Lots of White Space

I've always admired layouts with only one or two small photos and a couple embellishments and lots of white space. I've been very intimated by them as well. I finally decided that I needed to face my fear of failure and just do it. This is the result. This layout took me longer to put together than much more complex ones. I guess that's because the minimalist design shows all the flaws instantly.

I like how this turned out. I like how the quilt I made for Eliana is really center stage. The background paper by Basic Grey has just enough texture to keep it from looking too stark.

Even tho I now know I can do this, I don't forsee doing a lot of them in the future.

Five Little Words

Tired tonight. so will just leave you with five little words.

peace - my word for 2010

create - i try to be creative in some way every day

read - even if it is only a quote, a short poem or an article in a magazine or newspaper

eat - something healthy and green every day

exercise - the eliptical, a short walk, aerobics to a DVD at least 5 times a week, just move

Beautiful Quilts

Sorry for the blurry photo but I was taking photos of the quilts as others were holding them up.

Today at our quilt guild meeting, we had the pleasure of having Karen Hankins present a slide show and trunk show of some of her gorgeous quilts. The photo is of a collage of places around southern Oregon where both she and I live. Every single little piece of fabric is machine pieced into the quilt. She has shown her quilts at the Houston International Show and a Paduka (know I didn't spell that right), Kentucky show. She encouraged us to forget perfection and to continue to try new things as challenge ourselves. So inspiring.

Makes me want to do some more quilting.

LOAD

Lain Ehmann of Write.Click.Scrapbook is running a class called, Layout A Day. She posts a prompt each day and we take it from there. The idea is to get photos scrapped and use up our stash. I could certainly use all the motivation I can get to scrap on a regular basis. So.....
today's challenge was to document a beginning. It's a perfect topic as I just began my yearly winter/spring garden clean-up. The frost in November left my garden looking worse than usual and it was so discouraging to look out at all the dead and scraggly plants. Yesterday was a warm - 53 degree - day with a bit of weak sunshine. The perfect time to start some of the restoration. After two hours I had filled my garbage can and the garden cart with debris. The stuff in the garden cart was destined for the compost pile and the garbage can mess will be hauled away tomorrow morning. I had hoped for more obvious results, but even a little bit helps. I have many more hours ahead before all is ready for the summer.
I know I did something tho, by the way my muscles were complaining this morning! :)
For the layout: patterned paper: Basic Grey; ghost clock: Heidi Swapp: brad: brad topper by Imaginisce; alphabet: American Craft; unknown journaling block.

A scrap-a-thon

This week I've had the chance to get together two times with friends to scrapbook. I managed to finish 12 layouts and start on a couple more. Every time I get to be creative, it seems I have a favorite. This is my favorite for the week. The photo was taken on Thanksgiving weekend and is so good of all three of them. The 'I love you' in the lower right corner of the photo was an add-on when I had it developed at Scrapbook Pictures. I love how the photos come out when I send them off to SP for developing.

The sketch for the layout came from Pencillines. So many of my layouts are from sketches on that website.

It feels so good to be able to get back to playing with paper and photos and all the goodies I've been hoarding. I'll save the other layouts for another post.

Eleven Years Ago

Eleven years ago today I made one of the top ten best decisions of my life. I married Willie R. McCarley. We had dated for two and a half years. Neither of us wanted to marry again at the time that we met....reluctantly. We had each had long, unhappy previous marriages. And he was 12 years older than I....it didn't bother me, but gave him pause when considering marriage.

The day was clear and cool - a very rare day for Oregon in January. Our immediate family members were gathered for the occasion. We had the ceremony in front of a beautiful rock fireplace in a room at one of the local wineries. Our pastor married us; Willie's son was his best man and my daughter was my maid of honor. The ceremony was simple. Afterwards, we all sat down to a lovely lunch prepared by the owner of the vineyard. We had such fun. There was much laughter and telling of stories.

Later we left for a couple days at the Oregon Coast. When we arrived the sky was clear as crystal and there was a stunning sunset. The whole weekend there was warm with almost no wind - another rarity for that time of year.

I would love to be able to celebrate 11 years of marriage today, but we had only slightly less than 4 years together. I would do it over again in a nano second even knowing that we wouldn't have much time together. Those were some of the happiest years of my life. Thanks for the wonderful memories, Willie.

Grammy Love

I got to spend four days with Sara, Greg and Eli over Thanksgiving. Eli and I got to spend quite a bit of time together and even had about 3 hours alone one day when Greg and Sara went shopping.

Sara and I shopped for a Christmas dress and found a very understated one on sale at Hannah Andersen's. Of course, Grammy had to get the red and white tights with the red ruffles on the bum and the red patent leather shoes to match. Then we trekked over to Pioneer Square for a photo with Santa. Eli wasn't afraid of him, but was too intent on all the lights and people to smile. It was a sweet photo anyway. Santa said Eli told him she wanted a Harvard Law degree and a Mazaratti. Sara thought that was perfect.

Eli is mobile - either rolls over and over or pushes herself backwards to get where she wants to go. It's just a matter of time before she's crawling. Her two bottom teeth are just sharp enough to hurt if she bits down when sucking on your hand or fingers. She's enjoying peas, squash and rice cereal - not too sure about avocado. She's such a happy, contented baby. Goes with the flow most of the time. She'll be 7 months old on the 7th - how can that be possible?
I'm so grateful to be close enough to see her at least once a month.