6 Degrees

Just For Fun

I've been designing a lot of projects over the last few months for BasicGrey.  A lot.  Projects for classes at the Scrapbook Expos, classes for retailers, promotional projects, layouts for the newsletter, etc.   Most of the time they're projects I can't share here because they're being used in one form or another for something else.  It's a lot and it's been keeping me hopping.

So when I have a spare minute or two, the last thing I want to do is scrapbook for me. 

I spent all day yesterday designing a new card class for the Scrapbook Expos with our new Eskimo Kisses line.  Usually after a full day of doing that, I'm whipped. 

But this morning something inspired me to pull out some product and just play for fun.  And I did.  25 minutes later, I was done with this. 

It's not perfect, far from it.  Guess that's what you get after only 25 minutes.  If you look closely, the photo is a bit jacked up (took it on my iPhone yesterday so it's a bit pixelated), but that's ok. 

25 minutes has to be close to a miracle for me.  It never happens that fast.  Never.  Maybe if it did I'd be more inclined to pull things out on a whim and whip something up.

Nice to do something just for fun every now and again, eh?

Reusable Bags

Reusable bags.

What can I say, I love them.  Not the plain, logo-ed, boring ones from the grocery store, but the fun, playful, graphic ones you buy elsewhere.  Where else can you (you?  ok, maybe it's just me...) get so much pleasure out of buying a bag, in a lot of cases for only $1, that satisfies your need to spend money (your?  ok, maybe my...) AND helps save the environment at the same time?  And what better way to carry home those not so pleasure-inducing grocery items, like toilet cleaner.

I guess you could say I kind of collect them.  Kind of.  I've bought them and brought them home with me from all over the world - all over the US, Canada, Australia, Amsterdam and England.  Nick would tell you it's more than collecting, maybe a wee bit of problem.  Whatver, that's Nick...

There's only one problem with said reusable bags. 

You have to remember to use them.

And I rarely do.

In an effort to try and fix that, I've bought quite a few (refer to paragraph #3 above).  They're in Nick's trunk, my trunk, and in the back of the winter car.

And it never fails, the only time I remember to use them is when I'm in line at the grocery store.  Did I mention I was already in line?  And they've already started ringing up my groceries.  And the checker asks would I like paper or plastic.  And there are people in line behing me.  And it's too late to run to the car to grab the reusable bags.

But forget no more!  All I have to do is shop at a grocery store 25 minutes away from my house.  Lo and behold, they're familiar with forgeters like me.  So much so that they have a sign in the parking lot so you remember BEFORE it's too late.

Hmm, in the future I'll have to figure out if the gas it takes to drive 50 minutes round trip to this grocery store cancels out the fact that I remember to use my reusable bags....

Book of Lists

Had to share what I came downstairs to this morning -

They're such sweet kids!

Also wanted to share one last project I made with Label Tulip's August Kit. The challenge was to use the file folder included in the kit. I have a thing for Cavallini file folders, and I LOVED the pattern on this one. I decided to turn the file folder into a mini book, used a Bind It All (that machine is worth it's weight in gold, LOVE IT!) to bind the file folder together with lots and lots of pages inside.

The mini book is about lists.  I make lists.  All. Of. The. Time.  Constantly. 

And sometimes I save them.  Yah, I know, a bit nutty.  Not all of them, but some of the more important or memorable ones.

Like the list of baby names Nick and I considered before we had Jack.  Yep, that one is in the book, it's dated 1997.

Then there's the list of people for our rehearsal dinner back in 1995.  The oldest list in the book is from 1994.  It's my favorite.  Nick and a friend of his took me and my friend (that Nick's friend was dating) away on a surprise weekend getaway.  They gave us a list of things to bring - 50 in all.  They were trying to throw us off track on where we were going, so items on the list included snow boots, a bikini, and a tennis racket. among other things.

There are lots of lists in this book - grocery lists, the kids' spelling lists, short to-do lists, long to-do lists, things to pack for a trip to Europe list....  Well, you get the picture.  Even a list of lists I wrote a year ago about the kinds of lists that I wanted to include in a 'Book of Lists'  mini book.

A little excessive you say, maybe bordering on obsessive?  Nah, just me and my lists...

One Red & One Blue

The boys started school again yesterday. 

Yay!

They were both excited to go back.

Me too...

I shot a few traditional 'sit on the front porch while Mom gets some quick pics before we're late, Sam stop doing bunny ears over your brother's head' first day of school photos.

The only way you can tell the difference in the photos from year to year is that the boys get bigger each year. 

