orange gearle

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

~ a week in photos and words ~

c is for contagious

d is for drinks

e is for enjoying the iPad with elmo

f is for fork

Friday, I got a call from daycare...fever and complaining of an owie in her ear. So I made an appointment, and after an hour and a half of various tests (none of which made her happy) we came home with nothing but a 102.9 fever and a diagnosis of virus.

Saturday evening, my older daughter watched B. while we went out for supper to celebrate with friends. A close friend of mine turned 40 and her husband pulled off a surprise party. We almost didn't go because about a half hour before we left, B. vomited. I like this iPhone photo because the drink is the focus, but the party is still shown in the background. We came home after just a couple of hours to a kiddo with a 103.5 fever! Scary!

lime light (g is for green)

h is for hearts

Sunday was a little better. Still a fever, and stomach things, but times of "normal". I love this photo because1) B. set it up. She wanted the blankie on the floor (I helped) and then she set up the gorilla, and they played with the iPad. 2) The hair twirl. She twirls our hair and her own, especially when tired, or sick.

Monday, I was home with B all day. While still a bit pale and cranky, overall much better and no fever! Yay! Continuing with the alphabet theme...I chose a for, macro style for "macro monday".

Tuesday was my first night of class for this semester, so a quick shot of a lime for g is for green!

Wednesday I decided to try an idea that my older daughter, H. found on Pinterest! Fun shape bokeh. H is for heart, of course! (and I had to get a bit of orange in there somewhere)

I've been thinking a lot about my word; balance. Sometimes I think I even see it in the distance, but mostly it hasn't found me yet. :-) I need to go to a show or two I think! I miss music and spending time with C., just the two of us. Since B. has been sick I have gotten to spend more time with her, which is nice (the time, not the sick, of course). And I even had a minute or two to work on a layout (not quite finished, but will post soon). So maybe balance isn't so far away after all. Notice I haven't mentioned any sort of exercise though!

One thing is for sure, I have not been spending enough time with my parents. And even more important, B. hasn't been spending enough time with them. It doesn't help that she has spent the last two weekends with a fever!

Over the last few weeks my father has had several procedures to remove cancerous and pre cancerous cells on his skin. He worked outside most of his life, so it isn't surprising that it would be catching up with him at this point! This most recent procedure required quite a bit of tissue to be removed from his nose (dead center, of course), enough to necessitate skin grafting. This is something they will actually need to knock him out for and it makes me nervous! He suffered a stroke nearly 15 years ago, and we do believe that there have quite likely been other mini strokes in recent years (there are signs). Also since the kidney transplant, over four years ago, his health has deteriorated a bit due to the drugs that they have him on to keep him from rejecting my kidney. AND he has diabetes. So all of these health concerns are why I am a bit anxious about this upcoming event. It will be weighing heavy on my mind over the next week!

In my near future:
1. A show (or two). I have several on my calendar and I'm ready to go!
2. A night away with my soul mate. C. and I have several ideas about how to make this happen. It involves grandparent babysitters and reservations!
3. Finish that layout!

And I leave you with a B. story that makes this literacy coach very happy.

B. brings me a pile of books and says, "Mommy, talk these with your mouth." And that's what I'll focus my orange-colored-glasses-view on this week!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

~ january reflections ~

Wow. I am in too many projects right now!!! I'm not sure how I can find or maintain any sort of balance in my life with all this stuff going on! Unfortunately, you can see it in my photos, which doesn't make any of it fun. I should just embrace the fun that is creating and go with it, but I've been stressing over every. little. thing. I'm sure it's because I am spreading myself too thin!

Speaking of which, the month of February brings "February's Alphabet Fun" over on flickr. I'm doing it, of course. Feb. 1 = a is for.... Feb. 2 = b is for....you get the idea. I'm sure explore will not find me this month!

a is for apple

b is for breakfast

Both of these photos were also placed in the group We're Here!, and part of my 365. So three-fers, bonus.

I've noticed that this 365 attempt is quite different than my first failed one; both good and bad differences. I'm probably taking better photos overall. Like before, I am thinking about it often and looking at life through that lens, so to speak. I find myself, often, thinking, "Wow, that would be a great picture". Or thinking about the lighting, the composition of what's going on around me -- can what's going on around me have composition? I'm not sure how to word that! I think you get the idea. But a couple of differences: I'm caring too much about it. I am completely stressed out about the fact that my last few uploads have been...not so hot. Isn't that the silliest thing ever? I know it, but I can't seem to get past it. Also, I'm not taking nearly as many photos of my family. The whole purpose of buying the camera and getting back into creating scrap book layouts was to take better photos to document our lives. How did I stray!?

