Odds and Ends

Break from Writing About OTOAL

As you saw by my last post, I took a slight break this weekend from writing blog entries about OTOAL (our trip of a lifetime) and added to my Project Life weeks done - funny thing they also involved OTOAL.  I got 2 more weeks done (weeks 5 & 6) and week 7 is started.  I'm now into mid-February, just a tad behind.  :)   I find I'm using 2 of the colours in my colour scheme much more than the other one (grey) so I'll have to work at using it more often but it's just the other 2 (the aqua/turquoise and the yellow/gold) seem to go so much better with the pictures I've been using on the pages.  I think I'll see if I can introduce some other colours into the scheme as the year goes on.

It looks like I'm not being consistant with the week marker but in week 6's case I wanted to hide part of those 2 photos (who wants a garbage can in there?) so it had to be bigger.  I'll probably put in more variety in the size of it and the placement of it.

I think I'm going to try and do a week every other day or so until I catch up, speaking of which  I don't know what I'm going to do with April as the cameras hardly came out at all that month - maybe it was withdrawal from using them so much while we were away.  Any ideas?  Maybe just 1 page for each week and a heck of a lot of writing.

 

(Inter)National Scrapbook Day 2014

For the first time in what seems like years I actually did some scrapbooking (if you call PL scrapbooking) on NSD and got 6 pages done.  Up to April I'd only done 2 pages the entire year so this is major!  Here I go apologizing - they aren't anything special but they are done and I almost have January finished - will get the last week of it done today as it's already part way done.

I find it amazing how much bigger the week tag looks in the second one but I used grid lines so I know they are the same size - it must be the colour I chose makes it stand out like that.

I'm doing PL digitally and using a template of Cathy Zielske's (they'll be put in a book and this way I don't need to worry about the gutter).  I'm also using her Week In Review journaling cards on every page and September Blue's week markers.  I had started placing the marker in the same place on each week but that just wasn't going to work with certain pictures so now it's going to be where ever it fits.

I Actually Made a Digi Template!

This week in Cathy Zielske's class "Clean & Simple the workshop" it was all about making our own templates - mind you from Cathy's sample and following her instructions but I made it!   Can you tell I'm absolutely tickled about it?   I feel really confident about being able to do them now.

The background really doesn't show on here because it's white but that will be ok once it's printed out.

I am so enjoying this class and not looking forward to it ending in 2 more weeks (:   I wonder what we'll be learning next week.   Meanwhile I'm also coming along in getting the previous class "Design Your Life" finished - I'm up to week 9 out of 12 in it.

What I've Been Doing on "Design Your Life"

Design Your Life is the real old class of Cathy Zielske's at BPC that I signed up for in I think 2011 and never finished week 2 (a 12 week class).  It was it that brought about my choice of Finish for my one little word this year.  I was determined to finish it this year.   Well today I'm very happy to say that I'm now working on week 6 of it - almost half way through it.  :)

I'm really enjoying doing this and can't figure out why I stopped.  I thought I'd share some of the layouts I've done (to Cathy's sketches or in my case digital templates) get caught up this far.  There's one I want to share but I need my niece's go ahead first as her little one is the subject of it.   So instead here's some of the rest.  BTW, I checked with Cathy first to make sure it was ok with her seeing as they were class assignments.

This was a really dull, gray day and as I needed to repeat things I used the colours from the glacier - love that colour picker on PSE.
This was supposed to be all about 5 things my family member thought about themselves but not one of them co-operated (even John) so it's just mine.

 

I think the class is actually still available if you're interested  - at least if you go in through the link on Cathy's blog it is.

Templates - Cathy Zielske

A Really Nice Mail Day!

Friday was a super mail day - only trouble is I didn't know it at the time.  For some reason we just didn't go to the mailbox then but that was all remedied this morning when John walked down there.  He came back with a package for me from England!  It was from Becky who had my name in Sian's Great Big Swap of Very Small Things.  I couldn't believe how quickly it got here as it only took a week to get here - that must be a record because sometimes it takes longer than that when it's within Canada or from the U.S. to Canada (2 weeks). 

What a super little package it was, full of buttons, ribbons, flowers, butterflies, sparklies and so much more and it even had a handmade card from Becky to go along with it.  Thanks so much Becky.

I can't wait to use these!

Thanks so much Sian for organizing this and Becky for the wonderful package!  Kirsty your package goes out on Tuesday (tomorrow is a holiday here) and I hope it arrives just as quickly as Becky's did.

 

Some New Courses

Ok, I know I said I needed to finish the courses I already had on my plate but 3 came up that I just could not say no to.  I am keeping my word for the year - Finish - in mind though.  Two of them are on organizing & decluttering over at simplfy101.com with Aby Garvey - "The FUNdamentals of getting organized" (we're in week 3 of it and so far so good - things are going out) and "Organize Your Kitchen" which actually starts next week.  My kitchen is in dire need of organizing so hopefully this will help.

