Christmas Photo Shoot

We made our second annual trek to the Muttart Conservatory with the Gowdy's to take a few family photos.  It's a good idea, in principle, but it is often hard to get the kids to cooperate.  I find, however, that bribery works wonders, at least for the first ten or twenty minutes.  After that, it doesn't matter if I have promised a prize from the treasure box or cold hard cash, the boys seem unable to stay still for any photograph at all.  So we work fast.  And we usually capture at least a few good pictures. 

But here's one of the first photos we took. Everyone is looking at the camera and not too overly squinty. (My oldest has a tendency to squint in almost every picture). And then it went downhill from here........
 
This particular day, the boys seemed to take particular joy in posing for a variety of fighting moves for the camera.

Backhand

Punch

Nose Pinch

Knee

Smother

Strangle

Christmas Ornament Webisode

There's a great new webisode on the Canadian Scrapbooker website where Jackie Ludlage demonstrates how to make some really easy and gorgeous christmas ornaments from paper.  This is a great way to use up your paper scraps and impress your kids!  :-)

Christmas Tags

if you've got some Christmas related odds and ends laying around on your scrapbooking table, put together some tags.  They look great hanging on your tree or stick them onto a christmas present for that extra special personal touch.  

An old photo of the boys with Santa makes a cute tag.  The sticker is from October Afternoon, and the candy cane, I just downloaded from the internet after googling a candy cane image.  I resized and printed it and then decorated it up a little with some glitter glue.

Making Memories paper, paper holly and sticker, a free vintage Santa clipart image downloaded from the internet and some golden dewdrops from Robin's Nest.

This Santa image is from Crafty Secrets.  It's covered with a couple of coats of ultra thick embossing enamel, which I then just cracked after I put it in the freezer for a few minutes.  It's actually left over from an article I wrote five years ago for the inaugural issue of Canadian Scrapbooker.   The cracked UTEE technique doesn't take too long and it sure gives a special look to a wintery image.

The Gerbils

My youngest desperately wanted a pet gerbil.  It was one of the top things on his list to Santa that he started writing in October.   I was a little concerned as to how Santa would transport a gerbil through the cold snowy days of December so I checked on Kijiji and happened to find a gerbil with accessories for sale for a low price nearby where I lived.  So, gerbil #1, christened Shadow because she is black, came home as an early present.

Naturally, his older brother also then wanted his own gerbil, so I checked Kijiji again and found a free gerbil with cage and accessories in Edmonton, so gerbil #2, Toffee, came home.  So far, it's been great.  The gerbils are low maintenance, not smelly and very cute.  They are easy enough to take care of that the kids can do it themselves, with a little help with the cage cleaning that we do every few weeks.  Part of the deal of acquiring the gerbils is that each boy has to spend quality time socializing with their gerbil every day.  If they don't 'have time' because they are too busy playing video games or whatever, the gerbils will go away to somebody who will take care of them properly. 

One of the concerns I had about bringing small rodents into the house, is how safe that would be with our two cats.  Knock on wood, but it seems to be all right so far as long as the gerbil is safely enclosed.  Charlie doesn't seem to pay much attention to them, but Rusty is fascinated by the gerbils and spends hours sitting by the cage.   Or on top of the cage. 

One hundred books

I found this one on my friend Rhonda Steed's blog (and she said she got it from facebook). 
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.  Who knows if this list was really started by the BBC or is one of those internet urban legends that floats around.  Still interesting.  (As an aside, I googled it after I finished assessing the list below, and it looks like there are number of different 'BBC' lists floating around). 

Quite honestly, a lot of these books on this list I read thirty or so years ago and don't remember much!  When I was young, I tried to work my way through a lot of the 'classics'. Might be time to reread a few.  Some of them I disliked and struggled to finish.  The really good ones I reread every few year.  The Hobbit and Gone with the Wind are wonderful every single time I read them!  I own a handful of the others (Life of Pi, DaVinci Code, etc.) and just haven't got to them yet.  There's a few on this list that I never heard of before.  We could probably all make our own lists.........  get out there and read!  Preferably with some friends - discussing books is motivational for getting them read.

Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
14 The Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19 The Time-Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graeme
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgommery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Nova Scotia

well, I'm a little behind, since I was there during the last week of September, but can I just say I absolutely adore Nova Scotia?  Oh my goodness, it just suits me perfectly.  I could move there in a heartbeat.  I love the climate and the people and the landscape and the smell of the ocean.  I went with two of my friends, Kim and Sue, on a 'mommy' road trip and we could not have had a better time.  We talked and laughed and photographed and did not cook a single meal nor clean up after any child.

Here's where we stayed:  Cottage on Black Rock Road

Kim and her husband Bill bought this cottage a couple of years ago and rent it out through Cottages in Canada.  It's a wonderful little gem sitting right on the Bay of Fundy, perfectly situated for relaxing and exploring most of Nova Scotia.  If you're heading that way and need a place to stay, it would be perfect for a family vacation.  I'm hoping to take my family there in a couple of years.  I think everybody needs to visit Nova Scotia at least once!

Book Closeouts Sale

If you're looking for inexpensive books,  Book Closeouts has a great sale on right now, 50% off of the already discounted prices of many books, plus free shipping over $35.  They don't have the brand brand new releases, but there is still plenty to choose from.   I ordered a bunch of books for my oldest son, a voracious 10 year old reader, for a few bucks a piece.  On his list were anything by Eoin Colfer, Erin Hunter and the Warriors series, the Ranger's Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney, Simpsons comic books, and I found all of these at Book Closeouts yesterday.  I also ordered a few books for me - a novel, a cookbook, a photography book and a papercraft book.  All told, I got 13 books I wanted for less than $40, including tax, a pretty sweet deal.  ;-)

November Update

ooh, what a crazy month it's been, but every day of November that passes brings us a day closer to Christmas..........  and eventually out the other side to spring again.  Can't wait!  So far, November has contained my wedding anniversary (22 years, can you imagine!), my husband's birthday, a scrapbooking weekend in Pigeon Lake, lots of work deadlines, magazine deadlines, a bout with a stomach virus and the serious start of indoor soccer, meaning four or five days a week hanging out at the indoor soccer pitches.  This is the first year we have tried indoor soccer, and it is a lot of fun!  But definitely a serious time commitment.....

I just received the winter edition of Canadian Scrapbooker in the mail.  Always a happy mail day, and this issue was especially significant as it is the five year anniversary since the magazine began!!!!!!!!   I had a lot of fun with cork in the latest magazine - my big frugal score was a couple of rolls of cork shelf liner on clearance at Superstore.  Perfect for embellishments!  The thinner and cheaper the cork, the easier it is to punch and tear (although sometimes it tears too much so be cautious).  The thicker cork sheets that you can purchase for a bit more money are much sturdier.

Books and Things........

It's been a crazy couple of weeks.  I was travelling for fun and for business, and got awfully far behind in everything while I was gone.  Especially at work. Nothing like playing catch up.......  but I think my head is back above water. 

Anyway, if you are a book lover, or a book buyer, Chapters Online has FREE Shipping on orders over $25 at chapters.indigo.ca.  It used to be that you had to spend $39 on books to get free shipping, so this is a great deal.  I hope it lasts.  I have had excellent service from Chapters and buy most of books through their online store.  Besides the free shipping, I love that I can return purchases to a bricks and mortar Chapters store.  Sometimes online purchases ain't what you are expecting........

I read a wonderful book last week.  Not a type of fiction that I am normally drawn to, but I started reading this one and could not put it down.  It is a fictional diary from a woman in the late 1800's in the Arizona Territory, and was inspired by the true story of the author's pioneering great-grandmother.  Adventure, and a love story, and I couldn't put it down.  I was thrilled to find out there are two MORE books in the series, so I can't wait until those show up in my mailbox and I can continue enjoying the life of Sarah Prine.

Five Years...........

