Digiscrapping at an awesome retreat center

I gave myself a birthday present this year – a digital scrapbooking retreat at The Chick Nest in Clear Lake, Iowa. It’s a fabulous retreat center, and the classes were taught by Linda, who is hilraious and fun to chat with and a great teacher. She co-owns a Photoshop traning company. We had a very small group for this particular retreat, which was nice. We were able to work at our own pace and choose what planned lessons to skip and which unplanned lessons to add.

I learned how to do this

And I got much better at turning this
to this

I’d been out of the scrapping groove for a while because I’ve been busy posting comments on other people’s pages and posting ads and such duties that I do to earn money to buy scrapbook supplies. So this was a good push to get moving again. You can see my recent pages on my flickr page.

When I got home, Mark had painted most of our upstairs, which needed to be done before we list the house for sale. Becky bought and cooked dinner for the four of us, herself and my parents. Connor picked out my card (Dora the Explorer) and one gift (coffee) and Mark said he’ll also buy me tickets to see A Prairie Home Companion next weekend but I might turn him down because I think I already got enough gifts.

 

to do: Clear my digiscrapping creativity block

I got accepted several weeks ago to be part of a digiscrapping designer’s creative team. That means we make pages using products by Tiffany, known as Inspired by Dominic Designs, and post them to different online galleries as a way of promoting her stores.

It turned out to be great timing because soon after that, my hard drive crashed and I lost all my kits. So it’s nice to have a reliable place to get free, cute stuff!

She just began selling at a third store and is having a sale there. Check it out:

She is making some things exclusively for this store. Everything else is available at here or here.

Here are some pages I made with her kits:

 

We went to the zoo Monday

and saw the new Grizzly Coast exhibit. The sea otters were my favorite part.

 

I (heart) digital scrapbooking

I’ve found it’s much easier to sit down at the computer and hammer out a scrapbook page than to haul out stuff to do it the old-fashioned way. So I guess I’m officially a convert! Now I need to learn how to do fancy stuff like cutouts and get better about toning pictures and such, which used to be done in the lab when they were printed.

Since my page slideshow at the bottom of this blog was getting a bit unwieldy, there are now two – one for this year and one for last year. They are in chronological order so new things may appear at the end of the shows or in the middle, because I’m not scrapping in strict chronological order.

If you don’t want to watch all the old stuff to see when the new arrives, you can click on one of the slideshows, which will take you to Slide.com, where you can view all the images in the show. You can see the pages bigger by clicking on them, which will take you to Flickr.com. If you need to know the very second I add a page, you can sign up as a “fan” on Slide.com or become my “friend” on Flickr.com.

 

scrapbook pages

Here are a couple of digital scrapbook pages from our last two weekends.

 

odds and ends

I’ve composed many blog posts in my head over the past week but haven’t had (or made) the time to sit down and type them out. They’re all gone now but here’s a little recap of the week.

Grace and I returned to the library Wednesday afternoon. She played a computer game and picked out some books to take home. I returned the book I checked out three weeks before (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons) I can’t remember the last time I finished a book without renewing it! I stayed up reading it for two hours Tuesday night because I had to get to the end. I highly recommend it. I’m going to try to get out to the Oakdale library on Saturday to hear the author speak.

We scrapbooked at my parents’ house Friday. I got five pages done. Used up all my pictures and had to order more. I might have be current on photos by the time Grace graduates from college!

Saturday Grace woke up at 3 a.m. puking. She graced every room except Connor’s and the kitchen by 11 a.m. I called in sick and held her on the couch after that and she finally fell asleep and slept for two hours. By the time she woke up at 3, I was about to faint from having eaten or drank anything since midnight. She seemed ok after her nap but puked again after her bath and then her temp spiked again. By Sunday afternoon she was fine. I felt a little off most of the weekend but never got as bad as she did, and the boys seemed to be fine. Besides feeling bad for her standing at the toilet crying, I’m most sad that she missed her first swimming class.

It sounds like the in-laws enjoyed this weekend‘s U.S. Figure Skating Championship, which we (all the kids) sent them to as their Christmas gift.

Monday was 40 degrees so I took the kids outside in the morning and Mark took them in the afternoon while I took a nap. (No matter what I did that day, I was totally exhausted) Connor doesn’t really like being outside but Grace loves it. Despite being exhausted, I was unable to fall asleep until 3 a.m. Think of all the things I could have gotten done in those four hours!!

Tuesday, I convinced Grace to do her “scrapbooking” (drawing, cutting and gluing paper) in my room while I did mine. I’ve offered this many times and this was the first time she didn’t insist on both of us doing her scrapbooking in her room. She wanted to pretend my room was a school and I was her teacher so I kept her busy asking her to draw certain things, trace certain stencils, etc., and she had fun trying out all my fancy scissors. She also learned to write “bed” and “bear” but I don’t know if she remembers how.

Grace and I returned to gymnastics Tuesday evening. She was VERY tired from not having her daily rest (which Mark instituted a few weeks ago) so she didn’t really want to participate and was hardly able to understand the teacher. She spent most of the class bouncing on the little trampoline. Well worth my $12, eh? GRR

Mark and I watched Prairie Home Companion (not too good) and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (very cute but predictable of course) on my weekend evenings.

