12-hour crop (okay, slightly less)

So, yesterday I went to a 12-hour crop at the Scrapbook Barn in Gilbert, from 10 am to 10 pm. For once, I put together page-kits ahead of time- a collection of photos and papers that I wanted to use / thought might work well with the photos, and tossed in a few embellishments. Some people do much more 'kitting' than that, down to designing the layout, including letter stickers, pre-cutting papers, borders, etc. but I can't do that much of it ahead of time. 

I didn't finish getting ready till the last minute (what else is new, right?), so I was a bit late getting there- had to buy soda and snacks, of course! I took the page kits, my tool box, a few stamps, and whatever other papers and 'stuff' I could grab at the last minute. So, while I had the papers and photos I wanted, I didn't have some of my other essentials, like my ATG tape gun (!!), scratch paper, or a ruler- lol!! I couldn't work without my tape gun (I was seriously contemplating calling Tom so he could meet me halfway to drop it off-- lol!), so right when I got there, I had to run out to buy an adhesive roller. I figured I might as well get lunch out of the way while I was out, too, so I didn't actually start scrapping till, maybe, noonish?? But, I did get some pages (mostly) done while I was there, had a great time, and already signed up for next month's 12-hour crop (when I will hopefully be a bit better prepared- but don't count on it!). 

I didn't get any layouts totally 'done' (most still need journaling, and some still need titles) but I made a good amount of progress. Enough rambling; on to the photos, right?? 

This is the first layout I worked on, and like usual, it took me quite a while to 'get into' the scrapping process. The photos on the pages aren't the greatest, but I really wanted to include them in my album, since having 'real, live' wild horses around was such a cool thing to me when I first saw them (and still is). The journaling will be based on a news story I found that talks about the history of the horses living on the reservation. And it still needs a title, which I'm going to cut with my Cameo. The layout was based mostly on a Scrapbook Generation sketch from the travel sketches book. 

(as an aside, the red patterned paper is a sort of 'bandanna' print paper; I remember buying it years ago when we drove through Santa Fe on the way back to IL and WI on vacation- crazy that I remember that, right? I'm glad I finally found the perfect layout for it!)

         

     

These photos show a bit of my working process- I try out different photo arrangements from the sketches on plain white cardstock, decide which arrangement I like best, and take a picture of it so I don't forget how I wanted them. (This method works great for me, since my memory for this kind of stuff is horrible.)

a close-up of the embellishment cluster on the right-hand page-
I'll put something similar on the left-hand page, probably up near the title. 

This layout was based on one by Lisa Dickinson that I pinned ages ago-
you can see the inspiration layout on her blog, here. 

I've wanted to make this page for quite a while-- it's just a couple pictures I took last fall when we were on a short walk around the neighborhood, but I had a particular reason why I wanted to scrap them. During this walk, a car followed us around the block, pulled up to the curb, and the people inside got out and asked if they could pet our dogs. (To which we said, 'sure!' because they love getting attention!) The woman said they used to have a Sheltie years ago that they really loved, and seeing our dogs brought back good memories of their dog. We love our dogs, of course, but it makes me feel good to know that they could bring back good memories to someone else, so I wanted to document that. (that story will go on the library card.) 

A close up of the upper-left embellishment cluster: a bit of stamping, and a couple small pieces of patterned paper. The heart was popped up with foam tape. (I still need to add the date the photos were taken).  

A closer look at the heart cut-out card. I cut this card with my Cameo to be the same size as the photos (I used the small cut-out hearts on the corner embellishments), and backed it with a piece of patterned paper. To give depth and emphasize the cut-out areas, I added tiny (I mean, tiny!!) bits of foam tape between the card stock and patterned paper so it would cast a bit of shadow. (doing that was a pain, but worth it, I think.)

The letters stickers are foam Thickers, which are raised / dimensional.
I just love this font; it's beautiful! (they have a bit of glitter on, too.)

This was the fastest page I made all day, maybe my fastest page ever. I mean, really, really fast: it only took me about 15 minutes to come up with this layout and put it together! These were the first pictures I took of Zola, when I saw her in the pet store for the first time: I went in at lunchtime on a Friday and happened to see her, took the pictures, and went back to work and immediately e-mailed them to Tom-- 'hey, what do you think about getting another kitten?' Then I went back after work to see her again, and we both went the next day to see her again, ultimately deciding to bring her home! (I mean, really: who could resist that cute pink nose and the gray splotch on top of her head?!? lol!) The journaling will go in the empty 'quadrant' on the pink ledger paper, with a bit of writing on the heart tag at the top. Oh, and I just remembered- I do have a wood veneer heart that I painted white; it will go in the lower right-hand corner, to bring a touch of white to the other side of the page.

