On Top of the World

Our flight to the glacier:

template by K. Pertiet.  

Red Rocks Rock!

Just piddling around today in my digi file, trying out a new organization method (as usual) and came across a mini kit by christine smith called Butterfly Fly Away.  Grabbed a template and randomly chose a set of photos and came up with this.  Mini kits give me a small choice, which is good.  I did use some brackets I had in my bracket file.  The template called for brackets.  The alpha is by LeeBenkersDesigns with a red paper clipped to it and some effects.

Three Boys and a Girl

I used Coffeeshop Actions on three cell phone photos, then took a freebie template by clivesay and a free kit by Laura G from Cinnamon Scraps.  This was fun!

CT for Lee Benkers Designs

I am so excited to announce that I am now on Lee Benkers Designs Creative Team.  She is a digital designer that sells her kits at Hummies World and recently put out a call for CTs.  So here we are!

I am not sure how many digital scrapbookers follow my blog, but I know a lot of my followers just read my blog because they know me and I tell them to read it!  So for them I will explain what on earth a CT is.

CT stands for Creative Team. Lee is a new designer and I am the first member of the team.  Which is great because I hate to arrive late for anything!

Why do designers need a Creative Team?  So you can see beautiful digital scrapbook pages made with their kits and then go buy them so you can make your own pages.  They need this visual ooomph because in the store their kit looks like this:

Wow, that is pretty, but it is also a bit of a jumble.  How do you decide if you want to buy it?  Do you like the colors?  The theme? Do you spot specific elements that you just have to have?  To help you decide, the designer puts "samples" on the store gallery page.  And all of us love samples.  And with digi samples you get cool ideas to "scraplift".

For this kit, Lee made several sample pages that I do plan to scraplift!  I also made four pages for her.  She only asked for one, but I never do anything halfway and, besides, I am the only team member so far.  And I loved the kit.  And I have lots of loose old pics laying around I need to have a "spark" to scrap.  So here are my four:

As you can see, each one is quite different, and each one uses different elements and papers from her kits.  I still have not mastered the art of clustering lots of items, so I wanted to make sure all the lovely items in the kit were seen, and that seemed to take four pages for my style of scrapbooking.  The string of pearls that frames The Elegant Fifties was hard for me to think of a use, but I loved the white flower and I suddenly remembered this old print of a formal photography session that my parents had done of me, and a really nice page was born!

Each month look for Lee's latest kit on my blog and my take on it.

Scrapping with Pink

Ha!  Now I get to do girlie layouts for a new baby.  Welcome Teaghan Williams to the family!  She joins her three big brothers out in Texas. The photo came via cell phone text from her mom and dad.

Fascination kit Scrap girls July by Durin Eberhart

Breakfast Solved

I don't like breakfast foods in the morning; never have.  I will eat breakfast foods for lunch or dinner, just not when I wake up.  It is a problem, since the fuel breakfast delivers in the morning is very important.  I have always relied on cereal as my go-to meal.  But I don't like boxed cereals all that much, and they are mostly air.  Cooked oatmeal is okay occasionally in the winter, but I am not a fan.  I have been eating cornflakes for about a year, but am sick of those, too.  I mostly rely on a spoonful of crunchy peanut butter.  I even mix milk into my orange juice.  As you see, I am a problematic morning person.

Enter Holland America Lines breakfast muesli.  I am in love. This is a photo I found on the internet that is closest to what my version looks like.

During our cruise we had access to The Neptune Lounge, which had food and coffee and juice available all day.  (capuccino at touch of a button....oh my). The first morning I was looking over all the lovely bite sized tidbits available for breakfast (hello, continental style....no bacon and eggs than goodness).  I spotted some small white bowls full of something that looked like oats and milk, topped with some berries.  One spoonful and I was hooked!

Back home I did some googling and came up with how to recreate this for my daily morning meal.  You can go to the Eat Better to Live Better blog to get the full story.  For now, this is what I do:

Before I go to bed I put about 1/3 cup of raw, old fashioned oats into a small bowl, add milk to cover, drop in some dried fruit pieces and maybe some dried coconut, stir in some agave or honey, cover it and put it in the fridge.  The next morning I put in about 1 teaspoon of Vanilla CoffeeMate just because I am an addict, and spoon away.  Eventually I will get around to grating some apple into it to make it truly a Holland America Cruiseline treat.

I still eat that crunchy peanut butter on a spoon, too!

My current fave is at Trader Joe's.

Summer Feeling

Inspiration for this LO came from the Twisted Pixel challenge for July.  Template by Crisdam Designs, Gotta Pixel.net.   

I absolutely need a starting point for my designs and it usually comes from challenges using templates or scraplifts.  

This hike was so much fun.  Our guide was full of energy and it was like having your daughter around!  This photo of her, taken by hubby, embodied the mood of all our guides, all week.  Sunshine and warm in Alaska...a dream for all of them!

Note:  This is a photo of Larry taking a photo on the hike.  Bottom left is a photo I took of a marker:  Ice Limit 1920.  They had another marker we saw from 1970.  We were actually walking where the glacier used to be.

Baby Whale Playing

One of our excursions was on a boat to look for whales.  These guides know the whales by name in the bay and pretty much know where they are.  And the guides are all connected by radio to let each other know of a sighting.

We saw a few full grown whales and got some nice photos.  More on those in another post.  Today I have a story about a baby whale.

This little whale put on quite a show for us.  Five whale watching boats ended up in a big circle around it and he absolutely knew we were there.  Cameras were clicking and everybody was laughing and clapping.  After about 20 minutes, all the boats had to head back to the dock and Little Whale was not happy.  He started pounding the water with his tail, just like a kid having a tantrum.  It was hilarious.

After I finished my layout, I decided to play with my Ice Pop action from Coffeeshop. Maybe even a better look.

Alaska Memories Begin

The Alaska trip is over, the photos are uploaded, the memories fresh.  Sounds like time to make my photo book/journal!  I plan to make one "artsy" one with my stories and a second one that is simply the best photos in collages.  Best of both worlds and keep everybody (hubby) happy.

As noted in my last post, we began our adventure in Vancouver, BC.  It is a city of steel and glass, historic district, and China Town.  An hour's walk will indeed take you back in time.

In our walking forays into the part of the city nearest the port, I noticed two types of people: those older members of the population killing time waiting for their particular cruise ship to board (us) and the young 20 and 30-somethings trendily dressed, texting, talking into their mobiles, earbuds securely in place, rushing along the sidewalk... smoking.  All kinds of people, dressed in all kinds of trends.  Very melting pot, very European. We could have been back on the main shopping street of Frankfurt, Germany.

So......time to start those pages.  Today I chose these two photos:

The view from our hotel room:

 The famous Water Street corner with the steam powered clock: 

A little digi magic:

I took the cityscape photo and used the new action in Picasa to turn it into a b&w sketch.  I added the photo of the historic district and put two grungy edges over it to set it apart a bit.   The alpha is Basic Black by chelle creations and I added a clear glass action to it.  (steel and glass.....get it?).  The grungy stuff in upper left is from the kit Time Flies by Kokon.

It is a start.  And it took me way too long.  I need to get my mojo in gear!