A Little Idea for 2010

Alright, it’s December…nearly. Every year I make New Year Resolutions, but I’m not going to do it this year. Instead, I wonder if you’d like to follow something with me throughout 2010. I found this fabby idea on Nicole Finlayson’s blog. Scroll down a bit to her 2008 mini-journal to see all the months. I’m going to do one for 2010… want to play along?

Looks like she made the right side of the page a calendar (there are plenty of printable calendars on the Internet. I’ll have a poke around and post some links) and the put photos on the left side of photos of events or people significant to that month. This shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? If you want to play along, just post your photo of your month’s page and I’ll post the link here. Let’s say the deadline for the previous month is the 15th of each month. So the first deadline is 15 February for a January page. If you finish the year (i.e. 12 links) with me, maybe there will be some nice surprise at the end of the year (hint, hint).

On a more current note, I survived the foot surgery and am now convalescing with a very sweet husband to wait on me. He’s cooking, bringing me cups of coffee, doing laundry…. hey, I could get a bit spoiled by all this, except that it hurts like heck! Here’s a link to the surgery (scroll down to ‘bump removal’). I don’t want to post the details in case you’re squeamish or just plain not interested. Anyway, I’m not allowed to walk or drive for a few weeks, but then hope to be able in a few months to go on walks (and even all day shopping like Ally Pally!) again.

All my circle journals are finished now. Here’s the last entry I did:

This was an entry in the Poetry CJ and its theme was ‘Poetry of William Blake’. I chose his poem titled ‘Cradle Song’ and found a sweet little public domain picture of a sleeping baby that I couldn’t resist. I hope the CJ owner will like it.

Giving Thanks

Today in the U.S., families and friends will sit down to a table that is groaning under the weight of the dinner.

This holiday, proclaimed a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, was initiated by the Pilgrims who celebrated the harvest and offered thanksgiving to God for surviving another year. The “first” Thanksgiving dinner is generally considered the one in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621, but there were earlier celebrations in what is today Florida and Texas. No matter what the actual historical facts are, it has developed through the years as the one holiday that is celebrated by people of all religions and a time for families especially to sit together. It also used to be the least commercial of all holidays, although I fear that’s also changing.

Typical dinner is roast turkey with dressing, four or five vegetable dishes, mashed potatoes and gravy, bread rolls, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, pecan pie (in Texas at least), and lots, lots more. If you are unfortunate enough to not have a family or friend to share this feast, then you can get the same meal at any Salvation Army center, churches, and some restaurants even give free dinners to the homeless or those who cannot afford it. This, more than any other day of the year, is when Americans open their hearts and homes to everyone and celebrate the spirit of giving, sharing, and thankfulness.

It’s also a day to eat until you feel you’ll burst, then wait a bit to eat some more! By about 3pm you’ll see groups of people out walking – may be the ONLY time of the year you’ll see Americans out walking – in residential areas trying to ‘walk off’ their dinner. Until recently, all the shops were closed on this day, and the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. The sales are phenomenal, but now more and more are opening on Thanksgiving Day itself, which certainly dilutes the fun of anticipating the sales of the next day. This day was called “Black Friday” because of the headaches it caused the police and fire departments, medical and hospital workers, and retail staff. More traffic, more people, more chaos. Yet it’s the holiday most loved by the people. And most missed for those of us who are away from the U.S.!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my family and friends!

Camera Blues

I’m so frustrated with taking pictures of cards! I use, most of the time, a little Canon 960IS with 12 million pixels. It takes absolutely fabulous photos in sunlit situations or if I’m standing about 10 feet or more away from the subject, but for shooting close-ups of cards indoors it’s hopeless: anything shot close-up comes out blurry! I think it’s because it has an ‘image stablizer’ and when I use the flash, it somehow conflicts. I also use a Canon 350D occasionally and have the same problem, but when I turn off the Image Stabilizer, I can get fair shots.

Anyway, I’ve made several cards lately. First, two birthday cards:

 

The first one was my ‘own’ creation – if there is such a thing. You know, I live with my nose stuck into cardmaking magazines, looking at cardmakers’ blogs, galleries, and searching various other sites with sample cards. Those images live in the shadowy cobwebs of my mind and occasionally work their way into my creations. I don’t know if I saw it or dreamed it or just created it…. but if I see a particular image and deliberately set out to imitate it (I never copy exactly because I CAN’T!), then I give credit where credit is due. So if you see a card that looks like mine, tell me and I’ll give credit where credit is due.

