Jumbo Tron

So we finally used some of our wedding money to buy a couple things for our house. Our not quite finished basement always seems to attract the less social people at a party and/or the people who are dying to sing and dance along with our Wii. (Yes, these indeed can be the same sort of people. I've seen it with my own eyes.) In addition to this the basement had also collected a bunch of funiture destroyed by the cats, hand-me-downs, etc. Now I totally agree that basements should, by definition, include some of these token items. However, they we uncomfortable and not as functional as I would have like. (Plus - no secret - I also really like pretty things.) Enter very ginormous LG. It was a "good price" (ha!) and will actually be wonderful to game on. The 240 Hz are crazy! We watched a movie last night and it's actually noticable. Actually. We also picked up a value village buffet find from the TM trade show booth. I painted it black and it looks almost brand new and is perfect for the space. Thanks KC and Chantel! We also got a great deal on this tiny sofa. It is the only sofa that would fit down our stairs. I'm so excited to entertain now this season. To some of you this may not seem like anything fantastic. But to others, you know what it looked like before :)

Christmas Cheer and Christmas Fear

Hello Friends! I simply must apologize for my previous post. You see, I said that if you didn't get an invite to our Halloween party it was because we didn't like you or something similar and equally neglectful of other peoples feelings. This rash comment did have reasoning behind it - just not very good reasoning... I was unable to send my rather adorable (if I do say so myself) in the mail and thus ended up handed out some in person, calling people, fb-ing people and just generally hoping everyone knew they were invited. This was not true in all circumstances however and I felt like a big ol' rotten apple shortly after all hallow's eve. I'm so so sorry to anyone who did not come because they thought they were not invited. Everyone's invited! It's my favorite holiday. We jammed approximately 40 people into our small home and the party was a blast. Mine and Jill's costumes were hilarious (all thanks to her). That is, to those who knew who we were. Because I have students that read the blog I will not post my whole outfit. For any of you who still watch music videos, you may be able to decifer who I am.

On to Christmas! I made cards again! What's up with that? Got me. They are simple and that's why I like them I guess. (GAWD I love Sassafrass!) I'm still no Nadine :)

All of my shopping is done and wrapped (Lisa - I know this would horrify you and I will most likely blog about this later). We are getting a new couch to put in the basement so our guests are more comfortable when they are forced to watch me play "Just Dance" on the Wii ;) My new Dyson vacuum is a Godsend. So what, you ask, is the "Christmas Fear" about? My newest contract. Currently I have 6 classes to teach in 4 different subjects, 2 of which I have not taught before. Now this could be much, much worse but the thought of being responsible for 200 plus students, calling home, homework checks, keeping myself sane... I cannot sleep. I know I can do it, I just also know what it will cost. Such is the life I have chosen for myself. Enough complaining - I'm happy to be blogging again and will hopefully be back soon!

Halloween Invites

Well I don't have as much time to catch up as I would like. (I actually have zero minutes, but I'm desperate to blog again.) I am slowly drowning in both my personal and professional life but here is neither the time nor the place to vent my woes. Instead I leave you with my version of Martha's invites for our third annual Halloween costume party. If you have not received yours yet, it's because they will not send these little packages as letters and I have been hand delivering them... or you are just not invited :P I'll hopefully be back soon again! I miss this!

Martha's uber cute but far to fancy (and I'm far too thrifty) design. My much grosser, but, I think, equally enjoyable version.

It's beginning to look a lot like....

HALLOWEEEN!!! My favorite time of year!

You can tell that school has started and that I currently have no life if you've checked in lately and heard the crickets call through your speakers and the tumble weed roll across your screen. I have some projects currently on the go and desperately want to dive back into the craft world. For now here's a few crummy pictures of some of the decor I've put up so far... more to come!

My halloween tree.

How cool is this witch's boot? Heart.

Indie Girl Pages

For my challenge kit this month at Treasured Memories, Chantel gave me some of the lovely "Indie Girl" line from Sassafras. Score! The line is so pretty - I'm not sure my pages do it justice but I enjoyed creating them. And Sassatras is such a good deal I still have lots of product to work with. In fact, I did complete another page but it's... icky.

i*color

Hello World! Wonderful, beautiful, bright world that I can SEE!!! Wow, laser surgery was traumatic, though I went to a wonderful clinic with wonderful doctors and technitions (Eye Q Premium Laser) and they made it the best that it could have been. I won't go into the gory details but the bottom line is I can see. I had 20/20 vision less than 24 hours after my surgery and it has been the best thing to happen to me since sliced bread. Honestly, I still feel like crying when I think about it. Glorious! So what did I do with my new found eyesight? Well I can't do a heck of a lot at the moment. Ensuring proper healing of my eyes excludes working out and dust, excluding many household chores and going out in the sun for prolonged periods. A person who usually has multiple jobs and commitments does not do well under these conditions. My dear friend April and I were discussing the sheer therapy of coloring the other day and I became inspired. I printed off one of the first coloring pages available on Google and got to it. So relaxing! Despite my own best advice, below of a sampling of my latest most nerdy adventure.

Why not? I ask you. Color. Get out your pencil crayons, or perhaps your kid's pencil crayons as I fear most grown adults do not have their own 60 color Prisma Color set, and color. You NERD :)

Da Da Daaaaaaaaa...

Well folks, in two hours I will have a corneal flap, yes flap, created and the underlying layers resurfaced and reshaped. Yep. Having laser eye surgery. I have already had some major gastrointestinal and sleep issues relating to this wonderful invention. I became a biology teacher because I love things like anatomy and physiology... but let`s face it - eyes just gick me out! Therefore, the mental preparation for this surgery has been unbearable. I have not slept; visions of zombies with bleeding eyes dance in my head. This morning I am very ill which generally happens whenever I`m extremely nervous about something. Seriously, I would rather watch them remove my gallbladder or perform open heart surgery on MYSELF than this. BUT I must keep reminding myself that I WILL BE ABLE TO SEE!!! Having glasses since grade two means that I don`t ever remember waking up and just seeing. The thought is just unfathomable. And now an homage to a bygone era: last year's glasses.

The blue and lime green ones:

The pink and black ones:

The black and white ones:
I do plan to actually get some scrapbooking done when I can finally see again so in the meantime, I leave you with some pictures of my latest attempts in cupcakes. Ah, cupcakes. Why can't I just think about those? Got to go - I think I'm going to be sick...

Be Funky

So I'm working on some wedding invites and save the dates for a good friend of mine who is sadly living too far away from me in T-dot. I am really enjoying this new past time - I've discovered I'm really into computer and graphic design and should do this in my next life (note to self). Anywho, one of the save the dates is something adorable that I totally stole from some nice couple in the states. I will give the website credit at a later date when I show my version compared to theirs. It's amazing what you can do without Photoshop and a limited knowledge of Microsoft Word, really! While you anxiously (Ha!) await the photos on the invites, I bring you Be Funky, a website (from what I can gather) completely dedicated to 17 year olds, enabling them to make funky photos to place on their myspace page. Because I do not have Photoshop yet, I was forced to search for a free online photo editing resource. (I needed the photos to look cartoonish or hand-drawn.) And so I played around with Be Funky. It's free, easy and totally rad. I have big plans for this site - I promise to remove all notions of young girls making pouty faces in their long-arm photos. Here are some examples...

Yikes!

I should be in a vampire movie with eyes like this:I had to have them dilated today to check everything out for my imminent LASER SURGERY!!! That's right! I'm going to be able to see when I wake up for the first time since grade 2. As I am still waiting on a teaching job some very generous donations from the Bank of Mom and the Bank of Dad, oh and a whole lot of Atavan, have made this miracle possible. I am so excited (and also terrified)!!!

Grateful!

Hello Friends! I have just returned from a GREAT camping trip with great friends. Despite several severe changes in weather (we are talking sunshine to golf ball-sized hail in T minus two seconds) we managed to go on a couple hikes and enjoyed camping 20 metres from the riverbed. If you ever have the chance to visit the Bragg Creek, I strongly recommend it. The walk-in sites at Beaver Flats (where we stayed) are hugely unpopular, namely because you have to hike your coolers and all smelly articles to the car each night to prevent being eaten by a bear. We love them however! (The sites, not the bears, well I mean bears are cute and all but also hungry and strong.) They are so close to the river you are lulled to sleep each night by the sounds of the water. The pictures taken below are mere steps from our siteView to the right of our site.

View to the left of our site.

We walked down to Elbow Falls one day, an hour hike each way. Breath. Taking. We all just kept saying "this is the time when you are proud to live in Alberta". (It completely wipes away all images of silver genitalia hanging from the back of trucks; if you live in Alberta, you unfortunately know what I mean) I didn't bring my camera on the first hike as we had to cross several rushing streams but I managed to get a few photos the second time. Except for the first picture below, I literally just held my camera out on the automatic setting and clicked while I walked. Gorg!

I have some craft challenges in the works for myself... I'll be updating again soon I hope!

Song Killer

It's official: I'm obsessed.

How much do I love this? I can't say. I just continue to press replay :)


The whole CD (Yes I still buy CDs to support the artists I like) is wicked! And because it was 2 for 20 I also got the best of Depeche Mode. Yum.

Cards, Cards and More Cards!

As promised, here are my cards for the upcoming "Kids Camp" at TM. I think I have mentioned before that I do not normally make cards. However, this class as required me to do many things outside of just scrapbooking than I would normally do, and so, I give you CARDS! I actually really like doing cards now. They require fewer supplies, they do not take as much time and you can give them to people. I mean I simply lurve having my memories captured in the unique art form we all know and love, but who doesn't like to hear the reaction: "you made this?"? Nobody. That's who. Also, I decided to incorporate a little more of myself in this blog by setting the cards on my most prized possessions: my books! I heart reading. My parents used to give us one dollar for every novel we read during the summer. I would make big bucks! I'd climb into our treehouse and read for hours - not for the money, that was just a bonus - but because I loved reading. So I'll point out a few of my favorite reads from the pictures where possible. I would love any author/book suggestions that you may have for me! Anybody out there?
The "Book of Negroes" (the small face in the upper left-hand portion) by Lawrence Hill is the best book I have read in a long time. Powerful, yet and easy read, I couldn't get enough. Interesting point, the book is only called this in Canada but is based on an actual historical artefact.
Tucked in behind this card is one of my favorite books of all time: "Kit's Law" by Donna Morrissey. This is the only book I cried after reading. It's heartbreaking, heart-warming and just downright touching.
Harry Potter - yes its true! Can't deny these fantasy favorites.Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much is True". He creates such real characters. Heart.
Anne-Marie MacDonald's "Fall on Your Knees" Compelling, disturbing, still fantastic.
For those of you "real readers" out there, Diana Gabaldon might be considered smut but I want to marry every male character in her books. Dreamy.
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" (Mark Haddon). Need I say more than the title. I think not.

Purdy Flowers

So I've been working on a few new projects for the TM Kids Camp that happens to start this week. I'm really excited for the camp and I think that KC and I have put some cool projects together. The first class is creating a Card Kit and then one or two cards. I'm still finishing up the cards. (Check back tomorrow for pictures.) The second class is a canvas class. Having just recently started in this mixed art form, I think this will be an excellent way for tweens to be creative. If young Kennedy is any indication, I'm sure that they will come up with some wicked ideas and have canvases that surpass the demo. Hopefully pictures of the other projects will be posted soon but I wanted to share my favorite creation yet. You've seen this before in a smaller version. A few weeks ago I made earrings. Today I made a sweet ring. In large form it was even easier to create, so much so that I'm sure little hands will be able to enjoy creating these funky statement peices. Also, I was blog surfing (thanks Lisa for always leading me to the most beautiful things on the net) the other day and found this. I thought: "Where does Samantha get her flowers?". She must buy them and then glue them to handbands and other adorable things? Do you think? 'Cause her flowers look a heck of a lot better than mine but not all that different... Headband anyone?

Branding Myself

Do not fear.

I am not partaking in this...

... because it scares me. What? It does. Not much into the altering my body permanently. I'm too fickle for that.

What this blog is actually about is creating a logo for you! When we started planning our wedding I was really into the idea of coming up with a "logo" for us. I wanted to put it on everything. The problem with that of course is that it is A) pretentious and B) expensive!!! I had many grand schemes but I was really hung up on this. I love seeing weddings that are all coordinated loveliness. Of course I love the vintage or shabby chic weddings that are totally not matchy-matchy but again - the molla decides the type of wedding you can have. If I had a fabulous planner like Juli then maybe I could pull that off. But alas, I could afford no planner. (O. M. G. is Juli doing beautiful things lately!) So, I created our brand. I put it on our wedding envelopes, our Jamaica favours and welcome letters, our table cards, our thank yous, you get the idea. It really made a difference, to me anyway, to have this common denominator on all of the things we gave our guests. It looked super professional in my opinion and the best part was that I did it in "Paint". Yep. That cheesy program that comes with your Microsoft software. That one. No expensive Photoshop here people - just K and D brand thank you cards and envelopes. Seriously, the simple things in life really make the most difference to me. I'm a details person. What you can't see in these photos is that our logo for our destination wedding was our initials with two palm leaves in the background. Our thank yous are creamy and taupy and the taupy palm leaves didn't show up too well here. But trust me, if my camera hadn't died, you would have seen the beauty. That's another thing that I love about branding yourself. I used different colors on the invites, welcome letters and now thank yous but they all look similar.

P.S. The thank you cards themselves came from Costco. You get approximately 1 million for less than $40.00. Sweet deal!

Roller Disco Immortalized

A couple months ago Jill and I went to a birthday party at the Edmonton Sportsworld Inline Skate and Roller Disco. The theme: tight and bright. Yah. I know. Best birthday party idea....EVER!!! You know that Jill and I live for theme parties. So we hit up Walmart (Note: people of Walmart theme party soon to come) and found some special touches. Safe to say that most of our outfits came from our closets. What?! Everyone likes to cherish our childhood era; the eighties. Our friends Kelsey, Robyn and my best friend Kirsten (yep, her name is my name too, and whenever we go out...) rented the rink for the evening and had the wherewithal to purchase a liquor licence for their young (most were in their early twenties) party goers. Jill and I had approximately one drink each and it was a stellar night. I wish I could show you all of the short shorts, spandex and (apparently) mullets that come with a tight and bright party, but here are just a few pages. Pardon the bad photos, no patience.

In case you are confused, my friends lovingly gave Kirsten the name K2 to prevent confusion between me (K) and her (K2). Hence, "K2 turns 27".

I'm pretty sure that I scrap-lifted the crossed scraps of paper from Chantel. The Riff Raff Snowflakes are really hot pink and orange. I thought they looked pretty sweet and geometric until I got home and David immediately asked why there were snowflakes on this page. Sigh. "Tight & Bright"

I don't even know what this is but some ladies at the store today had some excellent insight. Something along the lines of it doesn't matter what your page looks like - a done page is ANOTHER PAGE THAT'S DONE. "Roller Girls

Artwork and Thunderstorms

Last night I hung out with Jilly. We really don't get to hang out with each other as much as I would like. She is such a bright light in my life. While we can get rather aggressive with each other at times, it is only because we are so close that such abuse can be tolerated. Even with a migraine last night we were making each other laugh; speaking in bad accents, being crude, just our usual deranged selves. And to add to all of this love and happiness, there was a thunderstorm last night. Me and thunderstorms are like peas and carrots... or maybe that was someone else... It certainly helped the pounding in my own skull to hear the relaxing sound of rain, thunder and the smell of rain, so much so that I got 3 pages done.
The first one I love, the second is old school. But what's wrong with a simple, old school page every now and again? Meh. Nothin'. As you can't read the jounaling tabs (I said old school right?) lemme'splain... I bought this adorable scratch off "coloring book" for our dear friend's daughter Bella when she was born because it was called "Princess Bella". I have been saving that book until now to ensure that she would not impale herself or lose any soft tissue to the sharp wooden tool. When I brought it over about a month ago, she was just as pumped as me. She watched her Mom color and then trotted off to her unfinished tree house to sit and work. She was soooooooo engaged and worked so hard: it was the most adorable thing I've ever seen. So I Paparazzied the moment. Happy Thursday!

"Art=WORK"


"Even Picasso had to Start SOMEwhere"
P.S. I can't wait to have my own kids so that I can stop creeping on my friend's children.

Cupcake Queen!

So I'm having a pretty sweet day today all in all. I made some ridiculously cute cupcakes! My friend Amanda bought me this awesome cupcake book which I had yet to try out. Granted they were time consuming, but come on, how adorable is this garden? I must admit that I cheated and used cake mix but I was really more concerned with the decorating. Yum!
Also, half of my students had their final exam today. It went really well and their average was super high - wahoo! In honor of the biology exam I wore my most nerdy but equally awesome science shirt...

Wishing I had better handwriting...

You know, lots of people comment on my handwriting in real life. I've been proud of my printing since at least grade 1 :P However, as soon as I go to write on a page things get sketchy. If I try too hard I come up with perfect printing like my mother would do - which is lovely but not natural. It doesn't even look like I wrote it. The other option is to just "go for it". The problem with that option is that my brain is not really a "got for it" kind of gal. My brain is more like "don't screw it up, but make it natural, but don't look like your trying too hard, but try not to ruin your page..."etc. Which brings me to my latest page. I was going to cover up the unnatural writing (I may still) as it can be likened to a "silent but violent" - sneaks up on you with no warning and kills the mood. I know that many of your brave souls handwrite on your pages all the time and the whole point is to tell a story or portray a feeling but my OCD just won't let me get there yet. At least I'm keeping up with the posting and crafting. Some more ideas in the works... This is a picture of my babelicous Mom, I belive shortly after my birth. I just love her soooo much! *Note: it is not mounted on that terrible pink color, I just had that paper down when I took the pic.

In other news, Jill was asking me why you can't click on the images on my blog to enlarge them anymore. My answer: I don't know. If anyone knows how to change this, please enlighten me. Love.

Same Same but Different

Just working at TM this Saturday and I thought I'd see what was in my cubby. Lucky for me I had some old photos from old page ideas. I was so excited that I scrapbooked a page right there and then. It kinda hurts my eyes a little but I'm so in love with patterns and colors. I know Jill is probably trying to stop herself from leaving the comment "too much! too much!" but I've decided I love it. And the pictures are hilarious to boot! Kurt Cobain inspired hair AND attire - Kara, I needed you then :) I've always known that my Dad and I share similar features but not until I found these photos did I realize how similar we really are.

Dad 1966. Me 1995. We were both in grade 6.


Enjoy your Saturday!

Scrapin' at TM

So I went to keep Jill company as she was working at the store alone tonight... and that way I could also bring her dinner. (I know, I know, I wish I could be your sister too.) I completed a page in half an hour. Yep. Me. Procrastinating, whining Kirsten. Trust me. This is an accomplishment. It's not anything special to look at but it had hidden value to me. The paper was a kit from the store. I challenge that is now met. It also means that I am starting to feel a little more like my old self - coincidence that this coincides with the last day of teaching being yesterday? I THINK NOT!!! I'm excited to work at TM this summer and get into "it".

Wedding Reception Pics

So. I'm dumb. I never did give our FAB photographer any credit in my engagement photo post. Her name is Ashley Champagne and you can find her here. She is incredible and has photographed Gaga - who, she tells us, introduced herself as "Gaga" not "Hi! My real name is Stephanie Germanotta but I prefer to be pretentious, disyllabic and completely deranged." What a weirdo. Anywho, Ashley came to our reception to take some candid shots and man did she ever. I will just post a few of the details (I know you crafty folk like the details) and a couple of my favorites. "Cootie catcher" favors (they were fun to design and fold - not- thanks for the idea Martha) with chocolate bars nestled within - yum!Also my beautiful tropical inspired centerpieces were created by none other than Lindsay Best. She is amazing and has recently started a new blog to showcase her incredible talents.

The head table had long intertwined pieces of bamboo with orchids and palms and other beautiful delights wrapped around them... so cool! I found a similar design on internet and Lindsay did it even better!!!

Dave and I love to laugh. I heart this photo for that reason.

Grammy. I had a reception in Edmonton with the hope that both my Grammy and Grampy could attend. Unfortunately, Gramps was ill but Gram was looking fineeeeeeeee....

Anyone notice that I've uped the posting? Woot! Woot!