scrap your walls!

Aaah, speaking of fall... it is thunderstorming like crazy right now! The back door is open, it feels wonderful! Not really much like fall though... Love thunder and lightning!

In scrapbooking news... I have another article posted on Crafty Places this week. Check out Scrap Your Walls: Love Always. Bill and Theresa and Bailey were this week's victims in my article. Muhaha! I am liking the weekly articles... forcing me to be creative. I want to be able to share more about what I do and how I do... I feel like I have mountains to learn, but I do know a few things that I can share already.

My husband was so sweet today. I asked him for a critique on the article since my mom is on vacation. I figured I'd get the usual: yes. no. that's nice. whatever. But he responded with a very SWEET email saying that the article was awesome and I really do have artist blood in me and it's so great that I'm passionate about scrapbooking. Awww... I love that guy.

And maybe I'm a praise junkie. So what. tee hee :-P

adventures in plumbing

Last Friday I visited my brother and sister-in-law. Friday night we had dinner at South Market Bistro. There is no such thing as a national spinach crisis here. Their food is purchased from local organic farms and prepared fresh. The menu is mouth-watering... and so much thought put into every dish. It was an experience. If I could have fit the place in my pocket (or at least in my ginormous trunk) to bring it home, I would have! (Especially the warm blueberry crisp with vanilla ice cream.)

On Saturday we went to the dump to get rid of the guts of their kitchen. They are in the midst of a complete kitchen remodel. Of course, the dump is like a smorgasbord to me. My brother practically had to hold me back to keep me from rummaging around. I did manage to scavenge a few of his drawers and cabinet doors that I am sure you will soon be seeing here as craft projects.

Then we did a lot of shopping. Lowe's, Lincoln Interiors (another mouth-watering place), JoAnn, thrift store (more rummaging!), and of course Custom Cut-ups. It was about 4 in the afternoon by the time I really got around to being helpful.

My brother had to re-work the plumbing going into his kitchen... so I learned how to sweat pipes! I could sooo be a plumber's assistant. I'm really good at holding things. (Seriously - these were HOT pipes... and sometimes I had to use muscle. Geesh.)

They're fun people... I'm glad we got to spend a completely random Friday and Saturday together.

bringing in fall

bringing in fall
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

Fall was in the air this past week, wasn't it? The air is cooler and it moves more... the trees are starting to show the colors they've been fantasizing about all summer... things are changing!

I'm not a big fall person. Mainly because I'm not much of a winter person. And since fall ushers in winter, I really have no use for it. I shouldn't complain too much though, because each season really does have redeeming qualities. And as I learned in Phoenix, those long cold winters are THE reason we have such spectacular spring and summer. So I'll suck it up and deal for a few months so long as we have that.

My mums are not in such great shape this year. Not sure who was in charge of shaping and pruning them. But I did find a few to snip and put in this little flower frog vase. Mums are great in vases... I need to get to Trader Joe's for some more when these run out.

Happy autumn!

I'm "published".

A few weeks back, right after the Last Scrapper Standing, but completely unrelated to that contest... I found some of my flickr artwork on a site called Crafty Places. This was the article someone had written about my work.

So I ended up exchanging a few emails with the gal who runs the site and she asked me to be on her design team. It's a pretty new web site, so there is the opportunity to grow as it grows. And the requirements were not too bad... a handful of entries per month. I also have the freedom to craft what I want and write what I want. So that is pretty nice. I'm still working on my ability to craft-on-command. :-)

Last week I submitted my first two articles. The first is an anniversary card I made for a friend. I really did make it in a hurry. But I wasn't in such a hurry that I couldn't photograph it. (There is always time for a photograph - especially when the light is good!) Cards are a fairly new subset of scrappin' for me. I got into them when I went to a rubber stamping convention with my sister-in-law back in April.

Which leads me to my second article... a scrapbook layout about Jen. When she was at our house for an all-day crop, we both answered quiz questions from a magazine we got at the crop. I kept her answers to make a page about her and she took mine. Since I had it fresh in my mind, I went ahead and used this as my article submission. I love this idea of capturing quiz answers in family members' own words. It really adds heritage value to your albums. I can just picture our future children reading about their Aunt Jen!

Fisher-Price unveils T.M.X. Elmo - Yahoo! News

Fisher-Price unveils T.M.X. Elmo - Yahoo! News

Oh my... this has potential to CRACK ME UP. I mean the original was funny, but now knee-slapping and rolling over, pounding his arm. lol.

I can just laugh thinking about it. Go ahead, act like you don't think it's funny. I can give you my friend Jari's number if you want reminded of how funny Elmo is. :-)

photography weekend

a llama tending his wool
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

It was a total photography weekend. It seems like I haven't had one of those in a while. I have been snapping on the weekends until the battery dies, the card is full, or I get bored... and not really ending up with anything great or special.

But this weekend rocked! I got to do "still life" and people pics at the wool gathering. And more people portaits & candids at my house on Sunday. Portaits and candid people shots are not my best works. I'm much better with nature and inanimate objects, usually. And I'm not sure that I learned anything new about pictures or the camera... but more photos is more photos, right?!

