Rehearsal, Rehearsal, Recital, Recital

What a crazy week it’s been. End of May is always nutty with Emma Sian’s dancing. The show that her studio puts on is very professional & quite impressive, but it takes a toll with long dress rehearsals. She was ONLY in 3 dances (compared with other families with 3 girls & 4 to 5 dances each!), but her 3 were a handful enough, thank you. Will we get the costumes in time? It was tight. With Emma, it’s a struggle not to loose anything: bitty bits, shoes, pieces of the costume not sewn on barrette & hair pieces, “Where are YOUR tights, no the tap tights?! These aren’t yours!” Scattered, that girl, but she had the time or her life.

As I type this right now, she’s sitting in her Apple costume, home from the last recital, drawing & watching Indy Jones 3, after having take out Swiss Chalet. We’re done! It was wonderful to see her so happy, exhausted happy, but happy.

Here’s my beautiful 8 year old. (Mum’s aren’t biased at all, I know, LOL). These portraits were taken by Vincent Chan Studios during the first dress Rehearsal, in between numbers. Bit of a rush, but I like how they turned out.

First Dance: Germany:

Second Dance: Tarentella:

Third Dance: The Big Apple:

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Kristina’s Colour Inspiration#10

Oh my Krisitina Werner‘s Colour Inspiration time, yeah! Looking forward to seeing what everyone came up with. So many fun ideas!

Her inspiration came from these fun summery tossed pillows from Pottery Barn:

The S.U. Colours that were pulled from this image were:

I used PP from Chatter Box, Scrapbook walls, 2 sided Light Den Stripe, S.U. Apple Cider DSP, Bashful Blue Textured CS, Old Olive CS, and some ‘Saffron’ Bling-Trim that I picked up at the fabric store. I used the Square pattern Coluzzle to cut a pattern in the 2 sided paper & then folded over kinda’ like a Lacé template. (My Lacé is lost somewhere in the craft area), more Coluzzle templates for scallops, S.U. Rub Ons, dimensionals, & a corner rounder. This picture below actually shows the colours of the PP better … shortly after I took this, it clouded over & the skies opened up. The paper really isn’t so yellow, as it is in the other images. I tried to adjust for it, but ya know.

Here’s what I ended up with, a scrap page for my DD who is in crazy dance rehearsals & recitals this past week. Here’s a picture of her all dolled up eating a bag of chips, it was just too funny. Believe me there was a ton of “stage mums” who had their kids in bubble wrap, as not to ‘ruin’ their dance make up/costume. I’m just hoping Emma-Sian (shawn) is having the time of her life. After Saturday’s rehearsal the costume will probably become her new pj’s LOL

Lastly, I just wanted to say,

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Street Hockey

These pics were taken earlier this month, just after Malcolm got his new Street Skates. It’s funny, I remember hearing somewhere that Street Hockey was against the local bi-law code, but fortunately, none of our neighbours seem to mind, infact, just about everybody plays. Someone is even filling in the Zamboni roll, sweeping up the spare pebbles.

Liam, yes, he’s the one in the PINK skates. (We don’t have skates that fit him, so he borrowed a pair that slip on over your own shoes & only skate forward. He LOVED them).

The boys had made an impromptu “bench”, raiding one of their garages for this:

Some kids played wearing skates & others sneakers, but fun was had by everyone as it always is on this near daily event.

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Chasing Bunnies in the Burbs …

The burbs of Ottawa have been over run by bunnies, cute, and rather bold rabbits. Between the rediculous snowfall damage this past winter & the bunnies chewing on bark, folliage, copious amounts of weed-filled bunny droppings and well whatever, the yards all took a heavy hit. These rabbits have access to all kinds of parks and open green spaces, but they prefer the back yards of the burbs.

This morning, we dropped the older kids off at school & came home around 8 am to chase after the bunnies … one of Liam’s favourite activities. Completely wipes him out. The rabbits never really ‘run away’, they just hop in a large circle, or figure 8 patterns, knowing that with all his might, the kids can’t keep up with them. We need a dog, maybe that would encourage the bunnies to ‘relocate’ to a more conducive setting for them & me!

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Crayon Craziness

KiymiKrafts, (Jenn) had a fun challenge to use crayons somehow, anyhow on a card. Mull, mull, mull. Let’s try making a seal. (not sure how clear it is, but it’s suppose to be an intertwined M & A)

I suppose I should have read this Martha Stewart article on Melting crayons BEFORE I tried this, but live & learn, that’s my life. I melted the crayons at a temperature too high, I believe (350F) … came out like lava. But for what it’s worth, here’s what I did:

Had a tough time taking off the paper on the crayons, they were kinda old.

