Scrapbook Page: ORS 2011 (Revised)

Paper and Elements from Shabby Princess

I'm not going to lie, this will never be one of my favorite pages but...so much better now!  Even though that red/gold combo was better than my first version, I still really did not like to look at it.  There was something about it that felt high school sports team or college graduation to me.  This isn't the most exciting combination, but the dark blue goes with the dark blues and reds in the pictures and the cream paper lightens things up while still matching.  Staples and pushpins are pretty much my favorite things ever.  I wanted to put a button in too, but since it was a conference I figured the bullseye looked more fitting (less cute).

Scrapbook Page: Garden Notes

Papers from Shabby Princess, Elements from Shabby Princess and Persnickety Prints

Ok well, I guess I spoke too soon.  Sometimes a girl needs a break and this particular girl likes to fall back on her hobbies in those times.  Since many of my layouts are multi-page, I needed some single page non-event layouts sprinkled throughout to fill in gaps.  I love taking pictures and have many interests so this should not be too difficult.  "Garden Notes" will be a regular gap filler as well as "Tony the Cat" "New Recipes" "Portland Living" and various craft-related things.  These are things I want to include in the scrapbook anyway so it's great they will have another useful purpose.  For my 2011 cover page, I'm currently thinking about making a giant composite of all my farmer's market produce pictures.  The PSU market ends mid-December so by the end of the year I should have a whole bunch and it'll be one cohesive topic.

For this Garden Notes, I learned how to make rounded corners in my photos.  I used a great tutorial from Matt Thommes and it couldn't be easier.  I really like the vintage-y, slightly faded  look of the papers and would like to find more little elements.  I'll have to look around a bit and see if I can find some pushpin/nail/thumb-tack elements because they would look great here (Update: found 'em!). 

This and That, Mostly Gardening

This was last week's farmer's marketing; I didn't go today because I'm leaving on Tuesday for Cold Spring Harbor Labs and will be gone for 3 weeks.  I have now forgotten how much everything cost, except the eggs, which were definitely $6, because that's how much the eggs always are.  I do enjoy them a lot.  After getting these I did a comparison with store eggs (did I mention this here yet?) and decided the taste of these pricey eggs was better.  Those sugar snap peas ended up being monstrously delicious, nom nom.

Today was the hottest day ever (85F), which was a rather nice change.  Last weekend I didn't manage to get many errands done because it was so gloomy rainy out so I got most of that out of the way today.  The main thing was getting a set of spare keys made for my neighbor, who will be watching Tony and the plants while I'm away.  At the hardware store (I do love hardware stores and the one nearish to me is a wonderful one even though it is pricey), I bought a large dark red watering can.  It is completely enchanting and if it wasn't getting dark already I'd take a picture of it to post.  I revamped my little balcony garden recently, pulling out (and eating) all of the lettuces since the intermittent hot days were making them sad.  Today the nasturtiums came up too; I was sorry I never got any flowers from them and will try them out again this Fall.  According to my gardening book, they also dislike the heat (which seems odd to me since they are spicy).  I am extremely happy about the three little strawberries growing though.  Here are two of them:

So the boxes are looking quite tidy now and I've transplanted the basil babies into the newly emptied spots and placed some chives seeds here and there.  Oh I pulled that giant radish plant out even though there was not much radish yet because it was kind of hogging the entire box.  It's not like I adore radishes or anything you know.  There are still three little radish plants in the box and I sprinkled some new thyme seeds in that spot (my little thyme plant died when I went to San Diego, it was unfortunate).  Thyme >> radishes.  I shall cook up the leaves tonight and see how they taste.

There is currently a marching band playing outside my window (at least that's what it sounds like).  From google, I found out that tonight is the Starlight Run and Parade.  I actually totally prefer watching these things on TV instead of in person, especially if there is extreme weather going on (weather outside the range of 65-75 is 'extreme' in my opinion).  I make exceptions only for fireworks and bands I like.  So far, nothing I  see on TV compels me to venture outside...

Scrapbook Pages: Jess's Baby Shower (revised)

Papers and Elements from Shabby Princess and Persnickety Prints

The ability to easily revise and readjust is my favorite thing about digital scrapbooking.  After getting a little practice in, I started to find my original layout for the Bunny's baby shower extremely drab.  It wasn't exactly as easy as a few clicks of the mouse, but I'm positive these revisions would have been impossibly laborious by hand.  I'm quite happy with the changes I made, although I can see making a few more little tweaks before sending this off to be printed.

This will be my last scrapbooking post for a while as I suddenly realized that I have an important deadline coming up.  I spent today writing writing writing and am daunted by how much is still left to do.  I deluded myself into revising these pages because I thought "these pages are already made, they won't take much time!" Haha, at least it was a nice break from the computer! (oh wait, it wasn't)