PageMaps card challenge

So PageMaps is having two challenges. One is a card challenge, and one is a layout challenge. I'm hoping to do my layout challenge this evening, or maybe tomorrow, but I did do the card one today. (There are also other challenges, now and again, which you can view here.)

Anyway, here is my card entry:

I really enjoyed making this card. It encouraged me to use a couple of things I've purchased in the past month and a half, and things I've received as RAKs, or Secret Santa gifts (flourishes! woo!), etc.

My list of items, for those interested, and of those things for which I know the origin are:
Offray ribbon - that almost sea green color
Studio G grey pigment ink (it's a small square, 1.25"x1.25" or 1.5"x1.5")
Bazzill Blossom 2.5" Heidi
unknown flower
unknown jewel brad
Autumn Leaves Clear Stamps by Rhonna Farrer
Autumn Leaves Stampology Flourishes v2 by Rhonna Farrer
Déjà Views Fresh Print Banana Punch (That's the darker pink paper.)
white cardstock (straight from the Wal*Mart printer paper section)
Making Memories NW Addie DieCut Scallop (Which is the other paper, of course.)

I think that about sums it up. Thanks for looking!

Just a little blurb

This came out of my mouth today:

"You're such a freak! Er, I mean husband. I mean, I love you."

Seriously? Sometimes I wonder at my oddities. (So glad he loves me anyway. *grin*)

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A bonus: After I said that my stomach had just growled, our youngest, Paige, said, "My stomach's growling at Chase." :D:D

And another: Cat asked if Joel was still doing basketball, and he's not because he doesn't have time. Chase said something about Tai Chi, and I then suggested that we could have the kids teach us yoga. (In their P.E., which has four different "color rooms" of activities, they've done yoga before.) Joel said that they have yoga at home, in the mornings, and Cat said, "We eat yoga??" At which I laughed and Joel responded, "Yeah. It's especially good with cereal." :D

Captcha or moderation?

Okay, I have an issue. It's not a very important one, IMO, but some bloggers and blog-readers out there seem to think it's a bigger issue than I do, and since I ran across it today I really wanted to explore it.

My issue:
Captcha (i.e. word verification) or comment moderation?

My thoughts:
I don't read a huge number of blogs, and when I do, word verification isn't an issue for me. I absolutely do not mind having to verify that I'm not a robot, and I certainly appreciate the reason people have Captcha on (it's also why I tend to use it). I've been spammed insanely before, and I cannot imagine having to moderate every single one of those comments, especially when a "robot" gets really busy. You might be surprised at how quickly those spam messages can add up once they have your number, so to speak.

I blog because I feel 1) like gabbing and 2) sharing my thoughts. You don't have to read my blog, and you certainly don't have to comment. While I love having comments, I don't need them to verify or justify my blogging; I do it for me, mostly. (Again, I do appreciate those who read my blog!! Please don't think I don't.) For me it's about the convenience of my own blogging rather than the readers, and that's probably primarily because I myself don't mind having to enter in Captcha. It's not because I don't treasure you, my readers.

But to give the comment moderation a try, I have it set to deliver notifications to me when someone comments, so that I can approve, or not, of the comments. One other reason I dislike comment moderation is that I feel like, when it's not a scrapbooking-related blog, that if my comments aren't liked by the blogger, they won't be posted. I can promise you that unless something is completely lewd and unacceptable, I will always allow the comments by people, even when I don't agree with what they say. I don't always believe that others will do the same. Know what I mean?

Anyway, there is it. You'll notice a new set up when you go to post (for those of you who have posted before), but you definitely won't see me supporting that new "Say No to Word Verification" movement, if you wish to call it that. I don't have a problem with people wanting to verify, and I certainly think that if a blog-reader really wants to post, then they'll be willing to go along with it. Sometimes it's not possible for the blogger to keep up with comments because their reader base is much too large to have to approve every single comment posted. (I obviously don't have that problem, and likely won't ever. *waves to her 2 followers and few other readers* *smoochies*)

But it's your call, bloggers. You do as you will.

Happy scrapping!

My Daily Five

While looking at Jen Lancaster's blog, well, the title of it, "Your List of Five", it reminded me of something I had intended to do starting at the beginning of this year (obviously I'm quite late beginning that). What is that, you ask? To endeavor to make a list of five positive things every day (or at the very least every week). These could be positive things about that day, my life, my family, that make me happy... whatever floated my boat, so long as I made five. The point was to help me focus more on the positive as opposed to the negative happenings, the latter of which seems to be so easy to do sometimes. Y'know what I mean?

