New scrap idea

Downstairs in one of the bedrooms, we have an old fashioned door with these wide, decorative hinges. The girls are forever sticking pictures of their latest heart throb (this month it's Johnny Depp) between the hinge and the door, using the door and hinge as a bulletin board. So this evening I was think that this might be cute for a scrapbook page to go with my Tuscany color kit. Of course, I'll put something other than the girls' latest heart throb on it. *LOL* But I thought this might be something different for scrapping journals, tags or pics? What do you think?



If you're interested in the elements and wood to make one of these, leave me a comment. I'll try to upload them and post a link sometime tomorrow.

SUNDAY UPDATE:
Ok, here is the link to download the wood and hinges.
I made some more papers for this set this afternoon. I'll upload a preview of some of the other parts later in the week. So check back for more! :)

Alone in the Mountains

I'm sitting out here on the back deck with my laptop and a fresh glass of iced tea, taking a break. I'm alone today, but definitely not lonely. When I was younger, I had trouble understanding the difference between the two words. But "lonely" hasn't been part of my vocabulary in years. And "alone" is a word I cherish on those rare occasions when I manage to get such time. The girls went rafting as part of a retreat with our church youth group and will be gone until tomorrow evening. DH is working a 24 hour shift. It's an absolutely gorgeous day here in North Georgia! The sun is out giving us a noon temp of 75 with a wonderful Spring breeze blowing through the trees. Life is good! :)

I got up this morning and stripped all the beds, washed all the linens and valances, packed away all the winter linen and pulled out most of the spring/summer supply. I say most because the new set that I bought last summer for the master bedroom has been stolen by gremlins! I swear, I've looked in every closet of the house and can't find them! How do I lose such things?? It simply must be gremlins because I can't come up with any other explanation! I vacuumed and washed all the window screens and opened all the windows of the house. Then I cleaned all the woodwork around the windows with Murphy's Oil Soap. Then I polished them up with Grandma's old kitchen recipe for woodwork. Geez, I love that stuff! I had all this done by noon! Isn't it crazy how I can get so much more done so quickly when I'm alone than when I have family "help" at home?!?

I don't have curtains anywhere in the house. Basically, I feel curtains take away from the wonderful woodwork around the windows and take away from the window views. So I use valances, scarves and over-the-window shelves throughout the house. On bedroom and bathroom windows, I have mini-blinds to give privacy. During the day they are up behind the valances; and at night they are down. It seems to work well for me, except during Springtime. I HATE cleaning the darned things! For today, I hung them up on the back deck, soaped them down with dishsoap and sprayed them down with the garden hose. But they don't get truly cleaned that way.
I've yet to find a good, efficient and effective way to do this. If any of y'all have any advice, please share!

Well, the dryer just buzzed. So it's back into the house to fold laundry and start on the bathrooms. I'll update y'all later this evening.

Scrapbook Freebies

Ok, I'm trying my hand at scrapbook kits. But it didn't start as a scrapbook. It started because I need new living room furniture. The current stuff is almost 20 years old. And I couldn't decide what I wanted in there that would look country classic while being somewhat classy. We have the raw pine walls with an exposed oak beam ceiling, hardwood floors, and a wonderful old black woodburning stove in there. The green couch and loveseat we have now are ok for color; but the wood end tables are just too much. I wasn't sure I wanted green in there again because we have so much green as a backdrop to that big bay window in there. Living in the country with woods all around us, we have enough green in every room. I need more color in there. I need a change! And I've spent the past 2 years putting off the redecorating in there because I just couldn't decide what I really wanted.

I was looking at a magazine last month that had this beautiful burgandy baroque fabric in it. It was laid across two other bolts of fabric that were a deep gold and dark purple with some blues in them. All were set on a black table with iron legs. And it hit me....those are the colors! That's the look I want in there! I held the picture up to the bay window; and even the greens from outside looked great with those colors. It had kind of a tuscany sort of feel to it. It would add more color in there; and the black of some iron tables in there would open up the space and contrast more against all the woodwork.

So now I'm in search of the perfect burgandy colored couch. While I'm looking, I decided to use the colors for some scrapbook pages to make sure of the colors and shades, while also trying to determine how much of each color I want and need to give it the look I now think I want.

I may post the entire kit later. But for now, here are a couple of quickpages I made (in PNG format so you can put a picture under it in the transparent area). They are 8x8 at 200dpi. I couldn't decide if adding the key was too much. So I'm including them both. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Here are the preview pics:



If you like them, here and here are the download links.
Please use for personal use only.

How many daughters (Part 2)

I scrapped some pics of the four girls from today. I used a quickpage found here

I made these to be a two page, side-by-side, layout.

How many daughters do I have?

One of the wonderful aspects of having daughters is that for each one I have, I inherit several more. At times, this can be rather challenging because I can never quite figure out, when asked "Geez, how many daughters do you have?" what I should say. There are always more girls in the house, running around calling, "Hey Mom" than there are girls to whom I have given birth. Then when we run errands, go to the store or on vacation, I always seem to have the Beast (our SUV) loaded with girls. I know the cashier at Walmart today thought I had either lied to her or lost my mind.

