Christmas Scrapbooking out of season, this page was fun to make.
This layout was inspired by the Two Peas in a Bucket "morph" National Scrapbook Day challenge AND the Big Picture Classes Creative Crop Challenge #12 to use "kraft" in two different ways on a page. I made those paper ribbons with a square punch to edge them at the bottom - a trick I saw on Pinterest - it works perfectly.
Dear Julie, Ella and Lula: We are thinking of you three and Bruce today. We think you are all completely awesome. We love you. We will celebrate Ice Cream For Breakfast Day every March 21st and remember Bruce and his positive, happy and funny spirit and we will remember the powerful love of your family. I'm pretty sure we will never look at ice cream or unicorns again without thinking about Bruce. Love, Mac, Allison, Katie & Charlie.
P.S. Charlie is going to the dermatologist today to check out that weird thing on the side of his face.
I found this post on Bruce C. Rosenberg's Facebook Page:
"On March 21st I was diagnosed with Cancer. It turns out that it was Stage 4 Metastatic Melanoma. One of the things that came to mind was "Have Ice Cream for breakfast". It was a mantra of sorts, a metaphor for living life. As sad as it is to have such an epiphany about life only when faced with something that threatens it, it would be sadder still if others didn't understand before they too faced some crisis themselves. I think that March 21st should be Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day as much as a show of support as an affirmation that everyone will vow to live life and not take even the small things for granted. I hope that by creating this group, perhaps this can be something more than a phrase thought up of by another cancer victim..someone who is facing a challenge to life and instead this can be rallying call to those who are living and vow to continue to live. Please spread the word and if you care to read my story you can see my Caringbridge journal at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/bruceandjulierosenberg"
Join the Facebook Event "Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (March 21)" created by Bruce C. Rosenberg.
If you or anyone you love has ever been diagnosed with cancer, read this and then join the Facebook Event "Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (March 21st)" created by Bruce C. Rosenberg.
The best way to tell you about this holiday and the life of Bruce Rosenberg is to read Andrew Dys's Article in the York County,SC Herald: Rock Hill Man's Death from Cancer - Surrounded by Love."
"In front of the house in Rock Hill’s Stafford Park neighborhood, stands a huge heart, carved from styrofoam, about four feet tall. It is covered with Christmas lights – and little messages to a guy with cancer so bad that it almost wasn’t cancer anymore. The heart is almost as big as the heart that was inside the house, until around 4:30 Monday afternoon, when Bruce Rosenberg – Rock Hill’s Jewish champion of Christmas lights – died in the arms of his wife and oldest daughter."
"The man was a giant,” said Scott Ball, a neighbor and a lot more. In Abu Dhabi and Florida, New York and down the street, hundreds of people who had been part of the life and death of this guy, Rosenberg, cried. He was a man with a wife and two daughters who never, not once, asked anybody to feel sorry for him. He attracted Christians and Jews, Muslims and agnostics. He was a favorite of cab drivers and doctors. He loved them all."
"Rosenberg’s idea of sorrow was, on March 21 – the day he was diagnosed with cancer last year – to tell people to eat ice cream for breakfast. His idea now has a national following on Facebook, along with a Pit Crew on Facebook – named for the arm pit where the horrible tumors were first found."
"Instead of self-pity, he took on a mascot – a flatulent unicorn."
She had heard the teenaged daughter, Ella, tell her father before he died that someday his grandkids, when there are grandkids, sure would eat ice cream for breakfast every March 21.
“What I watched was amazing, incredible, just unbelievable,” said McGoye. “The family, awesome. But the neighbors – it was a sight to behold. It was, well, it was love.”"
***
So that's the story.
Now go. Tell Your Friends. Join the Facebook Event.
Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast on March 21st.
Celebrate Life.
