paulabarber

A New Challenge

There is a new challenge at Method Playground this week. 
Brenda had a wonderful idea to get our creative juices flowing,
and it was something that I don't think I have ever really
done on a layout.  She recreated the pattern in one of her
favorite patterned papers, turning her creation
into the focal point embellishment of the layout. 
I loved the idea and couldn't wait to try my hand at it.
Here's what I came up with using a beautiful KI Memories floral print.

I sewed back and forth across the bottom third of the layout, and then
used my sewing lines as the guide for my journaling.   And I have to say,
I think that is my current favorite ribbon. 
It is such a brilliant shade of blue.

In other news, I'm trying to design a logo for my dear Hubby's business. 
I'm not really a graphic designer, I just pretend to be one at times like this.
I think I've created about 20 options and so far. . .nadda. 
Nothing is working.
I'm starting to get frustrated. 
Maybe I should just pull out my supplies and scrap it. 
Is their anyone out their that would like to design a legal logo for cheap?  
I might be in the market.  :o)

Olympic Fever

We definitely have it at our house.
Noah has it to the point that we are getting awarded medals
for the order that we finish dinner,
for who gets their seat belts buckled the fastest,
and for who can clear the ottoman in a single bound. 
(Sorry guys, Mama had to put a stop to that last one.)

I'm so glad that Kris remembered that we had these gold medals
that we had won at a dance competition a while back.
They are getting some SERIOUS use right now.
I guess it beats collecting dust on a shelf.
I decided to capture the fun on a layout last night.
I had been so inspired by this layout
by the amazingly talented Jen Jockisch,
that I had to break out the corrugated cardboard and give it a try.

And some close-up shots.

I love that clear arrow element from Fancy Pants. 
I punched out the stars, glitter the arrow
and then painted and inked the stars. 
And isn't that Collage Press World Traveler paper just perfect for this!

 

Come Sunday, we are going to be counting the days until the "snow" Olympics!

Journaling reads:

This is his first Olympics. 

At four and a half, he is just the perfect age to really get a feel
for the true Olympic spirit and all that it entails. 

Just watching him gives me flashbacks to my first Olympic experience.

Watching.  Cheering. 
Feeling the Pride right along with the winning athletes.

I had no idea it would stir such
strong emotions in me as a Mom this time. 

Watching his eyes light up.
Seeing him wearing Mommy and Daddy’s dance medals
around his neck as he watches. 
Hearing him turn everyday things, like finishing his dinner first,
into Gold Medal achievements.

I am loving every single minute of this!
”How much longer until the “snow” Olympics, Mom?”

Feeling Scrappy

I was lucky enough to get in some quality scrapbook time this weekend.
We were home, enjoying the Olympics, catching up on some home repairs
that we have totally neglected all summer, playing with the kiddos, and
getting in some hobby time.  It made for a really nice weekend.
I dug into some of my absolute favorite supplies and got scrappy.

I have had this Cloud 9 Designs Mini-Album sitting on my desk
for a couple of weeks just begging to be dressed up. 
I love the box that goes with it, so I started with that. 
Here are some peeks:

Collage Press is my absolute favorite manufacturer EVER.  I love their paper
designs like no other, so I had to feature a couple of them on this project. 
They have such beautiful colors, and the "B" side is always just as yummy as
the "A" side of the paper. 
I cannot wait to get my hands on their new Summer release. 
Especially Camden!  Yum.

That lace paper is some vintage stuff that I smuggled out of my Mom's craft
room from WAY back in the day.  Here's a peek at the cover of the album
inside too:

Don't you just love those Heidi Grace Chipboard hearts?  They are part of
this set.  The cream polka-dots make me oh-so-happy. 
And of course, two of my other all time favorites,
anything hounds-tooth (I'm so happy this is trendy right now. 
I'm stocking up!) and that perfect Elsie cloud fabric paper. 
I would hate to think how many sheets of it that I have used. 
To be honest, I cut my last piece to make this project,
so if you know where I can get a lot more, help a sister out, would you?
It's getting hard to find.

OK, it's about lunch time.  Then, it will be story time with the kiddos
and then nap time which means more scrappy time for mama! 
Can I get an Amen!

