Little Wossnames

Kate is obsessed with Little Einsteins these days. This ostensibly-educational program features four kids who fly around in a sentient rocket having musical adventures.

Doug and I often complain that they shouldn't be called Little Einsteins. I've seen several episodes now and they really haven't had any physics in them. Mostly music, with a little art and geography thrown in. June dances, Annie sings, Quincy plays any musical instrument that he happens across, and Leo conducts. Not much in there on general relativity. They could call them Little Mozarts. Or the Little Philharmonics, or something. Little Liberal Arts Majors. ("Would you like fries with that?")

Of course, the real point is that Little Einsteins are made by the company (Disney) that does Baby Einstein--the idea being that listening to classical music makes your child smarter. Unless you're Jack Jack Parr, in which case listening to classical music makes you burst into flame and metamorphose.

The end of the race

Challenge #11 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to make a layout with wings in it. A lot of people did altered-art style creations where they put wings on their kids. I decided to just use my chickadee drawing.



(Credits here)

Challenge #12 was another "Intersection" (like the collaboration in #2). One partner provided the photos and journaling, and the other partner did the scrapping. The topic was "a major accomplishment." Since I lost my first partner I teamed up with Lukasmummy (Crystal) and sent her some of my Cupboard Under the Stairs pictures. Here's the layout she created:



I like the sparkles!

The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is known as ADSR for short. Doug tells me that this also stands for "Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release." Apparently it's a musical term. Who knew?

That's the end of this race! If you're a digi scrapper, and interested, I would definitely recommend getting in on the next race. It's a lot of fun, and there are cool prizes for each challenge.

Playing at the Art Museum

On Friday we went down to the art museum and played in the Open Studio. We'd been there once, years ago, before Kate was born. (You can check out a card from the library that gives you free admission--is that cool or what?) Kate had a wonderful time painting, playing with clay, and stringing beads. Doug and I played with some ink and brayers (cool texture! I brought some home). There are a few easels set up in front of the big wall of windows. I loved the image of Kate in her cute little apron, standing at the easel painting, with the sunlight flooding in. (We'll definitely have to do that again, when I've got my camera back.) It reminded me of a phrase that my mom ran across once--"a hothouse of creativity." I think it might have been in an article on the Wyeth family. I told Doug, "This is what I want--a room with lots of windows, and a big table, and a sink." (Doug agreed that the sink was important.) Yep, that's what I want. I could spend a whole lot of time there.

They have these cases with supplies for different projects. Kate and I checked out the jewelry making case, and she quickly figured out how to string the beads on the wire. She was sitting stringing for quite a while, singing "Twinkle twinkle little star" quietly to herself. The next day she and I ran up to Artco and picked up a bead set. We got a Melissa and Doug set with brightly colored wooden beads and letters (this one). The wooden tray is cool but not really useful because there's no lid. We put the beads in a yogurt container. When we were playing with the beads together, Doug made a string with D-O-G. He showed it to Kate and asked her, "What's this word?" Kate looked at it and said "Dog!" Whoa. She can sort-of-sound-out some simple three-letter words with help (she does know all the sounds, very well), but this was pretty instantaneous, so she must have just recognized it. Either way, we were impressed.

I have a feeling it might not be butter

Youtube link.

A couple of years ago Rebecca got The Vicar of Dibley out of the library. We watched this part over and over. Ha!  (It's the first couple minutes of the episode.)

Little Artist

Last week Kate saw me working with some paint and wanted to do it too, so I popped my painting shirt on her and let her have some fun. She went through a few sheets of paper and then started making finger-dots on the cardboard that I'd put underneath. She was having a great time and I just had to get some pictures. It's amazing how her eyes look just the same color as the shirt here. I think her eyes are a lot like Doug's--kind of blue-gray, but they change in the light.

Challenge #9 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page in the "altered art" style. That's pretty broad, so I had a little trouble choosing a topic, but then I decided that one of these painting pictures would be perfect.



The watercolor splatters in the background are some that I was playing with a while back and then never really did anything with. (One ended up in my blog border.) They worked so well here that I decided to make a few more and put them up in the store.



(link)

Since my camera is kaput, I'm going to be looking for things I can do with the scanner for a while. Actually I'm lusting after a 40D now, and I think I can probably swing it, but I have to wait and see what Canon says about my camera first.

Uh-oh...

I picked up my camera to get a picture of the snow today (yes, snow) and it wouldn't turn on. I swapped out the battery and did get it to power on, but it wouldn't do anything else. I took it down to Abolins (local camera shop), and the guy there said he'd never seen anything like it. He's going to pull the back off and see if anything's loose, and if not he'll send it in to Canon and get an estimate. So I am camera-less. This will definitely limit my designing options for a while.