Welcome, Welcome, Scrapbooking Dystopian Fans to Panem District #7 Lumber,
First, you simply MUST watch this silly song about Lumberjacks from Monty Python:
This will get you in the appropriately silly mood to record some lumberjack and lumber related memories just like we did during our stop in District 10 Livestock. So watch the song and then sit down at your computer or with a pen and paper and record at least 10 random memories, which may or may not be funny, about lumberjacks, lumber, the forrest, and/or trees. You have to come up with at least 10. My bet is that you could probably come up with 100, but stop at 10 ok? And then come back for more District 10 Lumber Scrapbooking on the Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking Blog.
Here's my layout with three pages of 11 stories about lumber, trees and lumberjacks:
Ok, so you've got your 10 lumberjack memories in hand right? If you don't, do that now. Really. Do it now. And THEN you can read the rest of the blog entry for today. Trust me, just do it right now if you haven't already, it does not have to be full sentences, it does not have to make sense to anyone except you, but you do have to go through an remember and write down 10 memories about lumber to get the improvisational comedy concept of "piling it on" or the improv game "the minister's cat".
If you wish to support this blog and learn more about scrapbooking and improv and read the The Hunger Games (if you haven't yet); please click on the affiliate links:
P.S. Here are my 11 stories about lumberjacks:
Eleven Real Life Lumberjack Remember When Stories:
1. I went to high school in Bangor Maine where Paul Bunyan, legendary giant woodsman, stands as a symbol of a great era, the 1800s when Bangor, Maine was acclaimed "THE LUMBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!" I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 5 and went to Bangor to the circus; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 15 and used to climb up and sit on the feet with my friend Lizzy Dean; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 25 when I took Charlie to see Maine and we had our picture taken in front of the statue; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 35 (or technically 41) when I brought the entire family to Maine and showed my kids this statue. I have a wooden Paul Bunyan that its in my kitchen as a reminder of my hometown.
2. I not only can sing the Monty Python version of the Lumberjack Song, I also remember a song about Lumberjacks from summer camp - the one about My name is Jan Janson, I come from Wisconsin... and it goes again and again and again, when I sang it for the kids they both begged me to stop - maybe we should start using that one in the morning to get them out of bed! I used to watch Monty Python on Bangor’s PBS station late at night with my BFF Missy Woodbury and I’m pretty sure we used to sing the Lumberjack song and laugh our heads off until we fell asleep.
3. My Grandpi had 600 acres of mostly woods in Calais on River Road and we used to walk through the forrest when I was a kid and there was one tree that had a nail in it with a metal bucket hanging from the nail this was the tree near a natural well and I think maybe there was some sort of old fashioned pump that you could pump and fill the bucket up with water and get a drink, just in case you were a thirsty lumberjack I’m guessing.
4. My Dad had about 1000 acres of woodland just outside of Bangor and he won all sorts of Tree Forestry awards for being a very environmentally sound tree farmer, I have the plaques in my law office now. Sometimes I make a lame joke to clients that we waste a lot of paper because my law school professor J.J. Brown always used to say "paper’s cheap and time is short" - I think he was trying to convince us L1s of the brilliance of only writing on one side of the paper because it would be easier to read later on; so my story to clients is that even through our law office has been paperless since 2002, we still have and use a lot of paper - but karma wise I’m OK since my dad was an environmentally sound tree farmer. I don’t really think anyone gets this story, but my mind always goes there when the client comments about how gigantic their files have gotten - we are paperless in that everything gets scanned in and we have a fantastic client profiles software management system that I completely love and allows me to work from anywhere including from home and vacation and even my iphone!; but we still keep paper files and I usually have the staff put the physical files on my desk for client meetings and generally they are huge, like at least a foot or two tall of paper. Seriously, so it just kind of seems funny that we consider ourselves to be paperless with all that paper.
5. When we lived in Calais, Maine when I was little, the town next to ours had a paper mill and the whole town smelled really, really bad and I was always so happy that we didn’t live there and I only had to hold my breath for about 2 minutes while we drove through that town on the old Airline road on our trips to Bangor.
