OMG! OMG! ("G" being "gosh") ...

I actually got up into the craft loft tonight and FINISHED A PROJECT!! Not only that, I also personalized a card I had already made to use for my Mother's birthday tomorrow.

Maybe I should have warned you. Try not to hyperventilate. Nice, deeeeeep cleansing breaths ... lol

Well, I have been TOTALLY unmotivated, as you well know, to do anything remotely crafty for the last few months. Even for Mother's Day I just sorta whipped something out that involved no stamping whatsoever. (Well, except for the sentiments -- it was a double pocket card with tags.) Poor Bjorn and my dad had to just get store bought cards. Yes, I humbled myself and got STORE BOUGHT. I was so ashamed!

But I knew I couldn't let Mom's birthday pass without a home-made card. Regardless of how super sweet my Mom is, I know she would feel cheated with just a store-bought. Okay, maybe she'd still love me, but she deserves better. (Bjorn and Daddy do, too, but you know how it is with dads ... they have lower expectations, lol.) But I have been SO TIRED the last few days, and it's been SO FREAKIN' HOT that, even with the A/C on, it's still too warm in the loft.

Nevertheless, I trudged up there tonight to make Mom a card. And as I was putting away the small stack of things I've ordered, bought, etc. over the last few months and haven't used yet, I came across a little bag. It contained a Stampin' Up! Definitely Decorative (or whatever) catalog, my receipt from my demo's Open House a couple of weeks ago ... and TWO cards I'd made at the Open House!! Joy of joys!! All I needed to do was personalize one of them and Mom's card would be made! So here is the one I chose ... the personalization is the sentiment:


Everything is Stampin' Up!, but I couldn't tell you the name of the image set we used, since I don't own it and the catalog is waaaaaay over in the other room. The blue is one of the new In Color colors. I'm not up on the names of them this year. Eventually I will be, but not at the moment. I only ordered two of the six new In Color pads from Kathy because I just can't afford to do all six at once, like I did last year. I wanted to get paper and markers, too (MARKERS, mates! in the In Color colors!!), but decided to buy a stamp set instead, so I'll have to make the investment in all that stuff little-by-little.

While I was up there, I decided to finish the layout I started in, like, May or something. It has been staring me in the face all these weeks, so it was time to finish it off and move on!

Here it is:

I'm honestly too tired to try to remember all the supplies I used. I know there was SU cardstock and K&Co designer paper. I used the Cricut "Home Decor" cartridge (the old one, not the new one that has come out with the same name) and a couple of font cartridges. I used an EK Success border punch. I don't remember what company the flowers are by, and as for the glassy looking brads in the small flowers, those were something I received as blog candy. Can't remember the buttons' manufacturer ... Foof-a-la, maybe? I do know the ink and stamp I used (on the smaller flowers) was SU.

Anyway ... yes, I am a silly goon where my nieces and nephews are concerned. I was that way with my own kid when he was little. Heck, I'm that way with just about any little kid! They think it's fun, and that makes me happy.

It also makes me wildly happy that I SCRAPPED!!! It was FUN!! I hope to be doing it again!! Wooooooooot!!

*AHEM* Anyway, hopefully I'll have more fun stuff to show off in the NEAR future! But for now, I'm just happy I did this much!

Blessings!

Please Stand By ...

This is an alert to let you know that I am experience a temporary creativity malfunction and will be back on the air as soon as the problem is fixed. I apologize for any inconvenience, despair and inner turmoil this may have caused/be causing.

Please stand by, as the malfunction is expected to be corrected shortly.

(Please, God.)

Way cool old photos

So, I just feel like blogging even though I haven't been in the loft (other than to put things in it) for what feels like eons.

I have a nasty migraine tonight. Bjorn's parents are coming tomorrow. Somehow the combination figures. The migraine is hormone-related, so it has nothing to do with stress. Since we started with the housekeeping service, that stress has blissfully been relieved. Sure, we still had things to do to get things ready for them, but none of that running around like a madwoman, barking orders at everybody for two days straight and nearly killing myself to get the house mother-in-law ready.

