i make things

Project Life 2015: Week 11

Project Life Week 11 is here! Woohooo! I know I'm behind but I'm still at it. I'm still getting something done weekly. At some point, likely when softball ends for the summer, I'll have a little bit more time to get some more pages done.

This week is all about running outside, the 4-H spaghetti dinner and eating lunch with my niece Grace, the first grader...and Jacob being a little stinker at the spaghetti dinner. (Week is from Paislee Press, 11 is Bebas font and the date is Rockwell font)

I'm so enjoying the process right now. I'm going with the flow and getting pages done. Getting some journalling down and not spending hours doing it. I love it.

So here's my spread for Week 11.

I used two different pocket pages this week. The left side is 3-4x4 and 3-3x4 pockets. The right side is 1-4x6 and 10-3x4.

The reason I used the larger quantitied page on the left is because I know that next week is going to be hugely picture heavy and I wanted to make sure I had a page protector that could handle it.

Sometimes I think ahead like that. :)

This is the left side. Some food on the left and the Spaghetti dinner on the right. I used a project life grid card for my basic journalling of the event. Those cards seem to be my "go-to" when I run out of time and just want to use my own handwriting instead of creating something on the computer.

Me and the butterball, who hasn't gotten used to selfies yet. LOL

I love the grids it helps me keep my journalling even. P.s. the Clover is from a recent Studio Calico kit and the stamps for 4.H and the W's is from Kelly Purkey.

The right side is broken out into two sections, one is about running that week and the other is about lunch with Grace at school called "Eat Lunch with a Loved One Day".

This is an Ali Edwards GO Story Kit card that I added journalling too. I have the digital package as well as the paper package which is great because I can update the cards a little easier. For instance, on this one I changed the color of Go to green instead of black. I also added Running outside in hot pink (to match my shoe laces ). I decided to angle the journalling to be inline with go and I thought it gave it some visual interest. I went outside the box a bit.

I knew I had to highlight the extreme weather in March. Only a couple days a part and my running gear was completely different. One day 50 degree under armour a couple days later shorts and a t-shirt.

This is Grace or Gracer or Pita as we like to call her.

This isn't the best picture of her from that day. It's a bit fuzzy but I don't really care. It's a picture I love so I put it in and added a couple fun embellishments to it. (All are from Ali Edwards Story Kits).

Eating lunch with Grace. I added this card with the basics. It works nicely for that. (First is a stamp from Ali's Story Stamp subscription)

This 4x6 is a collage of 3 things: 1. A picture of Grace's favorite things. It was hanging on the wall at school. I knew I wanted that in there and the her name sign from her desk. I loved that. Then I added some more in depth journalling about getting to eat lunch with her. (Digital Brushes from Ali, notice a pattern here? I use a lot of Ali edwards lately...probably because I like her stuff and it's sitting right in front of me.) LOL

Okay that's about it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this post. If you'd like to see more Project Life click here.

 

Make a Card Monday: 1st Birthday Cupcake

My niece and goddaughter turns 1 this week and I had to find something cute and fun for this special birthday.

Naturally I went trolling through Pinterest looking for inspiration. Couldn't find anything that caught my fancy so I thought about checking the Silhouette Library for ideas and low and behold this cute cupcake strolled across the page.

Oh yeah, I knew this was the one. I dug around for some pink paper and saw this pink with rose gold polka dots. hmm.....maybe. eh, what the heck, let's give it a try.

I went out on a limb on this one...well for me it's a limb. I used rose gold and pink. I've never used this color scheme before but I thought I'd give it a try. It looked cute together. I used paper from the May Studio Calico kit so it matched well and I didn't have to try and find matching paper. That always helps and saves time.

Here's how I did it:

Supplies: (p.s. short and sweet)

• Pinkini Bazzill Cardstock
• Rose Gold Chipboard Letters (Studio Calico Kit)
• Pink and rose gold polka dot paper (Studio Calico Kit)
• Dark Pink Cardstock (bought this in a Michael's Recollections paper pack)
• Cupcake Silhouette die cut

Step 1: Sketch out design and figure out what colors will be in each spot. Also, you will need to resize the image so that it will fit into a 4-1/4" x 5-1/4" card.

Step 2: Cut out the full cupcake. I used the pinkini bazzill cardstock.

