Pssst...

 30 July 2009





There's a sweet little Studio Calico give-away today at Write.Click.Scrapbook , where yours truly had a chance to work with one of their kits for the first time ever. I can say that I was more than a little intimidated by this kit, being the very simple scrapper that I am, but I'm happy with the way my pages turned out. And I haven't been to the Studio Calico site yet to see what the DT girls did with this kit (again, the intimidation factor) but I'm sure they've worked it pretty awesomely. So head on over to theWCS site, and leave a comment for a chance to win some funky stuff. It will challenge you, I guarantee it!

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Hello...

 20 July 2009

So, yeah... it's been more than a month since I posted anything here. A huge thank you to everyone who emailed me, concerned about my health and well being, since I seemed to pretty much drop off the face of the earth these past weeks! I had family visiting in June and July, ( a rare occurence, since they all lve in far off places) and was kept very busy entertaining, cooking, chauffeuring, and sight-seeing. It was great fun, if not exhausting, so once my brother and his kids left last week, we hotfooted it up north that same day for a week of much needed R&R. I did absolutely nothing but snooze, eat, drink, read, and repeated that formula pretty much every day- no internet, no tv. Absolutely 100% unplugged, and I survived. The kids and hubs fished, fished and fished, and caught nothing to speak of. ;p Our weather was not so great, with lots of rain and cold- so cold that we had to turn on the heat a few nights, in MID -JULY folks. It got warmer towards the middle of the week, so I did manage to do a bit of dock sitting and just look out at the beautiful lake. I wish everyone could experience that kind of medicine when they're as burnt out as I was.


This will be a photo heavy post, because I've taken a million and one photos in the past month, so here goes...


'Ovechkin' and 'Brodeur' fishing. It was all about the fishing. The big one eluded them though.



canoeing on the lake while Mom hovered on the dock, stressed that they'd tip over. They didn't.

Paddleboating on a semi-sunny day.


My attempt at a sunless 'sunset' shot. The clouds never quite went away all week.




Two of my 3 obsessed fisherman.



I have many more Lake photos that I won't bore you with. Or maybe I will, once I get them uploaded and sorted through. ;)


I love this shot I took of Bobby playing baseball one night a few weeks back. I took it through the chainlink fence with my 85 mm lens, and miraculously, you can't see the fence at all. This lens is such a beauty. I kiss it often.




This is my brother's daughter, who I haven't seen since she was a wee baby. To say I was obsessed with taking her photo would be a bit of an understatement.. She's such a beauty, and all I could think about were the girly layouts I could do... :p








And my adorable nephew... he's 3, and all boy- could eat this kid up with a spoon!




Last but not least, a shot of my fashion concious pre-teen... he's getting huge. Feet are bigger than mine now, size 10's. Geez.



Here's a few layouts I did recently, which you may or may not have seen on the WCS site. The first was done for the July colour theme, and the 2nd was a sketch/ad inspiration from my dear friend & scrapper extraordinaire Linda.





Have I redeemed myself? Here's hoping I can make it back here before another month passes... ;p



Thanks for reading!

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back to the land of the living

 13 June 2009

Well, I've survived what has quite possibly been the busiest month of my entire life, and the most sleep deprived as well.

Since I last posted here, I have packed, moved, and then unpacked my Dad into his new apartment, managed by some miracle to get the Grade 6 yearbook finished VERY under the gun, all the while trying to maintain our crazy busy lives. And all this being done mostly without my dh around, who was away on numerous long business trips all month, the start of baseball season for both kids, and my regular job. I've had to come up with some pretty creative and last minute ideas about how to pick the kids up from daycare after work @ 5:30, get them home to feed them, and out the door by 6:05 to two different parks at the same time without the better half here to help. Haha! There were some days I thought I would be certifiable if the chaos kept up any longer.

I haven't had a second to think about scrapbooking, or taking photos, or gardening, or doing anything for myself this past month. I'm so happy that it's all over. Now I can get back to my own life. It was a draining project, much bigger and challenging than I originally thought it would be. I'm happy to have done it, because I would never go back on my word, but there were many times that I was this close to wanting to ditch the entire thing. And so,I'm marking my words here: I will never take on a project like that ever again!



Here's a card I made for one of my AC projects for last month. I really think I was subconciously making this for myself at the time. ;)





I'll be back soon, once my house looks less like a hurricane came through it...

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A little something to pique your interest...

 26 May 2009



sound exciting? :)

The launch is in 5 days... stay tuned!

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I want to win this...

