Feeling Grubby: PERU PAGE

This morning I sent my family off with nicely packed lunches, but when I went to make my own lunch, there was only a box of instant mac and cheese! I had used up all the bread, cheese and lunch meat!

I must fire the housekeeper. Oh wait. That is me!

So, I hear grubs are yummy.

Oh I did not try them in Peru. They seemed like they would be wiggly. Or perhaps you cook them....

I did google them which is how I know they are yummy.

Want a close up?

I think mostly they showed us just to torture the tourists. Cool by me, it was a fun photo!

Here is a side view!

One of my favorite new things is a dot of perfect pearls with a sequin pushed over top so just a little squeezes out of the hole! OH love that camera too!

Consider it a HINT of what I am posting tomorrow!

Happy Thursday!

Sending Fall to Julie

We typically have four good season changes here in Northern NY although they are not all the same in size.

We have early spring which stretches on forever finally morphing into late spring which is gone in a blink, summer which is hot and heavy for a good ten weeks, fall which sometimes seems like it lasts a week or two and then prewinter, winter, more winter, late winter, and we're back around again.

I forget that everyone else does not get to enjoy fall which is by my reasoning the best season ever.

This year it was gone in a blink. Although we have had some amazing Indian Summer which resulted in some serious gardening for me last weekend and sore muscles.

Julie of the Tucker-Wolek Clan previously lived in New York and is now in sunny Arizona. We think fond thoughts of Arizona usually when we are shoveling snow for the fifth time in a day. She does miss fall though and was wishing for some fall weather on Facebook a while back.

Thought I'd send her some. I filled this little altered metal box up with leaves! I dipped them in wax first so they will last a little while longer.

She can't crunch them underfoot sadly...

THE MAN likes to give me a hard time for too much crunching when we are walking in our woods. He has been taught like a hunter to tread lightly. Not me, I like to make as much noise as possible. It's way funner.

And one last photo of our woods taken just a few days ago. I was standing on our small water fall looking up stream. Leaves have nearly all fallen and the woods smells delicious. So pretty. 

Happy HUMP Day Peeps and enjoy the small little FALL I am sending your way, Julie! Maybe you can trade me your winter?

Pin Worthy Project: Book Page Trees

Inspiration for me usually comes from reading blogs, mucking around Pinterest, or finding something & getting an idea. Spotted a few folded book trees on Pinterest the other day.  Checked them out and found this tutorial the most helpful. The folding is easy peasy. I did also find sticking to around 40 pages is optimal for my attention span and how full I wanted my tree.

Yes, one ended up in the trash. The other thing I found was really focusing on nice neat folds is pretty important. ;-)

I wasn't ready to make any trees until I found cheap silver candlesticks at the second hand store and a friend passed back a couple of books I had lent her.

FOR THE RECORD, these were perfectly good books. I considered donating them off to the second hand store, but they were a little on the racier side. No I'm not telling you what they were. Although if you look real close you might figure it out.....or at least read something that makes you blush...

Here they are again, full size so you can see the little silver finial at the top & knob on the smaller tree. You can easily trim the bottom to have different sizes.

You can also fancy them up with PRIMA-Vintage Trinkets Charms - Paris which is one way to get your flowers & decorations out into your home where you can enjoy them too!

Thanks for sending me some mica chips to play with Lizzy Hill via Yvonne Yam. You can see they are posing as snow here, but will be glued to something before long! Like them so much better than real snow....

Happy Tuesday! One Pin down and a whole bunch to go...at least this one is calorie free!

Popcorn Treat Box Favors: THE CUTTING CAFE and 13th Birthday

Such a cute little cutting file!

Regina over at THE CUTTING CAFE comes up with the coolest things!

Take a wander over and check out all files that comes with these boxes! You can basically print your own striped paper to make it look like a real pop corn box!

I had to use colors that would work for my oldest's 13th birthday but I am looking forward to making these again!

As you can see below, we filled them with treats! A little lego character, some tic tacs and more candy!

Also added a gold initial which was my daughter's idea.

Here is a close up so you can also see the leaves I cut out using one of Regina's files. 

You can find them here in the Welcome Fall set. 

Love the paper I used. Reminds me of teenagers!

Have a great Monday! It's raining here which makes me happy. Moved a bunch of plants this weekend so they should be getting a good start!

Golden Birthday Candy Tower

My oldest turns 13 tomorrow. 

It seems like yesterday when she was saying ME SASSY and pointing to herself. She wasn't kidding! I blame most of that on the Pratt side of things. ;-) 

Anyhow, three of her closest BFFS are heading over shortly for a LAN Party. In fact, I have to hurry as they are going to be stealing my laptop.