The second card is one of these. I saw Ashley Newell’s beautiful card in the June 2009 issue of Cards (UK edition, Redline Publications) and it inspired me to do one similar (different colours, different stamps, different sentiment, slightly different placement). For this I used Stampin’ Up’s So Saffron, Chocolate Chip, and Whisper White cardstock, with SU stamps and ink.

And this one below is inspired by Charity Hassel’s card in the November 2009 issue of Cards magazine.

Again different materials: this one is from Basic Grey’s Marrakech collection. The sentiment is a stamp from American Crafts. All the embellishments are the ‘chipboard’ elements included in the collection package.

While I prefer scrapbooking because it’s more permanent and I don’t have to give my pages away (!), I do enjoy cardmaking almost as much. It’s a great way to try out new techniques, use new materials, and use up lots of scraps. The perfect compromise between scrapbooking and cardmaking, however, is the mini-album. It’s my absolute favourite thing to make…. whether for myself or for a gift. A mini-album takes a bit of organising, however, as a good one tells a story. The photos are usually related (a wedding, a holiday, an event) and follow a progression, so the journaling is important. It’s nice if you can coordinate the papers, colours, and design elements, too.

Whatever your interest, there’s some good way to express it with paper. I’m never happier than when stuck into a project in my craft room, cutting, pasting, creating……. how ‘bout you?

Blogs and Letter Writing

Do you remember (are you old enough?) ‘pen pals’? From the time I was old enough to write letters, I had pen pals. First there were the ones that our school found for us. I was in Spanish Club (for students learning Spanish) so had a pen pal from Mexico. We wrote for a few years then as life became busier for both of us, we kind of drifted away from writing. If we’d had email, we would probably still be writing! When I was a child, my father was in the military so we moved every 2-3 years, sometimes oftener. I was always leaving friends behind but sometimes we became pen pals and kept in touch for years. I still have childhood friends from 50 years ago that I hear from occasionally (and who read this blog -- Hi, Patti and Mary)!

As a young wife and mother, I used to get women’s magazines that had pen pal features: names and addresses of other women who were looking for pen pals. I know that some women had so many pen pals they had to devise some sort of indexing or other organisation techniques. I think at one time I had more than 15, but not for long! We used to exchange recipes, photos of children, and whatever struck us at the moment. It was a bit like blogging, actually…. but directed at one person. Sheesh… we didn’t even have copy machines (they cost thousands of dollars then), much less computers (hadn’t been invented yet), so every letter was handwritten! Those were the ‘Dark Ages’ – I can’t even conceive of doing that now.

Just before computers became ‘personal’ I joined some International Pen Pal clubs. These were commercial entities who sent a list of addresses for a fee (usually $5-$10 per year). I had pen pals from Poland, Spain, England, Netherlands, and more. One of them was a talented lute player from New York and we wrote for over a year, then once we each got a computer (high excitement at the time and $1500 for a computer that had a 10 mg hard drive --that's not a typo!) we both got email (AOL, the ONLY game in town and the big buzz then! The Internet was still only a fantasy) and switched to that for a couple more years. I suppose that eventually pen pals run out of things to say unless they meet at some point, and I never did meet any of mine. I did talk on the phone to the lute player and also to a wonderful woman in Georgia (the US state, not the country) who did a horoscope for me! Ah but eventually we all drifted on to other things.

Now we have blogs and I was thinking this morning that blogs are very much like writing to pen pals. We write about our interests and report on our daily activities, family life, etc. but with an important difference: we often never know who, if anyone, has read our blog or is even interested. They’re not as personal, but in some ways are even more enjoyable. When I wrote to Poland, for example, the letter sometimes took a month, then the person would have to think about it, then write back…another month in transit. With a blog, especially blogs that are updated regularly, information is fresh and almost instantaneous. We can post photos, documents (PDFs), and even post videos with sound! How fantastic is that?! I would have loved to hear my pen pals’ voices and seen videos of them.

So who’s reading this blog? C’mon, speak up and leave a comment with your own blog address. I’d really like to return the visit and know who you are. But even if you don’t I’m happy that you stopped in, even for a moment.

Little of This and That

Bella is  home now. She had her operation today, along with microchipping and a tooth extraction, so she’s a bit groggy, grumpy, and weird. Who wouldn’t be?! She is walking around a bit and ate a little supper (we only gave her about 1/3 her usual portion, per the vet’s instructions). Poor little mite. She can’t figure out what happened!

I’m taking Shimelle’s online course, ‘Blogging for Scrapbookers’. Unfortunately I haven’t really had time to delve into it, but so far I’m very impressed. We get pdf files (called ‘prompts’ but they’re really lessons of 3-5 pages) each day with a lot of information, some prompts for activities, and more. If you’re interested, you can still join and just get the past prompts from the archive. When you join the course, you are given access to a private forum where all the course participants can get questions answered, tout their blogs, or just chat. The course was not expensive and you get a lot of info for your money.

