Amazing August

August 2 -

I love when things come together so easily.  I'm pretty sure the whole month won't work out this way, so I'll take the easy when I can.

Today's prompt for August Break 2016 is "Leaf."  That means one leaf to me, not leaves, so I didn't want to just go in the yard and take a picture of the leaves (you would not really want to see my backyard it its current state anyway.  We fancied up the house itself; the yard is another story, but I digress).

In my emails this morning, I got one from Michaels that proclaimed it was National Coloring Book Day.  I have always liked to color, sometimes even more than the kids when they were growing up.  I have been coloring in the "adult" coloring books for a while now and have several different ones going on.

How does all this connect to the prompt of "Leaf" you ask?

From my years of experience working in the library as a "page" (someone who puts the books away), I know that a page in a book is called a "leaf."  (You might know that too, even if you didn't work in a library.  Good for you!)

When I color in my adult coloring books, I usually start with the leaves.  I like the varying shades of green and I like to mix markers with colored pencils.

Again, though, the prompt was "leaf" not "leaves" so I didn't want to just use those pictures.  Instead, below is a "leaf" of the coloring book I am working on right now!  

Like the way I did that?  You may have learned two things today, August 2 is National Coloring Book Day and a leaf is a page in a book (three if you didn't know that the person who puts the books away in the library is a "page").

Hope your August is also Amazing.  We are going to see Adele tonight.  So excited.  Follow along with the August Break prompts all month and it's not too late to join in if you want to play as well, just click on the link above.  

 

Amazing August

August 1 -

For most of my posts this month I will be playing along with Susannah Conway and her August Break.   Susannah gives us a prompt for the day and we are to take pictures to interpret the meaning of that prompt for us.

I have participated a few times in Susannah's challenges over the last couple of years and it is always interesting to see what the prompts mean to other people.  We share them on a Facebook page and on our blogs and while most pictures are what you would expect, occasionally a different interpretation pops up.

The first prompt is "Morning Light."  I know a lot of people may take pictures of the sunrise as the morning light and I must admit that taking a picture while sitting on the back porch was my first thought.  But, that's not really my usual thing to do and it felt too scripted.

Here is my take on "morning light:"

The light on our coffee machine is the most welcome site to me first thing in the morning.  I get up and head straight for the kitchen to start it.  Some mornings I get a treat and my husband has filled the basket with coffee and added the water already and all I have to do is push the button.  Then I head off to the bathroom and by the time I am done, so is the coffee and I can start my day.  

So, that's my take on the Morning Light prompt.  What would yours be?   Love to know.  Hope you will follow along with me this month and if you decide to join us, pop over to Susannah's site and sign up.  Leave me a message so I can come and find your August Break pictures!      

Jumpin' July

July 28 -

Time for the month end wrap up to Jumpin' July.

Here's my selfie for the month.  I took it at the Mountain Winery before the Foreigner concert.  What a great night that was.  You can read about it here.

This is our full moon from the 19th.  The Full Buck moon asks, "What are your most powerful dreams?" What a question!  I am thinking about this one a lot.  My dreams include both Bill and I being healthy enough and in a solid financial position to go on adventures.  My dreams include me being able to continue working at home, either typing or creating my special products to supplement our income so we can go on adventures.  My dreams include finding a little house in the country somewhere to either live in full time or just to go on an adventure several months of the year. 

I got really tired of my hair, which sadly is getting very thin, so I decided to get a cut and perm.  After I got it done, I remembered a picture that I had from when I was in my twenties. 

This is the picture.  We had a western theme party and I was a saloon girl, of course.

I am working through a program called Inner Excavate Along with Liz Lamoreux.  In it we are exploring our pasts and getting in touch with ourselves through pictures, poetry and mixed media.  It is something I started when she did it last year but did not finish.

One of the exercises is to take a mirror picture of ourselves.  When I got my haircut and remembered about this old picture, I decided to try to recreate it.  Because of the "mirror" idea, I put the flower on the other side and took a picture now.

It is sinking in that I will never look like the 25-ish year old girl in the picture on the left.  Physically impossible, in fact, since I had some facial surgery in my early thirties because of TMJ issues.  They did some reconstruction around my mouth.  Then of course there are a few extra lines and wrinkles as one would expect after 30 years of marriage and three children :)


Then I decided to go one step further and really take a "mirror" picture of myself.  Maybe it's wishful thinking or maybe it's because it is a smaller picture, but it seems to me that in the second reflection I can kind of see that 25 year old smiling back at me.

Sounds like a sci-fi story, right?  You get younger with each receding reflection.  

On another interesting note, while visiting our daughter at the new house she is renting this school year, I saw this pretty rose growing in her garden and snapped a picture.  I think it kind of looks like that flower in my hair from the saloon girl days, don't you?  I did not realize it until I was gathering the pictures for this exercise.  I think the universe may be telling me something, huh?  

I'm getting ready for the August Break with Susannah Conway again.  31 days of pictures!  The prompt for Day 15 is unicorn!  Bet you can't wait to see what I come up with for that!



How about you?  How has your July been?  Got any big plans for August?  Love to hear about them!

Jumpin' July

July 24 -

Our last concert for July was the Rock, Paper, Scissors Tour with Peter Gabriel and Sting.

We had seats on the floor but not too close.  Still, we had a great time.  Fortunately, the big screen allowed me to get some pretty decent pictures.  Both Peter Gabriel and Sting stayed on stage for almost the whole show.  There was no intermission and they just sang song after song.  

There was a little playful banter between the two and although there were a lot of songs I wasn't familiar with, most of them I knew and could sing along.  

They had an interesting stage set and they each had their own band members so there was a lot of activity. 

