Changes

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let thing flow naturally forward in whatever way they life. --  Lao Tzu

To imporve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. -- Winston Churchill

When I started this blog back whenever that was, I envisioned scrapbook layouts, tutorials, glory and fame.  Well, not really, but I did think posting scans of layouts and talking about them would be great fun.

It wasn't.  That just wasn't my thing.  I wasn't good at it and I did not enjoy it. So, it evolved into telling the stories behind the layouts which I found much more satisfying. And so I went along merrily for a year or so sharing layouts and stories and photographs.  Some people read them, but not too many. Then, for no reason in particular, eight months went by without a post - until last week while my family was away on vacation on my little slice of heaven on this earth - New Hamphire.

In December, however, I listened to a set of podcasts on NPR - Serial.  It told the story behind the murder of a teenage girl in Baltimore and the boyfriend found guilty of the crime. About the same time, I found a mysterious sweater in the trash.  It did not belong to me or anyone I know.  I was inspired to write my own "podcast" serial on Facebook about the investigation into the source of the sweater (a cleaning service employee tossed it after another client had given it to her, but it didn't fit.  I know - weird.) My Facebook friends enjoyed it and I discovered that I really liked the writing, especially when a bit of humor was involved.  In fact, the most successful blog posts were the funny ones about my dogs.

So, not my blog will be evolving again - with more stories and ruminatings and musings.  There will still be photos and maybe even layouts.  I won't be changing the title as that is just way too much work and I don't want to lose what came before.

Even if no one reads this or anything that may follow, it will be here for me, my kids, whoever.  And maybe, someday, I will do something more substantial with what I have written, something involving ink and paper and bindings. I mean, you never know where life may take you.

And does it really matter how long it takes for anyone to find what one really wants to do?

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most. --  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 

Don't Cry Because It's Over - Smile Because It Happened

Time flies when you're having fun.

They say in the end, it's the wink of an eye. -- Billy Joel

Carpe diem.

It all went by so fast. -- Dar Williams

Eight months have passed since last I took pen to paper, so to speak, but the days seem to fly by faster and faster with each passing year.  It seems only moments since my older son went off to college and yet he is about to begin his senior year. My younger son has joined a fraternity and is, for all intents and purposes, off on his own as well. I vividly remember their first days of kindergarten.

For the moment, however, we are together on vacation in New Hampshire, the one place I truly call home.  It is a place for doing nothing although there is so very much one could do.  We debate various activites each day and reject them in favor of simply sitting and staring at water and sky.

Today is our last full day. The week that passed flew by, so quickly that it almost feels as if it never really happened.  I look forward to these days at the lake, but the leaving is so incredibly difficult that I sometimes think it would be better never to have come at all. While the day we depart from New Jersey and head north is the best day of the year, the day we pack up the dirty clothes, used sheets and towels, cameras filled with photos and souvenirs we do not need, but already love is easily the worst.

But I know, really, that I would shrivel up and die without these days, however few, at this lake. There have been summers when our trek north has lasted for thirty days all told, when children were small and excursions were exciting. Gondola rides, amusement parks, nature centers, cruises around the lake, the penny-candy store. These were the fun, exciting and interesting ways for us and our little ones to pass the mornings while we spent the afternoons on beach chairs in the sun or floats on the waves, small though they may be. We had watermelon spitting contests. We slathered each other in sunscreen. We made sand castles on the shore.

Time has left all that in the rearview mirror. Now,  porch sitting and, sadly, smart phones and television are what keep college boys entertained now. A day will come, however, when they will again be making such trips to the gondola rides, amusement parks, nature centers and penny candy stores. They will have become the ones behind the wheel and the ones taking the photographs while watching their little ones laugh, having the time of their lives. Those days have passed for me and mine . . . for now.

Until then, I take photographs of sky and water, trees and old buildings, boats and dragonflies. New Hampshire is such a wealth of photo opportunities. I play around with the frozen moments in Photoshop and other photo programs, hoping to create images that make these lovely, but too-short days last well into the winter and beyond.