I enjoyed the OLW blog hop! As I'm looking around at all of the creative fun around me I'm wondering "How do these people do it??"! And I haven't even started back to class yet! Next, week I start a new graduate class, but it's OK because this time next year, I will be DONE (or close). Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is a good thing, but I'm not sure how I to balance it all between now and then; family, work, photos, OLW, scrapping. YIKES.

So, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed today. "Really?" you say, "I couldn't tell!" On the upside, look at all of the orange in the photos above! Whew! Awesomeness!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

~ OLW blog hop ~

I'm so excited (and a bit nervous) to be participating in my first blog hop ever! If you are visiting for the first time and you like what you see, please feel free to follow me by clicking over on the right!

As mentioned in previous posts, I am participating in a class over at Big Picture Classes called One Little Word with the fabulous Ali Edwards. This is my first attempt at this class and I am enjoying pretty much everything about it. I look forward to checking the gallery each day to see what my classmates have come up with. This month, I have enjoyed the prompts and feel like they have helped me get to know my word, balance. The one thing that has been difficult for me this round has been making decisions about the small stuff! As I shared in my last post, I'm sweating the small stuff and I don't like it!! :-) What I love most about this process though, is watching my word continue to pop up in my life everywhere!

But let's get to the photos and the process of putting it all together. I'll start with the final product and if you are interested in the details keep reading. Deal?

My word, balance. The title page is a photograph that I took on January 1st, the same day I announced my One Little Word in this post, which also explains why/how I chose it (or it chose me) and how the necklace in the photo is related to my word.

January page with title page

January 2012

The decision making part of this was the most difficult. Choosing the word was easy and picking out the album color wasn't at all a problem either, of course. I saw a scrapbook layout online a while back that used a grey and orange color scheme and loved it. I didn't pin it (I'm pretty sure I didn't even know about Pinterest at that time), so I couldn't find it again, but I remembered the colors and when this project came up I knew I wanted to use that palette. But then....white or grey prompt cards? type or handwrite? etc. To illustrate the difficulties that I had early on, I give you this photograph...

indecision

These were all for one quotation card! I love the quote, "Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving" by Albert Einstein. This was the first card I worked on, and I decided if they were all going to take as long as this one, I was in trouble! The real trouble was that I made six before I settled on this one...

I couldn't stop at just one quote! I also chose a quote by Henri Matisse, "What I dream of is an art of balance". I happen to love Matisse, so I was extra excited when I found it. I purchased a digital print of a Matisse painting online and printed it for my page. I chose this particular one because the people somehow remind me of my word -- and I like the colors. There are three layers, the base layer (the grey card stock is a bit of BazzillBasics (canvas) smoky goodness). The top layer is just the print, and I threw a bit of orange for good measure - a bit of an orange sandwich, if you will! I used this EK Success edger punch for some added fun, and wrote the quote going up the side. This one only took a couple of takes (headed in the right direction).

Probably my favorite card is the homemade chevron pattern, with the date. Inspired by this post by Katie Scott, I decided to add some chevron fun. First, I punched squares out of various paper. Next, I cut the squares in half and, finally, glued into a chevron pattern! Easy peasy! (Now we're getting somewhere)

And then, my word, Balance, written over two cards.

For this I inked, cricuited (heh, new word) and sewed.

This awesome embossed card stock, BazzillBasics' Tin Roof, was the base of these two cards. I cut them to fit and then I rounded the corners with my Creative Memories Corner Rounder. I lightly inked the raised parts with orange (of course) Stampabilities pigment and then ran the edges across the ink pad, too. I used the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge to cut out the letters on my Cricut. I was able to use several patterned papers from my stash. Finally, I got out my new(ish) sewing machine (read about my first adventure with that here) for a few, very imperfect finishing touches.

I had several mistakes that actually worked, which is always nice if you have to have mistakes! One is pictured below.

I had this great idea to use this awesome EK Success punch at the bottom of the thesaurus card (my first mistake was not spacing out the words to fill the card). I completely forgot that this punch doesn't really create a border, it detaches completely from the original paper! So I just stuck some patterned paper behind it, glued 'er down and called it a day.

Overall, I'm please with the final product and it was fun! I hope I didn't add too many boring details, but I happened to take a few photos while in the process and thought I'd share!

One more thing...looking for that self-portrait? I have taken a few, but been quite unhappy with all. So...I'll try again, soon.

Thanks for stopping by! Next up, Tere!