Father's Day Post

In honor of Father's Day, here's to my dad, one of the family gardeners!  Speaking of gardens, how is yours coming?  Other than the Chinese chives which apparently cannot be killed, we haven't eaten anything from ours yet.  The season did start a little late but I think it won't be long for the strawberries now.  Just as I am typing these words, someone just walked into the house with a bunch of cilantro!  I believe he is making me a avocado cherry salad on Father's Day.  Yay me!
As seen in Scrapbooking Boys and Men, special issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher.

It is so much fun to create titles using my Cameo. The software definitely makes it easier than what the Cricut stand-alone offers. 

In just three days, Cheese and the girls are coming to stay with us for a few days. It's unbelievable since Minnesota is fly-over country.  No one has ever visited me, so this is quite an event.  On the other hand, what do people do here?  Lord knows I wouldn't choose it as my touristic destination so I count my blessings twice that they are coming to see us!!!  I do have a few activities planned including several trips to the YMCA.  She said that she wanted to relax so relax we will, after a hard workout!  Meanwhile, please let the air mattress fit in my scrapbook room, lol.

I have also been pouring over the internet researching everything and anything related to our upcoming Alaskan cruise.  It's safe to say that after this trip, most everything will appear inexpensive in contrast!  The line is drawn in the snow when it comes to dog sledding on the glacier.  At $550 per person for 2 hours, my children are welcome to pay for that excursion when they visit Alaska on their own. I will, however, look into booking something up north of Minnesota for a dog sledding trip this winter, something I had never considered before researching this cruise!  

The house is starting to smell good. I'd better go help prepare dinner being it's not my day after all :)  

Tasty, the Father Baker

I have been so delinquent in the blogsphere lately.  When I find myself falling asleep and waking up to thoughts of an all consuming project at work, everything else just falls by the wayside.

Father's Day is right around the corner. Along with a couple of layouts published in the Scrapbooking Boys and Men, I have a few projects to show in the next couple of weeks.  First is this layout I did for the Creating Keepsakes' blog, taking inspiration from Mandi Buchanan's layout.

The photo was from last fall when my dad decided to taking on baking which ended in many tasty treats and expanded waist for us.  He took his skills back to Shanghai and his braided breads became extremely celebrated among all the friends and relatives.

The arrows really drew me in and I can only wish to achieve that kind of realism on a non-digital page! I imitated the look by using my Cameo and creating a negative space of the gray polka dot paper. 

Summer officially arrived this week for the kids as they both tearfully said goodbye to another school year.  Just the thought of summer bores them to death even though their schedules will be packed with many activities. First Born starts a three-weeks course at Summer Academy next week. Between summer piano lessons and YMCA swim team, she will barely finish reading one book a day.  Second Child will go to day camp every afternoon.  While her schedule will be less structured than her sister's, there's plenty of opportunity for excitement.  To go out on a bang, we are taking them to Vancouver for an Alaskan cruise at the end of this summer, so their complaints of boredom annoys me to no end.

Tonight is the season finale of HBO's Game of Thrones. Last week's red wedding was every bit as awful as I imagined in my head and worse!  Obviously nothing is totally resolved since we are still waiting for book 6 and 7 to be written. While I am not looking for a happy ending, but my gosh, let there be something cathartic please!  

Piano and Scrapbook

It's Sunday evening and I can finally relax a little. The weekend was a frantic one, mostly due to my own procrastination.  Furiously did I work on my projects this weekend for CK between piano rehearsal, concert, and recital.  I skipped both days' workout to make time for these activities. You know it's serious when I sacrifice a workout, let alone two days in a row!!

First Born performed in MMTA's Honors Concert last night. Her group's piece was about two minutes long but I enjoyed the two hours concert listening to various levels of piano performance. The two solo performances from the Senior Competition winner and the College Competition winner were really stunning and thoroughly inspiring. Jay and I also enjoyed looking at all the lovely dresses the female performers wore while they were taking their bows.  Our verdict on our own daughter's dress is that it would fit her for at least three more years' worth of concerts if she makes it again, LOL.

On the scrapbooking font, I haven't shared this Color Room layout yet so here it is.  More yellow and brown this time! I really adore this gorgeous palette of colors and right up my alley!  The good ol' summer days are back in town. So I can look at these photos knowing that we can go pig out on DQ any time we want now, for a little while at least, and by "pig out" I mean a bite or two, lol.

That's it folks. It's Sunday night and when I play the game of thrones, I   play to win!  Good night! :)

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day and it is quite lovely outside. I am waiting for the winds to die down before heading out to have some casual pictures taken with the kids.  They baked some delicious Dutch baby pancakes for me and I had to fight them for a fourth pancake.  They each had two by that point so I had to share half of mine with them! Here I thought I would get it without saying on Mother's Day!