Teen Girl #1 runs up to me and says, "Mom, I'll be right back. I'm going to run over and talk to my friend."
Me: Ok hon, but I'm leaving in 5 minutes.
Teen Girl #2: Mom, can I please buy a new hairbrush while I'm here?
Me: Yeah, but get it back over here quickly because I'm leaving in 5 minutes.

Cashier: How many daughters do you have?

Me: Today, just those two. I have 3 other adult daughters who live out of town. (I no more get this out of my mouth before more daughters appear)
Teen Girl #3: Hey Mom, I think I just started my period; I'm going to run to the bathroom, then I'm going home with you, ok?
Teen Girl #4: Hey Mom, I'm going to the bathroom with her, ok?
Teen Girl #5, skipping over from nowhere: MOM!!! Did you see my prom pics?!? What did ya think? Can you make me some scrapbook pages for them?
Teen Girl #1: Mom, I'm back. Will you buy me this new CD?
Teen Girl #6: Hi Mom! Katelyn says you're leaving in 5 minutes; can you drop me off at the house on your way?
Teen Girl #7: MOM! Can I get a ride with you tonight to small groups?
Teen Girl #2: Here's the hairbrush I want.

Cashier: Are you SURE you only have TWO daughters here today?
Me: No, I lied. I have no idea how many daughters I have. I'll know when I get to the vehicle and count them. But looks like, once again, I'm leaving with more than I brought with me. ~sigh~
Cashier: Do you know how many you gave birth to?
Me: No, because it depends on how you define 'gave birth'!

When I left the house for church this morning, I had just one, because one had spent the night with a friend. I had four in the Beast when I arrived home. And when I leave to go back to small groups, I'll have six. If all goes as planned, when I arrive home tonight, I'll be back down to the original two again.

DH called from work a few minutes ago to make sure we got home ok, and asked his typical weekend question,
"So how many girls do we have today?"
Me: At the moment, four; I THINK. But I went to Walmart after church; and as usual, completely lost count before I could get out of the store!

When all the girls are grown, I wonder what we will do? We've lived with all the chaos, hormones, hairbrushes and nail polish for so long that I question whether there is life after all these girls? I guess we'll figure it out later. But for now, I'm counting my many, many blessings and enjoying them all while I can because I wouldn't swap a day of this chaos for nothing in this world! :)

Here's the scrapbook pages I made for daughter number umpteen, (Remember, I lost count! *LOL*) who went to her first prom this year. I used a kit by Kim Liddiard for both, and a template from AmyW for the first one. I hope she likes these. I've emailed them to her and will show them to her when she gets back to the house with my youngest daughter. They all went for a walk to pet the horses down the road.

News from Destin/Ft Walton Florida

We are on Spring Break with the girls, staying on beautiful Okaloosa Island in one of the gulf front Summerlin Condo units. We love this area for several reasons, the most important being the water, beaches and fishing, all within a comfortable drive from home! This particular building has great gulf front patio decks with magnificent views and sounds of the water. It also has wireless internet that works great out there so I can sit in the cool early morning hours, wrapped in my favorite robe, (like this morning) and blog to my heart's content while watching the ocean over my laptop and listen to the waves. Life is good! :)

In the late afternoons, I go down to the Okaloosa Pier and fish until my right hand and shoulder hurt so bad that I can't take any more. Then we bring the cooler full of spanish macks back to the condo to clean, freeze and feast on our many blessings of the day. Someday, when/if we're ever able to retire, we'd like to be able to buy a place down here somewhere on the water. A place we could visit several times a year, even live in the winter months, but still be able to enjoy the mountains of our current home in the Summertime and Fall months. And the great thing about those months is not only the beauty of the mountains during those months, but also prevents us from experiencing the worst of the hurricane season here.

We've made many memories and family traditions down here through the years. We make this same trip 4-5 times annually. Our first night down here on each trip is spent eating fresh local shrimp. We usually stop by one of the shrimp boats and buy a couple of pounds to take to the condo. Then by mid-week, the girls are begging and pleading to visit the Lucky Snapper for lunch on the marina. We did the same this past Tuesday, going around 2:30pm to avoid the crowds. We were seriously disappointed this time! We were seated immediately. But then waited for for what seemed like forever while waiters looked at us, went around us, and even stood chatting and laughing with each other at the bar area. But not one of them came by to greet us or take our drink orders. DH attempted to flag down various waiters, but all would look at us, then walk on past us. After over 15 minutes of this, DH asked if we were ready to try something else. The girls, who were so looking forward to this lunch, readily said, "Yes! I feel like an alien on a different planet here today!"

We were all sorely disappointed with the Lucky Snapper and doubt that we'll return. We walked out as a waiter approached us at the door to ask what we were doing. DH, rather impatiently stated, "You now have another empty table to watch instead of the people at it." We walked down to our ever faithful AJ's where both the service and food, was as always, wonderful. It worked out well because we hit AJ's during "Happy Hour" where you can get a dozen oysters for $4.25. DH and Katelyn had 5 dozen between them, in addition to their usual sandwich platters! Codah and I split the No Frills Steamer Platter, and still had to take almost half of it back with us.

Another restaurant we tried this time was the Fisherman's Wharf on Hwy 98. We had dinner there on Sunday night. The food and service were both great there also. And the prices were good.

That's it for this morning. The girls are now up and ready for breakfast. Then we'll be off for another day of sand, water and fish! :)