It's Not What You Look At...

It's reveal day at Nuts About Sketches.  Here's my interpretation of Sketch #256.  I really do love working with Shawn's sketches - they're so fluid and user friendly.  My Nuts About Sketches projects always turn out great because Shawn's already done all the thinking. I just have to pull out the product and put it together.

I've got a mix of old and new here. The flowers are Primas and have been in my stash forever. The papers are Kaisercraft and are new. The letters come from Graphic45 and they're old. 

Another "old" is the man in the photos - my darling husband of 24 years now.  Every year with him just gets better.  I could not have found a more perfect life companion - he is the string to my kite, keeping me grounded, helping me achieve my dreams by making them more realistic realities.  He is a great conversationalist, has a warm, kind, and loving heart, and has a fun sense of adventure.  Every day with him is a new discovery.  

The photos are from a visit to Blue River last year. I was doing a scrapbook series on the 23rd Psalm and I had a "still waters" image in my head that only THIS particular place could make work.  True to his adventurous spirit, Tom agreed to a day drive, and off we went, taking Cowboy along of course.     

We had a great time. I had my new camera and was learning how to play with the features, but I think Tom had more fun than I did.  He took a quick skinny dip under the bridge. Me, I sat on the bank and played lookout.  I told you he was an adventurous soul!  

Nuts About Sketches - Design Team Round Two!

I love working with Shawn and using her sketches to create beautiful projects, so I'm honored and excited to be invited to continue with my Design Team position at Nuts About Sketches.  This layout is one that I turned in with my application.  

My mom, age 74, retired before personal computers were standard issue for teachers, and she really only uses her home computer to play solitaire. But recently my sister and I decided that her rich knowledge of the Bible and her incredible teaching ability needed to be out in the world.

Mom has, for years, wanted to write, but her health issues with her cancer recovery and an old heart surgery, coupled with her age, make sitting at a desk for long periods not really an option. Blogging seemed to be a perfect solution. But to do that, she was going to have to enter the computer age and buy a laptop. My sister said, "ONLY a Mac - nothing else. And you'll have to talk her into it. She won't listen to me." So, it fell to me to bring mom into the computer age.

At first, she resisted the idea, but surprisingly, only for a couple of minutes. I told her, "we'll get you a laptop, and a lap desk, and you can do it from your recliner. You sit there watching television anyway, and you can do this at the same time." Then there was a whole conversation about the logistics. Mom, and if you knew her you'd laugh, had very clear ideas of what her keyboard and her screen needed to look like. I said, "ok, let's just go to the Apple store and see what's there, and we'll find what you need."

I did a quick internet search for lap desks, and found that one that would work that we could pick up in the same mall as the Apple store, so I met mom in Tulsa and we looked first at the Mac Books. Mom got a little excited when she saw how simple they would be to use. But before we bought it, we measured it and then went upstairs to Brookstone to check the lap desks. I almost lost her when I sat her down in the big massage chair to rest a few minutes. She took a sales tag and asked the sales clerk, "do you deliver..."

The lap desk was perfect -which I knew because I'd researched and found the #1 best one out there - and she bought it. Then we went back down to Apple and she bought her MacBook Pro 15 inch retinal display, top of the line model. Then she signed up for the One to One program.

Since early December, I've been driving to Tulsa one day a week, meeting mom for lunch, and going with her to her One to One lesson so that when she forgets what her tech tells her, she can call me and I can help her with it. But she's a good student, and she is learning fast.

This photo is of her and her favorite tech, Josh, who looks for her name on the list when he's scheduled because if she's on there, he wants to work with her. I think that makes him one of the sweetest guys on the entire planet.

And as a pure bonus for me. When my DH asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, "A MacBook Pro" and he took me to the store and bought me one. So now I do a little one-to-one myself.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for listening to me ramble on (and on and on).

Heaven Whispers

This is my DT reveal for this week's Nuts About Sketches. Awesome sketch - perfect to play with that sunset image and these wonderful old papers from BoBunny's Forever Fall line. 

It's also week 4 of my Project 52 for 2013. Yeah, I know. I'm behind. A lot. But with sunsets like this one on my doorstep, who can blame me?

