Nisa Fiin Scrapjack

Another wonderful bit of inspiration in this weeks scrapjack!

My husband took this touching photo of me snuggling with my sweet Audrey. Audrey has been through quite a bit these past two weeks having 15 teeth removed in a 4 hour long surgery and they are concerned over her lumps... The dreaded and horrible big C is a very real possibility. Needless to say, I've been babying her, cherishing every moment.

Genevieve Simmons Scrapjack

Here is my scrapjack of Genevieve Simmons. Such a great inspiration! I wanted to celebrate some great window art that I photographed in Graft de Kijp, Holland.

Scrapjack Meghan Dymock

Here is my latest scrapjack.

The original was such a reflective emotion-packed LO. I just let the emotion guide me where it wanted and revealed a piece of me that usually remains hidden. This last week giving presentations to packed rooms and fulfilling my director type duties for the Florida Environmental Health Association really showed me how much I need to grow. I would love to be one of those people who can easily present to hundreds of people, and can strike up a conversation with anyone. Instead, I get nervous and my voice shakes, and I wait till people come and talk to me. Somehow, someday, I will break free. But for now I just have to keep pushing out of my comfort zone little by little.

kristina contes scrapjack

Here is my version of the latest scrapjack. These are so much fun!
I was feeling reflective about how life changes and found these old pictures of the field of flowers that used to be my view every morning while I was growing up. The field has now been built on and the view is no longer so beautiful.

Sold Sold Sold!!!

Yeah!
It's official! The monkey is off my back!!! The house has sold and the money is in the bank! I am SO excited to start looking for a new house, getting out of the apartment, and moving on with our lives!!! In loving memory of a great house that took WAY to long to sell, here are a few photos of the good old 220 S. Aberdeen:

Closing time?

I'm a wreck! This has been one of the most trying situations I have had to go through! Many of you know this, but in summary:

I got a new job across the state in may of 2006. We put our house on the market in June of 2006 and had to move up to the new job in July of 2006. We had to rent an apartment and move some of our stuff, but most of it (including the bed, couches, etc.) stayed in the old house. My job was going to pay for the move, but we couldn't afford a rent, a mortgage, and a storage unit, so we were going to wait until we sold the house to move everything.

We got a dank and dirty apartment in a bad part of town because the rent was cheap and they allowed us to have our three dogs and cat for a $100 deposit total. Not having a back yard to let the dogs run around in has been very difficult as they are NOT good dogs on the leash! So we made do, thinking this was only temporary.

We had someone in September who wanted to buy the house, we found a new house up in the new city, and everything was going fine until the home inspection revealed some work needed to be done to the house and the buyer ran off.

So now, at the end of July 2007 we might actually sell our house! The house has been moved into a storage unit, the futon has been replaced by our real bed, there is an upright string bass in the hallway of our apartment and a kayak in the bedroom.

I am sitting here waiting for the UPS man to drop off the closing documents for us to sign. Then we mail them overnight to the title agency and the closing is scheduled for tomorrow.

This might actually be coming to an end soon, but I am still waiting for the fat lady to start singing...

Movers and Flat Tires

So we (August, the dogs, and I) went back down to Sanford this weekend and met with LOTS of movers to get quotes for the big move up to Tallahassee. This was (hopefully) the last time the dogs got to see the house, and they enjoyed their own personal dog park for the weekend.

I went to the Scrappy Boutique in Orlando and bought all sorts of fun new products! They always have a very current collection and is refreshing not to see some of the more traditional scrapbook store supplies. Of course, I spent way to much money, but I just can't control myself! I got the Love Elsie airplane mini album and am in heaven...

The Poppy Ink kit reveal was up at 2 am on Saturday and I was sitting in my pj's in a corner in the kitchen stealing wifi from some neighbor in order to get any add-ons. They were great, but I just couldn't justify the expense this time. I tossed and turned thinking of what fun things I can do with the kit. The scallop stamp is TOO cute!!!

On our way back we ran over a key in the road and it punctured one of my tires. Because I have all-wheel-drive I had to replace ALL of my tires and ended up forking out $500! Yikes!!!

When we got back to the apartment in Tally my Personal Scrapper kit was waiting for me and OH MY how gorgeous it is!!!! I can't wait to play with it!

I saw that Paper Trunk is having a guest designer call and have been working diligently on my submission. I'll keep it a secret for now...

I'm on the Pop Art Gallery!

Oh so exciting!!! I submitted a couple of layouts to BamPop and they put me on the Pop Art gallery! You can check it out here.

Windom and Audrey are super excited to now be famous!

Saturday Six

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I spent the day cleaning the house, washing the dogs, washing the rugs, admiring my fun new fabric, salivating over cupcakes, and watching the flash flood from my apartment window. Just another fun Saturday...

Happy Audrey

Here is another layout I made with my BamPop. This one is a sting of action shots of Audrey running to us when we went to pick her up from doggie camp. I love that dog!

Yum!

I used my BamPop tonight! Love me some BamPop!

