Saturday, October 29, 2011

I remember...

when I read books, like actual novels not articles about education...
when I had a job to go to every day...
when I wished for a weekday off, now I'd give anything to work a regular school day...
when Sunday afternoons were for action movies and scrapbooking in the living room...
when I had someone to chat with about my shows a.k.a 'Gossip Girl' & 'The Good Wife'...
when I got a regular paycheck...
when I could make a mess in my kitchen and not care if and when it got cleaned up...

The grass is always greener on the other side huh? It's been a frustrating week. Hoping for better next week.

xoxo
K

Friday, October 28, 2011

5 For Friday

1. Check this business out! That's me in #62.

2. I had a fudge disaster yesterday. I tried to make Scottish tablet and it did not go well. It all went south when I managed to knock the candy thermometer into the sugar/butter mixture while it was boiling. Like I said, disaster. I'm trying take 2 today.

3. I have been working on a number of camp projects. I'm trying to chronicle this past summer in this album I posted a while ago.

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They are all 6 by 8. I like the way it's shaping up so far. Here's a little sneak peek. I'll have more next week!

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4. Studio Calico released their November kits today. I snagged the December Daily kit. I do have a few extras to add to it but I figured that getting the kit eliminates all the work. I can just stick withe a simple formula with the kit. It will also be fun to see what others do with their DD kits.

5. We had a BUSY weekend coming up. Multiple Halloween parties means we get to debut our Halloween costume for 2011. It's a good one! ;) Also, we have an 85th birthday party and a baby christening. Seriously?! We're covering it all this weekend!

Hope you have a great one!

xoxo
K

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

We Have Great Friends

Leaving Ottawa was difficult. The city was lovely but our friends are probably what we miss the most. Any city is great if you have great friends to share it with.

These pictures were taken at Pam's birthday party in June. It was one of the last parties we went to with all of our friends.

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I used a small grouping of hipstagram photos again and some washi tape at the top and bottom to anchor the pictures.

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xoxo
K

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Goodbye Gilmour

Our first home was a great one. We lived on Gilmour St. in Ottawa for a long time-4 years. It was a great home on the second floor of a two-apartment house. It was large and had great natural lighting. I made many a scrapbooking page in that living room! I loved living there-with access to everything downtown and our friends nearby.

Now, as we look for a new home, I couldn't help but reminisce about our first home on Gilmour and so, on Friday night I dug out some more hipstamatic photos and made this layout chronicling our move from that apartment home to Newfoundland.

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I had a really hard time using this sassafras paper. It just wasn't working for me. Then I had this idea to group a bunch of little photos together and it seemed to come together seamlessly. A few drops of mist/paint on the page gave it a little more dimension and made for the perfect background to tell this story with the faded photos. I made the title vertical and did the same with the journaling. I used a cute piece of paper from Studio Calico to number each of the pics and just anchored the picture section with some leftover strips of pattern paper and Crate Paper boarder stickers and a few buttons.

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It was a great place to start our adventures together. Now, let's find the next one...

xoxo
K

Monday, October 24, 2011

Monday Musings

It's Monday.

We had a great weekend. I had a wonderful time at my crop night at The Paperie on Friday night and managed to get a number of layouts accomplished. I even killed two Studio Calico kits in the process!

Here's one of the layout's I made Friday night.

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This is a layout about the Whalesbone restaurant in Ottawa. We had lunch there in June before we moved back home. It was delicious- fish & chips and lobster benedict with homemade ice cream sundae for desert! Seriously yummy. I used little hipstagram photos and a Studio Calico kit with a bit of divine twine for the title banner!

I went out with a few of the girls after the crop for some late night snacks at Boston Pizza. It was delicious and the company was even better. We chatted, especially about the retreat, and I'm even more excited for a weekend retreat coming up in a few weeks.

Saturday we puttered around and yesterday we ran a 5km race-another personal best for me and M. I need to give a shout out to my friend Katie as well. She ran a 10km race in Ottawa and had her own personal best this weekend! Great work Katie! Check out her blog because she is truly an inspiration!

We also babysat yesterday afternoon. Our best friend's are here for three months from Ottawa and we are so excited to see Baby Liam. He's my Godson and he's getting christened this coming Sunday! We're pretty excited.

So, the week has started. This time next week October will be ending and we will almost be in NOVEMBER! Whaaaaa?

Enjoy your last week of October folks! November is coming!

xoxo
K

Saturday, October 22, 2011

It's Here

Fall that is...

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Running is more blissful when there's leaves on the ground to prance around in!