6. When I was a teenager and living with my Dad and he owned all that land, he insisted we go out to the land to cut down our Christmas tree; we always ended up with a very Charlie Brown tree and we didn’t axe it down as you might imagine, he’d bring a hand saw. Once, when I was about 16 and was dating David Q, he said he could solve my Christmas tree problem and we drove out into the woods and found a giant tree - just like the Griswolds did in Christmas vacation and we chopped it down with an axe and then realized it was about 4 or 5 times longer than his little Subaru so we chopped off the top of it and tied it to the roof and hauled it home. My first Christmas in our house with Charlie, we had a real live tree and I decorated it with spray painted and glittered sea shells and pine cones, it was also when our black lab was a puppy and he kept trying to eat and/or hump the tree and it was a mess and at about 2 pm on Christmas Day that year, I hauled the tree, ornaments and lights and all, out to the curb in front of our house and vowed to never, ever have a real live tree again. We’ve had a fake tree ever since and I’m totally OK with that; someone usually sends us a Maine wreath as a Christmas present so I still get the smell of home without the giant mess or driving out to the woods.
7. My family came to America in 1706 from Scotland; Wallace Finlayson was in shipping and he landed in Portsmouth, NH on my birthday, June 6th in the year 1706 and he quickly moved up to Maine but continued in shipping, he or maybe his son is rumored to have been captured by Pirates and never seen again. His son or grandson, William Penn Fenderson and/or Nathanial Fenderson had a farm in Maine and one of them went into town one year with the harvest and was never to be seen again, it is rumored that he sold his crop, left his wife and kids high and dry, and he went out to California for the Gold Rush and that his descendants got into the wine business and now have some connection with Reunite and Mad Dog or Thunder something rott-gutt wine. Even though our family has been in Maine for over 300 years and it was once the lumber capital of the world, I don’t think any of my ancestors were lumberjacks, but the men in the Fenderson family always wore plaid shirts on the weekends - which maybe a lumberjack thing but could also have been a Scottish thing, anyway, they looked like lumberjacks and spent lots of time in the woods.
8. When I was a teenager and lived with my Dad and he was single, he used to date a lot of different women. His favorite kind of date would be to take the lady to dinner - one time he brought a lady to 7 or 8 McDonalds around the Bangor Area to get a free Chicken McNugget when the nuggets finally came to Maine, and afterwards, he brought her out to the land which he was very proud of; I remember distinctly him telling me about this date afterwards and telling me that he couldn’t figure out why she would never take his calls afterwards. And then he’d add the bit about how he "clubbed 7 porcupines to death with a stick" while he was on this woodland date; and then he’d add how it was environmentally sound to kill the cute little porcupines because they liked to eat a ring around the bark of the trees which would kill the trees and he was trying to grow the trees. I’m sure whoever that lucky lady was still tells this story about that weird guy who brought her on a date to McDonalds and topped it off with killing porcupines. Weird.
9. When I was dating Charlie and his parents had a house in Georgia, they used to have to cut down the Georgia pines since they’d blow over easily in a storm so my husband and father in law know their way around a chain saw. Charlie also has a song that has something to do with lumberjacks and is played on chainsaws, he relayed that song to the kids this morning but I’m guessing he’ll play it for them tonight so they get the full effect.
10. I grew up with Pine Trees and since I moved to Florida its been Palm Trees. I get nostalgic when I walk through a forest with lots of pine trees, it reminds me of my Dad and childhood and funny stories about trees and lumberjacks and home.- Katie 2/29/12 (leap day)
IMPROV CONCEPT OF EMBRACING YOUR MISTAKES: I forgot to include an 11th story on the computer journaling so I wrote the 11th story on the layout.
Here's the text from #11 which is included on the front of the page as though spoken by that nervous little skunk - hoping my dad wouldn't mistake him for a porcupine:
#11. Hey Psst. If you see Bob Fenderson "tromping around" in the woods up there in Heaven, make sure NOT to point out the porcupines, better to ask him about the SECOND LARGEST BAROQUE TREE IN MAINE, that will get him going for at least 2 hours; just ask my Tom K., the dad of my highschool sweetheart who remembered the STORY about the BAAARRROOKE tree when I paid a surprise visit to Jefferson St. while I was in Bangor, Maine for my 20th High School Reunion - it was so funny to me that he remembered. K 2/29/12
A scrapbook layout and a video:
I actually made this layout while making the video.