Step 3: Cut out base of the cupcake from your favorite patterned paper. This will be the cupcake base on the cover of your card.

You will need to erase the unwanted areas of the original die cut shape. To do this click on the eraser tool on the toolbar on the left-hand side of your screen.t looks like this:

On the right-hand will be two options: Solid and Outline. Choose outline.

Next, make sure to add a cut line from the left edge to the right edge (see below). This will ensure that the entire shape is cut out.

One last thing.

In order to cut the cover properly you will have to one of the following:

a. Flip the design horizontally in the Silhouette software (Object/Mirror/Flip Horizontally)

or

b. Flip your patterned paper over so the backside is facing up.

Once cut glue this piece to the front base of your card.

Step 5: Now cut out the candle. (dark pink cardstock) Follow the same steps as Step 4 except you are erasing everything but the candle.

After I cut this out and glued it down I added some pink polka dots with my pink marker.

Step 6: Cut out the flame from the rose gold patterned paper. Again, erase everything but the flame.

Step 7: Cut out a dark pink circle using your silhouette or in my case a 1" punch. Add any embellishment you'd like. I added polka dots as edging around the circle. (Repetition baby. Polka dot paper, polka dot candle and polka dot edging.)

Step 8: Add any additional embellishments you feel necessary. I used my own handwriting to add some swirls on the cupcake and added Happy Birthday. I also added the #1 Rose Gold Chipboard Number.

Opened up:

I ended up adding some light pink shading with a marker on the Happy Birthday just to give it a bit more definition.

I love how this card looks like it's on fire depending on what light you are in. Pretty cool eh? I didn't notice it really until I was trying to photograph the card for this post. I was moving it around and saw how it just "lit up" in the light.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you'd like to see more cards please click the Summary card page here or the link in the navigation bar above under Crafts.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you come back soon!

Jen

4th of July

4th of July - Meixner Family Sized!

Me and and all my nieces and nephews. It's difficult to get them all happy at once.

This is butterball. He's my latest nephew out of 5 and his daddy. They look a lot alike.

This is his brother, the Peanut. He didn't want his picture taken so at least I got the lip out of him...for a piece of candy.

When we get together we do a lot of things. First and foremost, we eat.

Oh yeah Henry (my cousin's kid) was going to town.

Jack my nephew.

Some of us like to sit and play on our phones. ahem....

Some of us are taking a rest break.

Some of us are avoiding getting smooched by the cheek pinchers.

Some of us are playing volleyball.

Some of us need help. This is Grace learning how to serve.

Some of us are doing selfies with my camera. LOL

These two are playing bean bags or what I really mean is playing with the bean bags.

Ashton is having fun with the bubbles courtesy of Uncle Thomas.

On to the fireworks. A lot of oohs, ahhhs, oh that's neat, oooh pretty! and so on. :)

Around Here: Summer: Series 1

Summer is here in Minnesota. It's been an abnormally cooler one if you ask me. I'm not complaining about that either. I love cooler weather. Most people would rather have it warm and hot...ick. If I'm in a good mood, which is a majority of the time I'll just let that go but if I'm not on my A game I'll usually say something along the lines of, "You could move to Florida, they have a ton of sun down there."

Enough about Minnesota weather patterns. That's basic chatter.

Here's a short pictoral view of what's been happening around here:

Fishing, a lot of fishing with Bruce and some with the family. Mostly in Rice County but I went up to Cass Lake with the fam for Memorial Weekend (yes I know that's May LOL) and then up to Rainy Lake in June with Bruce.

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Some beautiful lake sunsets.

Strawberry picking.mmmm.....tasty! Jam making too.

My flowers are in full bloom.

Went to a couple Twins baseball games. I'm happy to say they won both of them.

Playing A LOT of softball! Women's and Co-Ed

Fireworks get together on the 4th of July.

Hey wait. My camera was hijacked! LOL What was I doing? Oh yeah. Playing volleyball.

Kissing my butterball nephew a lot. He's so cute.

Spending time with the nieces and nephews. (Ashton was so mad. He's like...what's going on. Daddy's on the way.)

 

 

Week in the Life: 2014: October: Monday

Week in the Life. A scrapbooking project. Started by Ali Edwards and my topic today for the next several Wednesdays.

