Clearing Clutter

I thought I'd pop in for a bit of a break from another round of de-cluttering...both in this craft room of mine and the house in general. I feel a bit like Thomas Edison when he said:

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

I can look in my dayplanners a decade ago and see the same entry repeated several times throughout the months. Clean room, clear desk, organize this, that or the other! It's an ongoing battle! 
I have been making strides this past month! I've thrown away extra bags of garbage, recyled extra boxes of paper,  delivered a big heavy box of books to the library and given away bags of items to our Good Will here in town. Now for anyone who really knows me, they'll know that I'm talking grocery bags not garbage bags, but that doesn't dim the excitement one iota. LOL
They say you can't organize clutter, and I know its better to move it out, but I'm having some success in condensing things, too...I don't know if it will just be an illusion, but I'm putting more like-things together and I have new spaces on shelves...good thing because one of my biggest goals is to have more clear space to work on at the counters in this room.
and the biggest reason to keep at this task? so I can feel more creative in my space. So often I see a great idea online and I think it would make a great a page or card...but it's easier to ignore that growing pile on my desk than find homes for some of it and less than inspiring to push it aside to be able to stamp, just for the joy of it.
One Huge serendipity for me as a Demonstrator, is the goal and deadlines I set for myself to create projects for upcoming classes and workshops. With these in place, I have a purpose to creating, and I love that.
If that makes sense to you, maybe signing up would be a good idea for you, too! (and till March 31st, the Starter Kit is on sale!) You could even make some extra money to boot. I love Stampin'Up!

Here is another card I made for the Girls to copy for the Spring Fever classes:

This one was inspired by a beautiful card by Stampercamper, I changed the shape and then adapted the ribbon for the new smaller size. I loved the way she used the bright Melon Mambo Doily from the Sizzlet die as a back drop, I had to cut mine down for my smaller size. I used Fabulous phrases on one of the self-adhesive labels.

Back to another shelf of cleaning.
thanks for stopping by,

smiles,
Laurie

I finished the Digital book I was working on very late last night...in reality it's missing journaling on a couple pages, but I just made the photos larger on those pages, we'll see how it looks when it comes back from the printers...I added very few flourishes...I don't know why it takes me so long to pull together the photos and figure out how to adjust the pages from what is first compiled when opening the new project...but I worked at it over the past several days for several hours. It felt good to get it done! We had lunch guests yesterday, my Dad and nephew came over for a few hours. We tried one of those pull apart pizzas with pepperoni. It was a hit!
I had a fun weekend with a class Friday night, my sale and a class on Saturday and finishing with another lovely bunch of ladies out last night for the last of my Spring Fever classes. This is another card they could make from the kit:

I've just recently ordered the sweet set Lean on Me. I stamped her on the Designer Paper and cut out her little dress. The flowers are stamped from the Language of Friendship set that is available for free as an SAB product till the end of March. (be sure to get your orders in!). If you look really closely you'll see the little detailing I did with the Simply Scored on the white panel.

Away to make supper and get things put away from the classes.

smiles,

Laurie

Spring Birthdays

Just popping by with another card that the girls will be working on during the various classes starting tomorrow. They'll make 8-10 cards with a half pack of the Simply Scrappin' Kit from the Occasions Mini . I saw the layout online. The paper in this pack is really wonderful and I love so many of the embelleshments! One of my favourite Scrappin' Kits! I punched out the flowers and then ran a bone folder across them till I could peel them in half, stacked them and added the pearl center. I wish I'd have added some texture to the gray pice...I"ll be suggesting that in the classes.
I have an incredible sale going on on Saturday that I'm getting ready for this week.

And I'm trying to work on a photo book of our trip to Spain, too. My Husband and I enjoyed a wonderful walking tour around the Hills of Girona in the Fall with my dear cousin, Mark and his beautiful wife, and my dear friend, Kerry. We had such a wonderful time (fortunately, they did too!! LOL) I'm having so much trouble deciding which photos to include...I like shots with people (that I know) in them, but with some new photography classes in hand, now I have some pretty nice shots of foliage and scenery. How to decide what to put in...as a memory book, mostly you don't have great memories of a plant, they just add to the setting, so are they worth a space in my book...I have so many great ones of us laughing and having a good time...and plenty of scenery in the photos I took of us walking, too. If you have some thoughtson this, they would be appreciated. Although, I think I've figured out, rambling on here a bit.. that this book is for photos of people to tell my story. Thanks.  I can make a page of some pretty nature...or goodness a whole other book of nature photos, can't I?!
I'll leave you with a couple shots (chosen only because of where I am in that folder...when I find the top couple I'll share them later!)