I LOVE fall.

xoxo
K

Friday, October 21, 2011

5 For Friday

It's Friday again. I swear it comes faster every week.

1. I've been fooling around with some actions that I downloaded from Pioneer Woman. It took me forever to get them into Photoshop elements 8.0 but I think it will be worth it. Here's a before/after with one shot that I've been enhancing.

Before...
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After...
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2. I've been baking- a lot. I've also been tasting a lot which leads me to #3.

3. I've been running-a lot. M & I are running a 5K race on Sunday morning. We signed up on a whim but it's a good way to get part of our long run out of the way. We'll probably keep going after the race for another 5-7 km for sure.

4. I've been working a little side project this week that I'll be excited to share some time next week. There's a little scrapboking involved. That's all the hints you're getting!

5. I want to try this for a layout soon. The combo of the labels and the typing is so cool. I need to figure out how to do this.

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Bonus: My BF is here and brought her baby who just happens to be my Godson. Yeah I'm gonna steal him and keep him! I can't wait to see them this afternoon.

Bonus Bonus: I'm scrapbooking tonight at The Paperie and I can't wait to see some new friends and just focus on a little paper crafting for the evening!

xoxo
K

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Right Now...

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listening: "American Honey" by Lady Antebellum & the new Jay-Z/Kanye album. I know it's a weird mix but I have an eclectic taste in music.
eating: treats-lots of taste testing of treats
drinking: not enough water...need to fix that.
wearing: tried to not wear sweats on my days off-successful for one day: wore a blazer, jeans and a t-shirt. Today I'm wearing sweats again. At least their clean today. Maybe this coming week I'll try 'What I Word Wednesday'.
feeling: excited anticipation for things to come
weather: calm before the storm-beautiful for an early a.m run though
watching: trying to catch up on 'Hart of Dixie' and 'The Good Wife'
waiting: for the cable guy to come and fix the T.V.
wanting: more time in the run of a day-who doesn't want more of that!
needing: to make more digital pages for my school project
thinking: about my to-do list
enjoying: running in the crisp fall air
wondering: what I'll scrapbook tomorrow night at my local crop at The Paperie

xoxo
K

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Christmas in October

So I've been noticing an alarming trend in the "blogisphere" and the internet in general this past week.

There are an alarming number of advertisements for Christmas-related activities going on in the scrapbooking world. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I've counted 4 so far. It's not even Halloween yet! It's like when you go to Costco in September to pick up a few odds and ends for those last minute school supplies and discover that there are trees and wreaths and wrapping paper in the 'seasonal' isle. What?! Now, that being said I'm a pretty die-hard Christmas fan so I'm secretly along for the ride. Don't tell my husband.

So far I've noticed that there's a Holiday Card Bootcamp starting on November 7th by Jennifer McGuire & Kristina Werner & friends. Find info about that one here.

Then there's a Big Picture class that's being advertised called '12 Days of Christmas' which I'm pretty excited for. I'm not usually good at following online classes but I'm going to give this one a shot I think-if it doesn't work out I can always do that layouts after the fact anyways.

Rhonna Designs has all kinds of Christmas digital kits and cards and business here.

And then there's all the chaos surrounding the December Daily album. This year it appears that Ali Edwards-the Dec. Daily Guru-worked in conjunction with Studio Calico to develop a killer kit which includes access to a forum with some sort of access to Ali. I'm pretty excited about that album! I'm saving my pennies and thinking about that kit.

This weekend I was inspired to do some Fall cleaning and organize my scrapbooking cave. I came up with a ton of Christmas-related products that I've added to a little pile for my December Daily. It may be nowhere near Christmas time but I suppose it's time to start thinking about those crafty projects!

xoxo
K

Monday, October 17, 2011

A Start to the 'Summery'

So I've been working diligently towards my M. Ed. project all week and I've completed a whole section of pages for it. I'll be posting shortly on my project blog with a few more details but thought I would share the first and last year's layouts here on the blog.

Each layout is similar and shares a hand-stitched tag with the number of the year on it. I kept the formula simple so I could bang out 10 of them. Here's the stack-all completed.

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Here's summer #1:

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and here's summer #10:

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As I said, I stuck to a formula adding the tag to the side of the picture. I used a little area above the photo for a little embellishing, repeating the number each time with a little Scenic Route label sticker.

Layout #1:

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Layout #2:

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Then I added two pattern papers and a long strip of washi tape below the photo section. In most cases I also did a little embellishing on the tag as well.

Layout #1:

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Layout #2:

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I'm pleased with how they all turned out. That's stage 1 complete.