I'm also going to submit this to the Hoarders Challenge on Scrapbook Dot Com.  The papers are from BoBunny - Forever Fall line. I bought them to do up a Blessing Book for 2011. I ended up using something else, so these papers have just been sitting in my stash.I've also been hoarding the text rub-on for well over a year, possibly longer. I've had it so long I've forgotten just when and where I found it. I've been waiting for the perfect photo to use it with. This one was it.The dragonfly bling - that was a left over piece of an old bling flourish - I couldn't bear to toss it out. I thought, "you know, I bet I can use that one of these days..." I've had it a LONG time. The last layout I used black bling flourishes was on a couple of layouts in June 2010 (My Girls and Beautiful). So this piece is at LEAST that old.

Thanks for sharing my porch view with me!

My Mark On The World

Wow.  It's Monday, and it's another blog post from ME!  Unbelievable.  

I wanted to post my most recent project for Nuts About Sketches.  I haven't been very faithful to Shawn on this blog - neglecting to put my DT work up here.  She's got my scrapbook.com gallery linked on the NAS site, so it's not been too big a deal.  And besides, I know that this blog doesn't see a whole lot of traffic, so I've not been too concerned about it. 

But I think, now that I'll have Paper Mixing Bowl duties starting in January, I'd best get IN the habit of dropping my projects here, and probably doing a little more in the way of photographing them instead of just "point and shoot and upload." 

Here's Sketch #242

And here's what I did with it.  

The papers are Prima's Almanac Collection.  The little crochet fan came from Mandy Harrell's etsy shop.  

I took the little fan apart and put my own handmade floral on it so it would match my page a little better.  Then I created a sort of vine of similar buds with some floral wire and stuck them in behind the fan.  

The right hand photo has some text work done on the bricks - nothing amazing, just an invisible text box and some black text before printing.  

Thanks for taking a stop by.   I'd love to hear comments - the crickets are chirping pretty loud in the room here.  

Janie's Buddy

This horse was a throw-away. You can read his story in my Scrapbook Dot Com  gallery under the photo "Pasture Ornament." Go ahead, I'll wait. It's kind of important background to understand this photograph.

Pasture Ornament

My mom is a breast cancer survivor, but the treatments to save her life ravaged her body. She now has neuropathy (damage to nerves of the peripheral nervous system), tremors, and add to all that, she's 74 years old. 

She has begun developing an interest in my horses and I've sort of hoped that I could offer her an opportunity to ride at some point.  But horses are ... horses, which means anything can happen, and usually does, so I've not really felt comfortable with the idea. Much as I love Java and Charlie, she's my MOM, right?

Well, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, I decided that I would get on Buddy and see just how broke he was. And in short - he's amazing. Sane, quiet, unflappable. Just like I hoped he would be. In fact, he's BETTER than I hoped he would be. I called mom and told her, "I finally have a horse that I can trust with you. His name is Buddy, and if you want to, you can ride him this Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving dinner came, and after the dishes were cleaned up and the men were watching football, Mom said, "let's go out and see Buddy." And on the way to the pasture she said, "if you'll saddle him, I'll ride him." She told my niece, "you better take a good picture because this is the last time I'll ever ride a horse."

I helped her up onto the mounting block and helped her get into the saddle. I handed her the reins and explained that all she needed to do was point her thumb the direction she wanted to go and give him a hug with her legs. Her first words were, "He does what I TELL him!"

If you're a horse person, you'll probably notice that she's riding this horse with nothing but a halter and some reins hooked into the nose band. And her shoes aren't "regulation" or the least appropriate. And no helmet - I know.

But - the photo doesn't show EVERYTHING. I Photo Shopped out the lead rope and my right leg. The truth is, neither me nor the lead rope was the least bit necessary. Buddy took care of my mom as if he were walking on eggshells. He was - he IS - an unbelievable soul.

Mom had a great time. I know because she called me yesterday and said, "you know, I'd really like to come ride Buddy again." I said, "anytime. He's here for the rest of his life. I promise." 

As if there were ever any doubt.

***
This layout used the Nuts About Sketches Sketch #240. Come check out the NAS website and see how much fun you can have with a sketch a week!

Nuts About Sketches - Design Team!

Last month, I stepped out of my comfort zone and applied to be a member of the Nuts About Sketches design team.   Applicants were to take this sketch and create a layout from it.

Since I was working on my darling nephew's baby book, I took advantage of the sketch to create another Brady page for his first year album.  The sketch was amazingly easy to work with, and I was very pleased with the results.  I sent it in, thinking, "even if I'm not selected, I have another Brady page done, so that's a win-win either way."  

I found out right before Tom and I left for vacation that I've been accepted!  It's my first "away from home" gig, and I'm tremendously excited about the opportunity.