But I marvel at the consistency with which I have some kind of health issue whenever I'm around them. I actually called my mother this morning and said, "Please pray that I don't end up having to go to the hospital while they're here!!" It has become a joke (that I don't like) about my hospital visits that seem to happen around them. Only two out of three, though! As far as ambulances are concerned, anyway. Yeesh.

I've been spending (way too much) time lately doing the genealogy thing. I've gotten to the point where there's really just not a whole lot more I can do online, but I keep trying. And it's frustrating. But since I've hit the black hole of lack-of-scrap-inspiration, I don't know what else to spend my time on. I have managed to find some good stuff by sheer perseverance, but I really wish I could just get in the car and drive to some of these places and get the records I want from the courthouses, etc. Of course, I could just drive to downtown Austin and go to the General Land Office, the library, and the other records-holding places down there for a start, and I don't even do that. I am so lazy!! The thing is, so many of my more recent ancestors were right here in Texas, and some of them in counties not so far from mine, so it would be a nice little day trip for some, a couple of days for the others (I was gonna say weekend, but the courthouses aren't open on weekends). A couple are pretty far off in West Texas.

My folks have given me some of their old photos to scan, with the intention that I will eventually get all of them digitized. I find I really enjoy scanning the old-old ones, but the newer ones (1940s and 1950s) don't have as much "cool factor" to them, because they're so much more recent. And because there are jillions of those and I don't think I'll ever get through with them, and this is just the tip of the iceberg!

I love the old photos, though. Take a look at some of them:

Remember my grandmother who passed away last year? That's her on the right, in about 1913 or so. The other two babies are her cousins. I love this picture, because it floors me that my incredibly capable, wise grandmother was ever a baby! lol


And this is her in 1929 when she was a teenager. Quite the flapper queen! (Well, a wannabe -- she was way too much of a good girl to be a REAL flapper!)


The dude (and I mean that in the old sense of the word) on the right with the banjo is my grandfather, who later married her. He was ten years older than she was! Boy, do I love them!!!


This is my daddy when he was three years old. Li'l Texas cowboy dude! Hee!


And my dad's mother (in the middle) with two of her sisters when she was five years old. Aren't they cute in those old-timey clothes?

I guess I can save SOME photos for another time (don't worry, there are plenty of them!)

It's interesting to find out about your ancestors. We were totally on the WRONG side of both the Irish issue (we were the usurping protestants), and of the Civil War (Confederates all). But at least we got it right in the Revolutionary War (colonials, rebels, whatever you wanna call us, we were fighting for independence), and we done good by Texas!! I think the Texas thing just makes up for all the wrong stuff. That whole Texas heritage is really the part I'm most proud of.

I ran across the fragmented memoirs of my (I think) 4-greats grandmother as I was leafing through the family history notebook I'd put together a couple of years ago. There is some amazing stuff in there! I'll have to post some of that at a future time. She was a little girl of 12 when the whole Alamo/Goliad/San Jacinto stuff (Texas won her independence at the Battle of San Jacinto) was being played out, and she knew several of the people who were instrumental in the whole birth of Texas. She even watched the Battle of San Jacinto with her family from a thicket! But that's a story for another day.

I really have to go now -- can't keep this up with the headache I've got. On to bed (where I get to lay down in a dark, quiet room with no distractions and REALLY think about how much it hurts!), and then tomorrow Bjorn's parents arrive!

Have a wonderful, safe Memorial Day weekend if you're here in the United States. And all the rest of you, have a wonderful safe weekend, too!

Remembering the Alamo ;-)
Stacy

Explanation ... apology ... whatever

Okay, I feel like I owe my readers an explanation or apology or something for not being faithful lately. So, I apologize, and here's my (probably lame) explanation:

1) I am in serious Craft Slump mode. At the moment I'm not the least bit interested in setting foot in my craft loft. It's not so much a loss of mojo as a loss of interest. I actually found myself thinking the other day that I might just sell all that scrapbooking stuff and go back to sticking photos in albums, or maybe just have everything printed out in Kodak/Snapfish/whatever photo books (this was after doing one for my MIL for Mother's Day). It's SO easy, it looks so cool, and ... I don't know. I'm just not "there" with paper crafting right now. I hope this is just a phase!