I have a couple more layouts mostly done, which I'll post separately. I hope you all had a good (scrappy, and otherwise!) weekend, and thanks for checking out my scrapbook pages!

pet pics--

even with all the bird and craft photos, you didn't think I wouldn't post any pet photos now, did you?? I don't take too many of them (not when they're awake, anyway) since they aren't all that keen on posing for me.

Bisbee and Ariel, just hanging out.

Zola barely sits still at all, so she won't pose nice, for sure!

Krista won't pose, either! :D

Butters, though, now- she poses.

And so does Prescott! 

Thank goodness dogs don't know about the tooth fairy!

Otherwise, we'd be in trouble, lol!! Krista is doing great! The next morning, the nerve block and aftereffects of the anesthesia had all worn off, and she seems mostly back to normal. Here she is, pretty much back to her usual happy self: 

Granted, there are a few empty spots there, so she looks a bit goofy. But she's doing pretty good, even only a day or two after the surgery. I soften up her kibble with water, sort of like Chuck Wagon dog food (remember that stuff? I still remember those commercials!! click here to watch!) so it's pretty mushy, and her appetite is just fine. (as always, lol!)  

Tom pointed out that her snoot looks a bit shorter, which is weird-- till he figured out it's a bit of an optical illusion, because it looks like there's some swelling in her nose and face. I'll be interested to see if her face looks any different after the swelling goes down, because a number of the teeth that were removed were the large molars in the back. (no doggie dentures needed though- the vet said she'll just chew on the other side of her mouth.)

poor Krista!!

yesterday was a long day for Krista (and for us, too). We went to the vet at 7:00 am, so I could drop her off... she got her teeth cleaned, polished, and also, unfortunately, needed a couple (we thought) extracted. This is her 'before' picture, while we waited for her to be checked in:

She has a weird sort of underbite going on where you can see her bottom teeth when she looks at you. Turns out, those bottom teeth were  moved out of place because they were loose! She also had some pretty bad breath going on, apparently due to lots of gum disease, and even had some abscesses and  quite a bit of bone loss in her jaw. So, instead of just a few teeth being removed like we had expected, after about 6 hours of work altogether between the cleaning, all the X-rays, and the extractions, Dr. V. ended up extracting a total of 15 teeth. (dogs have 42 teeth total, but still, 15 is a lot!) I guess the same thing could happen to us, if we never brushed our teeth or saw a dentist regularly until we were middle-aged? 

Here she is last night after bringing her home from the vet's office. She was still pretty loopy from the morphine, and didn't even move after I got her comfortable on the floor. (poor thing!) When she did finally try to get up, she got to the tile floor and went straight down, sort of like that scene when Bambi tries to walk on the ice for the first time... 

This morning, she's doing much better, already! She ate all of her breakfast (mashed up with some warm water), and is much steadier on her feet. Now, she just has to chill out and heal till her 10-day checkup. (no problem, there, at all- her favorite activity is chilling!) Hopefully, she'll feel even better than she ever did before, considering that she's probably had these problems  accumulating for quite a few years. 

And as soon as I can, I'm going to start brushing her teeth, so we don't have to go through this again! :) (and brush the other dogs' teeth, too!)

random photo catch-up

yup, we're still here! We had a pretty low-key holiday that was spent mostly at home, with Christmas day spent at the home of some very close friends. I didn't really take many photos over last few weeks, but here's a few random ones:

Holiday flowers: Christmas cactus and Amaryllis

A couple weeks ago, I went to the local grocery store to pick up something food-related, and came back home with these! I entered the store through the greenhouse section- what can I say? LOL! These flowers remind me of the holidays growing up, because Mom and Grandma would both have their houses full of amaryllis (what's the plural for that, anyway?) and Christmas cacti during the winter. The white Christmas cactus is going gangbusters, while the magenta one, being smaller (it's the one on the left that's hard to see), has only got one flower open right now... the only word to use for the amaryllis is amazing!! There are two flower stalks: the first one has six (!) flower buds, and it looks like all six of them will actually bloom! Hopefully they'll all last, and I can keep them alive through the summer. (I'm not sure if my Midwestern-raised green thumb is up to the task here in the desert.)

Holiday dogs! L-R: Prescott, Bisbee, Krista

 One of the Christmas presents we gave to the dogs (and ourselves) was taking all three of them to the groomers... don't they look pretty?!? It's a big job with a long-haired dog (way too big for us to want to tackle it on a regular basis), and the groomers definitely earn their money! (by the way, Tom is off-camera holding up a treat- that's why they're all sitting so attentively. They don't sit still on command for more than about 1 1/2 seconds, otherwise- lol!)

winterizing in the AZ desert!!

We've actually had a freeze warning in effect for the last couple days, so we had to 'winterize' a few of our plants- the Styrofoam cups protect the growing tips of the cactus arms from getting frostbit. It looks goofy, but it works! This is our night-blooming cereus, which is doing really well, so I don't want it to get frostbitten.