This week I'll be working on my digital layouts which means I'll be focusing more on the story, and therefore the journaling, for each summer. I anticipate a lot of tears for that stage! Good ones of course.

Check out my project blog tomorrow if you are interested in more details into the process of these layouts and my approach to stage 2: digital layouts and telling your story.

xoxo
K

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Saturday Goodness

Friday's rock and not just because it's Friday which means a whole weekend off but yesterday's Friday totally rocked because:

*I got a whole lot of shutterfly goodness organized!

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*And then UPS came and delivered my Studio Calico box and oh there was some wonderful business in there! Here's a few pics...

Main Kit.

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Add-on Kit-the one with the numbers.

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Grab Bag. Let me just say this was amazing-I squealed a little when I opened it. The stamps, oh the stamps!

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Extras: new paper, foam for my inker thing, Amy Tangerine tapes and 3 new embossing powders.

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*My layout from the other day that I entered into the 'pink' challenge for my local scrapbooking store was added to their blog post yesterday morning! Check it out here!

I am pumped to scrapbook this weekend. Happy weekend folks!

xoxo
K

Friday, October 14, 2011

5 for Friday

1. I found this cute little quiz online. It tells you which 'font' you are based on a few questions. Check it out. It's pretty cute.

2. This came in the mail on Wednesday. I think I might quit working and just bake for a living. Oh and I'll have to continue running to counterbalance the effects of the baking. I'm pretty excited about that Bobby Flay book as well. M & I have a serious food crush on Bobby Flay.

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So, yesterday in an effort to figure out just how delicious it's recipes were-I conducted a simple experiment and baked the oh-so-simple classic, chocolate chip cookies. Now, M & I have a high expectation of chocolate chip cookies being that we've visited Lanvin in NYC a few times and have gone into 'chocolate chip cookie comas'. I highly recommend a visit if you are in the big apple. But, these cookies-they stood up to those expectations and more. They were gooey and puffy and delicious!

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3. I saw a cool tutorial on the Crate Paper blog that gave me some neat ideas for creating frames out of a die cut machine and cardboard boxes. Recycling + scrapbooking= wonderful creations!

4. I'm participating in a banana bread bake off for M's work week after next. I'll be perfecting my recipe until then. I'm thinking chocolate chips are a must. Stay tuned for the results.

5. Courtesy of You Tube I am pretty pumped to see this movie:



Have a great weekend!

xoxo
K

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Sleeping Beauty?!

Yes, she is. That's my best friend Nicole.

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You may recall that in April I posted the details of her bachelorette party. To say it was funny is an understatement. She fell asleep at 9:30 after multiple drinks and didn't make it to the end of her party! Despite that, she had a wonderful time (while she was awake) and she had a beautiful wedding in September to another of our best friend's, Mike.

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It's taken forever for me to get around to completing this layout but I was inspired by October's pink color challenge at my local scrapbooking store.

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This month's mojo challenge at The Paperie is to use pink in honor of Brest Cancer awareness month. You'll notice that I used multiple shades of pink on my layout!

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Happy Wednesday! Halfway to the weekend!

xoxo
K

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Weekend in Photos

It was a busy weekend.

We had a delicious meal with some new friends on Friday night at a local Mexican restaurant called Zapatas.

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Then we headed to another friends house to hang out around their fire pit in the backyard. It was a chilly night but we had a great time laughing and chatting together.

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Saturday we went for a walk downtown. I brought along my camera to take some photos of our adventure.

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Jelly bean houses

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Fred's Record Shop

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We stopped and had brunch at Casbah. It was delicious. M had pancakes and I had banana bread French toast with berry compote and fresh whipped cream.

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We did a little browsing in a few stores.

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We stopped by the Christina Parker Gallery to check out some work of a new friend of ours. You can see some of his work here. He really does some fabulous work.

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Then we stopped for a coffee and hot chocolate at a local coffee shop and tried to buy some bread from the bakery but they were all sold out!

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We dug out a recipe from Mario Batalli's book to make some homemade pizza for dinner and settled in for a good night's sleep.

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On Sunday morning we ran a 10km race called the Turkey Tea Ten. We both got personal bests. It was a great race!

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Then we headed downtown for coffee and breakfast sandwiches and some croissants.

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We had Turkey dinner with 23 of our family and friends on Sunday afternoon but amidst all the excitement and chatting I forgot to take pictures. But I did catch a shot of M digging out some leftovers yesterday for a late lunch.

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It was a great weekend and I was sad to get back to regularly scheduled programming this morning.

xoxo
K