2) I have been spending (way too much) time doing family research. It's like an addiction, it kinda feeds into my collector's mentality. I'm collecting ancestors! lol No, really what I'm trying to do is collect information about my ancestors. All I can get. I don't know if it's sad and pathetic to do that or if it's a valuable family service. Yesterday I received an obituary I had ordered for my grandmother's maternal grandmother. She had committed suicide after being sent to what we would now call a "state hospital," but what back then was lovingly and tactfully called a Hospital for the Insane. In this very tasteful and loving tribute to her, they talked about her going bonkers (not using that term, of course), about her being "convicted" of being insane, and then proceeded to give details of how she had hung herself in her "cell". It was horrible and depressing and I really wish I hadn't read it! I wasn't aware that having emotional problems was a crime. And based on what my mother told me about her (the g-g-g grandmother's) situation, her husband drove her to it. What made her "insane" was that she was suicidal in the first place. (And probably OCD -- her husband beat their children, which was often considered "normal" in those days, but not to her!) So they ship her off to a "Hospital for the Insane" where she sank into even more despair and hung herself. Apparently her husband spent the rest of his life trying to apologize and make amends to his children for his behavior and her death. Some forgave him, some didn't. So ... among all the wonderful stories of loving, adored farmers, ministers, store-owners, etc., comes this one. Is it something I want to preserve? I'm certainly not going to let Aidan know about it ... he doesn't need that "legacy" hanging over his head if he ever gets that depressed. Thorns among the roses, I guess.

I'm not even sure why I told YOU this, except that I'm a writer and I have a penchant for the dramatic.

Anyway, in addition to info gathering, I've been photo scanning (the old family photos). That in itself is going to take awhile.

So ... I haven't gone away, but I'm kinda on a crafting "sabbatical" -- unintended, but there ya go. I did make my mother's Mother's Day card (haven't scanned it). I've also got an unfinished layout on the craft desk waiting to be completed. And I did a digi layout for the SHINE group, but I'm going to have to tweak it a bit before I post it here.

I'm also going to close out the SHINE group, or transfer ownership to someone else. It was going along fine for awhile, but I can't get any participation at all now. I don't know where everyone has gone, or why, and I know people get busy, but I think my challenges/projects are good and worth pursuing, so I'm not sure what's up. I don't want to keep putting time and effort into it if no one else is going to participate but me, so ... it's time to move on. Someone also started a Christian paper crafting social network (very much like Paper Craft Planet, only Christian-focused), which may have drained off some of my participation. So, I'll just point people there and go on with life.

Okay, that's all for now. I promise I'll be back, just maybe not as frequently as I have been. And then I'll get through this phase and I'll be back as regularly as ever. That's just how I (and other ADHD people) function.

Grace and peace until next time!

No liability ...

I just want y'all to know that I hold no liability if you fall out of your chair and injure yourself to see that I have actually blogged again! And I can't believe it's only been two weeks since my last post. It feels like at least a month.

I FINALLY got a scrapbook page done. A ... page. Of course, I'm working on another one now, so that makes me feel a little better. But here, without wasting too much of your time, is the finished one:



This is the epitome of my husband, right here in these photos. He cannot just go somewhere and relax. He's always got to be thinking, doing, learning, fidgeting. We were at the beach in San Diego over Thanksgiving and went out to just relax, go for a stroll, etc. He sees a weathered board. Now, a lot of people would ignore the weathered board. Some people would think it was interesting as a sort-of "flotsam" sort of thing. But my husband looks at the weathered board and the waves washing over it and thinks: SCIENCE!! So he picks up the weathered board and sticks it vertically into the sand so he can watch -- no, STUDY -- the physics of the waves as they swirl around the board. And not just in one place. He has to try it out in different places along the beach, in different flows of water.