And so... that leads me to my post today. I think beginning with today I'm going to start a 30-day list. When I'm done, I'll be able to scrap a "Positives" page. Sure, I'm not starting on the first day of a month, but I can still do 30 days, right? (And for some reason, this reminds me that I really, really need to post the winner of the subscriptions to Memory Makers in my Yahoo Groups. Yikes!!)

Anyway. My five things today are:
1. My niece, Kiely, was a very smiley baby today.
2. I was able to keep my temper when my oldest, Cat, got snotty with me in regards to doing her homework).
3. Several semi-neglected chores were done, a countertop was cleared and cleaned, and I completely emptied out a plastic tub thereby making my bedroom a little tidier. (Yay for de-cluttering!)
4. I did not let my pain rule my day, despite my desire to do.
5. My Secret Santa gifts (for one group) are all wrapped and ready to go.
**BONUS** My husband Joel was home for a little bit today, and even though he was supposed to be there just to look for his work badge, it was excellent being able to see him. *warm fuzzies!*

So... what are your five? What five positives happened in your life, or made you smile, today?

Here are a couple of parts of that page kit...

So I thought I'd just make a quick post and share a couple parts of that page kit I mentioned, the one that inspired the CD-card-ornaments from last year.

Couple of tags (above) and some deco squares (below).

Last Year's "Card"

Here's last year's "card". I made quite a bunch of these for friends. I wrote our holiday greeting in Sharpie on the back, and see? It doubles as an ornament. Pretty cool, huh? I just altered a CD, and in order to do the eyelet, I used my trusty (and then brand, spankin' new) Crop-A-Dile. Oh, the ease of punching through that thick plastic... I was ecstatic! A couple of years ago I fell in love with those holiday papers, and I hoarded them, waiting to use them on the "perfect" layout. Well, I had a couple of Santa Days in mind, but I never could bring myself to use them. Argh! So when I decided to use them for a swap, when I made a page kit, I decided that I might as well use the rest for giving to someone else, and here's the result. The tree was handmade by me, but is inspired by one of the patterened papers in that collection. (There's a little heart at the bottom of the tree like that.)

I'm extremely fond of these, and almost wish I could do more for this year! *laugh* Instead I'm going to (I think) make the ornaments I posted about right before this one. Or maybe I'll just do those for the kids' teachers... I haven't decided yet. (Some really cool person--Leah!!--gave me the idea to add the kids' photos to the balls, and that inspired me to think I could cut the photos into triangles and glue them to the ball. She also suggested hanging the year beneath the ball, which is just an awesome idea!) For family/friends, I'm going to be making accordion albums (like the Halloween ones I posted weeks ago), but they'll be of the us, but mostly of the kids, with some of their basic likes and dislikes. These will be similar to ones I did two years ago. I'm hoping to do these every year or two (hopefully the former!) that way our friends will have documentation of how the little bra-er, darlings are growing.

Holiday Handmade Ornaments

Thanks to being a subscriber to Memory Makers magazine's newsletter, I found this cool idea. I decided to do my own, and while it's not quite finished yet, there's someone who's interested in looking at a finished product, so... without further ado, my photos are below. The punch I used is somewhere around an inch, maybe an inch and a quarter. I also chose to put an eyelet, for use with ribbon, to hang it from the tree, as opposed to the suggested hole with wire/hook.

Be sure of two things: 1) You only make three "hats", which will leave you with five extra triangles; do not make them into a hat, and 2) you fold the triangles in the correct direction, so the backside folds forward (I'd originally did it the other way around, go figure!).


So... let me know what you think! I plan to paint the edges (to help cover where things didn't match up perfectly), and maybe glue in some brads at the connecting points. I dunno yet. :)

Gift for my family's annual gift exchange

I took the youngest into The Dollar Tree to purchase a few more goodies to put in the reward container (incentive for her to learn to wake up at night to potty), and I was trying to think of some ideas for what I could do this year for our family's Santa Day gift exchange. And I actually was inspired!

Wandering up the dishes/storage containers aisle, I saw plastic tortilla containers, intended to help keep the tortillas warm (and they containers are microwavable, which is a plus). In addition, they had a 2-pack of plastic black salsa dishes next to those. I grabbed one of each and happily made my way to the register, trying not to lose our 4-year old in the process. (She might've been unhappy with me if I had.)

