Hodge Podge of Crafties...

I know, I know, I have loads of school stuff to be doing.  Let's not talk about that, because honestly sitting here knowing that my classroom isn't finished, that I have no key to get into the building, and that I just NOW got my new school email account up and running (which had emails in it since May, mind you, so I'm just a little behind here!), I'm pretty stressed out about the new school year.  I'm trying to take it a day at a time, a project at a time....but it's freaking me out!  I've worked some on my Writer's notebook, but it's not beautiful enough to post anything on here yet (will it ever be beautiful? probably not, but it WILL be finished...I'm halfway through, so that counts for something, right?), and instead of spending all my time working on school, I thought I'd take a little more time off and do some scrapbooking - crafts are good for the soul, yes?  (So is shopping, but let's not suggest that  I go do that!!!)

Here is a page I just finished about our wedding party. I had this idea that I wanted a long, sort of panoramic shot of the wedding party in the middle that was surrounded by single shots of them individually and with us.  I like how it turned out, but after the fact I thought it may have been more fun to use shots of us in college with them and then include little captions about them as individuals - like their favorite beer or a funny memory of them.  Anyways, there's always time to add that in the form of another page, right?

I hand-drew the frame around the big picture and purposely made it wavy, not only because I can't draw a straight line to save my life, but because I like how things look when they have squiggly lines all overlapped like that.  Then I added the brackets, because brackets are so "in" right now.  I printed out the title and the names and pasted them where they belonged.  Super simple, but I really like it.

 Here's a close up picture so you can admire my squiggly hand-drawn border....

Apparently I'm going through a "white background" phase, because here is another page I did recently.  It took a lot more time and thought than the previous layout, and I'm pretty sure it's just because it was a very specific picture I was using.  It's a page about losing my own dad very young and not having him around for the wedding, but being blessed with the best father-in-law in the world.  I think really highly of John, so I needed this layout to be perfect.  (My type-A personality coming out in full force.)

I normally dont use such tiny pictures when they are the only photo on a layout, but in this case, I did for two reasons:  I already had the 4x6 print, so it was totally free to use, and I thought the smaller picture lent itself to the closeness of the hug and the feeling I was trying to express in the journal.

"How's the kitchen coming?" you may ask.  Well, here is the test run for the chalkboard that will soon be taking the place of my boring all white cabinets.  John stopped by late last week and we did a few tests and then just threw the paint up there, so the job is pretty sloppy and the color isn't right (I promised Jonathan no more green in the house.....) but I love it so far.  It's a handy place to write quick lists and notes, and Ollie was super excited that maybe she could ALSO write on it some day.  Some day, baby.  Some day.

PEACHES!!!  Deb went up to Dave's Supermarket in Fairbury some time last week and got us loads of peaches since we couldn't financially swing a trip to Southern IL to get our own.  Needless to say, my whole house smells pretty great (much like heaven, I think!), and I've been spending a lot of free time peeling, slicing, and freezing these beauties so I can still eat my most favorite fruit even in the dregs of winter.  YAY!

 Yet another home project.....this time made out of a cereal box! I had pinned this a loong time ago on Pinterest and actually forgot about it, but I came across it last week some time and realized I had the perfect spot for it!  THis is the side of my scrapbook table that John promised we could attach shelves to (hasn't happened yet, but oh well!).  I had a small drawer thing that was supposed to be in Ollie's room under it, but it wasn't being well utilized and all of the papers were piling up everywhere.  So I cut a cereal box in half (the back is a little higher than the front) and covered it in a picture that I'd already had printed that used to hang in that very spot!  Anyway, it was super easy, amazingly cheap, and solved my problem!  I made 2 more as well and hung them lower to stash drawing paper for the kids and colored pencils that they can grab easily.  It made the side of the desk look way nicer than before, and all for ZERO dollars!!!  I'm finding places to add more of these around the house - like one for the dry erase boards and markers, maybe one for coupons....the possibilities are endless!  and when they get too junky, I'll just toss them and build a new one!

