Everyday Beautiful

Although I have graced this planet for over fifty years, no one would ever accuse me of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. On the other hand, I am hardly a dim bulb either, but you would never be able to tell that from the fact that there has been a glaring fact of my life that I did not notice until about a year ago.

I grew up on Bay Point Road.  I summer on Echo Point Road.  They both have point in the name. 

Nope. I never noticed that until, as I said, a year ago. See?  Dim.

But let me get to the point.  Those two points are quite possibly the most beautiful places I have ever seen and I have seen a fair amount of places. I do not mean Alps beautiful or Norwegian fjords beautiful or Inside Passage beautiful. I have seen all three and that kind of beautiful takes your breath away and makes you wish you had a better camera and a longer vacation, more money and retirement on the horizon.

No. I mean everyday beautiful. The kind of beautiful you live with and love every day.  The kind of beautiful that you miss when you visit that other world beautiful. The kind of beautiful that means home and peace and contentment.  The kind of beautiful that means family and parents and cousins and friends, games and picnics and barbecues and sleeping under the stars on hot summer nights in the years before air conditioning. The kind of beautiful that makes you remember climbing trees and riding bikes and drinking lemonade on the back steps, watching it snow and sledding on the hills and snowball fights. It is the kind of beautiful that you have to work for by mowing the lawn, washing the floors and replacing lost shingles, by planting the flowers, shovelling the snow, and sweeping the deck. Not extraordinary beautiful. Just everyday beautiful. 

I may not live on a point anymore, but I get to visit.  And both of those points scream home to me. They are the best beautiful of all.

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Layout Notes

Beach

These photos were taken from the point in the first photograph.  It dates back many years so I did not record the supply information.  However, I recognize the letters as old ones from Making Memories. Mica can be obtained from US Artquest.  It was probably painted with Plaid Paint.  The sand effect in the background was most likely a spray paint called something like "Make It Sand." I have no idea where those gold shell stickers came from.

Echo Point

Supplies: paper - Heidi Swapp; stickers and tags - unknown; acrylic title letters - Heidi Swapp colored with Ranger Alcohol Inks; chipboard title letters - Maya Road covered with patterned paper (unknown source); beads - Blue Moon; mosaic tiles - unknown.

We Love Rock and Roll

When I was a little girl, it seemed that everyone took music lessons of one kind or another - piano, violin and flute lessons seemed the way to go, but not at my house. As a little girl, I was forced to take organ lessons. You read that right. Organ lessons. In my house. At the organ my parents bought and plopped in the living room. It was eleven years (yes, eleven long years) of abject torture. For, you see, I had absolutely no aptitude for the organ.

Here's the problem. An organ, unlike a piano, has three keyboards at a minimum. There is the top keyboard for the right hand, the bottom keyboard for the left hand and the pedals on the floor - a keyboard for your feet.  Add that to that the volume pedal and all the stop buttons to change the sound of the organ from flute to oboe to whatever and you have a recipe for disaster.

Every Monday evening from September through June, I had a 30-minute lesson with a lovely older gentleman, Mr. Robinson. He drove up in his blue VW Bug and charged $4 for each lesson. It was the 1970's, after all. My brother, younger by four years, went first once his lessons began (he was even worse than I was) and then it was my turn. At twelve, it was even more horrible because it meant that I missed the second half of Little House on the Prairie. In fact, I missed the second half of Little House until I graduated from high school. It was utterly, totally and completely unfair when my brother's lessons stopped upon my graduation as well. Even worse is the fact that my much younger brother was never subjected to this misery. He never took a lesson in his life.

College was, therefore, a heavenly and liberating experience. No more lessons! After a year, however, I decided to try something new, something different. I signed up for piano lessons. So much for new and different. However, having two hands on one keyboard and none on the floor was so much easier. Still, I had no aptitude for the instrument and when the word "recital" was mentioned, that was the end of that.

Years later, my children came along.  My parents waited and waited for the lessons to begin, but I simply could not do that. Then, one day, they asked for lessons. I wanted to cheer. Wait, what kind of lessons was that you just asked for? Guitar lessons. Of course, my children had succumbed to the pressure of rock n' roll. 

That was seven or eight years and three instructors ago. We started accumulating guitars - lots and lots of guitars. This layout does not even begin to touch how many we have now.