And we just found out a couple of days ago that Doug only has one class this quarter. He had two lined up, and was trying to pick up a third somewhere else, but not having any luck. (I guess enrollment is down?) Then we learned that they'd had to give one of his classes to somebody else, since one of the full-time faculty had a class canceled, so they made it up from the part-time pool. So Doug will be looking for some other kind of work. If anyone knows of anything in the area, we'd appreciate any suggestions!

Cousin Squidge and Cousin Pudge

Challenge #7 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was a real doozy. I think just about everybody, upon first reading the requirements, experienced something of a sinking feeling. It was a "number crunch" challenge with two parts. I chose to do the first part, "messy," using one paper, two ribbons, three buttons, four glitter doodles, five frames, six pictures, seven alphas, eight flowers, nine staples, and ten random elements, all from one designer. I used all my own stuff, and had to make a few things on the spot for this challenge. Fortunately we could use the same element more than once to make up the required number.



(full credits here)

This was really a challenge. Definitely not my usual style, but it was fun. (Doug was looking at it and said, "This is going to be really busy, isn't it?") The hardest thing was the title. I spent a bit too long on that. I made a paper bag flower that I was really pleased with (it matches the frames). It's going in the April mega kit.

The title requires some explanation. We invented the word "squidge" to describe what Kate would do when she was kind of fussy and squirmy. (Sometimes we call her Squidgeon, or Squidgit.) These pictures were taken three years ago, when we were visiting my family in Ohio. My sister Betsey has this cute little dog, Angie, who is her "baby," so she decided that Kate and Angie were cousins. Hence Cousin Squidge and Cousin Pudge. (Angie has gotten a bit snappish in her old age, so these may be the only pictures we ever get of the two of them together!)

I worked on this one for a few of days, got it done with about an hour to spare before the deadline, and then threw together a layout for challenge #8 in about twenty minutes. Fortunately this one was a lot easier!



A memorable vacation experience, one-word title, black and white photos, journaling incorporating song lyrics, and no travel-related embellishments. Easy, yes? It certainly could have been more elaborate, but it was nice to be able to go minimalist on this one.

So I successfully completed the challenges for the week, but, sadly, I lost my partner. Karin was having internet problems and didn't get hers done. I'm teaming up with somebody else who also lost her partner. I was thinking about just dropping out, since I've got a big project that I'm trying to get finished in the next week or so, but I guess I'll stick with it.

Tagged

I've been tagged by Laura Call. The Calls are moving out of our ward. Waaah! We will miss them.

10 years ago I was:
I had to pull out my journal for this one. We were in St. John's, Newfoundland, where Doug was going to grad school. I was working at the Dominion grocery store and teaching early morning Seminary (we'd just finished Helaman and had a Jeopardy game with Korean candy for prizes). The night before we'd been to a benefit concert at the Ship Inn where Doug and I performed "Huntin' for Deer" (our very own creation, to the tune of "Waltzing with Bears"). I attempted to play the guitar and did rather badly, but as I recall no one was really paying much attention to the performances anyway. I told Mikel Koven that his beard made him look like Kenneth Branagh in dim light. The day of the 27th we went out and got some boards and cinder blocks and made some shelves in our basement apartment. I started re-reading Shards of Honor.

5 things on my "to do" list today:
1. lunch (check)
2. visiting teaching--got canceled, so I'm going to go play with Kate outside
3. laundry (check)
4. scrap?
5. I think we might go to Chevy's for dinner.

Things I would do if I became a billionaire:
Buy houses for my siblings, and travel a lot. Travel travel travel.

5 of my Secret Bad Habits:
1. I tend to be rather self-centered. (Maybe it's an artistic thing, I don't know.)
2. I spend ridiculous amounts of time and energy on things that aren't really important, and get by doing the bare minimum for other things that are important.
3. I'm a real flake sometimes. There are things I've said I would do for people that I still haven't done.
4. My house is a mess.
5. As it says over in the sidebar, I spend way too much time on the computer.

5 Places I've Lived:
1. Fairborn, Ohio--my family moved there when I was ten, and they're still living in that house.
2. Provo, Utah--I loved watching the light on the mountains
3. Korea--I lived in a variety of places, on my mission and teaching English with Doug. Dying to go back!
4. St, John's, Newfoundland, in a basement apartment for $275 a month. It had a nice big kitchen but no electrical outlets in the bathroom.
5. Tacoma, WA--we're on our third apartment here, all in the same zip code

5 Jobs I've Had:
1. One of my first jobs was at Taco Bell
2. data entry at AT&T
3. shrub pruner on the BYU grounds crew (that was so fun. Best job ever).
4. English teacher in Korea
5. grocery store cashier in Newfoundland

5 things that most people don't know about me:
1. I still have flying dreams sometimes. Fun.
2. I crave stability and spontaneity. It's a bit of a conundrum.
3. I enjoy doing things with people but I'm not good at initiating it. Sometimes I feel rather socially insecure. Not as much as I used to, but it's still there.
4. There are people that I very much regret not keeping in touch with.
5. I have stories in my head, and have sporadically gone through periods where I did a lot of writing, but I don't really know if I'll ever get them down properly.

