Our weekend's big news....DD stood up!!!

DD stood up by herself without pulling up on anything for the first time!!!  Woo hoo!!!  This is huge.  Beyond huge.  Stratospheric, really. 

It's started lately with her wanting to see what's up on various counters, which she's been trying out for a couple of weeks.  She pulls up onto the bathroom counter and tries to get my hairbrush or whatever she can feel while patting around with one hand and holding with the other. If anything's near the edge (like the brush), she can just see the handle and reaches for it.  She can't see what's on them but she can just barely touch the kitchen counters and was particularly interested in them while I was making Christmas cookies.

So yesterday while Clint was at the gym and I was fixing her lunch, she crawled into the kitchen and tried to stand up before plopping onto her butt.  I thought the first time could be a fluke.  She's tried this a couple of times before with days between attempts and then moves on.  But then she did it a second time for me. I clapped and made a big deal over it but she didn't want to do it again once I sprinted for the camera (she'd already given me a photo shoot earlier in the weekend by climbing into the bathtub with her jammies still on while I was getting her towel and clothes together so I guess I'd reached her tolerance limit for the flash).

Later on while I was at yoga, she did her standing trick for Clint and Connor a couple of times.

Today, when I dropped her off at preschool, I told one of her teachers about her newly developing skill.  When I picked her up, the same teacher was beaming and said, "She did it for me, too!"

And tonight, we proved indubitably that it is not a fluke.  She stood up, with three family witnesses, for several seconds.  And we got it on video.

I'll have to give her a day or two before I get the flash out for another photo shoot...  :-)

Woo hoo! I was invited to LDrag's Creative Team!

I'm so excited!  I saw Lina's designs, LDrag Designs, from Scrappity-doo-dah a couple months ago as a freebie, and I went to her site and fell in love with her designs.  Lucky for me, she was also having a creative team call and I was one of the lucky designers chosen.  :-)  I've known for a couple of days but wanted to say something when I could post my first official project wth her stuff.

This morning, she released two new products that go together, a set of masks and matching frames.  Here are the frames, called Mask Frame Them Volume 1:

And here's a layout that I did with them and her Bedazzled kit.  I copied and pasted one of the flowers several times to make the border on the righthand side of the layout. 

You may see that tulip again soon, because I'm working on some hybrid stuff for Lina, too!

More digital globes, anyone?

At least I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this template, LOL!  And yes, when I'm done posting all of my layouts I'll post the template as a freebie.

More globe layouts (this time the easy way!)

After making two paper versions of a globe layout, I decided that there had to be an easier way!  And I found it - I made myself a template in PSE 4.0 that looks pretty much like the globe on the magazine that I used as my original inspiration. 

1)  I started out by turning on the grid and making a perfect circle (hold down the shift key while using the ellipse shape tool.  One a new layer above the circle, I used the stroke command to make a 10-pixel outline just inside the circle.  (Actually, for every circle and ellipse I made, I made the shape, made the stroke on another layer, then deleted or hid the solid layer)

2)  Then I made a couple of narrower, longer ellipse layers on top of the circle and centered them horizontally and vertically using the the align...vertical centers and align....horizontal centers tools. 

3)  Then I copied those layers and rotated them 90 degrees left to make the lattitude lines.

4)  Then I selected all of the stroke layers and flattened them together, clipping them to the original circle shape.

Much, much, MUCH easier!!!!!

Here are what a few of the LOs look like:

A few globe layouts (first, the hard way)

I got an email from a member of 2peasinabucket the other day, praising one of my globe layouts.  Wow, to think that something I made in 2003 would stand the test of time - pretty cool.  Since she asked me how I made the layout, I figured I'd post the original paper version and its instructions, then the digital version and its template.  I'll start first with the paper stuff since I haven't figured out how to get a 4-shared account yet, LOL.  Here's the first one I ever made, from my HOF entry 2004.