But all the photographs in the world will not make taking that last look of the lake before it slips into memory any easier.

Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all-- Shakespeare

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. -- Dr. Seuss, of course.

Echoes of Summer: Relax - You're Here

(Another installment in a continuing series about summer vacations on Lake Winnipesaukee in NH.)

Even now, as the flakes have begun to fly here in the northeast and the time for twinkling holiday lights and the jolly old elf has nearly arrived, the seemingly endless days of summer still call. Although snow is the preferred weather phenomenon in my house, nothing compares to the paradise we call our summer home.

It is truly a paradise found. Heaven on earth. The place where relaxing is required and comes as naturally as breathing, where water, bubbles, sunsets, books, naps, and boats are the only news of note and where giggling and laughing are heard much more than anything except, perhaps, for the sounds of silence.

Even long after our week or two has passed, we can revisit those days simply by opening a scrapbook. We do it often during those dark winter days to relive the light.  

These layouts are some of the title pages of those scrapbooks. Each year seems to take up two volumes and NH always begins the second. Opening a book to see water, mountains and endless sky can always brighten the darkest of the long winter nights.

And those nights are looming ahead even as the lights of the holidays begin to decorate the neighborhood and my own house as well.

Although it takes six hours to drive from New Jersey to New Hampshire, the trip does not really begin until this tree comes into view.  It marks the intersection where our street meets the main road. It had been a tradition in and around the lake to nail a sign to the tree at the end of the street, but that tradition seems to have died out everywhere but here. It provides visitors with an easy landmark and provides those of us lucky enough to have our name on the tree the notice that we had arrived and that we can relax because we are, at last, here.

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Layout Notes:

Paradise Found

I did not keep track of the supplies for this list, but I can see that I was using up a bunch of older embellishments when I put this together.  The chipboard pieces all came from the same kit by Deja Views.  The large flower is from Prima, stamped with a swirl acrylic stamp from a forgotten source. The two metal letters are from Making Memories.  The source for everything else is long forgotten.

NH

Once again, there is no record of the source of the supplies in the this layout and I cannot place a single thing here.  The text on the large photograph is courtesy of Photoshop Elements.

At Last

The dragonfly was handmade with wire, a bead, plastic packaging and Ranger Alcohol Inks. The photographs are HDR - High Dynamic Range, edited in Photomatix Essentials.

Supplies: cardstock - Bazzill, Coredinations; tape - Tim Holtz with Ranger Distress Stain for color; stencil - Tim Holtz; modelling paste - mixture of Liquitex Basic Modeling Paste, Golden Gel Medium Glas Bead Gel, Dreamweaver Translucent Embossing Paste and Fold Art Acrylic Paint with US Artquest Mica Delights sprinkled on top; paint - Folk Art; dragonfly - wire (unknown), bead (Fire Mountain Beads and Gems), plastic packaging (on wings), Ranger Alcohol Inks (on wings); chipboard letters - Maya Road; Diamond Glaze; mosaic tiles - unknown; word bands - K and Company; brads - Tim Holtz Mini Brads.

Escape 

Supplies: cardstock - Bazzill; patterned paper - unknown; border - Cricut; chipboard letters - Basic Grey; paint (on chipboard letters) -  Plaid; paint pen - Viva Paint: metal - Vintaj; metal embossing plates - Vintaj; embossing powder - Ranger Melt Art Ultra Thick Embossing Powder, Hampton Art, A la Mode; metal glaze - Vintaj Glaze Metal Sealer; stamp - Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous; ink - Ranger Embossing Ink; marker - Y&C Gel Extreme, sticker letters - Authentique.

Echoes of Summer: Now and Then, Past and Present

The only place where my past and present merge completely is in New Hampshire, at our house on Lake Winnipesaukee.  A few years ago, inspired by a website called Dear Photograph, I merged my past and present by taking pictures of old photographs against the background of the original location.  It was much more difficult than I had anticipated, lining up those photographs of the past with the present.  