Because they wear uniforms (loosely called uniforms - khaki shorts or pants and red polo shirt), it's really hard to tell the difference from year to year, until this year.

This year we moved from two red shirts to one red and one blue shirt.

This year Jack is in 6th grade, and with 6th grade comes a nice change - the ability to wear a blue golf shirt, no more red.

Yay, no more red!  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against red.  But when the majority of your kids clothing is red and you see them in it every day, day after day after day, blue is a nice change.

So here are our traditional 1st day of school pics, complete with bunny ears.

And one red and one blue shirt....

Label Tulip

Howdy friends!  Long time, no read.  Or I guess I should say long time, no post.  I don't know where the time goes!  Spent last weekend in Northern California teaching at the Scrapbook Expo.  My first time teaching BasicGrey classes at the Expos, and they went super well!  I'm off to Chicago this coming weekend to teach at another Expo.

In between getting ready for the Expos, traveling, following up on post CHA stuff with customers (was that already 3 weeks ago?), working on my project for Inspiration Unlimited 2009, reading up on the gossip from The Bachelorette (what, Ed cheated, NO?!!) getting the kids ready for school and everyday life, I worked with a super fun kit this last week from Label Tulip.

Can I tell you how much I LOVED working with this kit?!  I was just telling Cathy (owner of Label Tulip) yesterday how much I enjoyed this kit.  I think she did a fab job putting together such a great cross-section of products.  I don't know what it was, but working with this kit was so easy for me, the ideas just kept flowing.

Here are 4 layouts I did with the kit.  I have one more project to share later this week using that WONDERFUL file folder with the butterflies.

This is one of my favorite layouts I've done in a loooong time.  Not because of the design, but because of the subject.  The kit included some die cut tags, and the one I ended up using on this layout really got the memories going for me.  When Jack was little, I made up a game with him called The Cloud Game.  When I put him to bed every night, we would turn off the lights and lay in his bed and stare at the ceiling.  We would pretend we saw clouds and tell each other what shape we saw.  I always ended the game by saying "I see a cloud that looks like a mommy and her little boy" and then I would kiss him goodnight.  Such good memories!  I probably would have never remembered to scrapbook this memory, so I'm glad that little die cut reminded me.

I didn't have a photo of us playing this game, so I downloaded a free stock photo from the internet with clouds.

Another favorite (for some reason this one was hard to photograph).  This is a scan of a photograph of my grandma at Laguna Beach with some friends back in 1940.  The original photo was in pretty bad shape - blown out, faded and scratched up pretty bad.  I scanned it a few years ago and decided to use as is vs. fixing it in Photoshop. 

Hee hee - look at the pics of those little kids in the One Day layout!  That's Nick and me when we were both 3 years old.  I scanned the photos, turned them to black and white (the colors in our outfits DEFINTELY did not coordinate!) and then printed on cream, textured cardstock to give a vintage look to the photos.  On second thought, maybe they didn't need a 'vintage' look, they were taken in the late 60's and early 70's afterall, I guess that makes them vintage in themselves, eh?!

And the last layout - It Was Magic - how about those photos?!  They're from the photo shoot that Sande arranged from us for Jessi's going away party.  We had so much fun staging these shots, you wouldn't believe it if you saw what was involved.  You also wouldn't believe the looks we got from the other park-goers....

Party of 4.... Your Table is Ready

Sound familiar? 

Party of 4 has been floating around in my head for the last few years, ever since I bought these vintage letters to hang on my living room wall on an inspiration trip with Sande a few years ago in San Francisco.  I wanted to do Party of 4, but 'party' had an uneven number of letters in it and it just didn't quite work right, so back then I settled on Family of 4.

Now I've done Party of 4.  

I've always thought it would be a great title and make a fun mini book, and Inspiration Unlimited 2009 in September is the perfect setting for it!

Here's a peek at the class I'll be teaching at the event using products from our June Bug line.  I love this line, especially for mini books.  It has so many different colors and patterns to it that when you put them all together it creates a really fun and whimsical look.

Can't wait for September!!

A Last Girls Night Out

On Friday night Jessi, Sande, Rhonna, Allison and I got together for a farewell party for Jessi - she's moving away to Michigan.

Since we always find ourselves behind the camera and not in front of it, Sande invited Terra - an the amazingly talented and super fun photographer - to take pictures of us together.

We headed over to Liberty Park for a few hours and proceeded to entertain ourselves (along with the rest of the park-goers who most certainly thought we were nuts!).

Here are some of the pics from our session and here's a link to the slideshow if you want to take a peek! 

So sad to have Jessi move away, but at the same time I'm very excited for her and Justan and the boys and the new chapter in their lives!