This & That

Round 2

Another amazingly busy music week ahead, culminating in the annual State Solo contest over in Boise.  The school district winners will all congregate there to compete, including my two boys and four other voice students that I accompany.  In between time, we have several rehearsals and a recital and I have to play for a choir at the Jr. High music festival.  Busy stuff, but good.  And because I'm in a really good mood this morning, in spite of the hair war I had with DD,  I'm feeling like the SA girls are en-TITLED to something fun.  This layout is a slightly tweaked lift of on in the J/F Simple Scrapbooks magazine...right down to the paper, which I happened to have on my table when I saw it.  Have a good week, and I'll try to hit and run when I can!

Hit and Run

No time for anything today other than this. And dropping a huge hint for the SA girls out there, I think it's really AD-mirable that I stayed up late and rattled this layout loose from my little pea-brain.  Kit from Scrap Addict .   DD photos taken in her St. Pat's finery.

Inundated

It's the week before the kid's voice recital and also the week before state solo competition.  For me, that means lots and lots of music practice.  I've got 20 songs for the recital and an additional 6 for State Solo that I have to get under my belt, er, fingers before next Tuesday.  So that's why Catherine hasn't posted recently, you say to yourself.  Yes, the evil "Girl in 14G" has the fingers tied up in knots.  DH has gone to Nebraska turkey hunting so no help with the evening kid-shuttle tasks....it's a hairy week.  Even harder is that I have an idea for a layout bouncing around in my head and can't get to the scrap room.  Life is rarely fair.....LOL!

Photo Woes

As a family last evening, we drove down to some ponds in the area just to look around and see what kind of critters we could see.   I hauled my camera along, thinking that I would twiddle with the manual settings, mainly the ISO, since I knew there is a running stream and very small waterfall on the property.  It was gorgeous light...that golden evening light and I proceeded to take nearly 50 photos in about 30 minutes.  Got them home and spent most of the rest of the evening wishing I had left everything on auto. Some turned out OK and true, the water action was frozen, but for the most part, it ruined the lighting and turned out really grainy.  I'm thinking I'm not a natural photographer.

Changes....

Sometimes it seems that the changes come in bunches and bundles and I've seen my share recently in my DD. There was the whole braces thing and this morning we took a trip to the mall where she got her 12 year old ears pierced.   Why is it that I feel like I just want to back-pedal through time every time I look at her?  The mall, in point of fact, is not my favorite place to go.  It ranks near the very bottom of my list.  But I was hoping to take her mind off another change we had this week.  Her also-12 year old BFF left the area and went to a different state where she is going to be treated for the next 2 or 3 months at an in-patient clinic for anorexia.  She's 12, for heaven's sake.   Who knows where this has come from.  All I know is that my DD has had to go through a hard time this week and feels a little lost.   I had to sit her down and talk with her about things I wish I didn't have to.  She's had to face some real-world things that I wanted to shield her from.  I wanted to cuddle her away from it.   But I have this feeling that it's just the beginning and it makes me a little sad.

That Cold Artic Air

We had rain off and on for most of the day yesterday....loved that.  But I looked out the window last night and saw the white stuff!  Now, I'm all for cooler weather, but that's pushing it just a bit.   After the flowers are out, it needs to be  pleasant.
DS#2 and DIL are coming for a couple of days to visit.  They've finished their school semester and have a day or two before finals start.  They have pretty well decided on Ohio State for DS's grad school which is great, but it really seems far away.  DS#1 and DIL are getting ready to move to Seattle for their second year, which is where the baby will be born.  I'm not sure that I like the idea of the whole family being spread all over the country.....not that I can do anything about it.
In scrapping news, more old/bads have been saved from the storage albums, LOL.

Quickly

For those interested, here is what the new LDS temple in my town looks like as of yesterday.  I thought about the progress that's been made as I drove past it on my way to Boise to go to the temple.  Next year at this time we should be having an Open House.  :)

Color Stuff

I've had a couple of questions about re-organizing stuff into color families, so I thought I'd blab a little about that this morning. (For those of you waiting with bated breath about the oriental fabric....I have to find the thing so I can take a photo....that's coming in a day or so.)  Off-topic, don't you just love it when the house is so quiet?  DH & DD were up really early and are heading over to Pocatello for a volleyball tournament.  They are gone and the boys aren't up yet, so there is peace.  Off-topic again....after five boys who despised organized sports with a passion that rivals their love of the outdoors (can you feel the intensity now?), somehow I ended up with a  jocklette.  Actually, I know how it happened.  Her BFF is into it, end of story.
But I digress.  Anyway, after reading about a few people who had organized their scrapping "stuff" by colors, instead of by type I thought maybe that might help me use things more effectively.  So I took a day and tore the scrap room apart to try this, wondering if I'd regret it later.  Turns out that I'm finding that it really works for me.  I didn't organize absolutely everything...mostly it was my embellishments.  My cardstock was already grouped by colors.  Now I can pull little baggies of stuff from my drawers and put them on the table with the patterned papers I'm working with.  It's helping with the creative process and helping me to use up my stuff.  It's a good thing.  Stuff that has stayed buried for years is getting put on a layout or card.  You might think about it.
One interesting thing I found during the process is how much of what color I have.  Lots of blue, which isn't surprising, but it's mostly ribbon, which IS, since I don't use it often.  I have the most of the real neutrals: black, white and brown and that also surprised me.  Hardly any orange or yellow, which wasn't a surprise, but not that much green....my favorite color.  Go figure.

And Every Once in a While...

....just to keep us taking the photos, there are the photos that make you smile because you think, "Hey, those aren't too bad!"  Newly 15.

Photo Frustration

What do you do with old/bad photos? I really want to know (why am I hearing the CSI theme in my head?).  You know we all have them....those childhood photos where the main subject is a little dot in the center, those photos we took before we scrapped.  I mean, let's face it, not every photo is publish-worthy.  In fact, in my experience, the publish-worthy ones are very few and far between. But as I thumb through younger photos of my kids, taken in pre-scrap days, I am flooded with the memories they carry with them.  And I feel this tremendous need to give them a home....LOL!  To make a connection between those photos and the memories.  Thank you, Stacy Julian. To paraphrase her philosophy, it's really not about the photos, it's about the memories and the photos are tools to cement those memories for our families. 
So back to old/bads.....do you find that you avoid them?  I have in the past, but having them on display in storage albums put them in my face more.  Maybe it's the whole mother guilt thing...."get these baby photos of your 25 year old scrapped.....NOW"! Maybe it's my middle-aged-nest-emptying time of life.  But I've been on an old/bad kick for the past few weeks.  And because I have, you're going to have to suffer through the fruits of my labors.  Believe me when I tell you that in spite of the photo quality, the memories are sweet.....and now, connected.
Done with kits from Scrap Addict and sketches by Becky Fleck, Jen McWhirt, and myself.