If you've never done Week in the Life before I encourage you to ride this train. Week in the Life is a week-long project where you document your life in pictures and words. I'm talking your schedule, the minutiae of everyday, the little things, stuff you wouldn't ever think of scrapbooking. Pictures of what you eat, your shoes, the stores you shop at, your schedule, what time you get up, what you use on your hair. Stuff like that. It's an intensive project where you document daily life in a way that you normally wouldn't do.

It's awesome. You never really realize how much your life can subtly change over the course of time. This project will help you see that and help you document your life and all the little things in it.

"It's often the little stuff that's actually the big stuff." - I love this quote and it perfectly sums up this project.

In August I'll be doing this again so I thought it would be a good idea to start posting from last year to get me revved up.

So here's a look back to my 2014 Monday Week in the Life.

My cover page.

My album is a 6x8 size.

To keep this project going I try to follow the same format everyday. Same size of page protectors and use the same set of supplies. I don't vary much. This helps keep this project manageable.

First layout always includes a large photo of me on the left which has the day of the week in my handwriting and the actual date. It also has a bunch of -ing words that describe how the day was for me. Then underneath that I have a paper row of the day of the week.

Each day I'll change colors but I always keep the same style so that the album flows. I'll also add a die cut or sticker that fits the day.

The next item is a 3x8 description of the day using specific times and a brief description of what I did:

*When I ate breakfast, what I ate, what I did at work and the times associated with it.

Turn the page and you get another 3x8 layout. This one I custom-designed. I used part of a picture of a specific topic. In Monday's case I talked about my morning routine. I picked a topic that I wanted to document specifically. Something I wouldn't normally scrapbook about but thought was important. This turned out to be one of my most favorite parts of this Week in the Life.

My Morning Routine. The picture is of my feet on the shower mat in the bathroom.

Next I did 2 - 4x6 pictures that supported the "Morning Routine" 3x8 spread on the left-hand side.

Turn the page and you're on to the next layout.  Left: 2-4x6 pics Right: 4-3x4 pics.

All about the food for this day, my love of cooking and a card showing some of the basics for the day: Location, Weather, Eating, Drinking, Doing...

The "basics" card is super easy and something you can prepare ahead of time. You can simply print 7 of them out and fill them in at the end of each day. Easy peasy.

Turn the page and you have 4-3x4 pics and 1 large 6x8.

I chose to add a card called Highs and Lows each day. You can print these out ahead of time if you like then just journal directly on them during the project. I changed the colors each day as well. Just to spice it up a bit.

I concentrated on walking pictures for this spread.

AND that's it. Let's recap. # of spaces to fill: 2-6x8, 2-3x8, 4-4x6 and 8-3x4.

You can use any pictures you want. My layouts are a combination of my DSLR camera and my smartphone. Sometimes I'll adjust in photoshop and sometimes I'll use my phone apps like instagram. It doesn't matter, you can do whatever you like or what feels comfortable to you.

I hope you enjoyed this. If you'd like to look at some of my past Week in the Life Projects click here. Next week I'll be posting another post for Tuesday. If you have any comments or questions on this project please leave them below.

Jen

 

Project Life 2015: Week 10

Week 10 might have been low on pictures for me but it definitely wasn't low on content. I had a lot going on this week. I designed a couple 3x4 cards that I'm pretty excited about. I hope you like them too!

With that, here we go:

The full spread which I call one and a half. One full page and then I used a " wide page protector that has 3 - 3x4 pockets and 3 - 4x4 pockets.

I've never used this one before but I gotta say I really like it. Having the ability to use square with portrait is fun. You could do a 4x7 picture and cut up and fill both slots or you could do one huge picture that's 4x12. There are so many options.

Okay here's the left side:

the Left portion of the left page. I kept this section as a modge-podge and left the right to fishing.

I used Ali Edwards' digital pie chart (from one of her digital kits) to help me create this "Salad - This is how I like it" card. It was a lot of fun. I actually use the colors from my salad to color the pie sections.

I ended up running out of pie pieces so I had to group things together. For instance, I but bacon bits and tomatoes together mainly because they are similar in color. (I ran out of room because I put A LOT of stuff on my salad.)

I drew the fork and knife using my tablet.