It is actually impossible to line up the past and present, but we come close, as close as we can, with our summer trips to NH.

Blowing bubbles on the dock in 1963.  This is my favorite photo from the early days of NH.

I made my first trip to the lake that very first summer, the summer I turned one. My earliest memories are of the water, the sky, the sunsets and the mountains, of the watermelon spitting contests, the bubbles, glass-bottomed boats, and breakfast around an old table with an oilcloth cover, of driving up Mount Washington, riding the cruise ship of the same name, exploring the Polar Caves and shopping in Black's, a store that exists even now. 

We lived without television until my senior year in college and, even then, we could pull in only one grainy station on the old black and white. The old rotary phone, a clunky bakelite antique, still exists in a drawer in one of the bedrooms, but the party line that existed well into my teenage years is long-gone. Only my mother mourned its demise as she fancied spying on the neighbors by listening in on the calls, something she never did. Of course, we often interrupted their calls when we picked up the phone to make our own.

If I were to guess, I would think that these were taken either at Storybook Forest or at Polar Caves in NH around 1966 or 1967.  Dad looks like he is very popular with the four-legged set.

There was a pattern to those days of my childhood that I try to repeat with each visit north. We would wake each morning and discuss the field trip to come. The mornings were spent exploring the area, visiting new attractions and revisiting old friends. Come afternoon, we would sit out on the dock, swim in the water with our feet avoiding the muck on the bottom created by the leaves that fell each autumn or read books that took us around the world. Nancy Drew was a favorite. Around 3pm, my mom would bring down our afternoon snack. If it was, by chance, the beloved watermelon, my brother, dad and I would compete to see who could spit their seeds the furthest.  Dad always won. On rainy days, we played cards on the kitchen table. This is where I learned to play poker, much to my mom's chagrin. We kept pennies in an old metal box which originally stored Band-Aids. That box and those pennies are still in a drawer in the dining room cabinet.

On some days, we would take out a rowboat, a fiberglass miracle that allowed us to see what lurked below. There used to be two of these boats, but only one survives and, for the most part, it stays in the murky basement as no one has sufficient enthusiasm to haul the heavy thing out to the water and then back in. 

After dinner, we might go down "to the bay," the part of our village where everyone went after dinner. We played mini-golf at the Blue Jay or watched the roller skaters and played pinball games at the Pavilion.  The mini-golf was sold and renovated a while ago and the Pavilion is now five condominiums, but the ice cream stand remains, tormenting us even now. At night, my brother and I would lie in bed (we shared a room until I was 12 or so) and "write" letters on the ceiling with a flashlight or just read until we could last no longer.  E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan was one of the books I distinctly remember reading by flashlight.

In looking at old photos of those days, I can see that not all that much has changed at the camp, though. The rope beds have been replaced with modern, comfortable ones. The old fridge that was a danger to small children everywhere has met the junkyard. The bookshelves in the living room have collapsed and the books have disappeared. Squirrels are no longer able to run through the walls. Some things, like my mother's desk with the built-in blotter, were stolen during the long winters when no one visited. 

But the smell is the same, a mixture of must and pine that I have never found anywhere else. As long as that almost unpleasant aroma exists, it will feel as if nothing has changed. 

These pictures were taken during the summer of 1978, after I was given darkroom equipment for my high school graduation. I not only took these photos, but I processed them as well.

Even when my much younger brother appeared on the scene, the pattern of our days never really changed. We just revisited the attractions of my childhood once again, seeing them through different eyes.  Many are gone, but remnants of those attractions remain in the ones that replaced them.

Recently, we renovated our kitchen cabinets here in NJ and had to pile everything on various surfaces around the house. I put the toaster on the kitchen table. During those few mornings of the renovation, I made toast right there on the table. At the camp, the toaster did not live in the kitchen but on a small table in a corner, next to the dining table. Every morning, my mother would make toast throughout breakfast, popping the slices out, one after another, and we buttered them and added grape jelly, munching on crisp toast along with our eggs. For some reason, that memory has stuck with me as one of the sweetest. I miss the toaster on the table, but relived it for a few days while the dust swirled and the paint splattered in my kitchen.  