I'd say have a sunny day, but I am looking out to a snowflurry right now?!! I guess we'll go with the not-literal 'sunny' but the spirit of sunny,  then!

smiles,

Laurie

Sunny Springtime

Seemed like a busy bit of time the past few days. We celebrated my Dad's Birthday at Dairy Queen, family friends' return from Mexico with a visit,  a 50th Birthday of another friend and Sunday we drove to Drayton Valley for a Synchro Show for our Oldest, she loves Synchro. We had a great time, the girls did such a great job of putting together their routines. The music was lively and everyone did a wonderful job. An added bonus was that my nephew was playing hockey there as well, at the arena, so we went and watched the last bit of his game and their win!
I sent out an announcement of my biggest sale ever last week, I'm hoping more gals will take advantage of it. I have loads of prizes still to be given away. I have about 3 spots left for my Spring Fever classes, too.
It's a gorgeous sunny day but I'm fighting a headache, so I'll leave this fairly short...Here is one of the cards I made from the kit...I love these little flowers!

The little sentiment is from Fabulous Phrases. I ran the Daffodil Delight through the Big Shot with the polka dot embossing folder, layered it on Pear Pizzazz and tied it all up with the matching seam binding.
Hope you're enjoying your day!

smiles,
Laurie

Spring Fever Class

I'm getting ready for upcoming classes, one on Mar 24th. (let me know if you'd like to attend, I have a couple other tentative dates as well.)  We'll be using a half pack of the Simply Scrappin' Spring Fever in the Occasions Mini catalogue to create a stack of cards for Springtime.
This one features the sweet bunny from Everybunny, a set I fell in love with last summer when the Idea Book and Catalogue was first introduced for 2011-2012. The image could easily be switched out for several other images or sayings.

The white panel has been embossed with Petals-a-plenty. I embossed the image and fussy cut her little dress. My Littlest was watching me colour the image (practicing again from the tutorial that Karen Barber taught over at SCS) and she asked "are you going to leave the dress white?" To which I placed the little dress I had already cut out onto the finished image...totally collecting a "Wow!" from her! LOL. I really love pulling the patterned paper into the image like that.

smiles,

Laurie

Winner announced

Yay for Laura K! Please email your address! Bonus points to her for saying that her current favourite saying comes from the Tea Shoppe set..it has long been a favourite quote of mine by Louisa May Alcott: "Stay", is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. 
I'm so glad I really like the rest of the set, as I would have been hard pressed not to get any set that had this quote as a stamp in it! LOL. (Note to self: make a card to put on blog, soon!)
But I have others to share right now. I have been busy the past few days having fun doing the Act of Stamping, actually...but also getting a few cards done, as well. I've created a set of cards from the Simply Scrappin' Spring Fever kit (pg 21 in the Mini).
I do half package classes and booking now for a couple upcoming ones. What a gorgeous kit!              I tried to make my cards a little less layered than the Christmas class cards. Those were too much to get done in a class and I had to modify ...working with the great self-adhesive die-cuts in the Scrappin' kit helps speed things up, though.

The kit coordinates with Pear Pizzazz, Daffodil Delight, Melon Mambo and Basic Gray.

I have 3 more half done cards on my desk and one other that I adapted from CamperStamper and simply loved! I'll share those over the next couple days, and then next week, I have a couple more beauts from a delightful mini get-together we had this afternoon, with a couple of my downline Gals.

smiles,

Laurie 

Hole In One ~ YES!

My husband is looking forward to a Golf Getaway he's been planning with my cousin. It's neat the two of them are like kids looking forward to it. Recently, my MIL got an Eagle and right on the heels of that great play, a few days later my FIL got his first ever Hole in One!! I'm not sure if the Boys are thinking that golfing down south might heighten their chances of good games and a potential Hole In One themselves, but the anticipation is surely helping my DH get through some long meetings this week!

I sent off a card to my FIL, I was kind of pleased how it turned out...I've admired the tone on tone BG I've seen with die cuts before but this was my first go at it. I cut out a bunch of 1's in River Rock with the Timeless Type Junior Alphabet in the Big Shot.