I know a lot of people look at this picture and journalling and think, "Why the heck are you wasting time and space recording your diet?" Well, I think about that a lot and honestly it's because food is a big part of me. I love food. I love to cook. I love to bake. I love to eat. Just by the mere fact that I will put food in my Project Life says something about me.

I also think it's interesting to see what it is I eat. Eating changes throughout one's life and I think it will be cool to look back 30 years or more down the road and see what I liked, didn't like, what restaurants I ate at, what I cooked or even how I like a salad. It's those little things that I think people forget about or don't put stock in that should be recorded as well.

Okay on to the next card, which is quite a bit more in depth than my diet. It's about a challenging time. That again can be questioned as a topic for recording in Project Life.

Why put out there something difficult? What not just keep that out of it? I've thought about that too and I don't generally pepper my Project Life or even scrapbooking layouts with negative things. I'm just not much of a negative nancy. That being said I will record the challenges in my life. Why? Because it's a part of me right along with the good and easy things.

Both the good and the bad and more importantly, how one handles it, will show a person's character. I want that down in writing for posterity as well.

I just wanted to get that out there. Not everyone will agree with it but that's okay.

The card was made using a handful of different digital items from the Ali Edwards gathering story stamp kit.

Onto the fishing section and much less philosophy unless you think fishing is philosophical....I guess it can be. Many people fish to get some peace and do some thinking...anyways, that's a topic for another day.

I made these cards using some PL cards from Christine Herrin. I don't believe they are for sale anymore. The original cards were about travel (jet set) but I manipulated them to be all about fishing including the color scheme.

I gotta say that was kind of fun. :) I changed the wording from Jet set to Set. Fish and changed the graphics to a fish on some fishing line coming out of the hole.

Some of the pics from our ice fishing trip. These are just pan fish. Little guys.

In the final layout I added the descriptions of the fish with a black pen.

The half-page layout is all about my brother's birthday party and one little picture of a trail.

I didn't have a lot to say so most of it is pictures and the party details.

Nick's favorite color is orange so I find this loud and crazy patterned 3x4 card to use. I thought it was fun and gave the page a bit of life and a focal point. Sometimes I think the pages get a bit crazy and you can lose the desire to view them if there is no focal point.

I made this Party time 3x4 card using a brush from Ali Edwards (story stamp kit). I digitally stamped on the "party time" then added the "oh yeah" with some staz-on ink as well as the "who what where and when" (Kelly Purkey stamp) Then wrote on the details with a black slick writer.

I want to make sure that I don't always use digital fonts or stamps for everything. I like having a bit of my own handwriting in if I can. I think it gives it a nice touch, not to mention gets a bit of you in the layout.

Okay that's it for this week. Thanks for stopping in and reading my post. If you'd like to see more of my project life layouts click here:

Make a Card Monday: Happy Birthday from R2D2

Welcome to Make a Card Monday! Thanks for stopping by! Today's card is a Happy Birthday R2D2 card. What's R2D2? Well, if you or anyone you know likes Star Wars they'll know exactly what this is. If you don't, just know it's a little robot that has a personality. He's cute and one of my favorite characters in the Star Wars franchise...okay I'm getting off on a tangent. I'll stop. Onward!

Today's card is one I've been wanting to do for awhile. Every time I think about doing it I don't because I need to do something else like Mother's day or Christmas or something. I decided to hell with it, I'm doing this card. So here it is.

Disclaimer: I should mention this isn't really my design. I saw a picture of it on pinterest and thought, "I could so do that." So I used that picture for the start of mine and just adapted it a bit to suit my own supplies and tastes. Here's the link.

I'm making this card for my brother's birthday (it's in March, yeah I know it's early but I've been itching to make this card. No time like the present.) I should probably mention that my brother is like 30 so he's a bit old for this BUT he's totally going to love it.

Quite frankly I could use this for one of my nephews too but my brother Chris is the Star Wars fanatic. Yep, fanatic. He has an entire Christmas tree with Star Wars ornaments. Yeah, that's right. AN ENTIRE TREE. LOL Okay, enough of that stuff. On to the card.

This card looks difficult but in reality it isn't. It's just a bunch of basic squares, circles and rectangles. Easy peasy. If you have punches or a die cutting machine you can easily do this card.