Chickie Day

I just completed my first art piece utilizing fabric and I am super excited to hang it up on the wall! It makes me smile... I used vintage fabric, vintage clothing, felt, ribbons, trim, fibers, ric rak, old iron ons, hand beading on the ground and around the sun, and some patterned paper from the Crate Paper Crush line. I free-style embroidered the sun and the background fabric and quilted the ground fabric. Chickie was hand drawn and cut. Something to make me happy!

Saturday Six

Here are some photos of this very crazy Saturday:

I was up at 2 am to drive August to the airport. He's going on a road-trip across the country with his old college buddy who's moving from Washington State to Connecticut. The airport is 2.5 hours away from our house. A very groggy start to the day. This photo was taken as we were driving into the airport and I like the way the words look like they are flying away. I didn't get back to the house until 7:30 when I passed out until about 10:30.



I finally got my order in from www.reprodepot.com. I ordered one pound of fabric scraps. I had no idea what I would get, but I was not disappointed!!! My favorite is the red mushroom fabric. Too cute! It is a very good assortment of styles with each piece about 1/3 of a yard wide. I think the total yardage was bout 4 yards.




I went to a couple of vintage stores here in Tallahassee and found some treasures! It is hard sometimes to find vintage fabric scraps, so I find vintage clothing and then cut them up. There are so many "loud" shirts (the yellow flower's) and pants (believe it or not the peach fabric on the top right are mens pants!) that will probably not be worn all the time, so why not repurpose them? I'm excited to use this for fabric art and mini quilts. The glass owl is just too cute and I have filled it with yellow buttons.

I am extatic!!! My BamPop order arrived today and I squealed the whole way back to the house! I got all the papers from both of their lines as well as the Hello Robot and Journaling Bubble acrylic stamps. YEAH!! I've got some great photos of Audrey and Windom that will work great with these papers. I also ordered the little birdies too and they are on their way...

LOVE me some BamPop!!!


I watched Paris, Texas a movie directed by Wim Wenders. It was excellent! Basically it's about a man who is wandering the desert unsure of who he is. His brother finds him and brings him back to an understanding of who he is and where he belongs in the world. Very touching and amazing cinematography. I just hung up the art print and this scene of the movie fit really well with the print.


So, along with a great meal and a fantastic movie, I had enjoyed a few glasses of wine. Toward the end of the night, when the wine was doing its trick, I snapped this picture of sweet Cooper through the wine glass. Needless to say, I slept pretty good...



I do miss August already and really hope he has a fantastic trip with David.

So, there you have my Saturday Six.

Mrs Sad Face

I got a much needed piece of humble pie today.
Funny how things can be put into perspective so quickly when the cloud you're floating on disappears.
I guess a disappearing cloud only leaves sunshine behind.
I'm trying to find the positive.
It's hard sometimes, though...

Create Create Create!!!

OK, so I feel like I'm going through some crazy phase right now. I'm starting to find my style and it makes me so happy! The pages I've created lately have all been my favorite. Granted, it is now taking me longer to complete something, but that's OK when the end result is something I'm going to cherish!

Here's my latest page.





















I was not a big fan of the colors in the original patterned paper:

So I crumpled a little, sanded a lot, mixed yellow acrylic paint and a glazing medium and painted over it, once dry I stamped a birdie with brown ink, wiped it off to fade the stamp a bit, painted gesso over some places, then put another layer of yellow glaze over the top. Next a stitched various horizontal lines over the LO. I took two index cards and layered them on top of each other, sewing again in various horizontal lines. I took the photo and hand-stitched it on top of blue felt, and cut around it with pinking shears. I took an existing copper circle embellishment and put some vellum on top, stamped the date of the photo 1974 and wrote out the place: Kampen, Holland. There was actually a little something on the table by Tante Co's arm and the paperclip embellishment covers it up . I made a mini vignette inside the small charm, added some ball trim, the title, and other little touches to complete the page. So I started out with a piece of paper I wasn't all too fond of and ended up with something really beautiful (in my opinion of course)!

I found this quote on the internet in response to the number of comments people made about being like me and not knowing what the phrase is supposed to be:

Allan Hazlett writes:

"I was one of the few who, upon learning (fairly late in life, I recall) that “for all intensive purposes” is a malapropism, was not embarrassed that I had spent to many years not saying “for all intents and purposes,” but rather lamented the fact that “for all intensive purposes” was not an expression in English. It seemed so well to capture what I meant when I uttered it - when we consider only those purposes that are intensive, that’s the sense in which this is a good idea. It’s a good idea for all intensive purposes, but not for some of your other purposes that aren’t so intensive."

I am not alone, and that feels good!

The meaning behind the name

All the way up to a couple of years ago, I thought the phrase actually went: "for all intensive purposes". I was reading a book when it dawned on me I had been mistaken my entire life. It made me smile.

It's great when you learn something new, and it's also great to laugh at yourself.

So, I'm not going to change. I think the phrase works just fine how I have been saying it all my life. It will just be an inside joke whenever I hear or use the phrase.