Maybe I will put the toaster back on a table in the corner and bring the past into the present on a more permanent basis.

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Layout Notes:

Now and Then

Supplies: Patterned Paper - Tim Holtz; punch - Martha Stewart; ribbons - unknown; clock and lake tag - Creek Bank Creations; paint - Ranger Adirondack Paint Dabber, Clearsnap Smooch, Ranger Distress Stain, Ranger Distress Crackle Paint; Martha Stewart Scoring Board; ink - Ranger Distress Ink; buttons - unknown; camera diecut - K and Company; brad - Imaginisce; work stickers - Simple Stories by Memoryworks, Making Memories; chipboard letters - K and Company; lake ticket - Creek Bank Creations; acrylic chip - unknown; marker - Zig.

Bubble Wishes

Supplies: Cardstock - Coredinations/Tim Holtz; patterned paper - Francis Meyers; metal - unknown; embossing plate - Walnut Hollow; clock - Dusty Attic; metal flowers - Imaginisce; acrylic sticker - unknown; dewdrops - Robins Nest; flowers - Tim Holtz Grungeboard; bird diecut - My Minds Eye; ink - Brilliance, Tim Holtz Distress Ink, Versa Mark Dazzle; flowers - Tim Holtz Grungeboard; spray ink - Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist; chipboard letters - Kaiser Craft; paint - Timi Holtz Crackle Paint; button - Memory Makers; word stickers - Authentique; marker - Y&C Gel Extreme; Diamond Glaze; Stickles.

Talk to the Animals

The sun embellishment was made my stamping a foam stamp on to a metal sheet. I then cut out the stamp and dry embossed the image with tools from Hero Arts.  I sprinkled and heated gold and copper embossing powder on the rays and then dotted on dimensional paint.  I did the same on the bear and moose charms and the bear paw and used the same dimensional paint on the border and the tag.  I aged the letters by painting them, covering them with Tim Holtz Crackle paint and rubbing ink into the paint after it dried. The paw was painted with spray ink using a paint brush and then coated with Diamond Glaze.  

Supplies:  cardstock - Basic Grey; patterned paper - Tim Holtz; metal - unknown; foam stamp - unknown; embossing powder; Viva Pearl Pen; die Tim Holtz (tags); metal animals - unknown; chipboard paw - Chip Off the Old Block; markers - Y&C Gel Extreme, Micron; bear charm - Dondero's Rock Shop (N. Conway, NH); embossing tool - Hero Arts; ribbon - unknown; ink- Ranger Distress; gems - Prima; paint - Making Memories; glaze - Distress Crackle Paint, Diamond Glaze

Me and Dad and the Glass-Bottomed Boat

I did not note the supplies used on this layout, but the background paper is from Basic Grey, the markers are my Micron and the acrylic shapes were colored with Ranger Alcohol Inks.

Camp

The tree embellishment was made by stamping an image on Stampbord (a stamping surface of hard board with clay), coloring it with ink and then using Stampbord tools to scrape away some of the ink revealing the white clay below.

Supplies: Paper - SEI; paint - Folk Art; markers - Zig. Y&C Gel Extreme; ink - Ranger Distress Ink; tree embellishment - Stampbord, Smooch, Ranger Distress Ink, stamp (Unity Stamp Company), Zig marker; letters - Jillibean Soup.

Family Vacation

Again, I did not keep track of the supplies used on this layout, but the word strip and other patterned paper is from a Tim Holtz paper pack.  The acrylic dots are from Robin's Next.  The metal sun is from Vintaj and was run through a Sizzix machine in a Vintaj embossing folder.  Everything else is a mystery.

Echoes of Summer - At The Camp

Long before I was born, back in a time when life was slower and easier and far less complicated, my grandparents, my dad's parents, acquired a small house on Lake Winnipesaukee that came to be called The Camp. No one seems to know how this name came to be, but when we tell family members we are in New Hampshire, we always say, "We are at the camp."