Here are the supplies:

• Black card (I'm using a 4.3 x 5.75" card)
• Patterned die cut of your choosing (I'm using Cathy Zielske's free honeycomb download.)
• 2 - 1.75" white cardstock squares
• 1 - 1.25" blue cardstock square
• 1 - 1" light blue/grayish cardstock square
• 1 - 2" blue circle
• 1 - 2" light blue circle
• 2 blue & 1 black small circle (I used a large hole punch)
• 2 light blue/grayish mini brads
• 1 barely blue mini brad (Lasting Impressions)
• 1 red gem (I'm using doodlebug)
• 1 white gem
• Wink of Luna Brush (paint brush)
• Star Jedi font (dafont.com)

This project has several steps to it. They aren't hard it's just a basic paper piecing so I'm going to show you in a couple different ways.

The first is this stop motion video I did of creating one of these cards. If you'd like to watch a video instead of reading or viewing pictoral instructions, here you go.

 

Here's the written version complete with pictures. May the force be with you as you complete this card.

1.  Assemble/Cut-out all of the pieces in the instructions.

2.  Assemble the head. You need to cut the blue circle in half. This will be the bottom part of R2's head.

3. Glue on the "now" half-moon blue piece to the light blue circle and attach to a white square.

 

4. Cut the other white Square in half. Then cut one of those halves in half. You should have 2 thinner rectangles. These will be the legs.

 
5. Now round the edges of the legs on one side. I used a creative memories corner rounder but you can use whatever you have on-hand.

6. Glue the legs on then trim off the excess.

7. Grab your small white square. Now we will be making the feet. To do this cut the square diagonally then cut that piece in half. Glue the 3 pieces onto your R2D2 body. 2 go on the legs and the 3rd goes in the middle. (R2D2 is like a tri-pod if that helps.)

8. Now we are going to make the blue lines on R2's chest. Using the 1.25" square cut it into strips. I didn't need the entire square for this. Cut in half then half again to get 4 pieces. Adjust the size as needed to fit on the body.

9. Now we are going to make the little blue piece underneath the blue strips and add the blue circles for buttons. 

Cut the light blue 1" square in half then into 2/3's. This should fit under the blue lines. If not trim with your scissors then glue down. Add blue circles inside light blue rectangle.

10. Next is the eye piece. Grab the 1" blue square, cut in half then half again. Now using your handy dandy scissors trim the edging to make a trapezoid. Glue down and add black circle for eye.

11. Adding other R2 buttons (gems and brads). Secure barely blue brads under the right bottom corner of the eye and the light blue brads on the bottom of the body slightly above the feet. (see picture)

12. Add red gem slightly to the right of the eye and the white gem slightly to the left of the barely blue brad.

13. Add white/metallic doodle to eyes and buttons to make it look more realistic. It gives it a little something extra. It makes it look 3-dimensional.

14. Glue honeycomb pattern to the front of your black card. Trim as necessary. Attach R2D2 on top.

15. Attach Happy Birthday Banner.

How to Photograph 4th of July Fireworks

Would you like to learn how to photograph fireworks? Have your fireworks pictures been just blah or so-so in previous years?

Would you like to go from This to That?

If you answered yes to any of those questions you've come to the right place.

I'm going to give you a quick tutorial on how I like to capture fireworks.

With any good image you've got to have a couple of rules. Yes, I know, photography is an art and there shouldn't be rules when it comes to art. Rules can stifle you. In this case in order to get the good shot you need to follow a couple rules. The rest, as they say, is up to  you.

1. Tripod - you MUST have one.

Why? Because you need to leave your shutter open for a second or more at a time. If you are holding your camera you are going to get camera shake. What is camera shake? Camera shake makes your images blurry. It's that slight vibration or movement that you exert while trying to hold the camera still. Normally you wouldn't notice it but when you are taking pictures with the shutter open (the shutter is what allows the light into the camera), it's visible.

Trust me. If you try and hold your camera you're going to look like you're an alcoholic that hasn't had a drinkin 4 hours. Shaky like a groom on his wedding night. I could go on with the metaphors but you get the idea.

2. Camera with Manual Mode - MUST have

Why? Firework photographs need a long exposure (aka the shutter is open longer than a milisecond). Most point and shoot cameras including smartphones don't have this option. You need a camera with a manual mode that allows you to adjust your shutter speed (Tv) to a second or more.