We visited the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City instead of going to our old standby, the ESPN Zone which is now long gone.

Both of my kids and even my drum-playing husband took lessons. My husband is an old dog who did not take well to the new tricks although he refuses to give up. My older son is pretty good, but prefers to play only for himself although he did once perform in a talent show. My younger son, however, well, he is a different story altogether.

He has a talent. Even I can tell the kid knows what he is doing. And I am not saying that just because I am his mom. He has demonstrated it time and time again. He attended rock band camp for four summers, performing a variety of songs in a restaurant with his new friends and instructors at the end of each week.

As a sophomore, he played in the school talent show.  Last spring, he and some friends put together a band to pay at our high school's version of Woodstock, called Glen Stock.  At the beginning of the school year, the same group performed in a fundraising event for an education foundation.  Right this very moment, he is practicing for this year's version of Glen Stock set for early June.

But soon, the lessons and performances will come to an end.  There will be silence in my house come September. I will have to go around dusting all the guitars that are going to live, quietly, in the empty rooms of missing boys.

As for all those organ and piano lessons?  Well, they did not go entirely to waste. Those skills come in handy - at rehearsals for my chorus, a chorus I have been singing with for almost 28 years.  But the story of that odyssey is an adventure to be told on another day.

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Layout Information

Opposite

This layout dates back to 2008 before I kept track of all the supplies I used.  What struck me about these photos is that my boys were wearing clothes that were the opposite of the color of their shorts, hence the title.

Guitar Guys

This layout is even older, but I do recall many of the supplies here.  The paper and title are by Basic Grey - their original set of papers and letters.  The guitar is from EK Success.  The staples are by Making Memories.  I have no idea where the acrylic words came from. The Fender sticker came in some guitar order or another. The wires, however, are from actual guitars. When my husband changed his guitar strings one day, I kept a few to use on a layout.

Hard Rock Cafe

Another layout that pre-dates my keeping track of the supplies, but I do recall that those chipboard letters, those very old letters, were by Making Memories.

Rock Star (single page)

I doodled a lot of this layout and make the guitar picks from chipboard scraps.  I traced a guitar pick and then cut them out, inked them and embossed them with embossing powder.  The same was done with the letters.

Supplies: patterned paper - 7 Gypsies; chipboard rectangles - unknown; chipboard picks - handcut from scraps; chipboard letters - Fancy Pants; gesso - Liquidtex; ink - Ranger Distress Stains; embossing ink - Versamark; embossing powder - Judikins; guitar diecut - Cricut; quotation stamp - Tim Holtz; marker - Micron, Y&C Gel Extreme.

Rock Star (second one - double page)

I did not seem to keep track of the supplies for this layout. I must have done it at a crop.  However, the circles are Tim Holtz Grungeboard, inked, heat embossed and dotted with Ranger Dimensional Paints and Viva Paints.  The title and stickers must be from EK Success.  The paper is Bazzill stamped with a stamp I cannot identify.

Glen Stock

This is another layout from a crop. If I recall, the chipboard shapes are from Blue Fern, covered with a thick layer of Stickles. I also coated the title letters (source unknown) with Stickles.  It took forever to dry.  The metal tape is from US Artquest and the fortune is from Anima Designs.  The band ticket is from Creek Bank Creations.  As for the rest, I have no idea. 

The End and the Beginning

I love looking back at things my family has done in our scrapbooks. Even if the events are fresh in my mind, looking back always gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

When I get to the end of the year in the annual scrapbook, I used to take all the index prints from Shutterfly, cut them up and paste down up to 100 photos on two pages.  Index prints are the teeny, tiny images of each photo I order on the site, about 20 photos on each 4x6 print. Shutterfly, though, stopped making index prints early last year.  Try as I might, I could not get them to send them to me.  So, I had to create my own.  It was no mean feat, but there is no point in going through a tedious process that involved flash drives, Photoshop, and a printer which refused to print on photo paper.

I spent a fair amount of time looking through a year's worth of photos from 2013.  I remembered most things, but, nonetheless, seeing those pictures again put a smile on my face and reminds me that it was a very good year.  Since I count none but sunny hours, only the good remains as the old year turns into the new. There were more photos of scenery and landscapes than of people since my boys cut and run when I take out the camera, but that is how things were before my boys came along anyway.  What goes around, comes around, right?