One of the cards on Splitcoaststampers had the dimpled ball and hole, I loved the idea and added the flag with the sentiment from .... lets play a game, winner will get a little something something in the mail from me..which set has the sentiment "Life is a matter of Moments".  I'll randomly pick a winner from all correct answers. I'll do the draw on Sunday, March 11 at 11pm Mtn time. 
Bonus points and your name in an extra time if you tell me your favourite saying and the SU set it comes from!!!

smiles,
Laurie

A Spark of Creativity

In January, we went to the Spankin' new Spark Telus Science Centre in Calgary. What a gorgeous space! The Girls were enthralled with all the areas...one of their favourites was an animation studio.  Once you created something, you could save it on your entrance pass. For instance, you could take a video clip, save it, take it to another station and add voice overs to it...not sure if we should've been able to log in to access it afterwards, but one option along the way was to email images. Just the other day, when coming home from the zoo, the Girls mentioned we never had seen any of those emails...lo and behold, tonight, I came home from a Band meeting and there were 18 of them in my inbox!  My Littlest will be excited to watch a penguin clip 12 seconds long she worked on.
Me, my favourite spot was a light sabre...but just moving through the studio caused neat pictures...here are a couple. In this first one I walked across the screen, sort of the second layer from the top of colour is my face, then my blue and white shirt.

 In this second shot, I'm twirling my long sleeved arm off to the side of my body and you can sort of imagine my face in the top right of the screen (?!).

That's it for the creativity in my life today (and not even created today)...I've been busy doing books which I never seem to get ahead of, but proud to say I made a dent in the papers strewn throughout the various areas they collect!

 I guess, I did pull out my camera this afternoon, too, to capture the Girls standing beside the mounds of snow that have fallen over the past 48 hours...2 Snow days in a row at school...which my girls love, they attend because the class sizes are about 1/2 and they just enjoy being there with their friends and doing 1/2 workload!

I'll see how the shots turn out and capture a couple of the horses tomorrow..to share.

back to the salt mines (or books...)

smiles,

Laurie

What's New at the Zoo? The Penguin Plunge

What a great weekend, we headed to Calgary to hang out with Cary who was busy working...
the Girls had Friday off so we planned a trip to the Zoo and the newest exhibit...the penguins.

There are 4 different types and quite neat to watch. We'd been warned that the Kings were prone to splash the visitors...and sure enough, we were glad for the warning when one gave a big wave of her ...do you call it a wing?! arm?! and out sprayed water but we jumped back with hardly a drop landing on us, as we'd been on our toes with anticipation...
My favourite penguins were the Humboldt penguins, they can shoot through the water at terrific speeds...and then torpedo themselves into the air and up onto their rocks! We enjoyed our visit to this new home for these 46 critters!
We headed over to the Hippo house next and from a favourite viewing spot just inside the door, we watched Foggy swim around his rock once and head out of the water...and we watched as about a dozen people leaped back en masse as he proceeded to have a poop...and I don't know if you know this but when hippos poop, they fan their tail back and forth to spray it evvverrrywhere. Luckily, I think someone must have given the people a second of warning...as they seemed to have escaped into a safe zone soon enough!
Speaking of spraying, the other animals we give a wide berth to are the tigers...but we did head over for a visit on this wonderful sunny day and Arianna caught a great shot of one of them!

We told Cary all the tales of our days adventures over Ceaser salad and pasta at our favourite restaurant, East Side Marios. The Girls love getting a fancy Shirley Temple, which is served up with 3 colours of Maraschino cherries and a piece of cotton candy!

smiles,
Laurie

Time to Flip the Calendar

I really was looking forward to turning the page on the calendar, I love my new Calendar page. Photos of us enjoying the beach last year when we went with my sister, a fav cousin and their families! What great memories of a fabulous time!
I love the first day of a new month...and with the extra day in February this year it had more anticipation.
We enjoyed the 29th! The morning started with a bunch of  stuffed frogs we had around the house found in the 'pond' on the table and a sign Hoppy Leap Year. I made little Artist Trading Cards for the Girls to find in their lunches. I used the cute frog from the set Turtle & Co. (the set released this year for Ronald MacDonald House Charities. SU gives $3US to RMHC every time this set is purchased...SU has donated over a million dollars since they began this programme nearly a decade ago!) For supper, I planned to served 'frog legs' (chicken drumsticks) which the Girls thought was a gross idea...I said it was very la-di-da amongst the French...even my Fancy Nancy didn't like the idea...not much more was said about the theme supper after that LOL!
I saw a marvelous idea online for building a Time capsule to be opened next Leap Year Day...so much will have changed in 4 years in the Girls' lives, I love the idea of peeking back in just 4 years.We were running with my class starting shortly after supper and tests to be studied for etc... so I'm planning that for the weekend.

I'm sharing a couple of the stunning cards the girls last night created...lots of shimmer.

 Aren't they gorgeous! And they each did 3! Great colour combinations. What fun getting the glimmer going again with the sticky paper and die cuts from the Big Shot (or with this 'b', one of the old sticky letters SU used to carry.)
I'm off to get tires this morning, so I'll keep it short.

smiles,
Laurie