When Connor was a year old, I wanted to make summary pages for several months of activity.  At the time, I was a tax accountant and one of the magazines that was routinely on my desk was the Journal of International Taxation.  The cover of that magazine just happened to always have a globe overlay on its cover.  I knew I wanted to make it into a layout, but it took me a while to figure out how I'd do it.  Then the layout itself, well, by the time I did all of the work in PSE to make the template shapes, sized the photos, cut and assembled them, pretty darned near took forever.

First, I traced the globe from the magazine onto light tracing paper.

Then, I scanned the drawing and used PSE (1.0!) to make 1/4 of the scan a little larger than 6 inches in radius.

After I got it the size I wanted it, I printed out the 1/4-sized globe.  Next, I cut out the pieces out of paper and transparencies.  Finally, I used the transparencies to figure out how to size and cut my photos.

Before I glued anything down, I laid everything out to see how it was going to look.  And then FINALLY I glued everything down.  Whew!  It was kind of an "in" thing to have stuff hanging off of the edge of layouts back then, so I didn't trim down the edges of the globe that stuck off of the side of the layout.

What kind of insane person would take this many hours making a layout and then actually try doing it again?  That would be me.  Not only did I do it again, I had to up the ante for my MMM entry by cutting out all sorts of little Quickutz and stamped words to make my journaling unique.

I may be crazy enough to do this twice, but I wasn't crazy enough to do it a third time!

Next up, the digital versions...

Club Scrap November layouts

I'm on the digital artist team for Club Scrap, my favorite monthly kit club ever.  I started off with a monthly membership to their paper scrapbooking kit club in mid-2000, and was "thrilleder than thrilled" when I made the DAT last year.

November's kit is called "Solstice."  I've already posted a boy scout layout and a Halloween layout using the kit.  Here are a couple of others.

I can't wait to share what's coming up in December!!!

Things I'd Scrapbook if I had the Time...

I've been taking a class on blogging for scrapbookers at http://www.shimelle.com/, and today's topic is about making blog tags, either to make it easier for readers to find stuff that they care about or on a specific topic.  So, starting today, I'm gonna start tagging.  One of the tags will be "Scrapthis!" so I can remember to come back to topics later on when I scrapbook them.  But beyond that, I thought I'd share something else that I've been keeping for a couple of years to keep my scrapbooking whims somewhat organized (I don't scrap in order).

I have a list of things I want to scrapbook about.  It's very long list, with a column for a suggested title or theme, a column for more detailed information / thoughts, and a column where I can put a cute little X in the box to show that I actually got something done.

Here are 10 random titles and ideas of topics from the 123-item-and-growing list of stuff that I haven't scrapbooked yet, but hope to some day...

1)  Artists in our family - this will be an album of the artistic pursuits of people in my family tree.  We have knitters, crocheters, rock tumblers, model ship builders, candle makers, and seamstresses, so I want to get it all into one mini-album.

2)  Blankies of our lives - this is actually already a mini-book that I printed in snapfish, but I forgot some very important pictures so I need to add on and re-print.  Very high on the scrapbooking priority list. The album shows different blankets that were given to our kids, who made them, and the stories of the blankies or the family relationships.  It also has information about some of the blankets that were passed down from me to the kids, and where I got them from (my parents, grandparents), so there are several generations of blankies in the book.

3)  World travels - a mini-book with one page featuring a great photo for each country I've been to and some basic information like the dates and major impressions of that country. I've been to 22 countries so I need to get started on this project before I go anywhere else and get farther behind!

4)  "Mommy, I don't have enough toys!"  Accompanied by a photo of our son, sitting in a play room full of toys, not realizing just how lucky and spoiled that he is.  I haven't decided whether to make it light-hearted or go deeper into how much he has and how to increase his appreciation for it.

5)  Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan was her name, oh!  Nicknames we call each other in our family and where they came from.

6)  Love notes - copies of the cute little notes and cartoons we write to each other from time to time. 