There is a night mode on smartphones which will hold open the camera's shutter for a a little longer than normal but it's not enough time for you to get grand sweeping fireworks picture. What I mean by that is you with get "THIS" and not "THAT".

THIS is a staccato burst of light. Basically dots of the fireworks light emitted.

THAT is a grand sweeping emission of color. You know those huge chandelier-like fireworks? They come down like a weeping willow tree? You want the shutter to stay open from start to finish so you can capture that entire image.

Those are the two MUST haves.

Somewhat Optional Items:

3.  Remote Control Timer - I like to use this because then I don't have my finger on the shutter the entire time. Which can also cause a little bit of camera shake. You press down and then lift off. There is a little camera shake there.

I also like a remote timer because you have complete control of how long the shutter remains open. You don't have to change your settings constantly to get the right shutter length.

Each set of fireworks is different. Some are shorter bursts and some are longer (chandelier). You want to be able to start and end your shutter at your own discretion.

That's basically it for necessities. What type of camera you have, what tripod and what remote is up to you.

4.  Camera Settings: Obviously there is debate amongst photographers what is best. What I'm going to do is give you my images from the last 7 years and what the settings were so you can judge for yourself which setting you want to use.

A couple of basics for you:

• I use BULB mode so that I can control all of the settings as well as the shutter speed. If you use manual you will have to change the Tv (Shutter speed) manually. Remember, that is how long the shutter stays open and therefore how much of the image you will capture. To little and you'll get staccato images and too much you will get way too much color and it'll look like a blob.
• I like to manually focus my camera at the beginning. If you put it on automatic sometimes the camera won't be able to focus until the firework has started. I'd suggest using the first couple of bursts to focus then start taking pictures.
• Landscape/Portrait - either will work. Fireworks are naturally vertical so this set-up lends well to them. However, I occasionally will switch to landscape and get the entire background as well (you know people, cars, buildings. This will give your fireworks perspective and you can really see how big they are. Plus you can always crop a landscape image to portrait in photoshop later on.
• ISO - I ALWAYS use ISO 100. You want a crisp and clear image not a grainy one so don't be afraid to use 100 instead of 1600.
• Aperture (Av): Aperture is what decides how much light goes into the camera. Shutter is how long the light goes into the camera and aperture is how much light goes into the camera. Aperture is like your pupil. During the day there is a lot of light so our pupil is smaller, letting in less light. At night it's dark and we can't see well therefore our pupil becomes larger thereby letting in more light giving us the ability to see better.

            A small aperture (described as f-stops) is f/32 which allows the entire image to be in focus. An f-stop             of f/1.4 would focus on a small image and completely blur the background.

            I've used several different apertures (Av) ranging from 6.3-32. I mostly stay in the 6-12 range. That             seems to work the best for me and the pictures I like. You can play around with this as well.

• Shutter speed - Generally speaking I hold mine open for a second or two but it really depends on what firework is going off and how much of it I want to capture. This I will leave up to you. My advice, start with a second and work your way from there (assuming you don't have the remote and need to set a shutter speed.)

Now, onto the pictures. A timeline of fireworks form 2007 to 2014:

I hope you enjoyed this post and these pictures. Good luck with your fireworks photographs and please leave links to your pictures. I'd love to see them.

Happy 4th of July!!

Father's Day 2015: The Harbal Family

Father's Day! All about celebrating Dad. I got lucky this year. Dad wasn't working so he was home. I got to see him. YEAH!

Sunday morning I asked Dad to meet me at the Straight River Farm to pick strawberries. He was pretty excited. He had been wanting to go for awhile.

Figured what better way to spend a little quality time with my Dad than picking strawberries (p.s. I paid for his because he's my Dad and I love him.)

This is my Dad. He's never minded getting down and dirty.

This is one of his boxes of berries. Between the two of us we gathered over 28 pounds of delicious berries. That's 4 boxes.

Here he is with his last box of delicious berries. He picked some for freezing and just eating. I'm pretty sure he ate a few while we were picking.

It's funny because Dad picks faster than I do but then again I'm a little more particular than he is. I won't pick them unless they are ripe. If they are slightly under or over I won't pick them. I want to get my monies worth. Plus I go home and turn them into jam and freeze them right away.

mmmm.....Strawberries.