At any rate, I ended up with about 90 teeny, tiny photos printed on plain old copy paper and a bunch of tickets from movies, concerts and museums.  Everything ended up on just two pages - a year in review.  Some events were more memorable than others, but I love every page and every photo.

And, now, we move on to 2014. . . .

(Okay, I admit it.  Three of those photos are from 2013, of course, but it matters not since I will probably take ones almost identical to these in the months to come.)

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Layout Notes:

2013: Supplies and Sources

cardstock - unknown; snowflake - unknown (holiday decoration); trees - Studio Calico with paint - Plaid, Diamond Glaze; leaf button - Blumenthal; chipboard flower- Dusty Attic with paint - Viva, Ranger Adirondack Dimensional Paint; mountain chipboard - Tim Holtz Grungeboard with Ranger Distress Ink and Diamond Glaze; holly - unknown; metal flower - Making Memories; chipboard numbers - unknown; paint - Plaid, Ranger Paint Dabber; marker - Y and C Gel Extreme; other - tickets.

2014: Supplies and Sources

cardstock - unknown; patterned paper - Bo Bunny; chipboard letters - handcut based upon Magistical Memories font; stamp - Stampers Anonymous; markers - Y and C Gel Extreme; paint - Ranger Paint Dabbers, Plaid.

Please note that this layout was "scraplifted" directly from a layout I found on Pinterest that can be found at this location: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/144959681730438279/.  I could not find the original source, but would like to give credit to the creative spark that inspired the cover page of my 2014 album. If I ever find it the original source, I will edit this post.

Throwback Thursday: Moving On Up

In just 48 hours, my years of mothering, technically, come to an end for my younger son will turn, gasp, 18.

Turning 18 doesn't mean what it once did.  When I was 18, it was the legal age for drinking. Still, though, he will be old enough to fight for his country and vote for the politicians that send our men and women to war. It means the end of the halcyon days of high school although I am sure no high school student sees those as their halcyon days and won't for a very long time.

Birthdays have never been a major holiday in our house.  Sure, when the boys were little we had the usual parties although we never got more complicated than an event at Chuckie Cheese or the local gymnastics school. We never hired a clown (God forbid) or tried to out do the party that came before.  No ponies. No bouncy houses. No caterers.  It seems, though, that there was always lots of pizza and cupcakes.

As the boys got older, we had a couple of sleepovers which I absolutely despised and was relieved when those went out of fashion.  Movies and dinner seemed popular and, as parents, we really liked not having a dozen or so teenage boys running around our house.

So, in just two day, my nearly six-foot son will be eighteen and I just have to wonder once again, as I seem to do every day, where did the years go? I could swear he was just eight only yesterday.

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Layout Notes - As many of these layouts came before I kept track of supplies, I have but one list - for the day my Andrew turned 16.

Supply List for "16": patterned paper - Paper Company, BoBunny; cardstock - Bazzill; corrugated paper - unknown; jewels - Michael's (blue and silver), unknown (gems); green diecut paper - Bazzill Doilies; chipboard letters - Magistical Memories; tassel - EK Success; stamp - Glitz It Now; paint - Plaid; glitter - Ranger Stickles.

Growing Up

Somewhere in their early teens, my boys decided they wanted to grow their hair a little longer, then a little longer and then a little more. When they were still in their early teens, it was cute. I liked it. They have such great hair that it seemed a shame to cut it off. Besides, short hair was for grown-ups and kids who played sports, for serious people. My boys were not yet serious people.

For a while there, it was getting really long. A little too long for my liking. But I had unusual children. They never got into trouble at school. They (usually) did as they were told. They called me and told me where they were and where they were going. They came home on time. They dressed fairly neatly although their rooms were generally a disaster area. One, until very recently, was very nearly a toxic waste site requiring hazmat suits for entrance.

So, I picked my battles and decided their hair was not going to be one of those battles. I figured they would eventually decide that long hair was too much trouble, that it was for younger kids, that they looked silly even though they had magnificent hair.

My older son's hair is red, an extraordinary shade of red, dark and shiny.  Up close, it is white, red, black, blond and even, here and there, grey. The effect is one that you cannot get from a bottle.

My younger son's hair was once red, but turned brown as he got older. Yes, it is mousy brown, but it is so thick that I do not believe his scalp has seen the light of day since his bald birth.

