July 26th, 2008

So happy at the news that my cousin and his wife (and their little boy, Isaac) have had a healthy baby boy. Welcome to the world, Aaron!


This little book will be on its way to them soon, as a small gift celebrating Aaron's birth. Also sending a song my cousin had mentioned on his blog, a lullabye he remembers his father singing to him years ago. Now, he sings it to his own sons. I've never actually heard it in English, but I know the song in its original Welsh (don't ask how!) and it's lovely. I hope he can use it to soothe Isaac and Aaron to sleep.

July 25th, 2008

We live in a pretty quiet neighborhood. I guess that's why our next-door neighbors hang their laundry out to dry in their backyard. Can't miss seeing their undergarments while washing the dishes... not, perhaps, the view I'd choose, but it's what I've got.


I like their back patio, though!

July 24th, 2008

Lunch with Mike today. Met up at Panera, which is always yummy (mmm, French bread and onion soup) on his lunch break. We chatted as we ate, caught up on what's been going on in each other's lives. He was kind enough to let me snap a picture - he even posed! :)

July 23rd, 2008

More reorganizing - it's been a slow process, but I am making progress, bit by bit. Took all my cardstock and paper and sorted it by color. That was harder than I thought it would be - it's not always easy to decide which color is the "main" one in a busy pattern. Once I had it all color-coded, I placed it in these Cropper Hopper paper sorters. Looks pretty on the shelf, no?


This also gave me a chance to really see what papers I had. Which was good, since I have it all fresh in my mind now... and it also gave me a chance to weed out the ones I know I really won't use. Some went right into the giveaway piles, which will be sent to some good cause soon.

Next step will be to sort through my books, as I have WAAAAYYYY too many of those. Need to clear the duds off my shelves to make room for the ones I really want to keep, and also leave some room for scrap stuff to be relocated there. I'm workin' on it!

July 22nd, 2008

St. Thomas, USVI. Practically paradise. Just look at the photo, or rather, photos, below. I used several (5 or 6) to put together a mosaic image of the hills of St. Thomas. Beautiful, no?


Ran this mosaic layout as a class at Scrapaholics, and I'll be doing it again for the next few months. Very fun! It's one of those projects that people might not think to do on their own, but once you see it done, you can easily do it over and over again - any photos that focus on scenery lend themselves to this kind of layout. I love it!

July 21st, 2008

Went shopping. I bought flipflops, Brian bought two suits, two ties, a pair of shoes... I think he made out better than I did on our little shopping trip. :) Can I tell you just how frustrating it was to watch him turn down tie after tie, shirt after shirt, all of which would have looked magnificent with his new blue pinstripe powersuit and his sharp black 3-button suit. He's impossible.

Meanwhile, I was thinking maybe I'd alter the flipflops, make 'em look fun. Flowers, buttons... something'll come to mind, I hope! :)

July 20th, 2008

Brian and I take our jobs as aunt and uncle pretty seriously. Or perhaps not seriously at all, based on how you look at it. We seriously want to be fun, loving family members, not stiff, stuffy formal "guests." We'll help keep him in line and keep him safe (it takes a village, after all), but we don't want him to associate us with "no" and no smiles. We want to get down on the floor and play with all the two-year-old toys he enjoys. We want to run, spin in circles, fall to the floor. We want to blow bubbles and try to catch them. We want to read (and re-read and re-re-read) his favorite books. We want to share in Evan's laughter and smiles. We want to wiggle our butts when he wants to dance. We want to give and get hugs and kisses along the way.


So far, so good. :)

July 19th, 2008

Staci hasn't been feeling well - she's got an ugly summer sinus infection. Ew. But Evan doesn't know how to slow down for his mommy's sake. So I piled Brian and mom into my car and drove out to Jersey for the day. We took turns soothing Staci and chasing after Evan, even taking him outside for some splash time in the blow-up pool and a run through the sprinklers (Uncle BriBri got to do that part). He smiled the biggest smiles - clearly, he loved running through the grass and the falling water. Gotta love that baby's smiles!