I find it very hard to believe, but Canadian Scrapbooker magazine will be celebrating FIVE YEARS of publishing with the next issue!!!  It really doesn't feel like five years.  I remember so clearly the excitement and inspiration in our initial brainstorming sessions where we dreamed up what we wanted in a scrapbooking magazine and the wonder of seeing that very first issue.  Things have naturally evolved and improved over the years, but the basic components are still pretty much the same.   And the excitement and inspiration are still there, but multiplied at least ten times.........  Many kudos to Jackie and Katharina for the wonderful magazine they have created and the amazing team they have put together.  I am honoured to work with them all and have them as my friends.   We never have any fun together.  ;-)  

Five years ago, when I started writing the Frugal Scrapbooker column, I had no idea how it would evolve and if I would eventually run out of ideas and inspiration.  I am happy to report that I never seem to run out of ideas!  LOL  They seem endless and I am already mentally planning and very excited for frugal columns in the next handful of issues.  I seem to enjoy scrapbooking (and the associated photography) more and more with each passing week....... it makes me so happy.  I think I look at the world a lot more differently as a scrapbooker and photographer, and that is a good thing.  I find joy in the details.  I love the creativity that this hobby offers and the smell of new paper, the feel of grosgrain ribbon and the wonder of stamping. Among other things.  ;-)

Thank you all for supporting Canadian Scrapbooker magazine over the years.  I look forward to many more fabulous issues!!!!!!!! 

Anyway, in honour of five fabulous years of publishing, Canadian Scrapbooker magazine is celebrating!!!  There will be a contest and a special collector’s edition of the Winter 2010/11 issue, available to individual subscribers

COLLECTOR’S EDITION

An exclusive front cover will define the collector’s edition of the upcoming WINTER 2010/11 issue of Canadian Scrapbooker magazine. The content of the collector’s edition will be identical to that of the standard edition. The collector’s edition will be sent to all active subscriptions only.  Celebrate with us!!  Subscribe or renew today by clicking here.

$1000 PRIZE PACKAGE GIVE-AWAY

Every active subscription (including gift subscriptions) on February 28th, 2011 has a chance to win a $1,000 prize package of inspiring scrapbooking products!
The 5th anniversary collector’s edition will not be available on newsstands or in independent stores.
*Active subscriptions for the 5th Anniversary Collector’s Edition are those subscribers who have active subscriptions on December 1st, 2010. Subscriptions received after December 1st, 2010 will start with the SPRING 2011 issue and will be automatically entered into the $1,000 Give-away.

**Active subscriptions for the 5th Anniversary $1000 Prize Package Give-away must be active and in good standing at midnight, on February 28th, 2011. Subscriptions that have expired with the receipt of their WINTER 2010/11 issue and have not renewed before February 28th, 2011 will not be entered into the 5th Anniversary Give-away.

For complete contest rules & regulations, click here.

Next week I will be here

so looking forward to it!  Haven't been to Nova Scotia since I drove across Canada almost thirty years ago.  Now I am going with some wonderful friends and will be looking at things with a photographer's eye.  I found it certainly makes a difference on how I see things.

I will see some lighthouses......

Plenty of fishing boats........

Will hopefully go whale watching on the Bay of Fundy........

and if it's raining, fortunately the Annapolis Valley has some great wineries and it just happens to be the Wine Festival next week!

It is the earliest apple harvest on record, so there will be lots and lots of wonderful fresh orchard apples to eat.

I am also looking forward to eating some of these!  I have had lobster meat, but have never tackled a whole lobster by myself.   Prairie girl.  ;-)   See you next week!

Turquoise

One of the colours featured in Canadian Scrapbooker in the summer was turquoise.  It's a fabulous colour and always makes me think of swimming pools and shallow tropical waters.  But it also works well for ice and glaciers!