I really love reading blogs and – when I can spare the time – I love to just go blopping (blog hopping) for a couple of hours. Scrapbookers and cardmakers must be among the most generous folks around: they’re always showing their creations, sharing tips, providing tutorials for how to do something, and taking the time to answer questions. I’ve got my favourite blogs in categories: scrapbooking, cardmaking, art journals, cooking, writing, and inspirational. The rest go in miscellaneous.

So here are a couple questions: What kind of impact have blogs had on you? I mean any kind of blogs: from President Obama to the Dalai Lama to your favourite scrapbookers! What makes a good blog? If you have a blog, what do you like about it? How do you use it (tutorials, keeping family updated, etc.)? Well, that’s more than a couple questions but I’d love to hear from you.

Another thing I’m curious about: how many of you bloggers also keep diaries or daily journals? I’ve kept a journal most all of my life and it’s great fun to go back a few years and read through them. There surely must be some kind of correlation between blogging and journaling.

Friday the 13th and other horrors

Who’s afraid of Friday the 13th (day of doom)? Of walking under a ladder (bad luck)? Stepping on a crack (and break your mother’s back)? Nah, not me either. Besides walking under ladders is just carelessness, right? Why is it we love being scared? I haven’t read them yet, but the buzz on everyone’s lips is about the Twilight books and movie… vampires every where you look. Today on BBC, they reviewed a new film, ‘Paranormal Activity’ that cost US$ 15,000 to make and has already grossed over US$100 million!!!! It’s supposedly so scary that Steven Spielberg turned it off (he had an advance copy for reviewing and was watching it at night and alone) to wait for the light of the next day. Our BBC presenter said she had to quit watching it –- period --  35 minutes into the film. And how big is Halloween now, mainly for adults?? The big film being released this weekend is ‘2012’ – about the end of the world and apparently with mind-blowing special effects. Oooh, whatever happened to ‘happy’ or ‘heart-warming’, not heart-stopping?

Well, onto other things. Bella is going for her operation (spaying) on Monday and I am really nervous about it. She seems like such a delicate little soul, so I’m worried even more about her than my own surgery in two weeks! My surgery (which is NOT spaying!) is on my foot where the surgeon will cut away a chunk of calcification on my heel and achilles tendon. Bella should be less neurotic after her surgery, they say. I certainly hope so. As for me, I just want to be able to walk normally after mine!

But now I ask you, does THIS look like a neurotic dog?

Her favourite place to sleep…on top of her dad!

Monday blahs

Mondays are just always boring…. it’s back to housework, back to work for my husband, back to whatever. I miss working sometimes (not very often!) just because it gives a person some structure or routine and, when I used to be a technical writer in Texas, something to look forward to on Monday mornings. We’d all catch up on what everyone had done on the weekend, have our team meetings to decide what we’ll do for the week, and just generally get the feeling of moving forward. Oh well.

Yesterday I made a Get Well card for my mother. She had a serious fall a few days ago and broke some bones so she’s in the hospital and today is moving to a rehab center where she’ll spend possibly the next six weeks, having physical therapy, etc. I’ve talked to her every day and she seems to be coping fairly well, but desperately needs cheering up. I wanted to go for a visit but my sister insists there’s no need. I’m having a foot operation in a few weeks and I’ve been waiting for this for two years!! If I cancel it, no telling when I’d get it rescheduled.

For this very simple card, I used My Mind’s Eye Bloom & Grow patterned paper and SU cardstock (Mellow Moss). The flower was also from the My Mind’s Eye range but the leaves were from SU (Best Wishes and More set), and the sentiment is also from SU. The button and ribbon are just stray ones I had on hand – and the ribbon matches the colours in the paper but in the photo it looks completely different!

I found some really lovely card ideas this weekend and want to try a couple this week. Have you seen Cards magazine? It’s published by the same group that publishes Scrapbook Trends in both the US (Northridge Media) and UK (Red Line Publications). I used to salivate over Take Ten, Stampers Sampler, and the other Stampington publications, but they’re all very same-y to me now. Cards magazine, however, is really fresh and inspiring. When I find a card designer I really like in the magazine, I look at her blog online and get even more ideas! I’ve now started printing the images (about 6 to a page, catalogue style) and keeping them in a ring-binder for just flipping through and getting inspiration when I’m in the mood to try something different. So much amazing talent out there!