July 18th, 2008

It's hot. Africa hot. Or perhaps just July-in-New-York hot, which is bad enough. We'd been tootling along in the mid- to upper-80's for a few weeks, which is certainly warm, not not necessarily steamy. But now we're having a bit of heat stroke here. It was 92 around 10am with more hot and humid to follow. Bleh.

July 17th, 2008

Meet my Canon XSi dslr - my baby. This is actually the second incarnation of my "new" camera, since the first had a lens-crunching issue and had to be replaced. Haven't used it much yet, since my little point-and-shoot has been in my pocket and I've grown accustomed to reaching for that instead of this big boy. But I've got a lot to learn about taking good photos and practicing with the dslr is the only way I'll improve. I'm working on it!

July 16th, 2008

The pile of goodies from the other day has been turned into this scrapbook sample:



It's not quite done, but it's bright and colorful and should be a fun project for kids (and parents!) at the store. Amazing that a pair of paper bags can look so cute! :)

July 15th, 2008

Peeking over the back of the couch in his pink satin pajamas, this fuzzy bear just makes me smile :)

July 14th, 2008

There's something about a stack of scrapbook supplies, waiting patiently on my table, that makes me happy. Can't wait to turn these into a mini-book for Scrapaholics!

July 13th, 2008

Finally started some reorganization of my scrapping supplies. Why now? Well, we've been re-thinking our use of the "office" here - because really, we use it as a room where stuff gets dropped in the middle of the floor and little work of any sort can be done. As much as I love the space I've got on the dining room table for my scrapbooking, it's perhaps not the most convenient place to keep papers and such. We savages eat at the coffee table when it's just Brian and me, but I have to do a lot of shifting and clearing whenever we have guests. I want to have a space that's dedicated to creativity where food and drink spills won't be my biggest fears. So, the office will get a makeover and a new purpose - to be my creativity studio. (Sounds better than office, I think.)

After I organize my stuff.

Now, I'm not necessarily good at organizing, or really, at staying organized. Or at keeping surfaces clear. I like a little clutter, to be honest. Gives a place a home-y, lived-in look. I've never really aspired to perfect, magazine-cover neatness. But lately, I'm starting to feel like everything should HAVE a place, even if it doesn't live there all the time. And like should live with like. So my widely-scattered scrapbooking stash needs to be re-figured to stay in the office/studio, all together, ready for me to create in there.

But my supplies spilled out of the office because they didn't all fit in there in the first place. I'll put some new storage solutions in there when I fix up the room as a studio, but really, I need to pare down my piles of stuff. Stop being such a scrapbook-stuff-collector. USE the items I buy. Donate the excess.

That brings me to the photo below. It's amazing what you find when you dig through stuff you haven't looked at in months. I'd totally forgotten about these transparencies, and the stickers and other things piled underneath. Pretty, no? I love transparencies!



As for donating the excess, I have a few possibilities in mind. I can:

• bring supplies to a local hospital that scrapbooks with patients/families (like North Shore here on LI, which has a program that creates scrapbooks with the families of NICU babies who're too ill to go home right away)
• send supplies to a soldier who scrapbooks (and can't shop for fun goodies while serving a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq)
• mail the supplies off to a non-profit like Send Love Today, which does papercrafts to brighten the days of terminally ill cancer patients

It's looking like I might do all three - I've got so much more stuff than I really need!

July 12th, 2008

Welcome to the great big Penner/Miller BBQ. After shopping and prepping and all that jazz, we played co-hosts today to a crowd of about 20 guests at Staci and Brad's. 20 well-fed guests, by the time we were through. I think we successfully melded both family and friends into one large group. Sure, the "adults" in the family hung together indoors while the "kid's table" was encircled by friends outside on the deck, but everyone ate and laughed and seemed to have a good time. True to form, the Penner boys pulled on gloves and tossed around a baseball out back as the afternoon cooled down to evening. All the Penner boys - including Evan, though he quickly lost interest in the too-large glove and instead wanted to swoop high as "Superman Evan" on his swingset. (Cue theme music here)



Only real problem - we vastly overestimated the number of hotdogs people would eat. Penners and Millers alike, we'll be eating the leftover dogs 'til they sprout from our ears.