Patterned papers, ink, stamps and ribbon are all Stampin Up, ribbon slide is Magenta (which I covered with a few layers of white embossing powder) and American Crafts provided the fun 'Cool' button.  I also used some mica flakes from Melissa Frances, they were perfect for adding a little sparkle reminiscent of snow.  If you want to see the layout bigger, just click on it.   Cheesecloth from my kitchen.  ;-) 

Mosaics

I have always loved the look of mosaics.  My neighbor Kim does amazing mosaic art with bits of broken tile, and there is just something so neat about using little bits of something to make a picture.  All of us scrapbookers have plenty of bits of paper, so with a little patience (and a sheet of two-sided adhesive), paper mosaics can be a perfect solution to using up scraps and having a little artistic fun.  If you haven't, be sure to check out the Mosaics article in the fall edition of the Canadian Scrapbooker magazine.  Here's a couple of my layouts from that article:

Photo mosaics are easy to do - on the back side of the photo, mark out 1" squares with a pen and ruler.  Number each square from 1 to 16.  You would be amazed how difficult it sometimes is to put a picture back together when it has been cut into sixteen pieces!  Numbering saves a lot of time.  Adhere the squares to a piece of cardstock with a thin border in between each square.  That's it.  You can keep going, and cover a page, as I did, or just make a mosaic out of one special photo.

The paper mosaic ducks are made using a Spellbinders duck die and two-sided adhesive sheets.  Patterned paper and brothers quote is by Quick Quotes, little paper flag is by Nikki Sivils. 

And mosaics can make an impressive card!  Cut a piece of two sided adhesive, stick one side to a piece of cardstock, put bits of paper on the other side (I used bits of JilliBean Soup), then cover with glitter or fine sand to fill in the sticky gaps between paper pieces.  Shake off the excess powder, add a sentiment and a bit of ribbon, and you have a beautiful card.  Have fun!  They all turn out a little bit different. 

Tomato Blight

well, apparently not just a bad tomato year for me.  Now I know what the problem is with my tomato plants!  I had noticed some very unusual disease symptoms but thought this was caused in part by the constant wetness and low temperatures.  That certainly helped, but turns out that an unusual tomato blight is wiping out tomatoes across Alberta.  The whole story is here in today's Edmonton Journal.  Very disappointing for many people who look forward to that amazing homegrown tomato harvest. :-(

Winged Things

so, with the temperatures being definitely 'coolish', a lot of winged things are not moving as quickly as they used to (or at all).  I came across this moth (at least I think it's a moth) sitting right in the middle of the sidewalk the other day basking in the sun and trying to warm up.  An hour later, he was still there, so I grabbed the camera and tried to sink down to his level.  He was very cooperative, not moving a millimeter while I was trying to focus.  As many of you know, getting a good close up macro photograph is a bit tricky.   I'm not sure what happened to him, the next time I checked he was gone.

And then when I was wandering around my garden, I spotted this wasp sunbathing on my sea holly.  He also cooperated and held still for a few minutes while I tried to get him into sharp focus.  Love how this turned out.

This spotted fella was resting on a thistle plant in my raspberry patch in late August.  I have never ever seen a moth quite like him before.  He was very striking!

And yesterday, this lovely critter resting on the sunflower near my compost bins.  He was very obliging, staying put for long enough to grab the camera!

Must be fall

I've covered my tomato plants two nights in a row, and the weather forecast is horrible, so I guess I finally have to give up and call it a season.  It was an abysmal year for many things in the garden, especially my treasured tomatoes, because of consistent cool wet conditions.  Poor things just never got a chance to bask in the sun and so I hardly have enough ripe tomatoes to make a single bowl of fresh salsa.  :-(

Oh well, time to move on.  The boys have been back at school since the end of August, the leaves are starting to turn and the days are noticeably shorter.  Guess that means I will have more time to blog! 

Here's a fall layout that I did a while back with Jillibean Soup product, and MyStampBox little alphabet stamps.  I love the quote, so appropriate for this neck of the woods.

Blog Hop Winners

Thanks for playing along!  Hope you had fun.  I loved reading all of your comments.  I just wish summer was longer.  :-(

Winners of the prizes for the first ever Canadian Scrapbooker blog hop are posted here.  Congratulations everybody!!!!!!!!!!  Tthere are some lovely prizes from a variety of manufacturers.