 20 May 2009



Isn't it lovely? I can so see myself riding around on one of these this summer. I think it's probably the coolest bike I've ever seen. If you want to win this beauty too, all you have to do is post a link on your blog. I'm not even sure that Canadians are allowed to enter the contest, but if by some miracle I end up winning, I'll try my darndest to convince them to send it over the border. ;p
Click on the cute button below to get the info. Good luck!


Madsen Cycles Cargo Bikes

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Because I don't already have enough to do...

 18 May 2009

I've decided to add this to my list:




Now, before you shudder in complete horror at this mid-century classic ( re: butt ugly piece of furniture), I'm going to show you this:



I fell in love with that 'credenza' on the cover , ( as well as the rest of this house, which is completely cool and gorgeous) and set about trying to find a reasonable facsimilie somewhere. Last week at Ikea with my good friend & neighbour (who is moving this week and is doing a major cleaning of her basement) I saw that they have come out with an uncannily similar version of it, only theirs is about $300 and made of presswood, as is most of Ikea's stuff. Not the greatest quality. Take it from someone who has a lot of Ikea furniture, most of which hasn't aged too well. So my buddy says to me, "Mel, I have the exact same thing sitting in my basement, and you're welcome to it". Score!!

Even when I saw the sorry state it was in when they hauled it over here Saturday morning , I still think I can make it look pretty nice with some paint and alot of elbow grease. I want to take off those legs somehow (although they're attached to the whole thing, hmmm) and replace them with some nice brushed stainless ones. I'll have to browse the Apartment Therapy blog for a bit of inspiration.

The monstrosity is now sitting in my backyard, and I'm itching to get at it. Once I get that pesky yearbook out of my way, then I'll be moving on to redoing this, and hoping it will make a lovely storage unit for the millions of CD's and DVD's I'm running out of room for. I'm having a hard time figuring out what colour to paint it though, and leaving it 'au natural' isn't really an option since it's not real teak- bummer. Suggestions are more than welcome. :)

Some of you have asked to see what I've been working on with the yearbook, so here's a peek at the baby page I did- I figure that's safe to put on here since these pics are pretty incognito. (Sorry I can't make it go bigger when you click on it)


This page took me an entire day to do. I'm not kidding. I had to resize and crop every photo on here, which was completely tedious and labour intensive. And the quality of a lot of them was *ahem* less than stellar. I did a million and one redo's, because I'm picky like that. But I like how cute and simple it is. The rest of the book will be a bit more slapped together, because I'm running out of time until my (self- imposed) deadline of June 1st. And I have some assignment stuff I need to scrap, so I'm really hoping I'll have something scrappy to post here in the next week.



Hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! ( for the Canadian gals reading this).
Mine was a blur...

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How not to organize. Or, How to not organize.

 12 May 2009


I got this in the mail today. My issue of RS arriving always makes for a happy day- I just wish I had time to read it right now. But the cover copy caught my eye immediately, and I was freakishly motivated (I'm feeling a public shaming may do the trick here) to take a photo of what my scrap space looks like at the present moment. I give you my dining room, aka scrap table:
( amd I purposely posted these so you can't make them bigger, ha.)




And the floor of said dining room:


Keep in mind this is just one part of the room, even though it's small. There are piles and mounds of stuff EVERYWHERE. That pretty green bag full of stuff is from the NSD crop I worked at 2 weekends ago, and I haven't even looked inside it.

Don't judge me too hard ok? (Or do, maybe it will anger me into doing something?! LOL) I've been working every possible spare minute I have on that yearbook, and have seriously neglected any attempt at clean up from the last time I scrapped a page, which was approximately a week or so ago, for the American Crafts blog this month. Once it gets to this stage, I just close the door, and we eat in the kitchen until the next cleaning bonanza. Which may be a while. I'm thinking about a month, or until I hand off that book to the printer. (At which time, I will probably spend 3 days in bed, trying to catch up on the many lost hours of sleep.)
In my fantasies, my scrap area looks like my scrap pages ( ie, clean, uncluttered, and lotsa white space- no dust bunnies or ink spots) but I just can't seem to get a handle on it. EVER. It's a vicious circle of cleaning and messing up, and soemtimes it just makes me want to throw it all away and be gone with it once and for all. Dramatic, I know. But true.

PS- Barb, this post is for you. I owed you one from way back, remember? ;p And see, I wasn't exaggerating!


Now, do you think I should even bother reading that RS article, or just call in the professionals? Any Stacey & Clintons of the scrap world out there? ;p

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