Of course, that would make for a good picture. :)

July 11th, 2008

Evan, like most toddlers, delights in repetition. When he likes something, he wants to immediately do it again. And again. And again... While the adults in the room all want to scream at the very same-ness of it all, he's shrieking with delight. And somehow, that makes reading "The Happy Man and His Dump Truck" for the 8000th time worth it. This time, it was a different truck book that was stuck on repeat. Evan likes trucks. Evan carried the book around the room and had us all read it to him in turn. Alan, Brian, Staci, me, Alan again... lather, rinse, repeat.



The amazing thing is, it was shiny and new for him every single time.

Sometimes, I want to approach life like a toddler.

July 10th, 2008

This little bear was hanging around in a basket in my old room at my parents' house. Then, the bear decided to go bridal (or at least, Staci decided to make it so). It was too funny an image to pass up a shot. :)
Meanwhile, I still get vaguely queasy when I look at that wallpaper for too long. Guess that's why I'm so partial to painted walls now.

July 9th, 2008

Evan got a hold of my camera and took some pictures of us all lounging around in my parents' living room. I like this one (of his little fingers pressed against the lens) best. :)



If only I didn't have to clean his little prints off the lens! :)

July 8th, 2008

*THWUMP*

Pillow fight!
Don't worry, Staci got hers.... :)

July 7th, 2008

So people are panicking about tomatoes - salmonella outbreak ongoing nationwide. I think it's sad that you have to fear your food. So I don't. I'm making a point of buying things locally-grown (now that they're easy to find at Wild By Nature on Long Beach Rd) and I'm washing my fruits and veggies before eating. Simple precautions. But I refuse to run screaming from a tomato or a bowl of salsa like they're full of deathly poison. An additional benefit of getting stuff that's grown locally is the freshness - nothing that's spent two weeks crossing the country is going to taste as good as something picked one county over. Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. Yum!

July 6th, 2008

Sometimes, looking at what's left behind when I've finished a page or a project, I am simply tickled by the way the toss pile comes together. Such lovely serendipity.

July 5th, 2008

Took some fun paper and a few photos from last year's trip to make this ring-bound Disney board book. Such fun! I've gotta make one of these for myself.....

July 4th, 2008

Happy birthday to you, American nation. While I'm not always proud of the actions Americans take around the world, I'm happy to live here, where I can speak my mind, voice my disagreements, diverge from the mainstream. I'm not blind to our societal faults. But I am relieved that we do, as a nation, manage to get some things right.


Here's to a better America this time next year.

July 3rd, 2008

A sleepless night (have I mentioned lately that insomnia sucks?) and I am listening to the sun rise, listening to the birdsong swell as the sky blushes with the color of morning. It is 5am, cool and bright. As the sun's light strengthens, I see the reflection of its color in the water and I know I need to capture the peace, the color of that moment.



Glad I got the picture, but... I need sleep.

July 2nd, 2008

Got the install done today - hooray, we have a ceiling fan! My thanks goes out to the helpful people at Expo Design Center for having the one we wanted in stock and ready to go. It kinda looks like a funky airplane propellor, but it helps move the air through our living room, dining room, and kitchen. Nice.

July 1st, 2008

Okay, so it's looking like June was a wash, photo-wise, after we returned from the cruise. I took nearly 1000 pictures, and I haven't had the chance to sort them, let alone edit them and get them online somewhere. With so many to do, it's overwhelming!

Then, my slr had to go back to the manufacturer (via Best Buy) for replacement, as the lens was emitting unpleasant crunching sounds when I focused. Best Buy took their sweet time getting that taken care of, so I was without my exciting new camera for much of the month. Blargh! Got a little creating with paper done instead - including the card below, for Amy's bridal shower. I think it came out rather pretty, actually.