 I made a rookie mistake, though and didn't completely charge my camera batteries after the last concert so my camera died before the end of the show.  I also had very little room on my camera, but I deleted some apps and managed to catch some more pictures and a video.  I'll try not to make that mistake again! 

Sledgehammer was the finale and it was a good one.  

We have three more shows coming up in August, with the first being ADELE.  Stay tuned!

Jumpin' July

July 19 - My new room is finished!  I have managed to put everything in it's proper place and labeled and even did a little purging!

This is the view walking in the door.  In the top right corner you can seen the crayon melting art work that my daughter did.  I went through all my papers and put them in rainbow order and also some separated by theme.  I made myself a tall work station by putting a board on top of some drawers and large containers, covered by a sheet.  Now I can stand and do some work occasionally, which is helpful, plus it hides some containers that have pictures in them that I have to go through.   

This is the right wall.  I even found a spot for Mickey and Minnie!  My ScrapRack has a spot and my "in progress" albums are all across the bottom shelves.  I even have an empty spot on one shelf.  My magazines are on a shelf on the wall and the top shelf holds idea and reference books.

This is the left wall.  I was able to put my old computer behind the TV so when I am done watching the baseball game I can turn on iTunes and have special effects on in background.  I love the visualizer on iTunes.  Some pretty neat designs there!

I have a lot of empty containers that I just can't seem to be able to get rid of yet.  I think I'll see if I can use them in other parts of the house.  

I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out and it didn't really take that long.  Now maybe I can get down to some serious crafting!  I've got a show coming up in about a month and I need to increase my inventory!  

How's your July going?

Jumpin' July

July 13 -- Movin' and Groovin'

So, anybody who's been following my posts (I hope lots of people), or knows me personally knows that I love to scrapbook and make mini-albums and cards and other fun stuff with papers.

My pride and joy is this WorkBox from The Original ScrapBox company.

I have one of the original versions and I absolutely love it.  My husband and I put it together a few years ago and it is such a pleasure to use it.  It is filled with tons of stuff and makes crafting so much easier to have everything in one place.  

However, I also have a paper addiction.  I have to have a separate bookcase for papers (this is not even all of the paper I have):

So my scrap room looked like this:

From the doorway

Left wall

 Messy because I was right in the middle of a project and I knew things were going to be changing so I wanted to capture the "before."  Above on the left is from the doorway.  The one next to it is the left wall as you look in the door.  Below is the right wall as you look in the door.

Right wall

I have a lot of stuff!  Most of it I know where to find and I do use a lot when I make my albums.  I have an Etsy shop so I am hoping to be able to make some extra money using it all. 

Our daughter just moved out completely to her own place closer to where she is going to school and has told us that she would prefer to live there full time rather than come home.  We support her decision and are very proud of her for making the transition to being on her own.  (A little sad of course because she was our baby).  

At any rate, we decided to offer a room to a friend of ours and I thought that since there was going to be some major moving going on, I'd move my craft room into the other room and let our friend have the front bedroom.  

Therefore, over the last few days, I moved (with a lot of help from our son and some help from hubby, who just had surgery so he can't do much) ALLLL my stuff.   

Looking in the door

Right wall looking in from the door

Left side

As you can see, just about all I did was move it!  There is very little order other than the big pieces of furniture are where they are supposed to be but all the little odds and ends are in a big pile in the middle of the floor.  I am taking the opportunity to go through some things and organize them better and perhaps purge some things I don't think I'll use.  

I still have some shelving to put up and rearranging to do but just from looking at these pictures I know I am going to like this room better.  It has much better lighting, maybe because the walls are white as opposed to the orangey color in the other room.  Maybe because the window isn't blocked as much.  

Also, I am sharing the room with my husband and son as they have a pretty massive baseball card collection which takes up the entire closet and some built in drawers.  

I've got my work cut out for me and I better get it done pretty quickly because I have a craft show in a month.  I need to make some more things to sell (or at least get the things I have already made out of this pile!)  Wish me luck.  I'll post the after pictures when it's all done.  What do you think so far?

Jumpin' July

July 12 - July started off with a bang!

On the 3rd, we saw our first concert of the Mountain Winery season, one of our most favorite bands, Foreigner.  We were in the second row, center stage so I was able to get quite a few really good pictures.

But the most excitement was when Kelly Hansen, the lead singer, came out into the crowd.  This is something that he does at every concert but most of the time we are not quite near enough to him.  This time, TWICE, he came right next to me!  The first time he actually came down our row and stood right in front of me!  

The second time he was climbing his way over the seats from behind me and as he got to my row, I snapped this picture:

and then helped guide him over the seat in front of me back to the stage.  I'm not sure, but I may have touched his butt.  Maybe it was just his lower back...:)

In any case, my husband said the look on my face was like a 12-year old girl, priceless!  

The next day was the 4th of July and we had a small gathering of friends here to light our safe and sane fireworks.  Our town is one of the only ones around that still allows fireworks as a way for the local sports groups and schools to raise some extra funding.  

When we were first together, my husband promised me that he would show me fireworks every year.  In the last 34 years, I can't remember a year with no fireworks, even if it is just these in front of our house.  One year we actually climbed out our bathroom window and sat on the roof to watch them.  How romantic is that!  

Then, on the 9th we were back at the Winery.  This time to see the band Boston with some good friends of ours.  While we were a little farther back than second row, we still had some terrific seats.

One of Boston's hits is the song "Amanda" which I managed to catch on video for our daughter, Amanda.  

That's just the first week and a half!  We have one more concert this month and we are in the middle of some more home projects.  I'm moving my craft room to a different room in the house, quite a project!  The subject of a different blog post for sure! 

How about you?  How's your July going?