The wool gathering pics were sort of a challenge because of the tinted light in the tents. One tent had a red and white striped roof and the other was yellow stripes. EEeeek! And you know I couldn't just leave them, right? I played with some adjustments in iPhoto... usually that is enough to tweak photos into shape, but I didn't have enough control over the color there. So I brought them into Photoshop Elements and used their automated tools. The Auto Color Correction did the trick. It was actually pretty amazing how it figured out what the right color was. The pictures of just yarn were the hardest because it's so hard to remember what the CORRECT color was. And after you play with it for a while... everything starts looking off and you have no idea from memory what the real colors were. (And I have pretty good color memory, mind you.) Also, probably a good thing I edited the pictures as soon as I got home, or they could have ended up REALLY crazy-looking!

When John saw this photo, he wanted to know why I didn't buy the toy llama... because it's so cute. He was also totally ok with my threats to bring home an angora rabbit. He's an odd one, my husband. :-)

cornhole

the toss
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

We had the gang over for grilled burgers, hot dogs, punch bowl dessert, and cornhole today. The weather was again gorgeous. Justin played his trumpet for us... so did Jari. Sarah and Jeremy later played beautiful music on blades of grass. I'm sure the neighbors were QUITE confused.

a wool gathering

finely knitted yarns
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

Today I went with my friend Ellen, her mom, sister, and neice to a wool gathering in Yellow Springs. I resisted the urge to take up knitting... I have plenty of other hobbies, that's for sure!

But I did take plenty of photos. the wool is just gorgeous... alpaca, mohair, silk, wool, cashmere, angora. And in every color and combination of colors imaginable. Mixed in with ribbon and beads. Yum! It's inspiration for scrapbooking and sewing to an extent. I did find some very cool buttons and even a few ceramic pieces to use on a scrapbook page.

It's a friends-filled weekend. I had dinner last night with Jenny and Becka while the rest of the gang was entertaining Jari at his bachelor outing. John didn't get to go because his flight back from DC was all messed up. I picked him up at the airport in DAYTON late last night.

Tonight we celebrated Allison's birthday at dinner w/her, Sarah, Amy, Andrew, and Jeremy. And we have plans for a get-together tomorrow to play some cornhole and cook out. It's a beautiful weekend... so glad for this weather.

remember

September 11. A day for remembering.
Remembering hurts.

The stories and the pictures still make me cry. Big sobbing, get-a-paper-towel, cries. Tonight on the news they walked through the airplane hangar where they have saved much of the debris from the World Trade Center. There is a large "blob" of metal. Not sure how wide, but it was just over the reporter's head in height. It is 4 stories of the building where it got the hottest. It burned as hot as the Earth's core. Paper was instantly carbonized (you can still read the words on it). And surely there were people on those four floors. And this blob of metal is their grave.

Wouldn't it be nice if some of my tears could help alleviate the pain of folks who lost loved ones that day? I wish it could be that way.

It's amazing who I look like!

It's amazing who I look like!
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

This is HILARIOUS to me! I'm either a Columbian bikini model, funny girl Goldie Hawn, or the oh-so French Audrey Tatou. OR... I could be princess Leia!! Natalie Imbruglia... whutever. Have you heard me sing?

Ok... find out who you look like and report back. :-)

photo contest

city of Detroit as seen from Windsor
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

It's time to submit 2 photos to my company's photo contest. Every year they produce a 52-week calendar that is distributed to everyone in the company (and to the employees of the company that publishes it... just because they like it so much!)

Well, you all know how important photography is to me... not just for scrapbooking, but as a hobby in itself. So getting in the calendar is an annual goal of mine!

The only words I have to go by are to look at last year's calendar. They say, "Many of the photos have a very obvious center of interest or activity. Look for photos in your collection that are a little different and unique." Location seems important... world places. Some past favorites are a pig on the beach in Costa Rica and of course sunsets, mountains, people, and architecture are popular also.

I emailed the group to my family and friends already to solicit some feedback. I asked everyone to choose 2 photos. Right now, the photo of the Detroit skyline (pictured here) is in the lead with 6 votes. The next closest is the Poison Dart Frog bunny with 3 votes. So if you haven't voted yet... click here see the whole set and let me know what you like.

Entries are due by Friday, September 15. I should know by November if I made it or not. THANKS! :-)

what's next

lastScrapperStanding all
Originally uploaded by brungrrl.

Last Scrapper Standing was fun. It pretty much consumed all of August though! Poor John had to take over on laundry, housekeeping, and making meals. In the end, I didn't win, but I do have a beautiful bunch of scrapbook pages to show for the effort!

I spent the long weekend in WV with the fam. We ate good food, took some photos, sat on the porch, chased goldie at the pond, drove the tractor, and played Rook. It was relaxing and rejuvenating. Just what I needed to re-group and get my mind around everything I need to do this month.

September is the calm before the storm. We have a TON going on in October this year. So I am spending this month catching up on stuff around the house and hopefully getting a few Christmas projects out of the way in advance.

So that's pretty much my life in a nutshell. Now... I wonder how my girls in SCOTLAND are doing?! Did you get there? All is going well?