Local Area Network Party....meaning that THE MAN has got a long table set up downstairs with a power strip so they can all play the same on-line game together.

Interestingly enough, they do that all the time already, but this time will be in the same place! 

It's kinda hard to twist your brain around how kids play these days. She also has a game of flashlight tag planned after dark, so there is bit of good ole fashioned play planned too!

The other game planned is Fluffy Bunny. You stuff a marshmallow in your mouth and say FLUFFY BUNNY. Repeat until someone is rendered speechless. Don't ask me, it sounds terrifying.

It's her Golden Birthday meaning that she is 13 on the 13th. Also born on a Friday after a long bit of labor, she has kinda lived up to expectations!

I have been hoarding these tart pans for ages to get enough to make a tower. She squealed when she saw it. I think she likes it or maybe just likes all the candy! 

Decided to mix it up with metals here. The top one is coppery colored with a gold spray painted edge. The middle is an aged copper and the bottom is silver. In between I have a spray painted glass candle stick and a glass lamp part between the bottom two pieces. I have some mirror paint I have been playing with again and the look turns out to be like old mercury lamps. Very pretty. Hard to see here, but I have a project coming up later with that.

It is ALL held together with some gorilla glue. Gotta love that stuff.

Anyhow, small peeps are almost here. Wish me luck!

Oh and PS:  This idea would work for the LESSolgy Kitchen Raid challenge! These tart pans work for a LOT of fun projects!

LESSology Challenge #30: Magnetic Board for the Kitchen Raid Challenge

I came up for the idea of a magnetic hanging frame in the kitchen after I got sick of things on my fridge. I thought that it would be a great place for the school calendar as well. Plus it works nicely with our latest challenge over at LESSology for raiding the kitchen for project supplies!

I made the original hanging frame back in November of 2011 and it was getting very faded. Plus, everyone forgot to write in the days on the calendar every month rendering it a bit useless. ;-) 

Here is a before photo. 

The actual base was originally a very thin piece of board with a pink wash and just a plain black frame. 

One night I gave my Big Shot a rather large work out and embossed piece after piece of aluminium tape. 

I carefully covered just the front of the frame with these embossed metal stickers. 

Then it was time for some paint. Wanted a pearl pink look so used some liquid pearls for my pink color. 

A quick sand and my frame was ready for metal!

Getting the metal was a little adventure in itself. I went to a local steel yard with my frame and got to pick out the exact gauge of steel I wanted. Then, pulled around back and some dude cut it to size.

Of course being raw steel, I then had to paint and rust treat before I could cover with chalk board paint. 

See, I couldn't make up my mind! It's not only magnetic, but also a chalk board! ;-)

If you look closely, I also went over my textured frame with a brown Stazon Ink pad. Love how pretty that recycled book page flower still looks. It's magnetic now so I can move it around.

My vintage silverware is also magnetic! I wanted to be able to easily take everything off this board for washing!

A fun practical project that hopefully inspires you to go on a kitchen raid yourself & play along! 

Hatching a Plan

The other day my sister in law texted me to see if my oldest would like a particular movie for her birthday. I considered my text back to her carefully lest she think we were really odd.

See we don't own any movies. Or CDs. Or that many books for that matter. Well, that is not exactly true. We own a ton of stuff digitally. So, I texted my sister in law, no thanks because we can just rent that movie from Amazon Prime or watch it on Netflix. Takes up way less space electronically! ;-)

It's an odd thing, owning less. Find that morphing over into my scrapbooking too.

Early this past summer, when we were dropping the oldest off at camp and I dropped my purse in the toilet, THE MAN threw down a challenge.

We were discussing the future when the small people headed out on their own & how to pass along the digital things like for instance the trillion photos we have electronically.

I said it would be nice if there was a program that sorted all that out and also included the scrapbooking pages I made made of various events digitally.

Although he was driving, I felt a prickly hairy eye ball slide my way from across the truck.

He said, you do know the pictures are king. You just like making pretty things and working with your hands. Admit it.

I squirmed a little. Came up with a couple of defensive things I might say and then gave up.

He had promised a stop soon which included a pee break and candy bar. Since we were driving in the middle of nowhere, such things had precedence.

Meaning that despite all the pretty pages, really it all comes down to the photos.

His more recent challenge involved digitizing all my pages into electronic format. Since they take up a large cabinet and the top shelf of my closet, it seems kinda daunting.

This time not wanting a candy bar, I started throwing up road blocks like for instance not having a fancy dancy camera. THE MAN said, I will buy you whatever you want and do all the research. You probably don't need a fancy camera though...you just want one!