The camp is a rustic white cabin with forest green trim.  It sits barely fifteen feet from the water's edge. The garage sits only a few inches from the road.  

There are so many things about this cabin that didn't change for years and years. A tree grew through the edge of the roof over the kitchen. It was finally taken down when I was a teenager. The refrigerator sat on the porch - outside. It was the kind that kids could get trapped in as it had a pulldown handle on the front and latched shut. It was not replaced until the mid 1980's. The cellar was terrifying with a sand floor and all kinds of creepy crawly creatures. A real floor went in sometime in the 80's as well. The potable water came from a well.  My brother and I would take a bucket designated for this purpose and walk the twenty feet from the back door out to the well. We would open the door (the well was inside a tiny little shed) and shoo away the spiders and skeet bugs and even the occasional frog, dip the bucket inside and haul it back to the house. It was the most delicious water I have ever tasted and I swear it stayed cold for hours. I do not recall when the well was connected to the house, but I mourn its loss.

There is a bedroom accessed through an exterior door from the kitchen. You go out the door after unlocking it with a skeleton key, go up the stairs and into what we called the annex. It was a terrifying place, but my brother loved it. Now it is plush and comfortable with its own bathroom. It still has no hot water, though. All the beds were wrought iron with rope supporting the mattress instead of a box spring. There was no shower in the downstairs bathroom, just a tub with a hose from the spigot for those who just had to wash their hair. The upstairs bathroom, just a sink and a toilet, had two doors - one into each room. It still does - and it still has the same sink and toilet. 

My mom had six brothers.  Many came up to the lake - to the camp - with their families. Together. Some summers, so I am told, a dozen or more people managed to fit themselves into the four bedrooms. One or two might end up sleeping on the screened-in porch on a bed that did not vanish until sometime in the 1970's. When things got too crowded, my parents bought a very rustic camp well away from the lake at the top of a dirt road for the overflow.  We called this tiny cabin filled with bunkbeds the Eagle's Nest. I cannot even find it anymore although I visited it many times.  

  

My mom's parents came as well. Until recently, my grandfather's hat still sat on a hook in the downstairs bedroom they used. I do not know when it disappeared, but I wish I had taken a photograph of that hat on that hook. It is just that I figured it would always be there.

I figured many things would never change. I had hoped some, like the well with its bugs and frogs never would though. But, of course, they always do.

Layout and Photo Notes:

Photo Postcard: The technique used to make this postcard was described in the post just preceding this one. Technique courtesy of Chris Peters.

Camp: I created the template or stencil for these tree many years ago, cutting it from a piece of sheet plastic. I have used it many times since. 

Supplies: patterned paper - unknown; cardstock - The Paper Company, Coredinations; ink - Ranger Distress Ink, Versamark; film letters - Heidi Swapp; paint- Plaid; alcohol ink: Tim Holtz/Ranger; rub-ons - Basic Grey; marker - Ek Success, Y&C Gel Extreme; trees - handcut; drangonfly - handcut based upon a stencil from The Stencil Collection; Pearl-Ex: Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.

Echoes of Summer

Pumpkins have begun to dot the landscape. Leaves have begun to collect on lawns, A jacket is definitely a necessity when I walk the dog in the morning.  Clearly, fall is upon us and summer has come to an end.

Although I much prefer fall and winter to the warmer seasons, my house is filled with little reminders of summer that do not get put away come the cool days of autumn. I use a mug with a moose on it every day. On the shelves of my living room are tchotchkes from summer vacations. There are sweatshirts and t-shirts in our closets advertising one tourist attraction or another. There is a solar windchime on a table in the living room and a glass globe hanging from a wrought-iron hook on another.

They were all purchased in New Hampshire. 

Pictures of New Hampshire serve as the background for my phone and tablet. They are often featured on my Facebook page. One adorns the top of this blog. I check the weather there almost daily.

But, no, I am not obsessed. Well,not too much, anyway.