7)  "That mommy pushes her kids higher," I took some photos of Connor happily soaring on a playground swing a few minutes before he said this to me.  It was the first time that I can recall him telling me that I wasn't as good as someone else, and it brings up a lot of thoughts (baggage?!?) about my parenting abilities, that parents aren't flawless, and that all we can do is the best we can do.

8)  Things my mom was right about.  'nuff said.

9)  What fitness, wellness, health and personal training mean to me.  Why I teach aerobics and personal train, my class persona, my target market, and how much I love it.

10)  Sandwich generation.  I've been writing this journaling in my head since May of 2004 when my mom died.  Actually, before that.  It started in 2002 when Connor was born and Mom was seriously ill.  I definitely felt the pressure of being in the sandwich generation.  It sucked.  Really.  Really.  Sucked.  But then I lost part of the top slice of bread when Mom died.  And now Dad died this summer and my life is an open-faced sandwich.
And before I sign off I'll share a layout that I did for Club Scrap's Digital Artist Team with the Solstice kit (November kit of the month):

Noodlicious!

DD has loved spaghetti from her first taste of it when she started solid foods. This summer, she discovered the joys of feeding it to herself.  I was wandering through photos today, tagging and moving them to the appropriate year/month folders when I found these little gems that I hadn't scrapped yet.  Here they are!

All supplies are from the kit Shabby She, by Krystal Hartley.  And the layout design comes from a template made from a member of Krystal's creative team (I tweaked it slightly).

Big-time Wrestling, Little Girl Style

Connor has always loved to wrestle with his dad; just last night they did a little Thursday Night Smackdown in the livingroom before bedtime.  Amazingly enough, the seven-year-old always wins, even though he's a good hundred pounds lighter than his opponent.  :-) 

For Makena, daddy-pouncing is a newer development.  She started plopping on him a couple of months ago, right about the time she learned how to say, "Aaaaah.....DEE!"  That's her version of one, two, three.  This layout shows her playing "Aaaaaah....DEE!" onto Clint while he's trying to nap.  It's hard to nap when a two-year-old is "Aaaah....DEEing" on your face, though.

All of the supplies for this layout are from After Five Designs.  The papers are from Au Bonheur des Dames and the elements are from Tickle Me Pink.

Happy Friday!

Ribbit.

Two Peas in a Bucket (see them here) is one of the places I hang out the most online for digital and paper scrapbooking.  They had a bunch of chats, challenges, freebies and sales over digital scrapbook day.  Here's a layout that I just finished that covers two of the challenges from DSD (scraplift a layout, make a layout using one of the 2peas DSD free kits) and also the "book of scraps" challenge.

Here's the original layout:

Monkey Boy, by LanaRappette

I don't know if it's poor form to post someone else's layout on your blog, so I just linked it for you to see the original inspiration. I also emailed her to let her know I'd used her layout for inspiration, but if there's more proper blog etiquette that I should follow, please leave me a comment or email.


Here's mine:

The free kit is technically a Christmas kit, but the greens were perfect for my ds' "Frog and Toad Day" celebration at school, so I cloned over a few snowflakes and the kit became a froggy kit.

Supplies:

Snowkissed Christmas (free kit) by Betsy Tuma, everything but the ribbon and photo corners

Snowkissed Alpha by Betsy Tuma

Perfect Ten by Club Scrap, ribbon

Self-made photo corners using "wow plastic" effect

Swirls from a freebie template by Pom from her Pom's Breathing Room blog

What a neat coincidence that the day after Frog and Toad day at school, DH found a little frog hanging onto the front of our garage door.  Talk about the perfect frog accent, LOL!

"Meow. I love you, Mommy."

October 17, 2005, 2:30ish.  Those were the first words, accompanied by a hug, that Connor said to me when he woke up from his nap on a Monday afternoon.  It was my first afternoon as a stay-at-home mom.