Easter Morn

This was the first year that Kate really understood the egg hunt thing. She was all excited about it. When I told her the night before that we were going to go outside and find eggs and put them in her basket, she kept asking, "Is it morning?"

The morning was rainy. Kate wore this cute dress that her Aunt Barb made, but you can't see much of it under the coat.



We had a few plastic eggs scattered around, some with little treats in them. I managed to snap a few photos as Kate dashed around in the drizzle.



It was a good thing we went outside, because Doug noticed that we had a very flat tire. He had enough time to get the spare on before we had to leave for church.

Kate wanted to look for eggs again, so we went inside and played find-the-eggs a few times while Doug changed the tire. I've discovered that Kate is really bad at looking for things. Even with the eggs out in plain sight, she had a hard time finding them. Maybe if we play find-the-eggs more often it'll be good practice for when she loses something.

After church we went over to Rebecca's house and ate bacon lentil soup and had an exciting game of Settlers of Catan. (Rebecca won, but it was really close.) She had some more eggs for Kate, too. We had an egg-filled day.

(I've had to edit this post about five times. And I just realized I titled it "Eater Morn." Oy.)

Wearin' o' the green (and a whale)

I understand that on the Catholic liturgical calendar, St. Patrick's day was moved to Friday the 14th (or possibly Saturday in some diocese) because Easter is so early this year and no feast days can be held during Holy Week. But, not being Catholic, I put a green shirt on Kate on Monday. That was our only nod to the holiday.



My sister Barb just sent us a dress that she made for Kate (pink!) along with a book of kids' crafts. Kate has been enjoying looking through it and asking to make things. (It goes like this: "What's this, Mama?" "Those are paper animals." "We can make paper animals?") So Doug made her a whale. It's a jointed whale, with brads (which may be called paper fasteners or split pins, depending on where you are). I donated a piece of watercolor paper that was left over from an earlier experiment.



We went outside to take pictures. It was a little chillier than I was thinking (and windy!) and Kate hasn't quite got the hang of "show me your whale" for the camera.



I like the effect of the watercolor. Kind of an Eric Carle thing going on there.

Rice Cooker and Spin-A-Lift

More from The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race! Challenge #5 was to scrap an interview with an inanimate object, so I decided to do our rice cooker, Lucky. We got Lucky in Korea almost twelve years ago, and he's still going strong!



(You can click on the picture to see it bigger.) 보시다시피 means "as you can see." Heh.

Challenge #6 was over at Sweet Shoppe Designs, where they do something called Spin-A-Lift. This is where you take somebody else's layout and rotate or flip it, and then use that composition to create a new layout. For this challenge one team member had to pick a layout from the other team member's gallery to rotate and scraplift, but also reverse the original subject matter. I used this layout of Karin's:



This is her daughter swimming. So I rotated the design clockwise and made a page about Kate not swimming.



(credits here)

Kate keeps looking at this photo and talking about going to the swimming pool. Maybe she doesn't remember how much she hated it. I guess we'll try again this summer.

Our Family

I drew the circles; Kate did everything else. Don't we look happy?

Paper Bag Frames

I love how these turned out!

(Update:  Since NDISB has closed, this set is now available here.)

Think Big

"Kate, would you like some grapes?"
"Okay!"
"How many grapes would you like?"
"One hundred!"

Pussy Willows and a Tantrum

There are a couple of big pussy willow trees behind our complex. I wanted to get some pictures before they blew, but when Kate and I went outside with the camera, most of them looked like this:



There were some branches that still had the soft fuzzy catkins.



Kate was having a good time with a teasel and a stick, and even wanted to sit down in the grass and take pictures. Her nose was running and I only had a teeny piece of tissue in my coat pocket, which quickly came to the end of its usefulness, so I suggested to Kate that we go back inside briefly to get some more tissue.

Well, you would have thought I'd just told her we were going to wash her hair, feed her brussel sprouts, and beat her repeatedly. She ran away from me screaming, "No! No! I want to stay outside! Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!" Kate has a very piercing scream that we get to hear frequently. I ran after her and scooped her up, and carried her back to our apartment, where we got Doug to bring us some tissue at the back door.

Challenge #4 of the Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race was to do a layout with "spill it" journaling, and I decided this incident would be the perfect topic, especially since I had a cute picture of Kate taken just before she went nuts. (Challenge #3 ended up being optional, and I didn't do it, since it was an all-about-me layout and I already have one of those.)



