Suzanne Earley

Learning more new things

Thursday night was Open House at the school, and the band director aka director of the musical handed me the piano and vocal scores for this year’s musical.  I’m sure that 2 years ago when I got the score for Grease I was freaking out as much as I am now (Holy Heck, What Have I Gotten Myself Into??), but that turned out OK, so this will, too.  I hope.  10 weeks from now, we’ll know.

Friday at noon, I got a phone call from the school nurse.  Will had been pushed into a fence and had a scraped up wrist.  I think it’s pretty nasty looking, but then, I’m a wimp.  It didn’t need stitches or anything, but he had tried to go eat lunch and started to feel sick to his stomach, and when I got there, he was pretty pale and sweaty-looking.  Kinda shocky.  I wasn’t at all surprised by the identity of the young man that had pushed Will.  He’s on their football team and Mark said this young man thinks it’s funny to just randomly push his teammates.

Learn something new every day

An online class that I signed up for last September, but never finished.  When you sign up for one of Shimelle’s classes, you are in it for life, and I had forgotten that until I started getting the prompts.  I’m going to try this again, as a different take on the daily photo project which I don’t seem to be able to keep up with.

Edited later to add:  digital scrapbooking elements, including the page template, from the Life 365 collection at Weeds and Wildflowers.  I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the fonts are Helvetica and my own handwriting font.

Disco, disco, duck

finally found what I was looking for, though not in the place i was expecting it.  i had seen this photo frame on a blog sometime in the last…month or so…which meant it was really easy to find.

not.

finally found it on the website of the digital scrapbooking site where i could actually buy the set of frames (and it was pure dumb luck that i actually ended up there).

yes, i was going to go to bed, but i just really wanted to find these frames.

i don’t “do” new year’s resolutions, but i’m going to try this daily photo thing again.

we’ll see how it goes.

(the photo is actually quite terrible, but i still like it.  i never figured out why will never got dressed today.  or why joe doesn’t have socks on.  all 3 (the third kid is their cousin ben) have basketballs, but you can’t even see the blur that is joe’s ball…they were doing a silly Disco Dribbling thing, which is why Joe is pointing — dribble with one hand, point with the other, then switch hands (sort of a staying alive disco move…))

and now, i am truly going to go to bed.  when i get lazy and don’t bother capitalizing, it usually means it’s time to quit.

s

p.s.  you are welcome for the ear worm in the post title. that’s something else i’m going to try to continue into the new year, the whole song title and/or lyrics as post titles.  i wonder how many people i’ll be able to annoy with them.

tomorrow’s daily photo might actually be one taken by mark, as he is going to take all 3 boys skiing tomorrow…we should probably ask his sister for a letter stating that he has permission to seek medical assistance for her son…just in case…

Journal Your Christmas, Day 4

I have struggled with what to write for this prompt all day.

If you can’t read it, the text says:

When I was growing up, the days around Christmas itself had a fairly specific sameness to them over the years.  Church on Christmas Eve, presents in the morning, brunch later.  I don’t remember that we ever went anywhere when I was a kid — we lived far from relatives, so Christmas was always just us at home.

My adult Christmases have been all over the map — literally.  We’ve been here in Iowa, we’ve made to Christmas-time trips to see my Dad in Florida (and trust me, Disney World is NOT the happiest place on Earth during the days between Christmas and New Year).  Last year we were in New Jersey with my sister’s family.  My mom’s family takes turn hosting a Christmas Day meal, and when we’ve been in Iowa we participate — either hosting or traveling to the celebration.

As a result, I can’t think of one specific situation that really stands out as an “ideal” or “perfect” Christmas.  I am quite content to celebrate wherever and however we can, as long as we are together.

For reference, here’s a link to last year’s page about the same topic.

December 4, 2007

I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday already.  How did that happen?  WHere did this week go?  Heck!  Where did this YEAR go?????

Suzanne

Christmas journal, Day 2

Gee, it’s weather related.

It’s much cuter in person.  I actually painted the snowflake white and added glitter glue.  It was kind of fun to dig out that kid of stuff.

Photo was taken yesterday morning looking west.  It is beautiful, isn’t it?  (If I say that enough, will I start to believe it?)

Christmas Journal Day 1

Template by Jessica Sprague.  Paper, buttons and tag from Shabby Princess Joyful Tidings Kit

I created this digitally, but I may print without the buttons and tag, and add those separately.  Last year I was learning Photoshop and did a lot of fancy stuff, this year I think I’m going to be using templates from a class that I took with Jessica Sprague several months ago, and trying to keep it as simple as possible.  I’ve got some different sizes that I’m going to try using, and some days might be more about a photo than words, and vice versa.  We’ll see how it goes….

The real Tuesday

So, I’ve just now realized that yesterday’s post was titled Tuesday, but it was actually Monday when I wrote it.  I suppose most of you READ it on Tuesday and didn’t even notice the incongruity.  Either that or no one is actually paying attention to me.  Sometimes I worry that it’s the latter, but then every so often my Dad calls me and asks me a question or makes a comment about something he read on my blog, so I know that at least HE is paying attention. (Hey Dad!  How are ya?)