Weeds

A friend invited us to play at this cool new playground
a few miles from our house yesterday.
It is a SPACE playground. 
The equipment looks like a spaceship and a giant rocket.
It was a big hit with Noah, to say the least.
My favorite part of the playground, however,
were the weeds.
Right behind it was a field full of these really cool,
dried-up-in-the-Texas-sun
weeds.
Of course I had my camera with me, so I plopped Keira in the
middle of them while Noah was blasting himself into space with his friend.
It was late morning and a great time to work on my exposure.
I am trying to get better at back-lit conditions. 
Usually, I get the blown out background with the face
so dark, it is practically a silhouette.
She didn't cooperate well, so I didn't get any good face,
but at least I got a little practice in.
(and Noah made it to space and back without any interference from his sibling.)

I still have some blown highlights here, but I just love what the sun was
doing to those weeds!  And yes, Keira has the same shirt as one of that
last photo I posted of her. What are you gonna do? 
I'll tell you what I did. . .
I went back to the same spot last night at sunset with a different outfit. 
heehee.
But the problem with those weeds is that they are prickly. 
REALLY prickly.  And I guess that makes me a bad mommy for
making my kids tromp around in them just in the name of photo practice.
Again, the kiddos didn't cooperate much.  (Do you think it could have
been the fact that they were getting poke and scratched?)
So I never got any good face shots of Keira.



And I still don't have my exposure just right. 
Full frontal sunset light = very hard
in my book.
I got the skirt here. 
and the matching headband from her sister here.
(Etsy has become my new favorite place to shop.)

If you have read this entry, you won't be surprised that
this is as good as it got from Noah.

{sigh}  I hope this isn't what he looks like at preschool everyday.

And speaking of school,  I found this link in my Ideal Bite this morning.
Green School supplies!
That beats prickly weeds anyday.
I'm ordering two.

Bows & Babies

The new challenge is up at Method Playground
hosted by the lovely and talented Stephanie Howell!
Bows, bows, bows. 
I have to admit, I haven't always loved them.
Growing up, I didn't want anything to do with bows.
Especially not in my hair.  Ewww.
Seriously.
But now, I think I'm trying to make up for lost time.
I don't even want to think about how many yards of
ribbon are lying around here. 
I was worried when I found out that baby #2 was
a girl.  I was more of the tom-boy sort. 
I didn't know if I could do "girl". 
But with the help of my family,
Miss Keira is sufficiently stocked with ruffles and bows.
For Stephanie's challenge, however,
I decided to take it in more of a boy direction.
Yes, you can put bows on a boy page.
Well, at least a knot with pretty ends.

 

When I saw these Scrapworks stickers in my July Studio Calico kit,
I knew that they belonged with this photo.  It is a favorite of mine,
even though the lighting is horrid. 
My little cowboy.  Ride 'em Noah.  heehee.
If you are the scrappy type,
I hope you will come and join in the bow challenge with us!

Keira, on the other hand, is in the midst of my favorite age.
She is 2 and says the cutest things.

Bo Pish - Gold Fish
shwushie - slushie
chew - Q (in the abc song - chew, r, s)
widdle wizurd - little lizard (there is a family of them living in our garage.)

And for some reason, Swiper the Fox is her favorite character these days.
She keeps going up to Noah, taking whatever toy he is playing with and
then throws it across the room saying,
"you'll never find it now, ha-ha-ha!"
{sigh}  We are going to have to do something about that one.

Something Fishy

I know you guys are probably sick of me talking about
"the lake".
BUT
we have spent every weekend there since early April,
except for one.  Seriously.  Every. Single. Weekend.
That's like 20 weekends from April until September.
That's a lot of lake.
So you can see, it is a huge part of our family life
during the spring and summer here in Texas.
And it is family time that we treasure. 
ALL OF US!

I grew up going to the lake and it made a huge impact on me.
I'm so glad that I have this opportunity to have my kiddos
experience some of the same things I did growing up.

One of my favorite things about it, besides the
quality family time and the plethora of activities. . .
is the fish.

 

These babies were caught on Saturday night and grilled on Sunday at lunch.
You just can't get much fresher than that! 
My wonderful hubby has become quite the
Cedar Plank Chef too.
He cuts his own planks from a tree that fell on some of his Dad's land.
So not only is the fish fresh, but the planks are fresh too.
I cannot even begin to describe the flavor!
The one problem with the cedar, though,
is that it smokes on the grill.
A. Lot.
It makes it hard to cook without protective eye wear.

And there is nothing like
a man in women's sunglasses grilling on cedar planks.
Mmmm. 
It is a good thing he has on that Texas A&M shirt to redeem himself,
huh?

Have a great weekend
and Happy 08/08/08!