(credits here.) This was my first attempt at the "tucking stuff in around the edges" technique that's so popular in digi-scrapping. I don't know if I've quite got the hang of it.

I've been working on a set of paper bag frames that have been a lot of fun (and considerably less time-consuming than a lot of the stuff I do). They should be done some time this week, hopefully.

Kids these days....

We were at Target on Monday and ran across this--a 50-pack of Play-Doh. Yep, that's fifty different colors. Why, back when I was a young 'un, we had to mix our own Play-Doh colors. And we liked it.

Paper animals

Recently we pulled out some brightly-colored cardstock that I'd bought for some paper piecing years ago. I thought it would be great for making some paper animals for Kate. I used to make things like this a lot, back in elementary school. (My desk was always a mess, and I went through a lot of glue.) We decided on a lion and a tiger.



I use my ruler to draw out patterns for boxes, complete with tabs for gluing.



Curious little hands. (Kate was "helping.")



I did the heads over again because I didn't like the first version.



The legs took a while. There are eight of them, and I put a little slant on top, which was a bit complicated.



The finished product.



And the back view. (Maybe I should make a bear to go with them. Oh my!)

I told Kate she could play with them after I took pictures. I don't expect them to last long.

Making animals out of paper boxes is a time-honored family tradition. Here's an old picture I dug up of Betsey with one of her creations. It's an Appaloosa uni-pegasus.

Collaboration

The second challenge in the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to create a layout with our partner. I was trying to come up with something that Karin and I could both scrap about, and thought that Ernie, our site ogre, would be a great subject.

I put together this basic idea and sent it to Karin:



Karin added a background and some other cool stuff and sent it back, and then I tweaked it just a little more and we called it done. Here's our final product:



This was a fun challenge!

Another Year Older

Yep, yesterday was my birthday. I've had a lot going on lately, putting stuff together for the March mega kit, and I've also started making a book for somebody (it's a surprise), which is going to take a while. And then there's the digi scrapping race. And having a sale for my birthday, and making the ad. And a few visiting teaching appointments squeezed in there (yeah, it's the end of the month). So if I haven't been posting much the past couple of weeks, that's why.

I wanted to get a picture with Kate, but she was in a bad mood most of the day. I finally got her to go outside and paint letters on the porch with me, and Doug snapped a couple shots. This was the best we could do.



We went out for Korean food for dinner. We stopped by the grocery store to get some kim (laver seaweed) first, and then went to the restaurant. This was the kind of pre-cut kim that's in little individual packages with maybe ten sheets in each one, and Kate snarfed down two of the packages before we even got our food. She's had kim before but I'd never seen her eat it in volume like that. Maybe she was just hungry.

My mom sent me Stardust on DVD for my birthday (thanks, Mom!) and everybody called and sang, of course. (Betsey really outdid herself this time. It was a truly astonishing performance.) Doug ordered something for me but it hasn't come yet. I know what it is, though, so it's not a surprise. Okay, it's a Wacom 6D art pen for my tablet.

And--surprise!--I got a summons for jury duty. I checked the box that said "I am a parent without child care" and sent it back. I did go in for jury duty back when I was pregnant with Kate, which was an interesting experience. I only had to report three or four times, and didn't get picked for the jury. I got a lot of reading and crocheting done.

It's getting warmer! Hooray! And the pussy willow tree behind our complex is budding. I must get pictures.

The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race

Season three of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is on! I didn't participate in the first two seasons, but sort of watched from the sidelines, so I thought this time I'd join in the fun! I have teamed up with Karin (in Australia) who is also a designer at NDISB (Karin M Designs). Teams go around to different sites and participate in challenges and win cool prizes, and hopefully have lots of fun in the process. I've been spending way more time designing than actually scrapping, so I figured this would be a good way to exercise those scrapping muscles.

Challenge #1 was to create a layout with this sketch, featuring our "favorite person or animal to scrap about," using our favorite color, and using a favorite element three times. Here's my layout:



I don't really have a favorite color. I like color. I find myself mostly drawn to greens, browns, golds, and dark reds. And I also have a lot of pink in my world these days. I struggled with the background for this a bit, but it works.

That white line frame was a last-minute addition. I was finishing this up last night, and looking at it and thinking, "That needs something else." So I took a crayon and drew a line and scanned it. If anyone wants the line you can grab it here (right-click and "save as").

When I was looking for a partner, I mentioned that I might be rather flaky. Karin said she'd flake with me. So we came up with the name "The Discombobulatorium" for our team. Karin made us a team blog and this cool blinkie:



For the next challenge we get to create a layout together. That should be interesting!