Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Disclaimer and recent random thoughts

Disclaimer: I really don't have much to say except a much needed disclaimer as to why I never post on my blog. I don't have the internet at home AND I just had two babies in the last year. So give me a break.

maybe I should make it a goal to post at least once a week. hmmm....

Random thought 1: Ben is hunting and is going to get the hugest bull elk of all time. (Why else would I be up on the computer at 11:00 instead of in bed with him?!) Oh, and did everyone know the difference between antlers and horns except for me? I didn't know until last night when Ben explained it to me. I feel like an idiot.

Random thought 2: I'm pretty excited that I'm almost down to the weight I was before I had baby #1, a.k.a. Teague. The only problem is that I've got considerably more flub now that before.

Random thought 3: Speaking of flub, I just tried on some jeans that I wore when I was dating Ben. Tried being the key word. I think I got them up to my knees.

Random thought 4: Um, I made another planner. This is the third one since my last planner post. Ridiculous.

Random thought 5: I think I've determined that I have a book obsession. making them, reading them...even reading about them. I could stay up all night reading book reviews. Oh wait, I've already done that...

Random thought 6: Crap, my baby is awake and I thought she was down for the night. BUT she's not crying, YAY!

thought 7: Did I mention that I hate to go to bed without Ben?

thought 8: I take it back. She is crying. Better go,

Goodnight!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Sneak Peek

Hello!

Here I am again after, let's see...4 months. AND this update isn't even about me. HA!

This post is actually for my sisters. We are having a family reunion in about a month and for our girl's night we are making altered books. We will be focusing on Christmas Traditions. I'm putting some pictures on here so they can start getting some ideas for embellishments that they can bring, and to get their brains moving on it.

Before I put the pictures on, let me just say that while most of the altered books I will show are differently themed than I would do myself, I am amazed at people's creativity.

Here we go!




















































Next are pictures from an altered christmas book that Lorraine made. This is closer to what we are actually going to do, only we are going to dedicate each page to a specific christmas tradition and the history of that tradition. ie. santa claus, candy canes, the north pole, cards, lights, etc.






































That's it! Mom and I are really excited to do them and have already put together some supplies.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Photo Peeks

Hello All, we got these done at Christmas and I'm finally adding them. I had to show off my cute boys (and if you look really close, you can see the one on it's way).





Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Post Script




P.S.
I figured out what I'm going to do with my planner I made. I'm going to make an altered book out of it with a LOVE theme. I'm going to put in it love quotes. There are a bunch of good ones from the book, "and they were not ashamed" It's going to be a, "I'm sort of obsessed with my husband" type book. TMI? find another blog.

Planner Peeks




OOOOKKKKK

So I did a little searching and stumbled across Keri Smith again. I found, "wreck this journal" in Barnes and Noble about 2 years ago and thought, "I HAVE to have this book". Did I ever get it? Nope, but my mind blunders upon the memory of it from time to time. Today I found her website and her blog and found that she had several more books. If I could make my journals like hers, I would love myself. (Not EXACTLY like hers, It would have my own flair- but I LOVE her style).

Here are her websites-
http://www.kerismith.com/
http://www.kerismith.com/blog/index.html

She has written a planner that I MUST see. I might just have to take a trip to the book store.

Never Ending Se-arch!

Alright- refering back to the last post- my book.

I made it to be my planner for the first six months of 2010. Hold on- I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have been on what I call, "The Endless Search For the Perfect Planner" since about 2006. I used to try all the different types of formats of planners that you can buy.
Buuuut
Franklin Covey was too constrictive, and didn't have enough empty space. (as in-NONE)
Barnes and Noble planners weren't bad, but again- no empty space.
Walmart planners had the same problem.

So last year, I, at long last decided that the only way to have my own planner is to MAKE my own planner. Little did I know that I would still have to test out a seemingly endless amount of formats.

My planner from the last 6 months of 2009 worked out pretty well but didn't quite work. I'll have to put in a pix of it later. I don't have it now. The first section I did was just a calender. and then there were about 6 other sections entitled things like, "Ooooh, Baby", "Shopping, Shopping", "It's all about ME", "Gifts: the Forbidden Section"... I don't remember the other two.

The bad part was that some of the sections were filled within 2 weeks, and others never filled up. Well, that drove me nuts. So I decided that this planner was going to have the first section be the calender, and the rest would just be blank for my journal. Actually, for EVERY journal- my daily journal, my scripture study journal, my sketching book, random notes, etc. Then I was going to make a table of contents at the beginning and color code each type of journal. That way I wouldn't have to precount and preguess how many pages each one would take. Sweet. I thought I had it solved.

I made my new planner out of 28 lb. paper, and by the time the calender section was done, I was like, " Oh crap! The book is going to be too fat to fit into my purse!" So I thought, "ok, no problem, I'll just make two books. One with a planner and one that is blank."

(Oh, I failed to mention before that the reason why I am combining all my journals into one and with my calender is because it's driving me crazy that my life history has to be referred to by reading 3 or 4 or 5 books!)

So I used the Calender for about 5 days to see how I liked it before making another book and I came to this conclusion-

I HATE it.

-Not enough blank space (That is ALWAYS the problem)
-Because I made it I can't just toss it about and abuse it. You can already see by the pictures that it's starting to wear.

So I did a google search on
"Best Planner ever" and found The Planner Pad.

I thought I could replicate it in a simple notebook. I haven't tried it yet. I still need the perfect notebook for the job. AND notebooks are lined. Which won't work. I enjoy too much the freedom of clean paper.

Ok, I think My ranting and raving are all done for now. For those of you who were bored enough to read this whole thing, I will update you shortly.

Until Then, the planner saga persists.

productive peeks

I made a book!

I've been wanting to do this for.....let's see- YEARS. Not sure how long exactly. But anyway, I did some research on the internet and learned from a good video how to do the coptic book binding stitch

Ok- here's the video link. It was BY FAR the easiest tutorial I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHAJyzzb4EE

Aaaaand here's the book-

Here's the front


And the back-


the details-




the inside back cover (which is the same as the front, but it had stuff taped to it)-


OH MY HECK it posted sideways. How annoying.

Now for the embarrassing part. sigh.

So I thought that hemp would match the book the best for the binding thread. BAD IDEA. Hemp could have been cool but the make of it was much too inconsistent (you'll see when you look at the up-close of the binding). Some parts of it are fat and some are skinny. It was also kind of harsh to the paper and caused it to rip easier as I was sewing.

Other mistake- I forgot to test the grain of the chip board (which was too thin in the first place) that I used for the cover so THAT was a pain.

Oh yea, and if you look at the second detail picture, you'll see newspaper print. When I was mod podging the paper onto the chip board (I did it over newspaper to protect the table) I left it on the newspaper while it was still wet and there you have it. Newspaper remains. grrr.

So here's proof of my learning curve-





Next post- a "kind-of" part two about the book. not about the making of the book, but it's purpose.