If you've visited my blog before, you might know that I've been developing a concept of applying the concepts of improvisational comedy to the creative process in scrapbooking. Here's a video of my process (you might want to do something while you are watching and think of it more of as a podcast with video attached).
Bear with me, I'll have better videos up this week, stay tuned OK?
Here is the Sunshine Snow Days layout:
The Story: Improv Scrapbooking + The story of a disappointing snow day and then two awesome ski trips.
Journaling: "Sunshine Snow Days. Back in December, Allison and I went to downtown St. Pete for the snow fest, but got there just as the bulldozer was getting rid of all that exciting snow. It could have ruined the day, but instead we found a small pile of white stuff and had a snow ball fight. Then, in January we all went up to Ober Gatlinburg and even though there was no actual snow, Allison was thrilled to experience the man made stuff and learned to ski and we even made a snow man. " Journaling stickers: "Happiness is not having what you want, its wanting what you have." and "Life Is Good. Today was ... the best. Ally got a 2nd trip to see snow & go skiing in Boone, NC."
Scrapbooking Supplies: DCWV, Echo Park, Fiskars Border Punch & stickers.
Want to learn more about Improvisational Comedy Concepts? Check out these books:
This Page Is So Easy To Make!
1. Cut 4 photos into 4 inch squares.
2 Paste them onto 8.5x11 cardstock.
3. Put a couple of paper strips and a title at the bottom; stitching optional.
4. Use up some stickers down the right side - just for fun, I made this page at Christmas time and I think they work for Easter too - try using some stickers or themed product that don't necessarily relate to your subject.
I consider this a warm up type page because there is not a lot (or any) journaling but it got me in the scrapbook room making a page. Many times, these warm up type pages lead to more meaningful inspiration - the act of doing something is a good thing. Try a quick page like this if you are having a scrapbooking rut.
Supplies: Patterned Paper .10 cents x 2; Stickers .25 cents; thickers $.10 cents; photos: .09 cents x 3. I made this page entirely from things I picked up at the scrapbooking yard sale for a grand total of $.82 Cents; ok maybe add a few more cents for the adhesive - still, I'm barely up to $.90 cents total. Wicked Bargain Right?
Not only do I now know that Santa's Reindeer are fueled by jet packs, but that time flies faster than a jet. I had intentions of blogging and even making a scrapbook layout for 1-12-12 but I got busy with lots of other stuff including:
1. Going to the ER thinking that I had a bursting appendendix only to learn that it was a gigantic gas bubble; I don't normally have that sort of problem and it was exceptionally painful. Now I know and feel a bit like I'm taking after my Grandma Grace in the hypochondriac department. I am thankful that everything is ok.
2. The normal daily routine of life including working, taking kids to school, laundry, dishes, dinners, homework, work work, meetings, phone calls, mountains of paperwork; it is nice to get back to the routine but I'm wondering how I'm going to fit everything in. I lots of times think I would like to be able to freeze time to get stuff done and/or clone myself - Samantha Stevens Style ala Bewitched.
3. Ok this one is fun in a scrapbooking kind of way: I went to the Whim-So-Doodle scrapbook yardsale on Saturday Morning and got so much stuff including the red graph reindeer paper on this layout.
I did the Ali Edwards December Daily project this past Christmas and I was very diligent about doing a page a day and I really loved making the project and I love the final result. But looking back, something feels like it is missing, at least for me. I didn't do many - or even any - actual 12x12 pages for my Library of Memories Albums - which is fine, but, somehow, I just felt like I needed to do at least one. This page condenses the entire month into one page, plain and simple and easy. I made it in less than 5 minutes and it makes me feel good to have one page from 2011 to go into the Libary of Memories, Things We Do - Celebrations - Christmas album; especially since I'm pretty sure there are several 12x12 layouts in those albums from most of the other years since my children arrived. I know that probably no one would miss 2011 in the LOM album - but we had a great December 2011 and I wanted to be sure to include it - and the title of the page will remind me, and hopefully my family, that there is a December Daily Album for 2011 out there.