Weekend Update

That is always my favorite part of Saturday Night Live.
Too bad this isn't it. heehee.
This is what I looked like all weekend while we were at the lake:

The sippie-cup in the foreground isn't mine.
Really.
I made it through Breaking Dawn and I really enjoyed it.
It wasn't at all what I was expecting, but I guess if it had been
there probably would have been a ripple of disappointment
running through my veins. Stephanie is anything but disappointing!
Expected or not, she did wrap the story up nicely.
I won't say anything else. I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone
who hasn't read it yet.

Keira found a new means for displaying her feeling of frustration
this weekend. It totally cracks me up, which makes her all the more
frustated. I don't think she understands why we can't take this face
seriously.

I hope she doesn't do this too much. Think of the wrinkle she will
get on the bridge of her cute little nose!

I spent the last two days cleaning. I had really ignored my house
last week with my last minute MMM craziness. I'm feeling much
better. Something about a clean house that just puts you at ease.
But my scraproom is another story. The time has come, I fear,
for massive purging. I can no longer remember what color the
carpet is in there. I think that is a bad sign.
TOO MANY PILES!
Yes, a purge is definitely in order.
Maybe next week.
I'm really in the mood to scrap!

And here are a couple of the layout that I teased last week.
They are part of the August newsletter at scrapsupply.com.

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Thanks for stopping by.�

Friday Brain Dump

***Warning: Long post with rambling subject matter ahead!***

-Whew.
It's Friday.
I am really looking forward to this weekend.
Why, you might ask?  Well, I'll tell you.
Two words:  Breaking Dawn

Yes, I'm a Twilight Series fanatic.  I can admit it.
Two-pages in to Twilight I was rolling my eyes wondering
why I didn't realize this was a Teen story.  15 hours later
I was in my car on the way to Barnes and Noble to buy
New Moon and Eclipse.  I will be in line at midnight
tonight to snag my copy of Breaking Dawn.
But I do think I will leave my prom dress at home.

-I have some exciting news to share today as well.
I was recently asked to join the team at
Method Playground!!  It is a wonderful, technique
based challenge blog.  I'm really looking forward
to working with everyone there.  I hope you will
stop by and play with us sometime.

-Yesterday was the most stressful day I have
had in a long time.  And, of course, it was my own fault.
I wasn't going to enter the Memory Makers Master Contest.
I had decided.  End of story.
Then, Tuesday I woke up at 5:30 am to go to the bathroom
and an idea for the "I Believe" layout that is part of the
contest hit me like a ton of bricks. 
It was an epiphany.  (E-pee-phany?) :o)
I wasn't even thinking about the contest, and there was the
idea.  So I made the layout.
And I liked it, so I decided to enter. 
On Tuesday.
The deadline was yesterday.  Thursday.
At 12:30 pm yesterday, my entry was finished.
It was in the box and taped up ready to go.
When i sat down to get the address off of the website,
I thought "hey, I'll look at the rules one more time. Just in case."
Well DUH!!! That was dumb.
REALLY DUMB.
When my Believe layout hit me Tuesday morning,
I just sat down and made it.
I had read the rules but it had been a while.
From what I remembered, there really weren't any rules.
Well if you have read the rules, you can probably guess,
I made my believe layout a 2-pager.
And when I sat down to get the address at 12:30 yesterday afternoon,
I realized it was supposed to be a one-page layout.
That was pretty much the only rule for any of the layouts,
and I didn't follow it.
I was so upset. I just sat their looking at the screen.
Then, I just addressed the dang thing and headed to the post office.
I sat in the parking lot at the post office banging my head
against the steering wheel.
If I sent it in, not only would I be instantly disqualified,
but I would also likely never see that layout again, and I REALLY liked it.
SO. . .
I drove back home, opened the box,
took the layout out and tried to make it into
a single page layout.
Fast!
Luckily, I had enough of all the products that I used
to get it in the ballpark. Same photos (smaller), same journaling
It looks sort of the same.
Kris liked the 2-pager lots better but what can you do?
The good news is that I won't get disqualified for THAT reason, anyway.
I think it was 10 minutes until closing when I raced into the post office.
Idiot!
Idiot!
Idiot!
So I have to win now, right? It is too good of a story.
There are always good winners stories, aren't there?

-Today is August 1st.
Do you know what that means?
(besides the release of Breaking Dawn.  Have I mentioned that I'm a fan?)
Today is newsletter day at Scrapsupply.com!
Here are some teasers for you.
You'll have to read the newsletter if you want to see the rest of them today.

 

I hope you all have a great weekend.
And may Edward just bite her already!