I have spent part of every summer of my life (with one or two exceptions) on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in the tiny town of Alton Bay on a finger of land known as Echo Point. While I have lived in various places in Massachusetts and New Jersey in my fifty-odd years, this spit of land is the constant. It is the place I call home. When we leave each summer, I always wonder why we do not simply stay there and live. I know why, however. To live there would be to ruin the magic.

So, to hang on to that magic for a little bit longer, I think I will write about those summers in the lake. They began long before I ever came upon this planet and, with luck, my children will be able to enjoy them long after I am gone.  Echo Point isn't going anywhere.

Layout Notes:

Welcome to the Lake

I failed to mark down any of the supplies for this layout. The photo was edited in Photoshop using technique found in an article in the Somerset Studio Gallery Winter 2011 edition, "Vintage Inspired Photo Postcards," written by my good friend and fellow scrapbook artist, Chris Peters. Unfortunately, that edition is sold out. Perhaps I can persuade her to allow me to share it here. Her work can be found at www.mementosofthejourney.etsy.com.

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.

The Silence is Deafening

It has been quite a while since I visited this page and wrote a blog post, but it has been a whirlwind of a summer.  My son graduated from high school and then went off to Italy with a friend, staying at the apartment of the friend's aunt and uncle.  I had the good fortune of going off to France with my choral group for a tour celebrating and honoring the sacrifices of those who stormed the beaches at Normandy seventy-years ago.  No sooner had I returned than we all went off on a family vacation to New Hampshire with my husband's siblings and their families.

It was a whirlwind indeed.

And then we returned and the shopping and packing and readying began.  We were readying for our two boys to leave for college and leave me with an empty nest.

And on a cool and cloudy day (thank goodness) in late August, we loaded up the truck (thank goodness for that, too) and our spare junk of a car and headed south on the Garden State Parkway and then the New Jersey Turnpike. It rained a bit (oh, no), but it passed.

When we hit the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I knew this was real, that when I returned to my humble house, it would be empty, empty of boxes and bags, of folding chairs, computers, printers and bins of clothing.  It would be empty of boys.

It was a bit of a confusing afternoon.  My youngest was moving into his freshman dorm, into a room roughly the size of the back of my truck. Managing to find room to stand was no small feat. Managing to fit everything else in was a challenge.  There was barely room for the furniture that came with the room let alone a printer, a small TV and his desk lamp.  This was one seriously small room.

My older son, by comparison, moved into a palace, a gorgeous apartment he was to share with three of his friends.  It has a huge living room/kitchen combination with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The air conditioning is amazing.  They have a washer/dryer off the kitchen. They each have their own spacious rooms with the biggest closets I have ever seen.  There share two bathrooms.  My house only has two bathrooms. He did, however, have to build his own furniture from Ikea.  So far, it hasn't fallen apart.

My husband and son went off to get the younger one his textbooks while I took the older one to the market for food and to Home Depot to get his brother a desk fan.  The floor fan did not fit in the tiny dorm room.

When the dorm room was finished, it was nearly time for the floor meeting and their first dinner in the dining halls.  We said goodbye and then went off to dinner with my older son.  As a junior, he knew the ropes and didn't need any time to acclimate.

And then there was nothing left to do, but say farewell.  My older son looked at us and asked how parents did it.  He wanted to know how you raise children for eighteen years and then just say goodbye and leave them at college.  I found it an odd question to come from one who was only twenty years old.

But we did it.  We raised them or eighteen years and then we said goodbye and headed north back on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway.

School began this week and I realized that fifteen years of drop-offs, bagged lunches, field trips, permissions slips, books covered in brown paper, parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, fundraising events, snow days, summer reading lists, homework, book reports, dioramas, yearbook photos, playdates, field days, soccer games, proms, concerts, report cards and pick-ups are officially over. As Jackson Browne once sang, "They say in the end, it's the wink of an eye."  He would be right.

And the silence in my house is truly deafening.

So long, my lovely boys.  Be well.  Have fun.  Be the best you can be.  This is the time of your life.