70 most of the time. I may have to put a thermometer in the greenhouse and see what the temps are during the day and night.

That is my plan and I will let you know how it goes.

Scrapbook: I have my class tomorrow at 10am. I am all done with my BSF preparations so I can focus this evening on getting my bag packed and getting the last minute things done. I was going to buy little boxes for the books to be packaged in when they are finished but I couldn't find the size I wanted and the one's I did find were almost $1 each. So I came up with another idea of putting them in glassine bags with a little sizzle and tying a pink bow. It is pretty cute (and cheap) and will work very nicely. I just hope the ladies have a good time!

Scrapbook Update

First of all the weather. It has been chilly and cloudy all week. I had to dig my heavy coat back out of the closet. But on my way to work I was noting all the beautiful magnolia trees in full bloom and thinking to myself, "it may be chilly but it is still spring". Well right now it is SNOWING! It started about 15 minutes ago and it is REALLY coming down. Big fluffy white flakes! April showers bring frozen flowers I guess. Argh! They are filming a movie or something down on the street outside of my building (I work next to a park that they like to use in movies and tv shows, especially Law and Order) so I bet the snow is really making the directors day!

Ok, now onto the scrapbook update. I did complete a 1 page layout, but it wasn't quite done by Sunday. It is funny because this blog has provided me a great deal of accountability to meet my goal each week. I was really stuck on a couple design elements on the page which is why it didn't get done by Sunday but I kept thinking, you have to get this done so you can blog about it and keep on track! So I forced myself to "just do it" with an idea I had. Letting go of the perfectionism is hard at times but I am happy with the way the page turned out. This is a page about a weekend tip we took to Eugene a couple years ago to suprise Greg's grandma on her 90th birthday. Sorry for the shiny spot on the photo of Greg and his Grandma.

Of course I love the clean lines on the layout but when I was all done and looking at it I realized it has hardly any embellishments. That would be fine except I need to use up the massive amount of stuff I have accumulated which includes tons of embellishments and here I only used 2 brads, one snap, and some letter stickers. I think on my next layout I will issue a self-challenge to use at least 5 embellishments. We'll see how it goes!

Well my Mom has been dabbling in scrapbooking recently (she is regularly a stamper). A few years ago she got the idea to take the giant box of photos my Grandma had stuffed up in a closet and actually do something with them. So many heritage photos and most didn't even have a name or date on the back. So we went through the box during one visit to Richland and she, Rachel and I sat down with Grandma and Grandpa and quized them about each photos, noting who it was, when it was taken and what it was about. We filled up notebooks with information. It was funny because sometimes Grandma would say "oh, we don't talk to them anymore" or "I don't remember that" and then grab the photo and rip it up! Yikes! Well, the photos stayed in the box a few more years untouched. I think it was such a daunting task no one wanted to start organizing and cataloging the photos. Plus, we all assumed we had endless time.

Well in 2001 my Grandpa died unexpectedly and my mom realized that time was not on her side. If she waited much longer all the people that knew the history of the photos would be gone. Plus my Grandma's memory is starting to deteriorate. So over Christmas she sorted through the pile of photos and we brainstormed a color scheme and some simple embellishments and she began a people book showing our family tree. This is just the first of several books (she has that many photos!) but I just got to see some images from the book today. Here are some example pages:

I love how the pages are all a little different but her page elements tie them all together (ribbon, ribbon slides, book plates, photo corners, and the same color scheme/family). I am so proud of her for finally accomplishing her goal (or at least getting started) and doing such a great thing for our family by recording a little of our history. She has 20+ pages done and I can't wait to see these in real life. Great job mom!

Weekend Update

Well today it is overcast and chilly. Bummer. I am wearing short sleeves, a skirt and my new shoes (below). So I obviously don't check the weather before I leave the house and instead rely completely on wishful thinking to prepare for my day.

We had a nice weekend. It turned out Greg didn't need to go into school on Saturday after all (they haven't been good about ordering the supplies he needs for his thesis research-another problem!) so he stayed home and did homework and worked on a presentation he has to give in a couple weeks at school.

I hit the mall! For those who take mall shopping for granted, I don't live anywhere near a mall (they don't really exist in Manhattan) so I drove out to West Nyak about 45min to find one. Lucky for Greg I didn't wear very comfortable shoes or else I would still be there looking around. I found all the things I need for my scrapbook class next weekend plus some other fun stuff!

I found tons of colored photo corners at JoAnn Fabrics along with some ribbons and stuff. I also bought some fabric for a project at home and some black velvet to use as a backdrop when doing photo shoots. I am hoping to play around with my camera in the next few months and develop my skills a little. I also found these super cute shoes at DSW which I am wearing right now. I love them. I guess I am a little obsessed with shoes right now. When you have feet as big as mine it is hard to find shoes that look cute AND fit. DSW has a pretty good clearance section and it is organized by size so it makes my life so easy. These are Reaction and weren't on clearance but I made an exception.

I spent part of Saturday putting together the kits for the scrapbook class and I am about 90% done. I think I may make a 2nd little book as an example during the class. The woman will be sitting at 2 separate table so this way each table will have a change to look at a real life example.

My seeds also came in the mail on Friday so this week I am going to begin working on getting some of them potted and into the green house. Greg has already started clearing brush from the garden so we are on our way.

Other than that our weekend involved movie watching, scrapbooking, mixed CD making, eating, serving communion at church, cleaning, and a nice nap. Pretty standard for us. I noticed no one left any comments on my last post even though I specifically asked you to. I am going to assume that means none of you read books, just my blog. And that is OK with me!