The long and perpetual winter will definitely delay the season of growth for us. The tulips are almost about to bloom and the vegetables seeds are just in the ground.  I imagine we won't be picking strawberries till later in June and who knows when for blueberries. This is the first layout on blueberry picking from last year. I just got my hands on these incredibly beautiful WRMK and American Crafts papers  The green is so soothing so I really wanted to focus on that for this layout.

WRMK has the best gromlets!  I received some glittered ones and put them to use on this layout. I also got to use my Crop-a-dile to set them.  I did have to rip out the first one I set but you can't even see my mistake on this close-up photo, can you? 

The "Life documented" is Project Life card from WRMK.  Not only perfect for PL stuff, they make wonderful instant embellishment for all projects!  The little bee seems to agree with my assessment! 

It is time to get ready for lunch and then off to BodyPump I will go.  May your day be sunny and bright!

Countdown to National Scrapbooking Day

To kick off the National Scrapbooking Day this Saturday, May 4, the CK Dream Team, contributing writers and contributing editors are posting to the CK blog all week to share some scraplifting inspirations based on projects featured in the May/June 2013 issue of Creating Keepsakes.

Yellow is all the rage in my book right now, so I was immediately drawn to this page by Christa Uttely.  I know I wanted to do something with the yellow and shape them like ribbons. Not only is yellow a trendy color, it juxtaposes with the dark rich reds in the raspberries in my photo.

Today is May day and we had some snow flurries, can you believe it?  At this rate, harvesting these delicious antioxidants will be a very long time off yet!  I suppose I will just dream about them, the crown jewels, the cash crop of our garden, sigh...

They are indeed too good to be true because I simply never imagined in my life, living in the 'burbs, that I would have the opportunity to harvest such amazing fruits! The bounty that is the good earth... now all we need is consistent warm weather. How we all miss the gardens!

Please stop by Creating Keepsakes' blog and view more blog entries from the team and to enter to win many fabulous prizes this week! Good luck!

The Color Room 148

Continuing from the last post, I am showing a few photos borrowed from others for this post. We visited Persnickety Prints during our CK trip.  Laina asked me to do a jump outside of the store, and I enthusiastically obliged.  One shot was all she took!  Hilarious stuff!  I do this jump on a very regular basis in workouts and am more than extremely happy to show it off on the street, LOL. 

One final photo by Megan before we all boarded our planes.  Is it me or does Gretchen's suitcase look like it can swallow the other three? lol.  

Here's looking at us: creative time at Stampin' Up! 

I have more photos so I'm going to milk it!  There will be a next time :)

Now onto something I have not done in a long time: a Color Room layout!  How I have missed doing these so I am back participating with the palettes! Lydell has done an amazing job running and keeping up the Color Room.  She is my hero and I really am glad to be able to contribute what little I can.  One tiny sad note: I thought the sage green was gray, oh well! 

I was immediately reminded of the reasons why I love doing these palettes: it's just pure fun.  Find a photo, match some colors, say something if I want to, nothing if I don't.  Dig through the stash, use up some products, enjoy myself!  I love scrapbooking!

Back from Creating Keepsakes

This week, I had the pleasure of attending the annual Creating Keepsakes' editorial board meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I spent three glorious days evaluating the magazine issues from the past year, discussing trends of today, brainstorming ideas for upcoming issues with fellow Dream Team members and CK's editorial team.  It was all work and all fun at the same time.  There was plenty of good eats and creative time too. It is so cool to see how things work behind the scenes and to be given the opportunity to understand the business side of the magazine.

Some great changes are being made to Creating Keepsakes, digital editions are available and a substantial expansion of the digital portion of the magazine is coming to subscribers.  The magazine is definitely taking steps to adapt to the environment, both economically and also technology-wise.  Adaptability is a key to long term business viability so it is a good thing that the management is actively taking these necessary steps.

Here are some photos from the three glorious days: Jennifer, editor-in-chief, at the helm, leading us through three days worth of meeting agenda.

This is a hint as to where we did our creative time!

The whole gang inside the headquarter of Stampin' Up!

We also visited another little spot... WOWsER!

Lastly, here we are with Joannie in the CK office!

The last 48 hours were far from glorious.  Due to flight cancellations and bad weather, Jana and I traveled for two days to finally get home, even spending a night in Spokane!  I need to get the dust off me to attend a birthday celebration for my father-in-law.  Have a wonderful weekend and I shall be back with more photos of this fun trip.