So, am I making fun of him? Absolutely not! Although this personality trait drives me crazy sometimes, I think it's pretty neat. It's one of the reasons I married him, actually. He never can stop learning. "Education" is all around Bjorn, all the time. It's amazing. Just like him.

Wow, that journaling was better than what I put on the page! Maybe I'll print it out and put it on the back or something ...

So, let's see if I can remember the ingredients (it took me two weeks to finish this ... not constant working, but one day to put the papers together, stick the photos on and do the journaling, another day to print out the title and adhere it, and a third day to do the twine thing and the writing around the edge. Spread out over two weeks):
Paper -- K&Co; little scrap of SU for the journaling
Teal twine -- Club Scrap
Hemp twine -- some hardware store or other
Lacing brads -- no clue. I took them out of the packaging, poured them into a little drawer and that was the end of any credit to the company.
Marker -- SU

Yeah, so why that took two weeks ...?
Well, I've been hangin' with the ancestors, chasing tornadoes vicariously through the more-exciting lives of other people, having migraines, dealing with weird hormones, nursing a sick kid (no, not swine flu, this was before all that), going to the kid's play two days in a row -- they were TOTALLY AWESOME, BTW, and, well, I don't know what else. Just doing whatever. I had a scrapping mojo crisis, to be honest, and not only did I not want to get into the craft loft, I had a horrible "purpose crisis" and lost the plot of scrapbooking for a few days, like, why do I do this, it doesn't make sense, it's pointless, etc. Thank God (literally) I got over that!

Great news -- Bjorn finally has allowed me to get housecleaning service!!!! Had the housecleaners for the first time almost two weeks ago, it was expensive (because the first time they charge by the hour), but it was so AMAZING to have the house clean again! I felt like royalty! And even though Bjorn had to take a 20% pay cut at work (all the exec-level employees did, and the rest had to take a 10% cut), he's still allowing me to keep the service, at least for now. We have all been doing a fantastic job of keeping things nice, so when the housecleaners come back on Monday, they won't have to work so hard and maybe can get to a couple of things they didn't manage to do last time (minor stuff). Oh, the bliss! And it has actually made me want to do some of the stuff I used to hate, like putting away clean clothes (instead of just folding them and letting them pile up on the dryer), folding towels (okay, I confess I make the guys do that), keeping the kitchen clean (as in, no one will want to call the health department), etc. It's just amazing. I am so blessed. Thank You, Lord!!

We really do need the service, because I'm having major sacro-iliac joint problems in my lower back, which make it very hard to do certain things (like mop), and Bjorn, poor guy, was just diagnosed with degenerative disks in his neck, and bone spurs that are growing toward the INSIDE of his vertebrae, which is not a good thing. So he can't do a whole lot of physical stuff, either. Please pray for him. He's really upset about the diagnosis -- but he hasn't seen a neurologist or spine doc yet, just his chiro, so we don't know really what the prognosis is. He may be jumping wildly to conclusions about the degenerating quality of his life.

Well, Aidan is ready for bed, so I need to go. I hope to have another LO and blog entry for you soon ... until then, it's tornadoes (by proxy -- I don't want any near here!) and ancestors.

Cheers!

One week later ...

Sorry I haven't been posting lately! Don't know if I've been busy or lazy, but the result is the same, so I apologize.

Got caught up in virtual storm chasing (via TornadoVideos.net) and genealogy and who knows what all else, so I haven't been incredibly busy in the loft, but I do have a few more things to show off. Here are the last of the Easter pages:




Ingredients for both are pretty much the same -- We R Memory Keepers and K&Co papers, plus some misc. stuff. On the Easter '97 one, I was over at Elizabeth's house and had only one sheet of the WRMK DP, but needed both sides at once! So I cut out the yellow-gridded rectangle and flipped it over to put where I needed it, but there were some gaps that showed between it and the striped bits, so I had to get creative, since I wasn't at home and didn't have all my usual "stuff". I had taken my Cricut over there, so I cut out a bunch of caterpillars to put across the top (so, yeah, they don't have anything to do with Easter, but you do find them in yards), and I had my SU spiral punch along, so I did that one for a border across the bottom. I didn't manage to finish the page at Elizabeth's, though, so when I worked on it again at home, I found some SU green wide grosgrain ribbon that worked great down the vertical gap. Then I just cut out the letters and numbers with my Cricut, added a few extra touches, and it was done! (Love this simple scrapping philosophy!)

