10/19/12

A moment-in-time, with kid stuff.

I took this photo this morning because I want to remember. I love the randomness of all this everyday clutter, taking up space on our living room ottoman. The bits and pieces of what the kids are into these days. Little treasures of their everyday life. The kind of days that tend to zoom by us. The kind of days in which we seem to not remember these types of little details. It's not just a warm beautiful autumn day I want to remember. It's this part of our daily lives on a warm beautiful, autumn day that I want to remember.

 

10/10/12

Connecting + Pinterest


Funny story about blogging. You can't wait to start a blog and want to blog everyday then you want a break. During said break you discover all the other ways to socially connect with people. Such an increase from the days when you started blogging here back in 2006 that it could be overwhelming if you tried to connect using all of them. I actually began blogging earlier than 2006,  but back then I started a blog on live journal, around 2000-2001.  So much has changed.

Emailing friends and family used to be the main way to "connect" then came Facebook. I thought about it recently and the only times I email now are for work related or school/volunteer related topics. Interestingly enough, junk mail always finds a way in. Ha. I never did tweet but I finally flickr'd, then came pinning, and I'm eyeing Instagram as a possibility next.

Well, I guess so much hasn't changed. We still like to connect and share we just go about it differently, at blazing speeds it seems. The funny thing is that while I was on Pinterest one night about a month ago I saw one of my older card pictures on someone's board {the photo above}. I did a double take. I hopped off the couch, OMG! But since no one was around to share this nerdy moment with, because it was about one o'clock in the morning, I sat back down.  I just had to see for myself, and yes there it was. I was flattered yet perplexed at how such an old post, from '08, could have made its way to a crowded place like Pinterest. Go figure.  Where was i going with this?  Oh yea, and funny story, that's how I made my way back to this blog.


Through the stats on the blog I discovered that the post from this one sizzix papercraft experiment is the most popular on my blog. It was also listed on a craft site much later. I never checked those stats that much, so when I found out in 2010, it was a pleasant surprise. :) I also enjoyed reading the many comments about it, some from '09, '10 and '11. Thanks!

I have also moved up to the LifeStyle Crafts letterpress machine, good results, not crazy about the plastic plates, felt they could have done a better job on that. I barely use my original sizzix now. But just last week my daughter, who is in 7th grade now (she was only 6 when I started this blog!) wanted to use some die cut letters for a social studies project so we hauled out the old reliable machine.

I love the look of embossed paper still. Recently discovered so many nice embossing folders from stampin'up and darice, they have been my first purchases for crafts in a long time. See, around the same time I took breaks from blogging I also took breaks from buying too many craft/scrap booking supplies. It felt good not to overload, or just even not to think about or obsess over whether I had the latest and trendiest stuff. Goodbye to over buying, and now I only buy what I need, really really love and can get much use out of.

Cheers to connecting!

Watercolor thank you

Still enjoying the watercolor for card makers class. Since I wasn't able to follow along each day I'm still busy practicing some of...