The idea, and how it pertains to scrapbooking? Well, I'm going to add my recent purchases to a basket, and a gift card to Safeway (for purchase of ingredients needed for a Mexican dinner), and then... the scrapping part! I'm going to make a 6x6 album filled with salsa recipes. I thought about doing an assortment of Mexican dishes, but... the salsa dishes really inspired me, and since several members of my family love salsa, I thought they might find it fun to experiment. :)

Anyway, there it is. I just had to share. (And this way, it's written down PERMANENTLY--or as close to it as I can get--and then I absolutely cannot (but I might anyway) neglect to implement this idea. See... 'cause now that I've said it here, someone might be expecting me to actually post photos of it, and I really cannot (but I might anyway) let them down. Perfect logic.

Scrapbook Bingo Designs blog

Before I forget to mention... I'm a member of a wonderful Yahoo! Group called Scrapbook_Bingo. Just the other day (yesterday, in fact) the owner, Amanda (whose blog is Cricut Creations), started a design team and blog for our group! I made the first scrapping blog yesterday, since I was inspired to scrap a cute and simple little project similar to one I'd done last year for my kids' teachers. If you haven't visited, please do! We haven't done much yet, but we have great expectations, and ideas!, for it!

More BOM and what I've been doing

Goodness! Whatever have I been doing? Weeeellll, it was a busy weekend, what with visiting my older sister and staying the night at her house, and then coming back to do quite a bit of housework which included taking several loads of wet laundry to the laundromat. (UGH! Our dryer is STILL not fixed! It's been 2.5 weeks since I called them about it! *mutter*) But anyway...

I've been steadily working on my BOM. Previously I posted about my intro pages, but I've done another FOUR! Yup, that's right. Four in a week's time. I'm cruising along!

Favorite Season

The A to Z of Me

Halloween
(Fave Holiday)

Daily Routine

And of course I made one for each of my three kids, so total number of pages completed in the last week: 20. I tried to do the smaller pages slightly different than the larger ones, but only the Halloween and Intro pages are quite a bit different. And actually... I'm going to show the smaller Halloween one, because I really like what I did with the distressed grey paper (and also with the cu-ute skeleton head). Tell me what you think (sorry for the flash):

My Wordle BOM layouts

Here they are. My intro pages for my BOM (Books of Me). The one on the left is for myself, and will be a landscape 8.5x11" album. The three on the right are virtually identical pages (differing most only in the handwritten "titles", and not intentionally, and will be for the kids. So really I'm doing one album four different times. Since theirs will only be 8x8, I might frequently find that I'm doing their pages much different than my own. (The second page, which won't be the second in the book, is already in process; I'm just waiting for the ink to dry. Uh, you'll know what that's about as soon as I post that I've done the pages. Might not be until tomorrow, though. We'll have to see how my day goes today. So far, so good.)

Wordle

Weeellll. Talk about an effing kick ass site! And really? It's PERFECT for scrapping, if you ask me. And, you're reading this, so you obviously did. Right?
So, here it is. (With a HUGE thanks to Julia for sharing it!)
And this is mine:

You enter in the text you want (or you can do a blog that has tags), and it automatically creates it for you. Pretty cool, no? (Just in case there's any doubt after that sentence, Wordle gets credit for the image seen above, though I think I should take credit for the words, since they are mine.)

Anywho... you should try it out! :D


Oh, here's another of mine (in a couple of color schemes). I think I'm going to use one of them for the intro page of this BOM (Book Of Me) a group of mine is doing.



Update: I'm pretty annoyed that my printer won't print accurate colors. UGH! If I'd known that ahead of time, I'd probably have told my husband he'd damn well better pick out a different printer, 'cause that one's not going to cut the mustard! (FYI, it's a laser printer, and it replaced my old inkjet which was an "all-in-one" and worked just fine. Except that it didn't roll the paper through any more. Now I'm out a scanner, too, just for this thing that doesn't print accurate colors!! When I want that bright pink that's my background color, I don't want to get something that's obviously RED and not PINK. Y'know what I mean??
Okay. Venting done.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

So here we are, a smidge into October, and I get these reminders from a "Click To Give" website. Each click gives whichever organization/charity a few cents, and it costs you nothing (except a little time) to do so. I've been a little remiss in my clicking (sorry!!), but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. The website can be found here. (And while you are there you should consider going to the other tabs and clicking their "Click To Give" buttons, too. It can be painful if you're on dial-up, but I'm so very used to high speed that I'm very impatient. Um... and, well... I am an impatient person anyhow. (haha! I totally typoed that to be "inpatient". *snicker*)

And in honor of the month, while the only person I personally know who's suffered through breast cancer (and recently had a mastectomy) is my ex-step-grandmother, to whom I was never close, I made a page about a different cancer and survivor--and this one is definitely a "woman's" cancer.