The third one is my favourite already and it just started on Thursday.   It's Cathy Zielske's "Clean & Simple The Workshop" over at Big Picture Scrapbooking Classes.  Cathy has such a wonderful way of teaching.  BTW, it's still open if you want to take it.  I decided I wanted to take this one "live", not like the "Design Your Life" one I'm doing on my own so that's why I'm working away at 2 of Cathy's classes at the same time.

Here's what I did for the first week.

Pictures are starting from the left - John & I on our most recent Alaska cruise, my sister and I in the Public Gardens in Halifax , one of the Irises in our garden, the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove and 2 of my cousins and I from our visit last September. 

It was supposed to be hybrid but as I'm in the midst of decluttering/organizing my scrapping room I couldn't get at my papers so it was all done digitally.  The plaid paper is from Scrappity-do-dah's Believe in Miracles kit.

Week 3 of DYL (Design Your Life)

I signed up for Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life self-paced class at BPC would you believe back in August of 2011.  I have decided that I HAVE to finish it once and for all this year and have managed to finish off the rest of week 1, all of week 2 and this weekend I'm working on week 3.    Because it's self-paced I don't get any feedback on my assignments so I thought I'd share this one (assignment #1 of week 3). 

As you can see it's kind of "old"  - I am so far behind on our vacations that it's ridiculous.  This was done using 2 templates that Cathy provided as part of the course. 

I decided to do everything digitally as it's just much quicker for me and it comes in handy if you don't have the right size of picture for the template.  :)

 

Hello Monday

Hello Starbucks and chai/tea/coffee with Janie.

Hello no asthma meds for today and tomorrow to prepare for tomorrow's lung function test - ugh.

Hello laundry - is there ever any end to it?

Hello mall walking - time to get back to it.

Hello New Balance store - time to get some better stability shoes for walking.

Hello Staples - with all this backing up of pictures onto DVD's we need more jewel cases.

Hello Shimelle's June challenge - have the pics & papers just need to figure out the rest.

 

I've been reading Lee's "Hello Monday" posts for awhile and finally decided to try my own version.  This is my first.

It's Been One of Those Weeks

You know the kind - when everything gets away from you and before you know it it's gone right on by. In my case without even 1 blog entry since a week ago Friday. I'm behind on blog and e-mail reading too but at least I'm caught up on replying to comments made on here. I won't even talk about the courses I'm supposed to be taking this month but there is always this coming week. I at least have started one of them and now even have my own font.

So what do I have to show for the week - absolutely nothing. :) Well I did do a lot of cooking - the nice comforting food we love to have in winter. Made a few soups too. I did manage to pop out 3 times during the week for some much needed tea/chai and crossword time with my friend Jean (the most we've done that in months I think as usually it's just once or twice a week because of other things going on. I did manage to get my Project Life Week 2 done (I'll share that in a wee bit) but I don't know what I'm going to do about week 3 as there were hardly any pictures taken that are worth putting in there. :)

Now as for those who wished me well while coping with shingles, thanks so very much for your thoughts and I'm happy to say that the pain seems to have gone (knock on wood). Guess getting right on to those meds as quickly as I did was definitely a good thing.

We've had about 4 inches of snow since Thursday morning and I'm hoping to get out there today and get some pictures - course it would have been better to do it while it was still fresh and white but that just didn't happen for some reason.

Ok, Project Life. I finally finished week 2 on Thursday when we had the 3 inches of snow and just got around to getting decent pictures of it today. :)

As you can see, a lot of week 2 had to do with getting all the Christmas decorations down and put away till 2013 (we're supposed to be on a cruise Christmas of 2012, keeping fingers crossed about that).  A note of explanation - all those liquor boxes piled up at the front door - we make our own wine and had just bottled 4 batches.   My cross-stitch lady is one of my on going projects - I'm working away at finishing off the bead work on her.

Project Life 2012 - Week 1

Edited the picture/layout sharing from original post.

Well here it is almost the end of week 2 and I've just finished week 1 of Project Life.   :)   Don't know what I'm going to do about week 2 as not many pictures have been taken what with hardly going out at all - guess I could go down & take a picture of the Walk In Clinic.   :) 

I found it hard getting pictures of my week 1 side by side.  I'd be interested in knowing how others that aren't doing the digital version managed to share theirs.  Maybe the meds are frying my brain but I just can't think how to do it today.  :)

NB:  After a good night's sleep it came to me - PSE.

 

 

It got super cold one day that week and I just had to take a picture of our indoor/outdoor thermometer that we've got set for Fahrenheit to remind us just how cold it got.  (Hmmm, might be an idea to occasionally put some weather stuff in there).

The top right picture in the last layout is some of the tree decorations being sorted out for packing away for another year.

I'm trying to use up all the Creative Memories number stickers I've got from eons ago so that's what I'm using for the week numbers.

I can just see myself tomorrow changing these pictures of the 2 pages after I've thought about them. 

Yep - changed them!  :)