Now, be sure to check out the Blogiversary contest just posted on the Hands on Photography website.  One lucky winner will win a WeR Memory Keeper Cinch and be published in the Canadian Scrapbooker magazine.  And even if you don't win the contest you will take some great photos and get some scrapbooking done!  :-)

Welcome to the CS Hands On! Photography Blog Hop!

Welcome to my blog and thanks for participating in our Hands On! photography blog hop!!!!!!!!

You should have arrived here from Jackie Ludlage’s blog.   If you didn’t, please visit the Hands On! Photography blog HERE  to start at the beginning and visit each person’s blog in order, so that you don’t miss out on your chance to win any of the prizes!

We are celebrating the one year anniversary of the Canadian Scrapbooker Hands On! Photography blog, also referred to as the HOP blog. Last September, we launched the HOP blog as an added feature to the Hands On! Photography article in each issue, to offer more in-depth tutorials for the topics that Sue discussed in her articles.

Each month, Sue posts a new tutorial on the HOP blog, with photo examples and helpful links. Our magazine and blog readers are encouraged to submit their photos, which are then shared on the HOP blog and entitle them to a chance to win a randomly drawn prize each month!

I'm excited to announce that the blog hop prize I have to give away to one lucky commenter is this prize pack from Cosmo Cricket:


Want a chance to win this prize? In celebrating our one-year anniversary, we'd like to invite you to review one of our past tutorials. My choice is the December 2009 tutorial on Bokeh. To win, just visit this tutorial and leave a comment there, and then come back and leave me a comment with your favourite summer pasttime! It's as easy as that!

Thanks for participating in our blog hop!! Now, onto the next blog... You'll be visiting the talented Heather Starosielski!

More Peeks from Chicago

For you Harry Potter fans, Creative Imaginations is coming out with a whole line of paper and embellishments.  Isn't it great?  And as the mother of children that have dressed as Harry for Halloween, I'm thinking this might be perfect!

Anna Griffin had one of the nicest Halloween lines, in my opinion.  Lovely paper, with not a trace of purple in sight!  :-)

My Minds Eye also had a great Halloween line - check out the kraft paper at the bottom of this photo.

Let's see, what else..........  I have never purchased Studio Calico products before, but I will be looking for them now.  I was very impressed with their products.  Really fun paper lines and embellishments.  I especially liked the Elementary collection for school layouts.

And not sure how well this shows up in the photo (which shows some of the results instead of the actual dies), but Tim Holtz had a number of new Sizzix dies and embossing folders.  Some neat stuff here.

Nikki Sivils had some fun new releases - this is probably my favourite.  With two boys, I'm a sucker for blue, but it looks very versatile
.

Snapshots from Chicago

Now, I didn't make it into every booth at CHA, and I didn't always remember to take pictures.  Or sometimes it was too crowded to take photographs (Harmonie and Eche Park spring to mind).  But here's a selection of some of the up and coming scrapbook products that were displayed at CHA in Chicago.

Loved the Punky Sprouts booth, very fun mini-albums with canvas and corrugated cardboard!  Nice people and some great projects.

Canvas Home Concepts had all sorts of fun materials - lots of canvas of course, but also burlap, cork, jute, chalkboard - if you like the natural look, this company's products are right up your alley.  I loved it!

I thought TaDa Studios diecut papers were great!  Very unique and perfect for a special page!

The Prima booth was stunning, as always, with lots of gorgeous new products!

Coredinations is partnering with several other scrapbook manufacturers to produce specially embossed cardstock.  Here's a photo of the collaboration with Graphic 45:

Gorgeous, isn't it?

One of my favourite new tools was by WeRMemory Keepers - I love the look of stitching on my pages, and this looks like a reasonably priced tool to help me do that.  For hand stitching onto paper, most of you know that one must pierce holes first, then stitch.  Tthis gizmo will pierce the holes  for you in a variety of patterns simply by running the wheel over the paper.  Or, if you are not into sewing, you could just leave the pattern of little holes as a stand alone embellishment to your page.  Neat!