So, this is my mother. She had pre-cancer cells (cervical) twice. I don't really remember feeling overly concerned, but I sometimes have a tendency to react to things like that, too. Anyway, she goes in for her regular check-ups, and things are still okay. The photo was taken by one of my kids, probably the eldest; she's sneaky like that. The patterned paper is from the "Once Upon A Time" Stack by Die Cuts With a View. I cut out one of the flowers and added it as an embellishment near the journaling (as I'm sure you can see).

Eeee!! We went to the concert last night, and I must say that I had a wonderful time! Despite having to stand for a few hours, I did amazingly well. The loudness bothered Joel's ears, so we stayed against the wall, which was actually just fine because at least then 1) we didn't get overheated (people were coming out of the mass of bodies sweating!) and 2) my shortness didn't (much) impede my viewing of the stage. A friend of ours showed up at the tail end of the first band's performance and since she hadn't eaten, we ended up heading out for most of the third band's performance. Then she and I (while both our husbands left for their place) waited in line (with a couple of her friends) to get autographs!! And there they are!! *enthusiastically points below*

So there are their delightful autographs!! I've never been all that excited about this sort of thing, but considering it was my very first signed-band concert...
I guess I was more excited than I thought! *grin*

The first band was called "Blue Ember" and I found them to be pretty good. After looking at their MySpace page (seen here), I was puzzled because the lead vocal for the night was a woman who is most obviously not listed on their page as a band member. Her name was Jackie, but beyond that, I know nothing about her. There was a very surprising moment when all of a sudden she burst into, well, "Screamo", for lack of a better term. There were two reasons this surprised me. 1) They hadn't had any singing like that up to that point and 2) usually women aren't the ones performing in that style. There, I said it. It wasn't overdone, and wasn't repeated, so I think I was able to handle it alright because of that. ("Screamo" isn't something I normally can listen to, to be honest.)

The second band's name is "Break As We Fall", and I quite liked most of their music, too. They had a guest vocal, and she has a good voice, and I think she did very well despite the fact that her style isn't one I normally would listen to. Their MySpace page is here, and their regular website is here. The trumpet really won me over, let me tell you!

Cloud 9 was the third band, and I'm a bit undecided about their music. I mean, to be honest, I only saw their first and last songs on account of leaving to get food for Jackie (not the lead vocal, but rather our friend) and a place for me to sit for a little while (my hips were starting to hurt a bit). Jackie wasn't fond, and I'm not sure that Joel was either, but I kind of liked their sound. I feel as if I should listen to a bit more before I make a decision. They came from NY (whereas the first two bands are local), and I wish I'd gotten in their lines to thank them for coming all this way to perform for us. I will say that I think they had a really good stage presence (what I saw). You can see them and their music here. One thing we did hear before we left was their pronunciation of our state. I commented on that and we chuckled a little when it was mispronounced a second time. Their blog about last night mentions it, and made me laugh out loud!! Oreg-IN not Oreg-ON.

It was presented by ASOSU, which is the student body for Oregon State University. The purpose behind the concert was to promote voting and voter registration, which certainly is a decent cause. (Despite the fact that I'm not one of those who pushes the "Vote Now!" movement, I can appreciate people making intelligent (and creative) presentations for people to get involved. And they're right--it's our futures and our choices, and most importantly, our voices.

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And in line with the whole voting thing, here is a video I thought was excellently executed. Perhaps some of you have seen it before; it's called "Don't Vote."And while I don't talk politics here, I did do a page using the most recent Virtual Crop on one of my Yahoo Groups. It was for the "no photos" challenge, I think. (Or maybe it was for the "blue as main color" challenge, which I think is more likely.)

I think I'll be adding some thoughts to the strips below, or perhaps on the blue above the strips, but I still have to think about what I really want to say, as I'm not really certain about it yet.


Sooo... that's it for now! I'll make a post later on tonight, but it will be on a different topic. (I'd meant to post it yesterday, but... that just didn't work out. Um... obviously.)

Well. My first scrappy blog post. I don't suppose the first one will actually be interesting, as I'm not sure what I could share at this time.

*think*

Hmm. How about an older layout that somewhat matches my
blog template choice?

A love for all things pirate. Yarrr!!

And to follow up, here's a recent layout of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, which happens on September 19th.


So there you go.

*Here's an interesting, related and yet unscrappy fact:
We're watching "Hook" right now. Kids' choice, but I just
love this movie!! It's my absolute favorite Peter Pan tale.

Update: I remembered to include the link to the official site for that "holiday".