quote of the day

It's the second day of school so I imagine I will be having many of these extra cute conversations in the upcoming weeks:

Little Girl: Will you sharpen my pencil?

Me: Can you say the magic word?

(without hesitation and completely seriously)

Little Girl: Abracadabra.

P.S. Mary had a little unicorn is by Helen Dardik.

in love

I fell a little short of my goal to create 14 wedding scrapbook pages before the end of summer but I squeezed 1 more in during a night of scrapping with Angi! I know you see 2 pages here but I'm only counting it as 1 because the right page is about Corey's great grandparents' wedding.

Luckily for me Corey's dad was really into genealogy for a long time so when I was scrapping our trip to Chautauqua a few years ago he dug out a bunch of memorabilia for me pertaining to the nuptials of Corey's great grandparents in 1924. Not only did he share the page of genealogy about his grandfather, but he also scanned and printed their engagement picture, wedding announcement from the newspaper, a telegram from the bride's aunt and uncle, and railroad tickets to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Score!

I discovered a weird coincidence: we got married almost the same day as them 75 years later, and in an Episcopal church as well. They were married June 25, 1924 and left for their honeymoon on the 26th, which is the day we got married.

The top picture is of our 2007 visit to the church where they got married, and the bottom picture is from our wedding in 1999.

I put off making these pages because I couldn't decide whether to use a heritage theme or how to put everything together. Spurred on by my goal I just went for it, selecting distressed-looking patterned paper with only scraps for accents to keep the focus on the items of significance. When I cut out the honeymoon tickets I did it by hand to follow the tears and make them look more like originals. I love the stamps on the back with the date. I trimmed some of the border off a postcard and included it to show the location of their engagement picture.

I love the bride's scallop-edged dress, so I salvaged some scallop-edged scraps for accents, used scallop-edged cardstock to accent our wedding picture, and trimmed the genealogy page with decorative scissors.

I feel so fortunate to have copies of these pieces of family history, and that I have them displayed now where people can see them in the future.

P.S. I have completed 11/14 pages about our wedding. I doubt I will make 3 more pages this weekend but I might try.

I bought an app.

Last Friday I bought my very first app, A Beautiful Mess, and it's the best 99 cents I ever spent! Combined with the joys of Instagram I have spent a record amount of time on my phone this week.

I can't wait to get these pictures into my Project Life album!

Please prove you're not a robot.

When leaving comments on other blogs I'm sometimes asked to "Please prove you're not a robot" by typing in some random numbers and letters. Usually it takes me a few (sometimes several) tries to get it right, which leads me to believe I may, in fact, be a robot. Cool.

P.S. Two-Headed Robot in Space is by Raina Gentry.

Project Life March continued

This is my other favorite week (visually) from March:

It documents the girls ganging up on a cricket, a text from my nephew, watching Napoleon Dynamite, the first day of spring, and spring in our backyard.

Recently I started printing the pictures family and friends text me to include in this Project. This way I can include the people who live far away that are still a part of my life. This picture is of a card and Weekly Reader about Ireland I sent my nephew for St. Patrick's Day, which he texted as a thank you. Love that kid!

Napoleon Dynamite was on t.v. and we got sucked in. I saved this Napoleon Dynamite chapstick packaging when I got it a very long time ago, and my paper hoarding tendencies paid off. The journaling is on the back (see below).

My Favorite Season is from a Smash pad. I popped out the other seasons, put some patterned paper behind it, wrote some journaling, and stamped the date.

On the left you see Caprica Six guarding our backyard. I added the 24/7 sticker since we joke that she is always on duty. She takes her job very seriously.

On the right is a picture I took of an orange tree blossom. I love the smell of our citrus trees blooming. The quote I used came pre-printed on vellum. One of the nice things about this Project is that you don't have to figure out how to adhere your vellum without it showing. This time I just trimmed the quote and slid it in over my picture, no adhesive required!

Maybe I should post more of my pages because now I see I've made a mistake here: it's March not April. Off to fix it...

I'm back. Another beautiful Arizona sunset! I added a Home sticker and Thickers for the title.

The rest of the week documents my book club meeting to discuss Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, finishing Dragons of Winter Night, a family pack walk, playing Hangman with my class, a factoid about the moon, Survivor, a phone call from my sister, and getting the dogs nails trimmed.

I used a magazine ad and stamped it. Free and saved from the landfill!

The distance to the moon was mentioned in The Secret Life of Bees which I was reading that week so I wanted to include it. Luckily I went to the internet to double check the distance before I included it because it was wrong in the book. Actually I went to many websites that gave various distances so I finally settled on the one that had a range of distances since the moon gets closer and farther. That one made the most sense to me so that's what I went with. Hopefully it's right!

I used some scraps of patterned paper, letter stickers, and a sticker (couldn't believe I had a sticker with the moon on hand!). The patterned paper had a star already punched out of it so I highlighted it by rubbing some white stamp ink along the edges.

Finally we have an unfortunate victim of Survivor which I printed off the internet, and the back of the Napoleon Dynamite chapstick packaging (it's as cute as the front) where I added some paper flags for journaling. Free and saved from the landfill!

the getaway car

This month Child's Play Challenges is asking us to use a tire swing as inspiration. Since I'm working on our wedding scrapbook the tire made me think of the pictures of our old Isuzu Rodeo all decorated up by our friends and family at our wedding. Luckily lots of people took pictures of our Rodeo and passed them on to me. As I laid them all out to decide on which ones to scrap I realized I could use almost all of them to make the shape of our s.u.v.:

See it?