I wonder if I should work on writing shorter blog posts that focus on ONE thing instead of a million....but guess what, that's how my brain works! 50,000 different things all happening at once!  Now back to the school stuff.......EEEEEKKKK!!!!

And the #1 Reason I'm Glad We Don't Live in an Apartment Building is.....

....because sometimes bedtime sounds like a death march, and any self-respecting person should probably want to call DCFS.

But let's face it, as parents, we've all had to grin and bear it while our children scream at the tops of their lungs, usually the same phrase over and over again, until everyone's ears are bleeding.  Today we suffered through two "I DONT WANT TO GO TO BED" blow outs, one at nap time (which wasn't worth the battle) and one at bedtime (which obviously I won....by the grace of God...), and thus I'm sitting here with some liquid relaxation reflecting upon my day.

First things first:  a huge round of applause to the fine people at Yellow Tail Winery for putting their wine in screw top bottles, because getting a cork out of a bottle was NOT on my list of things to do tonight.

Excitement of the day: two finished craft projects, a trip to the park, and a successful video chat with Nonnie (the kids kind of turn into crazy people when the camera turns on, but we made it work somehow!).

I finished Ollie's birthday banner today!  Here are some pics:

 I made the triangle template in Word and added the colors there, which allowed me to make some fun patterns without wasting my hard earned scrapbook paper.  In retrospect I probably could have formatted the white circle and letters onto the banner template as well, but I didn't think of that until just now.  Doh.

 Oh well, it was fun using the Cricut with Charlie to cut the 2" circles out of white cardstock - he was fascinated by the moving parts on the machine!  Then I cut the letters out as well (1 1/2" size), and Ollie got to help glue the circles and letters down, so she was part of the magic too.

 The first and last triangle on the banner has a small picture of the My Little Pony group on it, so if the color scheme works for next year I could always reuse it by gluing a new picture over it.  I say this now, but of course I'll probably make a new one next year anyway.  I punched little holes in the corners and attached them with curly ribbon I bought at Dollar Tree for - you guessed it - $1.  It worked really well, and I like it uncurled best (I tried it both ways, and even Ollie agreed on straight being better.)

I also have some 5" circle cut outs to glue together and then hang from the tree outside when we get ready for the party, which of course isn't until August 31, but I'm one of those plan ahead kind of girls, so here we are!  I may even start on the Superhero banner for Charlie's party tonight if I can't get motivated about school stuff!

My second craft victory today is my "Becoming a Bride" layout for my wedding album.  Honestly, it turned out exactly how I pictured it would and so I'm not sure why I had such a hard time finishing it, other than I didn't know what I wanted to write on the page or how to make the perfect title for it.  I'm not much of a perfectionist (just as my father in law about all the hideous cakes he's gotten for his Cake of the Month Club gift Ollie and I gave him at Christmas!), but when it comes to scrapbooking, I really become OCD about everything being perfect.  Maybe I don't want people to see things 60 years from now and think I did shoddy work!  Anyway, here are pics of the finished layout:

I was inspired by this original page that was in my Scrapbooks, Etc magazine (that used to come straight to my door until Better Homes and Gardens decided they didn't want to print it anymore.....but I'm not bitter or anything...), and just sort of tweaked it a bit to fit my own needs.  I hand-cut the title out after formatting it as a Word Art in Word.  (I really like Word, can you tell?)  I didn't use my Cricut because I'm cheap and only have one cartridge that doesn't cut pretty swirly fonts that I needed.

 I went over the title with glitter, because everything is better with glitter.

 I think the scalloped/lace trim adds some interest to the page without overwhelming all the other things I have going on...like the glitter!

This is some sort of fuzzy snowflake self-adhesive trim that my dear scrapping buddy Sam donated to me several years ago before she moved away, and I was stoked to finally use it!  I really loved how it looked over the aqua glitter.

So there are my two craft victories for tonight.  On the horizon.....

• As God is my witness, I will force myself to work on this writer's notebook!
• Homemade sour cream....it's gonna be big.
• Maybe the start of a new wedding album page...we'll just have to see...