No mom’s group today because of the cold (-50 wind chill, I think) and Mark stayed home from school because of the cold. I got out of having to bring snack. ha! We just hung out today and I made a bunch of phone calls. Mark rearranged Connor’s room a bit to help the heat circulate better instead of being blocked by a futon.

Wow, that was fabulously boring. I promise a more exciting post next time.

 

To do: make New Year’s resolutions

I’ve had a request to blog about reasonable resolutions. I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions but the idea of them is keeping with the theme of this blog so I’ll give it a shot. I’m not going to try to lose 20 pounds or write the great American novel or eat vegetables with every meal. So let’s give these a try:

• Read two fiction and two nonfiction books
• Go to the gym at least once a week
• Finish five scrapbook pages a month
• Send birthday cards … before each person’s birthday
• Start composting

I just realized those fall into some nice categories — for my mind, my health, my spirit, other people and the Earth. What are your resolutions? Can you make an attainable one for each of those categories? Feel free to share them in the comments.

And have a wonderful new year!

 

Time flies when you’re having fun

I can’t believe it’s Dec. 22. Wasn’t Connor’s birthday just the other day?!

We’ve all been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to blog about it. But for the next 20 minutes, my only work-related task is to stare at the wire feed, which is moving slower than a snail, in molasses, in January, after it died. I could learn how to work Mark’s new mp3 player that his wonderful wife gave him for his birthday, but I forgot to bring a battery. I could order the last few Christmas presents I need (which I don’t need to arrive for another week) but I’m still disgruntled that they didn’t have them in the stores Thursday so I’ll wait another day. So here I am and here’s what we’ve been up to:

Thursday: Shopping

We were out shopping for about four hours, which should have been enough time to hit way more stores than we did. But with two little ones in tow, my need to find the “perfect” gift for one person and Mark’s need to look at EVERY option in a store, especially if it’s on sale, we didn’t get very far. I think we managed to buy more for ourselves than other people. oops.

We did get some of what I wanted to get our niece and nephew. But some other things I wanted, which are on barnesandnoble.com were not at Barnes and Noble the old-fashioned version. Irritating! We also got the main part of the gift for a dear friend of mine but I need a few fun little things to round out the package — not sure what they’re going to be yet. And Mark got a gift for the person he has in the Westpfahl name exchange.

The kids were very good, but Connor fell asleep so Mark stayed in the car with the kids while I hit the first two stores, and we had to eat twice because Grace (and Mark) is always hungry. But while we were in the mall, Connor sat nicely in his stroller, not making a peep (except when he saw food that wasn’t being offered to him) and only man-handling a few items for sale (why is it so hard for stores to make room for a stroller?) Grace was cheerful the whole time and followed directions very well. Only at the end when she was tired did she get pokey.

Friday: Shots and Scrapbooking

The kids had doctor appointments at 9 a.m. Friday. … 9 a.m.? What was I thinking? We did get there on time, but I had no breakfast and we didn’t have time to gather a couple of things I wanted to take along to my parents’ house. Both kids did awesome at the doctor. Grace passed the vision test. I couldn’t believe she didn’t get shy and clam up. She refused to do the hearing test though. She had three shots and Connor had four. Neither cried until they were on No. 3. Connor weighs 21 pounds and Grace weighs 27 (I think). The doctor recommended giving her Pediasure, which is high in calories, and getting her to drink more milk. She’s in the 2 percentile for her height/weight. On the behavior chart, she can do many things they don’t expect until age 5, like write her name.

After the appointment, we went to my parents house for the day. Mark was there part of the time and out getting a haircut and doing some shopping for the other part. I got five or six pages done in my scrapbook. It would have been more but we spent about two hours eating lunch, playing play-doh and trying to get Connor to take a nap (which he never did). Grace “helped” me quite a bit, although she also did some “scrapbooking” of her own with scratch paper, a pencil, stencils and tape, at her own little table that Grandma set up for her in the craft room.

Connor ended up falling asleep on the way home and slept straight through till morning — about 15 hours.

Saturday: Mark’s birthday

Becky came over to watch the kids so Mark and I could go out for his birthday. She was very nice to do this on short notice, despite having other things she wanted to do. She headed to happy hour when she left though — yeah, they drive me to want to drink too

Mark and I saw “Charlie Wilson’s War” — and interesting and entertaining movie though not quite what I expected or quite as good as I’d hoped. I thought we’d see the second National Treasure movie because Mark really wanted to but he chose this one because he knew it was the kind of movie I’d like more than National Treasure. On his birthday. What a sweet husband.

We went to lunch at Khoury’s in Inver Grove Heights. The food was fine but not spectacular and a little expensive for the type of place it is (like Perkins but locally owned). The desserts — German chocolate tort and creme brulee — were fabulous though, and Mark’s was free.

And that brings us right up to now (except for the times I was at work each day. I’ll spare you that!)