Full Swing

I hope my scrapbooking is back in full swing, however, I can't always count on the little boys to nap together. Plus, Michael is 4 now and doesn't always take a nap. I was proud of myself to head downstairs today, even in the cold basement to do some paper scrapping. I finished off a few pages that just needed journaling. I had started them at the annual crop I attended earlier this month with some girlfriends in Des Moines.

Well before show-and-tell, how about a little family update? :) We'll start with the littlest guy...William is 13 months old and is trying to figure out how to RUN already. He has the walking thing down pat now. Oh, and as of today he can climb up on the couch. (Please say it isn't so!!) He figured out how to get on the coffee table last week. Once up, he dances around and generally gives us a heart attack. So far he's only fallen off once, when neither Jeff nor I was in the room. He wasn't hurt, thank goodness. He seems bound and determined to do everything at an earlier age than his brothers (except grow hair).

Michael is fighting a cold and cough this week. The preschool teacher wondered if I could pinpoint what activities we'd done the night before or how we'd done our morning routine b/c he was so calm, serene, and grounded on Wednesday....yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh...he was just getting ill:( (Mental note; Michael behaves better when subdued by illness) He's getting more interested in Legos but is constantly forced out of the room for inadvertently (well usually inadvertently) breaking creations Christopher made.

Christopher is apparently a perfect angel at school and is doing very well in his studies, especially reading. Yeah, I'd like to see the perfect angel a bit more frequently at home;) He just turned 7 last Friday. The weather and Jeff's bronchitis curbed our party plans a little. Due to some GOOD cold meds, Jeff was able to do the friend party at Perfect Games here in town. I stayed home with the little boys while Christopher and friends whooped it up on pop and cake, bowling, air bouncing, and gaming to their heart's content.


Summer 2008 trip to the Des Moines Science Center
I am VERY near to being totally done with 2008!


The first and only time I've seen a praying mantis in the wild. Daisy was acting very peculiar in the backyard so we went out to investigate and found this!

More bug stuff from 2008. I actually did all these paper pages while getting ready for and packing for the retreat a few weeks ago. I still need to upload the pages I did at the retreat itself! :) It's been a papery sort of month!

Jessica Sprague's Pen Tablet class

I tend to take most of Jessica Sprague's digital classes...haven't hit one yet I didn't absolutely love! This one is no exception. Although I was already quite adept (if I do say so myself) at using my Wacom tablet as a mouse substitute, there have been several things I either didn't know how to do, didn't know existed, or thought I didn't want to do that I have now done and liked the results. One of those was to use my own handwriting on the tablet. I thought I didn't want to do that, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I might even actually do it again after class, lol. One thing I didn't know existed was pop-up menus...let's just say that if you own a tablet or are thinking of owning one, once you have it, you NEED to take Jessica's class:)

Here's the week 1 layout:

Created completely with class materials and a Google map. This is the infamous marching band trip from July 1988:) We won 3rd place in the 4th of July parade in Washington DC...even in the next-larger class than we should have been in. ALL of my pictures from this trip totally suck you-know-what! Most of my decent mementos from this trip are post cards.

Week 2:

Made during Jessica Sprague's Wacom tablet class.
Includes handwritten journaling, handwritten doodles, leaf overlay made with various brush techniques made easier using the tablet, chipboard swirl (IRL) traced using the tablet, and bird traced from artwork paper using the tablet
Jessica Sprague papers, etc
Crystal Wilkerson circle tag
Misty Cato Farmer's Market wooden frame
lstock artwork...extracted the bird from a paper
Katie Pertiet photo frame on right
leaf overlay made my little 'ol me, using instructions from Jessica Sprague's class
stereofidelic, outlaw and AL Serenade fonts
Journaling around frame is my handwriting (using the tablet, of course)

Week 3 was photo editing using the tablet. This was an awesome lesson (no corresponding layout). We were given 2 photos from Jessica to work on with the video lessons. I learned some editing techniques and new tools with this lesson; totally worthwhile. I wouldn't normally put this much effort in to all photos...these are special techniques to really make a good portrait great.

Week 4: Just finished this one up today. The final layout from class:

Week 4 layout template from Jessica Sprague Tablet Fun class
Jessica Sprague: brown paper, swirls and stitching
Dani Mogstad Frosted Flakes circle paper
Bittbox watercolor brushes
Clementine sketch font
Heather Roselli Big Top striped paper (somewhat recolored)
Cheryl Barber Stitching and Holes styles from Scrapgirls.com (soon to be retired:( )
Rhonna Farrer Perfect Pets embellishments
Chatterbox Phonebook and CK_Ali's Handwriting fonts
I usually tend to do the class layouts fairly closely to the original. For this one, though, the photos I wanted to use didn't go at all with the paper selections Jessica used. So I picked different ones except for the solid brown. She also had us do a really cool extraction with some flower photos, but that didn't fit my theme either. The Rhonna Farrer dog freebies really worked well though, whether I needed the tablet to use them or not:)
This one really has a cool photo masking technique using the watercolor brushes...love this look and will definitely use it again!

Ah...class is winding down this week...always bittersweet. :)

Local Peeps...shameless plug for my child's school!

Bigify this if you want to see the details. The cost of the card is $10...if you go to Hy-Vee grocery store more than 10 times in a year, you've already "made back" the $10, as you get $1 off any total more than $25. There are some really good deals at restaurants and Great Clips too, just to name a couple.

If you want to purchase a card, contact me or go through your child's school instead:)