Pretty sure each and every one of my nieces and nephews has loved strawberries and could eat a pound all by themselves. Not kidding. They could just sit with that pound in their lap and eat until everything was gone. LOL

After the picking and chatting was done we went our separate ways. Dad to freeze and me to can.

All of us got together as a family for dinner (or supper depending on your interpretation of the word. I say lunch and dinner others say dinner and supper)

This is Dad aka Gramps aka Papa aka Grandpa aka Grampa depending on the age of the kid hollaring at him.

He loves to give lawnmower rides. The kids go nuts for it. He likes to swerve, drive fast, go up and down the ditches.

Most of the time they are yelling at him, "Go faster Grandpa! Go faster!"

These four are diehards. They have been getting rides from both me and Grandpa for years. They beg and kind of plead for rides. (Korby, Jacob, Jack and Grace) They'd go all day in that wagon.

Here's the whole brood. Ashton (orange stripe) he's not sure whether he likes it or not. He doesn't cry or anything but he doesn't look happy.

Clara (little pony tail sprout) doesn't ride 'cuz she's too small yet. But she was sure happy sitting in there.

Lucas didn't ride either 'cuz he's way too small (a little over 6 months). His brother just got to hold him. (Jacob)

Love the look on Jack's face. :)

Okay after awhile it was time to eat so we had to listen to the whining and crying and pleading again. It was more humorous than anything. It only takes about a minute or two then they start stuffing their mouths with food and it's blissfully silent...for another moment. LOL

Look at this cutie patootie. She's my 2nd niece and goddaughter. This was the first time I saw her with her cute little pony. She hasn't had enough hair until now. I can't wait for pigtails.

This butterball is my newest and 4th nephew Lucas. He's so happy and fat. That's what I tell his mother. She just shakes her head at me. Bruce is holding him because these two were born on the same day and their bald so naturally I need to get a picture of that.

This is Gracer (Grace) and Clara. Grace loves herding these kids. She's taken on the role of leader of the pack. She is the ring-leader in most of their mischief and noise-making. She chases them around and screams and they laugh and scream too.

This is Dad again. We bought him a man crate for father's day. It was pretty cool. Full of bacon-flavored things like bacon-flavored beef jerky, popcorn, sunflower seeds, peanut brittle (yes you read that right. bacon flavored peanut brittle) and even some pork belly seasoning.

It comes with it's own metal crowbar. Pretty freakin' sweet dontcha think? Oh I think so.

He loved that. Pretty sure he polished off the bacon-flavored popcorn in about 10 minutes.

This is Dad's brood. gaggle. herd. pack. family. whatever. :)

Left to right: Angi, Ashton, Nick, Karen, Chris, Korby, Jimmy, Dad, Kelly, Kimmie, Lucas and Jacob, Thomas, Jack, me, Grace, Clara, Bruce, Guy and Michelle

This was the best pic I could get. There's always someone talking or messing around or won't cooperate. I just told Mom to keep snapping and one of them would have the majority of us looking at the camera.

My Dad and his Children:

BackRow: Nicky, Jimmy, Kimmy

Front Row: Chrissy, Dad, Jen, Mitchelley

Do we look alike?

How about now?

 

Dad and the grandkids. Korby didn't want to cooperate AT ALL (orange). So he sat in the back and cried. Not sure why he didn't want to sit by Grandpa. We'll never know. Okay. Moving on. :)

Jack, Ashton, Gramps, Lucas, Jacob, Grace and Clara.

This is like the picture of faces. Here's what I think they could be saying/thinking.

Jack: Ashton what are you doing?

Ashton: Dad why am I sitting here with my sippy cup?

Dad: Woooooaaaaahhhh

Lucas: Help!

Jacob: The stare of death.

Grace: Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyy

Clara: What are we doing?

Korby: Don't look at me?

Let's try one more...well, most of them are smiling and sort of looking at the camera. Eh. Good enough. :) If they were sitting there are prim and proper looking straight at the camera I'd say, "Who are you and what have you done with my nieces and nephews. Give them back!"

My niece and nephew Jack and Grace with their Dad. Who is my brother in law and is now rivaling my other brother-in-law for the whitest legs.

I should start a contest. The winner gets some free tanning sessions? or fake tanning spray?