I would like to say I remember that day as clear as a bell.  There are snippets I remember vividly.  Loading him on the preschool bus for his field trip to the pumpkin patch.  Unloading him from same bus two hours later and falling on my butt in front of the school while trying to pose with Connor and his pumpkin.  Thanks, Carmen, for getting pictures of that!  Playing "kitty" before snuggling him into bed for nap.  Waiting, waiting, waiting with happy anticipation for him to wake up so we could play.  And then the heart-melting meow.  It felt so decadent, so forbidden, so good, so right.

Muddy butt-print and all, it was a glorious day. 

I wish I could remember even more, but it's slipping away.  Crud!!!  I didn't even remember a few weeks ago to celebrate the fourth anniversary of my freedom!  Usually on the 14th at about 5:00pm, I think, "Woo hoo!" to myself for reaching escape velocity and,  "Neener neener neener!!!" to my former coworkers who are still stuck there.  And I have some special feelings for the few people who took what had been my dream job for almost nine years and turned it into a nightmare's nightmare, but since I vowed to keep my blog G-rated I'll keep those "special" feelings to myself.

These days, I'm stressed out again.  With two family deaths and Clint's job change all in the last five months, and the lovely discovery that my personal training 60%/40% commissions is actually the 40% and not the 60% I was promised, there needs to be a stronger word than stressed.  Stressed in bold, underlined, with italics and an exponent of 2 or 3 at the top right.  Stress squared.  Stress to the third power.  Exponentially stressed out.  Stressponentially, speaking, this chick is losing it a little around the edges.

Heck!  That would be a fan-flippin-tastic blog title - "Stress-ponentially Speaking" - but I digress.  What I really wanted to say tonight is that I want to remember, if not recapture, that heart-bursting feeling I had at 2:30ish on the 17th of October, 2005. 

That's why I'm trying this whole blogging thing again.  I don't want to lose any more of the good stuff.

Happy Day Before Veteran's Day!

As we make preparations for ds' boy scout pack attendance in tomorrow's Veteran's Day parade, I wanted to show off this layout I made of him wearing his uniform for the first time.  Normally when I want to take his picture, I get a lovely shot of his hand in front of his face or some rebelliously goofy expression.  For this shot, he posed and asked that I take his picture and I was more than happy to oblige.

He looks so handsome in his uniform.  Proud to be a boy scout.  Learning what it means to be a part of a service organization.  Excited to be marching in a parade to celebrate heroes - their den has been learning about all sorts of heroes for the last month - and to walk among them.

Way to go, Handsome!

The supplies for this kit are all from Club Scrap's November digital kit, Solstice.

Blog, take two.

This is harder than I thought. 

I've typed my "triumphant return to social media" post at least three times and erased it.  There are just so many thoughts swirling around in my head that I'm not sure how to organize them.  Kind of like scrapbooking - I anguish over my pages.  Now, I'm anguishing over this post!

The anguish stops now.  The last thing I need in my life is more stress, so I'm NOT gonna get stressed out about my blog, LOL.  I'm a multi-faceted, multi-talented person with a hectic life.  I don't fit into one neat little category so my blog isn't going to, either.  Some days I'll post about my personal training and aerobics business, maybe with a few favorite workouts, an anecdote about a class, or a rant about working for a gym that's changed hands three times and been in bankruptcy at least as many times in the last few years.  Other days, I might put up a scrapbook page I completed, a photo I'm going to scrapbook or a little journaling ditty that I don't want to forget.  Sprinkled throughout will be the wry humor of the middle-aged housewife who doesn't have time for a nervous breakdown or even a relaxed bubble bath of twenty minutes or longer sans interruption from a child convinced that I must help him find his bicycle helmet and light saber right now.

As I say frequently to my aerobics students, "Get out of this workout what you need.  Throw the rest away."  That's how the blog's gonna go.  If you like my scrapbook pages, cool!  If you like my fitness facts, awesome!  If not, that's OK, too.  Take what you want and throw the rest away.