For some odd reason we don't have any egg hunt pictures from '98 or '99, so the next (and last) set was from 2000. I used the same line of papers, to keep things tied together. At first I thought the layout ended up TOO simple, but I grew to like it. I was going off a Page Maps sketch (gosh, I love Page Maps!), and they had flowers where I put the buttons. Being a boy page, I didn't want to use flowers (I know some people do, but I just can't go there), and I tried all kinds of things there -- big brads (don't try to use rub-ons on Making Memories' colored brads, they don't take), smaller brads in larger numbers ... finally settled on the buttons. I wanted some texture, so I think they served the purpose. I also really like the "stitched" border punch I got the other day from EK Success. It's not too girly or frufy for boy layouts, and I like the embossed stitching effect.

Here was my layout for the Faithbooking project week before last:

I meant to post this on Good Friday, but the day got away from me. It's digi-scrapped. I found it was actually a bit difficult to do this layout -- I had to really slow down and meditate for awhile on what the Cross really means, not just to me, but to mankind in general. I get so jaded to the story, having heard it all my life, but it is absolutely the most important, amazing love story ever! That Jesus would willingly go to the cross to die for my sins ... because He loves me! (He loves each and every one of us that much.) Blows me out of the water.

So, anyway, that gets me caught up on my scrapbooking. I still have a couple of cards to show, but I'll save that for another day (soon!).

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Another Easter page!

Yes! The fun never ends! Here is the page for Aidan's 3rd Easter, which, by now, was in Arizona. Where it's, like 102 degrees in April already. (How did I ever survive that place???)


Wasn't he gosh-darn cute? Again, I ask, why do they grow up so fast? And yet, I love the age he is now, too. (Mostly) Except back then I could pick him up and cuddle him and he didn't mind, and I didn't have college and him leaving home looming on the horizon. Then it was kindergarten that was looming. Boy, I didn't know how good I had it! (Actually, I think I did.)

Ingredients:
DP: We Are Memory Keepers (or is that "We R Memory Keepers?"); K&Co.
CS: not sure -- poss. Club Scrap or SU
Punches: Fiskars (edge); EKSuccess (photo corners)
Journaling pen: I think it's Zig (would be the same as the SU black journaler)
Cricut cartridges: Base Camp (with "Charm" function on), Jasmine

Simple page, but I like the way it turned out. I think as busy as the paper and the photos were, any more embellies than I had would have just been too much.

I got a new Cricut cartridge today -- "Life's a Beach"!! I've been wanting it since I heard it was coming out, and I finally took the plunge (no pun intended) and ordered it last week. Tons of beach/ocean/nautical images, a sort of "tiki" font, even a whole set of beach-oriented titles! I'm thinking I'm gonna love this. I hope I'll use it alot. I thought I would use "A Walk in My Garden" a lot, but I've hardly cracked it open. I'll probably use that one more when I do more "girly" pages (about me, Mom, nieces, etc.)

Hey, speaking of the subject of my Easter layout (Aidan), he got home from school yesterday and announced (well, his dad did, who had picked him up) that he'd gotten a perfect score on the National Latin Exam! This makes two years in a row! Aidan claims he should have been given a "harder" test (i.e., a level harder), but I think he was just being humble. Anyway, only a tiny percentage of the kids who take this test nationwide (like 5% or fewer) get a perfect score, so I'm pretty proud of him! And this will definitely look good on that college-app resume (especially for someone who's going to major in linguistics!)

Ack! There's that "college" word again! ;-)

Well, my aunt is still in town, and we're invited over to dinner again (lovin' this free food!), so I'd better get going. I've only got one more finished Aidan Easter page to show you (until I make more, mwuhahahahaha), so I need to get up into the loft and get to scrappin' again!

Have a good 'un!