Pacific Northwest Road Trip: Scrapbook: Go Follow Your Feet

Go Follow Your Feet.  As you might guess from the title this layout is all about my feet. Well it's more about where my feet took me but it's a lot of pictures of my feet.

So here's the story. I went on a huge trip to the Pacific Northwest (PNW). I was by myself so I took a lot of selfies using my timer and sometimes. When I didn't want to take my timer out I took pictures of my feet in whatever place I was.

As I went through my over 3000 pictures I realized that I had a ton of pictures of my feet and the terrain. I knew I wanted to do something with this. More like, I had to. I couldn't let all those pictures not be used.

So I happened to be going through Ali Edwards' Story Stamp class and the theme was Go. Something clicked. I kept on reading. She did a layout where she turned her pictures into tags. Another click. I had my idea. :)

Then it was on. Like Donkey Kong. (I'm a child of the 80's, what can I say.)

This layout was born. Yes, it's simple. I like simple sometimes. It's a lot of pictures but that's okay. That's what I was going for. I wanted to use as many as I could fit. (fyi - 2 - 8x8" layouts)

Here's how I did it.

1. I went through all my pictures and printed out all the portrait prints of my feet. Like these.

I printed them out on a 4x6 card so they were each 3x4.

The tag itself (I measured it with my handy dandy ruler) is 1 5/8" x 3 1/4" so I knew I needed the pictures to be smaller. I wanted to get as much of the area around my feet as possible. If I would have printed them all on a 4x6 I wouldn't have gotten as much because the image would have been bigger.

2.  Next comes the landscape pictures. Those I needed to do some adjustments on. Why you ask? Well my printer, when I tell it to print two pictures on 4x6 photo paper it turns the images. What that means is that the image isn't tall enough anymore for my tag. The tag is 3.25 inches tall and my image is 3 inches tall. See image below.

Here's my original picture.

So I needed to crop the landscape image to a vertical 3x4. Which fits on the left-hand side of a 4x6 landscape photo. I added another cropped 3x4 image on the right-hand side. Cuz I'm all about saving paper.

3. After printing all of those out I cropped my large picture to 3.5" x 7.5". I put it on 8.5 x 11" photo paper and then added some of the other 3x4 images so I wouldn't waste an entire sheet of paper.

4.  Next step is to take an existing tag and use it as a stencil on the 3x4 images.

Place the tag on the picture over the image you want to cut. Just hold the tag in place while you cut around it.

5.  Now you should have a pile of picture tags. I futzed around with them until I had them placed where I wanted them. I made sure I didn't have two that were similar right next to each other and I made sure my bright pink laces weren't causing a visual problem.

There are 10 tags that could reasonably  fit on this page with the larger image on the right.

6. Now lay out your title.

'

• "go" is from Ali Edwards' Story Stamp Go Kit.
• "follow your" Basic Gray micro mono letter stickers
• "feet" are American Crafts White Thickers Foam Stickers (can't find them online)
• cork heart is from Studio Calico (can't find in their shop)

I glued down the go with red line tape which works perfect! It's strong enough to hold the acrylic 3d word, you can't see it and it doesn't stick to anything else but the word.

6.  Now I decided to complete a visual triangle just to try and bring the pages together even more. I used a cork heart and a phrase stickers embellishment from a Studio Calico kit.

I did that in two places.

7. Then I went around and added some stamp phrases on some of the picture tags. I didn't do all of them just some. I didn't want to go crazy and add too much.

Go with the Flow is from Ali's Story Stamp Go Kit.

Remember this is from the Story Stamp click kit.

everyday magic is from Ali's Story Stamp Magic kit.

the best is from Ali's Story Stamp little things kit.

this was awesome was from a Studio Calico kit.

8.  Lastly I wrote some journalling around the outside of the tags. Most of the tag pictures were dark or I would have wrote a snip-it about each location. That wasn't really the point of this page which is why I wrote my journalling along the outside of the pictures.

This layout was fun. It was a little bit tedious just because of the cutting out of the pictures but it was fun and I'm glad I thought of something to do with all those pictures of my feet. (yes Michelle, I know you don't approve.)

Thanks for reading this post and I hope you enjoyed my layout. If you'd like to see more please head up to the navigation bar. There is a section for each area and then a drop down for more detail. I have scrapbook layouts, project life layouts, cards, etc.

Jen