As the years of long hair went by, they would go for haircuts, but they were few and far between. I would urge them to go short, but they were having none of it. My older son graduated from high school and went off to college with his hair still below his ears. His classmates had moved on to shorter cuts, but he did not seem to notice or he just did not care.

My younger son, well, there I had more luck, but it was none of my doing. His hair was beginning to annoy him because he played soccer. It got in his face. It drove him nuts. He cut it during the summer between his junior and senior years. Varsity soccer players do not have long hair.

Then, the unheard of happened.  A player on his team was felled by an unknown heart ailment - in the middle of the game.  He was revived on the field after many anxious, endless moments. A couple of days later, all the boys had his number carved into their hair. It was touching and sweet and the boy, recovering, loved it. I hated it. It was, unbelievably, too short for my taste. My younger son liked it and never went back.

And still, my older son held on to his longer hair.

Until. Yes, until he came home for Thanksgiving. He knew he needed a haircut.  He asked me to make an appointment at the salon all the boys go to (never the barber shop). I did. Then, he dropped the bombshell I had been waiting for.  He had decided it was time. He was almost twenty. It was time for him to join the ranks of grown-ups and cut off his hair. He let me take a before photo.  He let me take an after photo. Oddly, he had the same expression on his face for both photographs. He was transformed from teen to adult in the space of thirty minutes.

I was thrilled. I was overjoyed. I was shocked and saddened and horrified.

My days of being a mom to kids and then to teens were very nearly over.  My children were not little boys anymore.

And I did not like it, not one little bit.

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Layout Notes

First, let me emphasize that I scraplifted the basic idea for this layout from an image in a magazine, specifically, the idea and location for the chevrons which are popular elements that I never really liked, but worked in this context.  I have no idea which magazine it came from or the identity of the scrapbook artist. I cut the photos out of the magazines and keep them in a folder.  Whoever you are, thank you. The rest, however, is entirely of my own design.

The metal sheets for the arrows/chevrons and the corner embellishment were run through a Sizzix machine in a Vintaj embossing folder.  I sprinkled on embossing powder, avoiding the raised areas, and heated them from below. When they cooled, I inked them with embossing ink, sprinkled on a generous amount of clear embossing enamel and heated them. I colored the spinner for the clock in a similar manner.

The letters are chipboard that I painted silver. Then I embossed them with the same blue embossing powder.  The paint bubbled a bit revealing the silver color.  Worked for me.

Supplies: cardstock - Bazzill; patterned paper - unknown (green, polkadots), Making Memories (tag paper); clock - Michael's; spinner - Tim Holtz; fabric tags - Prima (house), unknown (blue); sheet metal - unknown; embossing folder - Vintaj; embossing powder - Judikins; chipboard letters - Kaiser Craft; ticket - Tim Holtz; ink - Ranger Distress Ink; paint - Ranger Distress Stain; brad - unknown; marker - Micron.

Throwback Thursday: The Camp

It was warm like spring just two days ago. Now, it is cold and incredibly windy, making it even colder. Only thoughts of summer and vacations in New Hampshire seem to warm me up on this blustery day that has no business being in the middle of March.

I have lived in many place - southeastern Massachusetts, western Massachusetts (college), Boston (grad school) and northern NJ.  I have called all these places home, but only one place has remained constant, only one place is really home and it is the one place at which I have spent the least amount of time.  Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

Since before I can remember, my family in its various incarnations has spent a week or two in Alton, NH, in a house we affectionately call "the camp" for a reason I can either no longer remember or for no reason at all.

When I was a tiny one, my parents, my mom's parents and her brothers and their families would trek from Massachusetts to the lake, to the house that my father's father bought back in the 1920's.  The drive that takes two hours now, took over four back in the 1960's.  We would be jammed into every nook and cranny in the three bedrooms and the "annex," a little room perched over the garage that was up a flight of outdoor stairs accessed by a door in the kitchen. There got to be so many of us that my parents bought a little cabin in the woods and filled it with bunk beds so that everyone could come. 

I have only the vaguest recollection of those days, but even now, my grandfather's hat sits on a hook in the bedroom he and my grandmother used although they have been gone for over 40 years. The beds did not have boxsprings, but ropes to hold the mattress. There was no TV. The refrigerator was on the porch, not in the kitchen. We could hear chipmunks running in the walls.  And we loved every minute of it.