I cut some clouds from white cardstock and punched 2 pictures with my circle punch to make tires.

I only used my corner rounder on the "spare tire." Get it? This is how I entertain myself.

I would also like to point out the top picture. Looks like all of our guests are there on the sidewalk behind the Rodeo. I wish whoever took that picture asked everyone to turn around but I can actually tell who some of them are by the backs of their heads.

I used my fancy edge scissors for the journaling strips, which I tried to make look like the exhaust coming out the back. I put washi tape under die cut heart ribbon and held it together with yellow staples to make a freeway of love.

I know that the trashing of our car took contributions from at least 5 different people all operating independently. When I look at these pictures I feel their love again as they worked to make our day special.

P.S. Only 4 pages left to my goal!

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

As I read When You Are Engulfed in Flames I thought about what I could say about this hilarious book of essays in my review. The key point I wanted to make is this: David Sedaris has a way of making the everyday things that happen in our lives comical.

Wait! Why is that my prevailing thought? When is the everyday shopping for a human skeleton and then trying to figure out how to gift wrap it? Or finding yourself in your underwear in the waiting room of the doctor's office? David Sedaris has a gift of relating to you through his own bizarre experiences and then making you laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

In St. Louis the bow tie was characterized as "very Charlie McCarthy," while in Chicago a young man defined it as "the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party." This sent the bow tie back into my suitcase, where it begged forgiveness...

It sometimes helps to remind myself that not everyone is like me. Not everyone writes things down in a notebook and then transcribes them into a diary. Fewer still will take that diary, clean it up a bit, and read it in front of an audience.

"Maybe the recorded birds are saying something about free food," he suggested, but to me the message seemed much darker: a call to anarchy, or possibly even murder.

Check it out!

P.S. This book counts as my Book with Fire (or Equivalent) in the Title for the What's In a Name Challenge.

Project Life March

I'm currently working on June but I'm behind on my posting. Here is another favorite week of mine, but I had to cover a lot of it to share on the internet because I have a lot of pictures of kids from my school.

This week documents a student earning a Happy Meal for completing all of his timed tests in math, my tutoring kids, giving Strega Nona her medicine, the new pope getting elected, a field trip to the Arizona Science Center (best field trip ever!), spelling with Play-Doh, and finding some clips from my Amazon wishlist in Target.

I used a felt blue star border for my math star, and Lego letters for my tutoring kids. I used packaging from the Sparrow Clips to share the story of coveting the clips for so many years.

My friend Alana gave me a guinea pig calendar from Etsy a few years ago when she was my secret santa. I saved it and cut out all the cute guinea pig pics at the end of the year. I got those out to document Strega Nona getting her medicine and found the one of a pope guinea pig. Coincidentally this was the same week the pope was voted in so I had to use it. I don't know why I followed the story so closely on NPR all week, being an agnostic, but it was interesting to learn about the special shoes and all that stuff. However, Corey and I had a little off-color joke about it which is why it's covered for you. We are pretty PC people but sometimes we can't help ourselves.

Here's the rest of the week which documents the boys basketball team winning the championship, watching The Fighter and Property Brothers, and having lunch at Jimmy John's on St. Patrick's Day.

I printed The Fighter movie poster from the internet but The Property Brothers came from a magazine ad. I had a marathon and graded a lot of papers that night. Probably something I normally wouldn't deem interesting enough to share but with their picture from the ad I had to do it.

When we go to Jimmy John's I try to save the tape that holds my sandwich closed for this Project. I'm sure they had a whole team of people working on that tape design which saves me some crafting time. The St. Patrick's Day card came from an old Creating Keepsakes magazine insert. I cut it out and painted the letters with watercolor paint. It feels good to bust out the paint every now and then.

There's also an 8.5x11 insert this week. I made a collage pic from the multitude of exciting pictures I took on our field trip. It's a great way to get up to 20 pictures on one page which is why I mention it, but of course I can't share it because of all the innocent little faces on there. I get my collage prints from Walgreens but you can also make one yourself using Photoshop and help from The Nerd Nest.

Happy 4th of July!

I watched Joey Chestnut win the Hot Dog Eating Contest, breaking his own record with 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes! Corey is camped out at the park all day waiting to record the fireworks for those of us who are too hot to go outside and watch them ourselves.

P.S. I found this picture of Romeo at Patriotic Dog Contest.

Ten Thousand Heavens by Chuck Rosenthal

As soon as I started reading this book I discovered it's told from the horse's perspective. Uh-oh. My last foray with a book told from an animal's perspective was irritating.

However, as I continued to read on, I discovered that the author utilizes his background in philosophy to deliver some thoughtful gems via horse speak. It's clear that Mr. Rosenthal has spent a fair amount of time around horses and has given some thought to the why behind their instinctive nature. It was entertaining for me to read his take on equine behavior after spending so much time thinking about it myself. Philosophy and behavior aside, it's a touching story of a man whose mission is to rehabilitate a Thoroughbred Arabian mare named Annie using time and love instead of whips and spurs. My feeling is that this is the true story of the author's relationship with his mare, Jackie O, but it's called fiction because of the point of view it's told from.

One of my favorite quotes made me think of the Morgan mare I used to ride, Thunder. That horse had spunk! "A horse that wouldn't try to buck you off once in a while was no companion at all."

If you like horse stories you will gallop through this little book of friendship and compassion.

And now for your enjoyment, a gratuitous horse painting (which hangs in our bedroom) by Emily Martin called Judy and the Dream of Horses: