Happy Valentine's Day!

Said by the little person at 8:00 this morning, about 5 minutes after he woke up:
"Chocolate is good for breakfast."
 

"Chocolate is my FAVORITE breakfast."

Such hard decisions for so early in the morning.

So we had some chocolate for breakfast. Then we made pancakes!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Surprise!

Imagine my surprise to find this smiling face as I was cleaning and reorganizing a few weeks ago. No telling how long he had been sitting in there, gas all ran to his trunk, waiting for someone to discover him! He was so patient! And his little person was so excited to see him again!

Piano hinge binding

This past weekend at the Memory Bound crop I ran into my friend Robin and she had seen this amazing creation and wondered if I had ever done a piano hinge book. I have and this is the book I have that taught me how, by Design Originals.

Here is a small piano hinge book I did, it's been probably at least a year or so ago that I did it. It's not very big, 4.25 5.5.

I think I intended it as a garden journal type book, but I never got that far with it!
I used bamboo skewers. It's actually relaxed over time, I think I bound the string at the top and bottom a little tight and it used to stay sproinged open, but today it is sitting very nicely, non-sproinged!

When one thing leads to another...

It all started with a 40% off coupon for Hobby Lobby. Which led to this:

Which led to this. We decided to make a valentine's day card and the word he insisted we use was CAKE...

Which then led to, you guessed it, cooking...

His job, among others, was to fill the cupcake pots with the papers. This kept him busy for at least the 2 minutes it took to run the mighty mixer!

Which then led to this. This was a carrot cake mix. But his comment after tasting it was "This is very good chocolate". I busted out laughing.

And I didn't correct him. Chocolate, carrot, hey they both start with a C and he was at least eating little bits of vegetable, assuming they were real, they were orange at least!

And the water kept him busy while I cleaned up the kitchen a bit.

Some of the finished product:

Yummy!!!

Baby Album

One of the ladies in my office at work recently had a baby, her third, and it was a girl. Her first two were boys. So we at the office were just as excited to get to make/buy girly things for her for a shower as she was to receive them.
Here's what I made for her.

I used 6x9 page protectors from Making Memories. The cover is a sandwich of chipboard, felt and fabric, sewn around the outer edge. I sewed a paper pocket into the front and back covers before assembling the layers. Then bound it with standard office binding rings and decorated them with ribbons.

I used Basic Grey paper Blush Collection and chipboard stickers from the Bittersweet collection. The chipboard stickers had adhesive on the back already, but it just wasn't sticky enough so I had to glue many of them anyway. I also used other miscellaneous bits and pieces from my stash.

I just used a simple design of solid on left page and pattern on right page with a little embellishment on both pages. I think 4x6 photos, horiz or vertical should fit nicely on these pages.
Here's a few pages

You can see the whole album here if you're interested.

Project 365, 2009

This project initially started here. Since I really have no trouble taking a picture a day, I thought what the heck, might as well do this again. I sort of did it last year, but never formally organized it into anything tangent.
This year, Creating Keepsakes offered a Kit of the Month designed by Becky Higgins. Of course it was an instant success and sold out very quickly. I was lucky enough to get this kit and here's how it's going so far...

On Friday, Memory Bound had an all day crop, so this was my project for the day. I got all my photos printed for the month of January and gathered my notes and went to work.

As I was working thru the pages, I decided if I would journal on my blocks daily as I record my notes, It might go together faster.

And if I would slip in all the "week of" cards, that would help too.

I like how it's turning out and this project could easily be done without the special page protectors the kit provided. You could use the 12x12 3 up, 6 slot page protectors that are offered by a couple different manufacturers. Becky also has a digital download of the journaling cards at her blog here, go to the January 2009 archives and scroll down to about January 10. She also has a post of alternative ways to do the 365 project if you didn't get a kit.

And here's a snapshot of many of our January 2009 photos.

Now on to February! Can you believe it!?!

We got Ma a web cam for Christmas and she finally got it hooked up. I have discovered that Skype, as opposed to Instant Messenger, will do video calls with my iMac built in web camera. So Skype we did.

LAD had just discovered he could make bubbles, big ones at that, with his cup, milk and straw. So G'ma and G'pa Airplane were treated to that discovery, via web cam! How exciting!




































Ma had a mirror and turned it on her web cam, so we could see it. Exciting stuff, I know!










Then she got the magnifying glass out. Now that was funny!

Coming to a theater near you, maybe, someday...

This past week Randy and Bill have been hired to do some movie scenes with the Beech 18. No idea who's in it, the plot or even the name for sure. Maybe Ray Liotta, woman running away for some reason, Ticket Out.

All I really know is the Beech came home to the frozen tundra from OK, they (the movie company) found a frozen lake (they ultrasounded it, measured it, blah blah blah safety-ed it), cleared the snow to make a runway, and started shooting. I think it is basically organized chaos.

But anyway, here's a few pictures Randy shot last week.

Pilot "Hollywood" Bill (on the right).

You want me to land WHERE? Yep, right there.

I wonder how long that cup of coffee stayed warm.

Lights, camera, ACTION.

I think airplanes have "good sides" and "bad sides" too, this might be the bad side. Lucky the door is on the "good side".

If only these babies could talk, the stories they could tell...

Heat Wave!

It got into the 40s this weekend. This is major heat wave for us up here in the frozen north.

LAD decided the Blue Tractor and Green Wagon needed to go outside too.

 
 
 
 

Let's go Flyin'

Sorry, not today, the batteries are ran down. Bill and Randy are in the movies! Some movie company contacted Bill to do some scenes with the Beech 18 on a frozen lake, we got lots of those. So that's what they've been doing that past few days. On Friday they had to start and stop the airplane so much the batteries ran down, so we went and fetched them and brought them home to charge.

LAD saw the hangar door open and so we had to go check it out!

LAD of course wanted to get in. And drive it. And touch Everything. I heard Randy say "no don't touch that", "no, don't touch that either", GASP "NO, especially don't touch that one".
I think he was reaching for that little orange one you see in the photo, down towards the bottom, the one that looks like a WHEEL.
So he had to settle for the yolk, boring!