By the time I hit my teens, only my immediate family went to the lake.  We would spend the mornings on field trips to local attractions and the afternoons swimming or paddling the rowboat or just lying on the dock.  Around 3pm, my mom would bring down watermelon and would we compete to see who could spit the seeds the furthest.

When I went off to grad school and my brother went off to college, we stopped going to the lake. We were too cool to spend our time in a house that didn't have a shower and didn't have water you could drink.  I was too cool to sleep in a bed without a boxspring.

Years passed. My parents sold the cabin in the woods. The camp began to have seen better days.

I got married. I was suddenly old enough to appreciate what I thought as a teen was lame and boring. In 1987, my husband and I decided to go to the lake to see the foliage, but we found we could not stay at the camp. Work was needed. And so work was done. No more hauling drinkable water.  A shower was put in the bathroom. Walls and ceilings were replaced.  A new kitchen was put in - one with a refrigerator inside the house.

But the essential feeling of the camp remained. 

And then a new generation came to the lake.  It was my husband's family - his siblings and their children - who made the trek from NJ to the NH with my husband and my two boys. My parents bought a second house - one that is accessible for older adults - and so we crammed ourselves into every nook and cranny once again. Those were the golden years when we would go north the day after school ended for a week and then again for a couple of weeks in August with everyone in tow.  And we all had an amazing time. 

But now, things are changing again.  That next generation is in college or grad school.  They do not want to go to the lake for, you see, they are too cool to hang out on a dock or swim or drive around in the boat (a motorboat came into the picture back in 1993) or visit the local attractions. There are no game systems at the camp although there is cable TV and even wifi now.  

We are not sure what this summer will bring. As our lives are beginning to simplify, the lives of our children are becoming more complicated.

But I have my photos and my memories of a simpler time - when we had to go out to the well, shoo away the water bugs and the frogs, and dip the enamel bucket into the water.  It was, without question, the best water in the world.





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Layout Notes:

The tree embellishment is a stamp on Stampbord, a piece of pressed wood with a layer of white clay on the surface. After inking and stamping, you can scrape away some of the ink to reveal the clay underneath. It is a great substance for shading and highlighting. 

Supplies: Paper - SEI; paint - Folk Art; markers - Zig. Y&C Gel Extreme; ink - Ranger Distress Ink; letters - Jillibean Soup.

Tree embellishment - Stampbord, Smooch, Ranger Distress Ink, stamp (Unity Stamp Company), Zig marker.

Throwback Thursday: Those Were The Days

When I was a little girl, I was privileged to live in a house with an enormous yard with only one enormous tree - a flowering peach.  My friends and I spent many hours under that tree until my parents put a shed at the back of the yard - a shed that was not for storage, but for a playhouse. They bought me a toy kitchen complete with sink, refrigerator, stove and kitchen table with four little chairs.  When we got too old for that sort of thing, it became a clubhouse where my friends and I kept our collections of rocks, glass and sea shells. We wrote a clubhouse song about wanting to live an outdoor life.

Those were the days of miracles and wonder. (Thank you, Paul Simon).

When we moved when I was twelve, somehow we forgot it all. As far as I know, all those rocks and shells and pieces of glass are still there. I know the shed is as we pass that old house when we visit my parents.

I have not even one photograph of the playhouse. Not one.

And yet my parents took a multitude of photographs of me in my cute little dresses and hats (it was the 1960's after all) parked in front of the flowers that populated my parents' yard. Most of the flowers were in the front, but there was a patch of roses in the back near a particularly prickly neighbor's yard. (That would be the photo in the top right corner). 

This layout has just three of those many photos.  So many were the same that there seemed no point in putting them all in an album. So, those reside in the same box from whence they came, still curled and crinkled and getting curlier and crinklier. I will probably never look at them and yet - and yet - I cannot quite bring myself to just toss them away.  

After all, they are, as far as I am concerned, priceless antiques, part of those days of miracles and wonder.

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Layout Information

This is not a particularly artful layout, but the grid system works perfectly for those old 3x3 photos with the white borders.

Supplies: all papers - SEI; ribbon - unknown source; brads - Oriental Trading Company; marker - Zig by EK Success; wooden flourish - Kaiser Craft; butterfly sticker - K and Company; dew drops - Robin's nest; love sticker - unknown; metal flower - Imaginisce; chipboard letters - Maya Road; paint - Plaid.