It's an odd concept. Making something by hand and then turning it into something digital. Can't go directly digital, the idea gives me the heebie jeebies. I really LIKE cutting up the paper and sticking down flowers...not to mention wearing glitter on my face at least daily.

However, if your dream involves riding around North & South America in an RV? Might want to wrap your brain around having less! Wish me luck.

Hatching a plan now. Starting with a micro project called Peru.

Too Blonde Layout for Peru Album

Nipped out on my porch in the wee hours of the early mornin' sunshine to take a picture of this page.

Currently I have it smashed in the Peru album in hopes it gets flatter, since sometimes the mist just makes it curl a bit!

Got a Copper Perfect Pearls mist from Ranger and those gold letters below at the Scrapbook & Cards Crop and Create in Cornwall,Ontario a few weeks ago and also made this page!

Took me this long to get a photo taken and the journaling done! ;-)

My favorite part of this page are the gold letters, copper misted "say what?" and black & white bow tie.

In a close tie with the shiny sparkly letters for my affection is the actual story behind the page. Here is my journaling.

Visiting the village at the base of Machu Picchu was an experience. Known as Aquas Calientes, this little town was bursting at its seams. The Urubamba River divides it so the sound of running water, buses, and people is continuous. You can tell it’s growing by the projects going on everywhere. We were walking down the ramp heading down into town when I stopped to take a photo of a water feature. Incas & modern day Peruvians appear to be able to build these little structures extremely well! Machu Picchu is littered with them!

We encountered five or six squat muscle bound men & boys pushing wheelbarrows full of bags of cement up the incline. For the record, I like to move my large bags of cement with a tractor. They slowed when I popped into view. The boss started yelling rapidly in Spanish behind them chiding them and telling them to get their butts back to work! I felt badly. I am not THAT blonde, but I do look very different than the Peruvian ladies! 

While searching for the right name of the town, I came across this amazing website that makes you feel like you standing in the midst of it. Check it out here! You can see Incan stone work and all kinds of construction!

My other very favorite part of this page is that crazy flower I made! It was a make n take sponsored by Maya Road. Very yummy!

Hope you enjoyed a little wander down a path you may not have taken yet! I sure enjoyed that website & making this page. Brought me right back to last year!

Happy Tuesday!

Mr. Pumpkin Head Skeleton: OTP Project for The Cutting Cafe

Had quite a bit of fun with this project over the weekend. I was wearing glitter and glue for most of it!

I have wanted to make a Halloween Apothecary Spice rack since I spotted one somewhere. I must have been scrolling through Pinterest, but I can't find the pin.

I was inspired to finally get this done after getting a really fun printable stamp set called Halloween Trio from Regina at THE CUTTING CAFE that I wanted to use in conjunction with my rack!

Mr. Pumpkin Head Skeleton turned out to be my favorite part of this project! His body was the "stick" to a lolly pop that I have been hording for years in my Halloween paper. I was happy to find it and really wanted to use it!

The witches hat also came in the set and made me happy to get colored up and added as a decoration on my rack. You can see it there at the bottom snuggled up with a purple glittered rolled rose.

Here is a top view of my bottles, tree, and Mr. Pumpkin Head.

One last photo of my large blue bottle in the middle. That twine that is twisted around that bottle is actually blue bailing twine I found along the side of the road.

By the way, as I colored up these images, I realized they would make super awesome cupcake toppers. Give it a try! I'd be happy to pass along my address so you can send me some of your "work" for me to sample!

A Huge Disparity: Linking Up to Story Telling Sunday

Really had a great time making this double page spread. The subject however does make me sad quite a bit. 

Had to brush the cupcake crumbs off since I made them at Scrapbook & Cards Crop and Create in Cornwall, Ontario. My adventures there were quite fun but also helps to illustrate what I am writing about. 

So went shopping for flowers for these pages while I was there. I am guesstimating $8 in Prima Goodies and new papers from a $35 kit I brought with me. Not sure what the total cost of this page might be, but lets face it, Scrappin is not exactly cheap. 

This layout is about a trip I took to Peru. I wrote about the boy by the train ages and ages ago last Thanksgiving. That page is the first part of the train trip.

Here is the journaling I added to that page a few days ago on clear vellum:

We then boarded the train for Machu Picchu. We thought the real adventure lay at the end of the ride, but truly the ride itself was beyond amazing. The train had a glass roof and we got fantastic views of the river and mountains. At one point half way through the ride we stopped for a few minutes. I could see this little shack in the distance and a very little boy watching the train.