I made this one in Picasa and I'm going to see about printing it out in a 12x12 - if anyone has any print recommendations - please leave a comment or a link.
If you are a scrapbooker, and chances are you are if you are reading this blog, then you have probably at one time or another, visited the craft store and looked at or even purchased a "Memory Kit" - come on - show of hands please? Right, just as I expected 99% of you have and the other one percent is in denial. Who could resist 59 pieces of scrapbooking embellishments for $2.99? Not me. But truth is that I'm guessing this fabulous pack of Starlite Christmas awesomeness has sat in my Christmas scrapbooking stash for the past ten years. I pulled it out this morning and felt sorry for it so I decided to see if I could challenge myself to make a layout with it and have it look "not awful" - and I think I succeeded - let me know what you think:
The top three photos were all in bathrooms and taken with my canon - and/or my daughter's canon - point and shoot and the bottom three with my iphone. None are particularly good - with the exception of the top right - I think that one was pretty good and I felt very fashion-y that day because I was wearing a long necklace - I forced myself to put it on as I'm not really much of a jewelry or accessory girl.
Journaling: "I decided that this year I'd make an effort to be in the Christmas Photos!" "I'm the one behind the camera."
The second line is an inside joke-ish reference to one of my family's favorite movies "Deep Impact" with Tia Leone when her Dad shows her the photo of her and her Dad on the beach & she was angry with him for marrying a young woman and leaving her mother along - and she snapped back "Where's Mom?!?" And he answered "she was the one behind the camera" - that scene always makes me cry big streaming sappy tears - and I pretty much cry the rest of the way through the movie - especially later when the giant tsunami wave is coming and she is with him on the beach facing it and certain death and she says "Oh, Daddy." If you haven't seen that movie, watch it - its a good one.
Back to the OPA (Old Product Alert) - this is a term from Cathy Zielske's Big Picture Classes class "Design Your Life" which I also highly recommend, in fact, I think whoever designed the pages for the front cover of that Memory Kit product could probably benefit from the class - although my guess is that those pages were made 10+ years ago so chances are their skills have improved since then.
I got crafty with those little Christmas trees - check it out:
Also - the title and journaling in the middle of the page with the six photos on top and bottom lined up is a very, very easy way to get six photos on one scrapbook layout and have it looked pulled together, at least IMHO.
Tell me: Did you take photos of yourself this past holiday season? Do you scrapbook yourself? AND how old is your oldest product and do you still use it?
One more day of December Daily and the year 2011 & then I'm starting on all these resolutions & One Little Word & Twelve & Move More Eat Well & Round Up & all sorts of other fantastic things in 2012.
I have completed Christmas and Boxing Day and a few other pages. I'm all caught up and am planning to do December Daily until the end of the month.
I know that December Daily only goes to the 25th - or at least I think it does, but I still have extra room in my American Crafts 8x8 album so I figured I'd go to the end of the month. Here is today's page - a self-portrait of the family at year's end & I saw this idea on Pinterest of putting everyone's birthdays and the anniversary date together - and since our anniversary is coming up, I figured it would be a good place to include it (I have mixed up the numbers for internet purposes).
Also, I tried to do the paper strips chevron trick from Jennifer McGuire with this diagonal paper but I couldn't figure it out so I just used a paper strip instead. I'm going to try that trick again, so I'll post my second attempt soon.
The family picture is the one I used on the first page of my Project Life 2012 album.
P.S. I figured out the chevron stripes thing using plain old striped paper (NOT diagonally striped paper):
I feel like an Elf at crunchtime on December 24th - almost there with finishing my December Daily Album - I am ready for it to be done - and it almost is - just a few more pages.
Here is Christmas Eve / December 24th for December Daily:
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