Winterizing method 2- this method doesn't work on cactus, lol!
The plant under here is a natal plum, a low-growing evergreen
shrub native to South Africa: click here to see a photo of it

Mom was asking me recently what winter in AZ is like, and if we really notice a difference. Besides the obvious temperature changes (it does get down to freezing occasionally at night, and every once in a great while- like every 5-10 years- there might be a visible snowflake or two falling somewhere in the Valley), there are some other differences. There are some deciduous trees that lose their leaves; the quality of the light and sunshine is much weaker (it's still lots better than having gray skies for months on end, though); it gets dark much too soon for my taste; and it rains occasionally (not like a monsoon storm, but a wet, damp, cold rain).  

One other way I know it's winter is when I'm running the water inside the house- the water takes forever to get warm or hot when you run it! LOL!! It's an odd thing, but there's a good reason for this: since the ground doesn't freeze here, our water pipes are buried very shallow underneath the ground. Because of this, the water never actually gets bona-fide 'cold' during the summer, and it also takes much longer to heat up during the winter. 

Afternoon-sun-basking kitties

One other way I know it's winter is that the cats get a lot friendlier, both with us and with each other. They get very 'cat-like' and hang out in the sun, or curl up on any blanket or afghan that looks comfortable. (including right on top of us, if we're sitting still!) They would never do this in the middle of the summer (not that they could sit in the sun even if they wanted to, since we have the sunscreens up to block the light). 

So, now it's on to 2013- both Tom and I are sort of glad to have 2012 over with, actually... what with my two surgeries and a cancer diagnosis, a cat illness and surgery, and a mysterious dog sickness (he's finally back to normal, thankfully), 2012 wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, and we're not sorry to see it gone. Here's looking forward to a year of better health and good things to come, for all of us! 

(except for those pesky New Year's resolutions, one of which is for me to clean up my craft room: we were watching a Hoarders television show marathon over the holidays, and some of it was hitting a bit too close to home for comfort-- lol!)

the week (well, some of it, anyway) in photos

Wednesday afternoon, a storm moved through the valley- storms (and really, clouds in general) are unusual things here, so they're pretty exciting when they do actually happen.

 Yay, it actually rained! Enough to use the windshield wipers, even!! (although not right here; this is just after it started.)

Then, there was a duststorm... so, my nice clean car isn't nice and clean any more. :( But, there was rain!! so I won't complain too much.

another photo of the praying mantis from Friday. I love that you can even see his tiny antennae here!

Saturday morning, we ran some errands. 1) drop the dogs off at the groomers. 2) check out chest freezers and computers at Best Buy-- need to do more research before we buy, though. 3) stop off at Arriba's Mexican Grill for lunch-- they have some amazingly hot (and tasty) Hatch chile entrees. 4) Pick up framed artwork from JoAnn's. 5) back home, with leftovers for Sunday.

Arriba's interior is kind of 'kitchy' Mexican, but it's fun- an entire wall of plastic flowers, and these larger-than-life parrots everywhere. I thought this one was kinda funny, holding his can of beer. (when I took the photo, a sweet little old lady who had also been taking pictures asked me, "oh, are you a tourist too?" haha!! No, just a scrapbooker!

The first piece of framed artwork. My mom is an amazing sewer!! I started this piece of counted cross-stitch, oh, maybe about 2 years ago?? not sure... Anyway, I work really slow, and have a tendency to not finish things, even though I have the best of intentions. She worked on me for at least 6 months to give it to her so she could finish it for me. Finally, I conceded defeat (I was probably only about a quarter of the way done) and true to her word, she did finish it. 

But, that's not all- she also did this one, too!! These were designed by the same designer, and are about 18x22 framed. Gorgeous, right?? 

I know-- it is amazing, isn't it?!? I have no idea how many individual stitches there are in these, but they're so detailed, there have to be thousands... a huge thank-you to Mom, for spending untold hours on these with your needle and thread.

I'll post another photo or two of them, once we get them hung. I think they're going to go above our bed, and will finish off the bedroom perfectly! 

The dogs, after spending 4 hours at the groomers. They are so clean, the white fur is almost blinding! And, there's so much less hair on them, I can't even begin to imagine what the floor at the groomer's looked like after they were done!! L-R: Krista, Prescott, Bisbee. (Krista still doesn't know how to 'sit' yet; I need to work on that with her some more.)

Bisbee's hair is so silky smooth after they come back from the groomer's; too bad it won't last! (we haven't let them 'cut loose' and play outside quite yet; don't want them to get dirty too quick.) She poses so pretty! (when there's no outside distractions, that is.)

random pet photos

Just some random animal shots from the last couple days:

Ariel watching something outside-- they just wish the could open the door by themselves!