It was not until we got much closer when I realized he was all by himself. I wondered at a culture so different from mine. When I had kids that size, they were firmly attached to me and I was always fearful that some great evil would befall them if I didn't constantly keep them in eye sight. Obviously he was just fine by himself watching the train go by. 

So, I threw an American quarter at him (it was a slow moving train) because I thought he'd think it was fun. He grabbed that quarter and took off. My Dad and I had a good laugh and we went back to watching the scenery. 

This young girl in the photo may have been that boy's sister as here is what I wrote about our return trip on that same train:

On the return trip from Machu Picchu, we stopped in the same spot. The whole family was out that time and taking handouts from people in the train. The shack was a house and four or five people were collecting candy, dollars, and food. 

One man had no hands and had to scramble to pick up a granola bar with his wrists that the gentleman on the opposite side of the train threw. I had a terrible feeling in my stomach that we on that train had so much. A lovely vacation, a beautiful train ride and these people had our scraps. 

They tried to entertain us on that train. They sent around a clown dressed up in a Peruvian Costume playing a little flute, but it did not distract me from the windows or my heart ache. 

I printed him in sepia and added the photo to a small copper frame to not distract from my page. The actual colors of the clown were gaudy. He was hustling us to buy trinkets & blankets to distract us from the view outside. 

. 

Here you have my small little tale. Just a minute or two of my life. Thankful I had the opportunity to visit Peru and also the abilities to do the things I want to do in life. 

Linking up to Story Telling Sunday. Thanks Sian as always for hosting us!

Nicecrane Design Christmas Cards

I feel like a bit of an over-achiever posting Christmas cards in early October, but Ignacio's amazing images over at Nicecrane really inspired me to get them done.

Check them out here!

The colors on these images are awesome! They are vibrant without being overpowering. Really liked how they turned out.

I am a big fan of images. I think it's a great way to get a bit of digital into your layers. So the best of both worlds. Plus super quick if you print a couple 12 by 12 sheets out of them set to business card size!

I actually brought these cards in a kit to the recent Crop and Create in Cornwall, Ontario that I attended this past weekend. I wanted to give myself an easy assembly task so I could get the lay of the land.

The nearly free flowers were pre-made ages and ages ago so I had that advantage as well! Good thing since I was in a cupcake eating frenzy for most of the evening. Talk about distracted scrappin!

Happy Hump Day peeps!

Cupcakes, Apple Crisp, and Scrappin!

LOOK at all those ladies working hard and how many tables...talk about scrappin mojo!

Scrapbook & Cards hosted a Crop and Create in Cornwall, Ontario which happens to be around an hour and a half from my house. Not far at all since some of that time involves sitting on the bridge waiting to be let into Canada. ;-)

Me and Cornwall go way back.
It's the closest town over the border. The possibility exists THE MAN and I may have headed across once or twice in college when we were under our drinking age here in the States for a purchase or two. ;-)

Now Scrapbook & Cards is a free down loadable magazine. It's pretty cool, you can even hear the pages turn on your pc. ;-) I have not spent much time looking at their publication, but I can however tell you that the event they hosted was amazing!

As amazing as the cupcakes & apple crisp we had for dessert!

Now, I am not one to go scrappin in public.

For one thing I am not well behaved. I like messy and was afraid I might be a menace with my mists and dirty fingers and spread out all over tendencies. I also never spend that much time all at once on a layout. I flutter in and add a thing or two and flutter out. A day later the page is finished and I'm never sure how much actual time was spent.

I am also bad at classes. Hand me some paper and adhesive and I'm off. Ears shut & blinders on.

I went for the company actually. Met up with the fabulous Anne Pennington and her posse!  That is her in the top photo on the left. Had to be quick to catch her, she was SHOPPING HARD. Just a little iphone picture to capture the moment so yes a bit blurry!

We had two independent scrapbook stores to browse through. One is local to Cornwall and one I have frequented before.

Sweet Sentiments & Auntie Em's were awesome! I bought lots of fun stuff! That is Auntie Em's below. FEAST YOUR EYES ladies! The Prima was on the back side...I had a ball picking flowers! I did not take a photo. Thought maybe it would be a bit mean. ;-)

The BEST part though was getting to meet Vicki Boutin and getting the REAL DEAL on what it's like to work in the Scrappin' Industry.

Something to the effect of:  I don't want to dash your dreams but....

Yes, she dished the dirt. I am noisy like that. From here it looks glamorous, but I had this feeling....

Also met Nichole Harper and Angie Blom as far as scrap stars go!

And one last photo because I am just a little mean....

Happy Tuesday!