SPRAGUEFEST!

I am beyond excited to be going to my first ever Spraguefest! What a thrill it will be to meet Jessica Sprague, Carina Gardner, and Heidi Swapp! What a trio and a treat it will be! To top it all off it will be in the land of sin city - Las Vegas baby! I am looking forward to meeting lots of new people, playing with paint, doing some digi, taking photos, and visiting the many spectacular sights to be seen. It has been a very, very long time since I have done anything for myself and am so looking forward to this trip. The only thing that would make this trip even better? Maybe meeting Becky Higgins, Ali Edwards, Cathy Zielske, and Stacy Julian too... that will be for another trip.

Digital Design with Carina Gardner

I have been MIA because I have been fully immersed in a 5-week long course, Art of Digital Design 2,with the lovely and talented Carina Gardner over at Jessicasprague.com. It has been an intense, busy, fun, and interesting course with a bunch of fun and ambitious people. Carina was absolutely fantabulous in her presence in the class, critiques, and webinars. She is truly a wonderful teacher. 

I am continuing to progress in my design work and am hoping to be able to build up the confidence to put my work out there soon.

I hope you are all continuing with your scrapbooking whether it is through photography, journaling, digital, paper, or even just printing out photos and putting them in albums. It is all good.

Project Life

I was just viewing Becky Higgins blog today and read a letter by a 56 year old woman named Karen,  whose children are now grown. She came across some old letters from her father from back in the day. Reading her letter made me stop and think about my future.

What do I want my children to remember. What questions might my kids want to know about? What answers can I provide for them now? What would they want to know about? My history. Where I came from. Who I was. What my personality was like. Where I grew up. What my house looked like. What I enjoyed doing with them. What did our bedrooms look like? What did that shed outside look like? What were my parents like? I have old letters from my father too and envelopes and letters that I have saved from my mother and father. I like that I can see what their handwriting looked like. I am sometimes afraid that my history will be lost if I don't record it. If someone doesn't record it. That is where Becky Higgin's Project Life comes into play here. I have done a digital version, am currently working on another digital version as well as the traditional paper version.

On the days I feel like I am "falling behind" with Project Life, I remind myself that it is not about falling behind... it's about recording life. Any amount of recording of my life is important. Falling behind doesn't leave behind parts of my history... nor does stressing over it... just recording any part of it...does.

Note to self: Don't stress. Just do it when you have the time.

I'm Baaacck!

So sorry for being away for soooo  long, but summer with a house full of kids and nice weather usually means not a lot of time to get on the mac.


Summer is in full swing here. We took a week to enjoy the 4th of July holiday with my family. My first thought was why hadn't I done this every year? You see we live a good 8 hours away from my mother... hence the long drive with three little ones was enough of a deterrent to go any where. Staying put was always so much easier. However, this year, the boys are older, wiser, much more easily placated (ie I can at least reason with them now and the in-car video player doesn't hurt either).

Despite the long drive and international (Canada Day) holiday traffic we had the best time e v e r.

The weather was perfectly hot, sunny, summery with just tid bits of rain at night. Evenings were just dreamy and the temperature - perfect.

Fireworks were enjoyed. Eyes sparkled. Parades, candy being thrown, music, and icy snow cones were had. Swimming in the river. Playing at the park.  An evening game of whiffle ball or two.  Hanging at the beach. A water park.

BBQs. Amazing company. Perfect. What more could a kid ask for on summer vacation? Oh for the love of lazy days of summer (even if it did include more than 8 hours of driving). Hope yours is just dreamy too.