I’ve been doing a little mishmash of everything the last few days.  Printing and trimming stuff for the Stories In Hand class at JessicaSprague.com, thinking about what I’m going to do for my Journal Your Christmas project this year.  (And if you are interested in doing your own Christmas Journal, you should visit Shimelle, sign-ups are open…)  Plus!  I’ve actually done some work, including some customer quilting, cleaning the shop back up after the weekend of fun, and putting together a new shop sample.  I sewed the rows together this evening and brought them in here to press, whereupon I have discovered that I’ve actually put half of the rows together wrong.  Duh.

I know you probably can’t tell, but I will say that the long light-colored rectangles with stripes on them,  are not supposed to line up in almost-rows like that. (What I did was make all 5 rows the same, and every other row should be shifted.  Here I’ve just flipped them end for end, and it’s just not right.)  On my way in to sew earlier, I looked at the book with the pattern in it, and thought, I don’t need to look at that, I know what I’m doing.  Ha.)

It’s the same pattern as the fall-themed quilt I did several weeks ago.  I got a whole whack of new fabric last week and a lot of was was WOW-BRIGHT.  The picture doesn’t even do the fabric justice.  Those of you that know me (and the color box that I live in) are probably wondering if I’ve lost it.  I’m still not sure I like it or not.  Will was just in here and asked if it was for someone.  I told him it was a shop sample and asked him if he liked it or not.

“It’s pretty bright,” was his answer…

After I unsew and resew so that the blocks are in the right order (because I’m trying to actually follow the pattern, since it’s a shop sample, and dang me, that is really hard, because I hate following patterns…), I’ll need to decide on a border — one of the really wild and crazy prints?  Or something tamer?

I think that was everything I intended to babble about this evening.

If not, I’ll babble about something else tomorrow.

Suzanne

Randomly

1.  I’m surprised by how many hits I get on this blog from people who have searched for Western Salad Dressing.  Seriously.  At least once a day if not more.  I feel like I ought to be posting more recipes using it to provide a useful service to the community of folks who are searching for it.  Hey — I might have to post our family’s secret dip that uses Western dressing…it’s a recipe my Mom’s side of the family MUST have at every family gathering.  My husband and children thinks it’s gross.

2.  I have ladies coming Wednesday morning to learn to knit.  THey are making felted bags, and of course I have to be making a new one along with them.  I started with a brown base for the bag (purely because it was  skein of yarn that had been wound into a ball as an example when we get the ball winder and had to test it).  I totally horked up a skein of pink last week, so after I untangled it, I decided to use it with the brown.  I was going to just do brown and pink stripes, but now that I have one brown and one pink stripe done, I think I might need to add in cream stripes, too.

3.  On the way home, I saw a man walking a Beagle puppy.  OMG.  I want a Beagle puppy.

4.  I don’t seem to have a concussion, but I do have a sore spot from my head injury.  And my sister-in-law can attest that you can actually see the mark where I whacked myself.  My guardian angel works overtime.  One of these days I’m going to hurt myself very badly, purely out of clumsiness.

5.  I haven’t talked about digital scrapbooking in awhile (because I haven’t been doing any…imagine that…) but coming up here soon is an opportunity that you should think about if you have any interest in the subject at all.  The classes I’ve taken in the past have been with Jessica Sprague — and starting on the 9th she is offering a free class called Stories in Hand.  For all of the info, you can visit her website:  http://www.jessicasprague.com/ — the details are on the home page.  You do NOT have to be a digital scrapbooker to do this class, the class is about developing a way to capture the stories you want to record and remember, whether you are a scrapbooker or not.

6.  I have to work on feeding my boys.  Those three boys.  They think they need to be fed every single day.

Later -

S

The lost was found

If you read the comments from Monday’s post, you’ll know that my Mom did in fact have the book I was looking for.

Only, she didn’t have the patterns insert.

Turns out, I had that. But once I knew that I wasn’t really looking for a book, I was looking for a pattern, I actually knew right where to go in order to find it, so now I’m ready to rock and roll on that particular project.

Of course, I have plenty of other things I could or should be doing, so…

Moving on.

The weather is absolute crap. Still. Again. Forever.

We actually saw snowflakes on Tuesday, great big globby blobs of snow mixed in with the rain. Today is just rain, I think, but oh dear goddess, make it stop. I’m so tired of cold and wet and grey and……….

Moving on.

When you are around someone every day, you don’t always notice how much they are changing. Look at these guys. There are 4 years between the “now” and “then” photos:

This is the week 2 layout assignment from my latest class with Jessica Sprague.  Way cool.

Well, I’d better go pretend to accomplish something.  Like laundry.  Whoopee.

Suzanne

Snuggling under a new quilt

Sitting here at the computer, I have my brand-new, freshly washed quilt in my lap.  I’d rather it were Maggie curled up there.

Sigh.

I’ve gotten some digi-scrapping layouts done in the past few days.  I haven’t mentioned that I’m taking another class from Jessica Sprague. It’s the advanced class, and woo-boy, are we learning some cool stuff.

Here are the first two assignments.  The first was done using all of the class materials, the only thing I added were the photos.  I made the scalloped border and created that cool circular frame thing.

The second assignment was to practice things we’d learned in the first lesson, using our own papers, etc.

Lots of cool techniques here, I won’t bore you with all of them.

Although, you should make note of the quilt that Hannah is having her tummy time on.  Look familiar?

You can click on both layouts to view them larger and read the text.

If you are interested in any of the digital products I used to create these, drop me a note and I’ll be happy to tell you what I’ve used.

TTFN-

Suzanne