Lesson learned: MESSY! Probably should have lined with a cupcake liner or maybe even melted less crayon & poured it while hot onto parchement paper lined cookie sheet to make it look more like a traditional seal.

Wait for it to cool a bit … it was so hot, it would probably have melted the rubber on the stamp LOL! While it was cooling, I stamped a background image with my stampendous stamping quad (faux).

I’m not sure what I think of it, but it’s my go at a challenge with crayons, thanks, Jenn!

EDITED:  The monogram stamp, only had “Design by Henry c.1985 Temple City, CA” on it.  I bought it, cheap, as I remember (like under $10 a few years ago), at Heather’s Stamping Haven in Ottawa (had a ton on shelf, and what she doesn’t have, Heather will order in & call you, she’s so easy to talk with).  It’s the same place I bought the quad … and a ‘few’ other things too.  LOL!  I saw a Graphic Design Forum that was trying to track down the ‘Design by Henry’ monogram stamp in this thread.

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To Describe Dad …

Here’s a scrapbook layout dedicated to my DH, and wonderful father to 3 adoring children. I used a masking technique with “Vintage Alpha Stax” stickers from ColorBox It’s hard to describe him in just a few adjectives.

I used the S.U. Spritzer with Earth Elements Markers, Chocolate Chip, Close to Cocoa, Creamy Caramel, and Not Quite Navy.

Just peel it off to reveal the negative image.

Here’s the finished scrapbook layout for an amazing DAD!

Chocolate Chip Textured CS, dimensionals, & Corner Rounder.

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Gift Card Holder

I saw a video tutorial on Dawn Griffin‘s website, for how to make these clever little gift card holders. I pretty much went by what she did, just adding ribbon instead of a band. I didn’t have a “word window” s.u. punch, so I used the square coluzzle intead with the 3/4″ round punch.

Cut a strip of CS 4.5″ by 11″

Scored at 3″ 5.5″ and 8″ Just check out Dawn Griffin’s Video tutorial for details on this easy and fun card.

We made two, for the two birthday parties the kids went to on Sunday. Can you tell which one they were playing with? Honestly.

The paper was Purely Pomegranate CS from S.U., and I used the Cuttlebug Embossing folder with the Sizzix machine, Sizzix Die Cuts (for letters), the 3/4″ punch, & a Square Coluzzle, Sticky Tape, and Ribbon.

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Beate’s Challenge BiC14

Here is a challenge from Beate, BiC14 uses

I love challenges that give you a guideline, rather than a specific layout. Beate’s Inspiration Challenge was open to interpretation and there are so many different ideas that could be pulled from the image below. I used the circle card & punched circles for scallops courtesy of Kristina Werner’s wonderful blog full of ideas. Beate used this as the inspiration for all stampers:

Here’s what I ended up with:

Used: Summer Sun CS, Purely Pumpkin Texture CS, Stamps: Paint Prints, Stampendous Faux Finish Quad Cube, Versa Mark, White Embossing Powder, 3/4″ Punch, flower Punch, Circle Cutter, Dimensionals, Ribbon & Corner Rounder.

For more wonderful ideas check out the SCS gallery.

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Feed the birds …

This is the second time we’ve filled the feeder. Normally I see butterflies or humming birds, but I wasn’t really around on the weekend & it was empty come Monday.

I prefer the hummingbird feeder to our traditional seed feeder (sorry finches!). Although you have to keep it meticulously clean as not to get the hummingbirds sick, it’s still way better than the other kinds of feeders. Less mess, no weird weeds growing around the base of the post. No unwanted greedy visitors such as chipmunks, black or gray squirrels, well, rodents of any kind. Just butterflies and hummingbirds.

I hope to take a reasonable picture of a hummingbird this summer. I wonder what shutter speed I’ll need? I will scrapbook that one for sure!

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Victoria Day Weekend?

There’s a picture of my tulips from the backyard and normally on the long weekend, I do a bit of planting & tidy up & then we, as a family, find some fun stuff to do & generally flake out.

This year was a bit different. I had signed up for a two day ‘crash’ course in Photo shop CS3. I had mentioned that I wouldn’t mind taking taking a general interest course & it kinda’ went from there. My DH downloaded a free 30 day trial version for me to mess around on.

The course was at the local college, 9-5 on Saturday & Sunday. Wow, it was like drinking from a fire hose. I think I would have absorbed a bit more if I had signed up for a 9 week program, but this was more conducive to working around the family, thanks to the support of DH taking care of the 3 kids and especially dealing with Liam struggling with yet another cold.

It was a little intimidating, sitting there with a bunch of “web team people”. But I am proud to say I did it, I kept up & it is a fine place for me to start my ‘at home’ studies and maybe restore some old family photographs. For now, I think I’ll just goof around with it, so I’ll retain at least some of what was thrown at me. LOL.

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