Ariel  'flops' on the floor when we come into the house, looking for a belly-skritch

Krista is always smiling!! (she doesn't know she's going to the vet to get a shot, lol!)

Krista posing with Nano (one of the cats who lives at the vet's office)

still here! a photo post--

yup, we're still here, and still doing stuff- I just haven't done anything with my photos lately! (I'm actually embarrassed to say that most of my recent pictures are still hanging out on the camera...) But, here are a few of them that I did rescue from photo cyber-purgatory!!

we took all three dogs to the groomers a month or so ago; no way are we patient enough to deal with all that hair!! Melissa and her staff at Puppy Love Pet Stylist always do a great job with them- Doesn't Krista look happy?? (Bisbee and Prescott are probably thinking, "come on, let's get home- it's dinnertime!")

a cool-looking early evening sky (the colors were much more vivid in real life)

everyone waiting at the door- must be dinnertime!!

Prescott's "olyphant" toy hanging out at the top of the stairs, waiting for him to come back.

"unpacking Christmas" from the coat closet. (I'll post some pics of the decorations, too!)

yesterday afternoon we went out for lunch, then attended a performance of Handel's Messiah given by the Scottsdale Choral Artists and Scottsdale Arts Orchestra. [The performance venue was a (large) Lutheran church-- notice all the organ pipes in the background? We didn't get to hear the organ yesterday, but I would definitely love to- it's one of the largest church organs in the state, and has over 5,000 pipes!]

pet pages from the SB cottage

In addition to doing some art journaling and moving bits of paper (okay, lots of paper) around on the table, I did actually finish some scrapbook pages while I was at the Scrapbook Cottage last weekend; probably about 10 pages / layouts, all together. (wow, has it really been two weeks ago already?? where does the time go, anyway?? )

This page features one of my favorite photos of Bisbee... she had just been to the doggy beauty parlor, and was looking particularly cute, I thought. I love the little pink bow in her hair! (okay, I never thought I would ever write a sentence like that, but really, she does look cute with a bow.) She is such a happy dog, and particularly "girly" looking (she even runs like a girl- haha!!) so I wanted to showcase that. I fought with this page for AT LEAST an HOUR, trying to use a certain color scheme I had in mind, but I just couldn't get it to work. Once I gave up on that and started picking other papers, the page came together in about 15 minutes. Funny how that works, isn't it?!? (aggravating, too!!) The starting point for this layout came from Shimelle Laine's blog, and one of her newest series, "scrapbook starting points."

here is the "starting point" from Shimelle's blog for the page above featuring Bisbee... mine turned out quite different, right?? That's the beauty of the starting point concept. Different papers, different colors, add your own number of photos, etc. to "personalize" it just for you- absolutely brilliant!

This one is a portrait of Krista, also made using one of the layout starters from Shimelle Laine's "starting points" series. This is one of the first "portraits" I took of Krista, and had wanted to use pink / girly colors with it, too, but they just didn't work with the colors in the photo, so I switched to Sassafras Lass papers, which I think bring out the golden tones in her fur. A couple manila shipping tags, add in some of my vintage buttons and rickrack, and it was done. more or less-- I always fiddle with things on my pages for a while, moving things 1/4 inch here or there. (here is the suggested starting point from Shimelle's blog, which you can find here: Shimelle Laine) Basically, four 5 1/2 inch squares with a narow strip across the middle, then you take it from there.

This one is a portrait I took of Bisbee (on the left) and Prescott (on the right)... looking at him now, it's hard to believe he was ever that small! I love this picture, too-- they both cocked their heads just so, and I managed to get it on film... yay! The printed paper I used was leftover when I cut up the paper for another page (using the pattern on the reverse, I think), and it was just laying there-- it ended up being perfect for this picture! The paper is printed with a pattern that makes it look like layers of fabric and sewing, and when I got home, I added some of my own "real" sewing to it, along with a few more vintage buttons and stickers that match the patterned paper.

thanks for looking-- I'll be back soon with more scrapbook pages!! (and check out Shimelle's blog, if you have time- I promise, you'll find something inspirational there for your scrapbook pages!)

more of the blur...

I know that none of these pictures are examples of great photography, but I get such a kick out of watching Bisbee and Prescott play in the backyard thatI keep trying to capture it on film. Even with the composition and focus problems (or maybe because of them), hopefully I've at least captured the "essence" of their joy and exuberance-- what do you think?

(they remind me of a shampoo commercial, with their hair blowing in the breeze!)

^^^ I really like this one!!

Below is Krista, being her usual smiley self!

It was sunnier out Wednesday afternoon, so the photos below were shot with the sunlight as a backdrop-- most of them didn't turn out very good at all, but I got a few that I think worked; it's sort of a neat effect.

Their playing only goes in spurts, though-- they flop down on the ground exhausted pretty quickly... I'm exhausted myself sometimes, just watching them!! (it's still fun, though.)