Scrapbook Saturday

While on our scrapbook retreat, we always end with our AYM meeting during "happy hour." This time we shared our January and February layouts. Our January theme was "there's no place like home!" For February, it was "the kitchen is the heart of the home!" 

Each month I give the girls a few things they can use on their page. 

This is Pam's layout. 

She found this really cute utensil rack that she used for her title. I cut one for myself because it's so darn cute! I included the little heart pockets with this month's handout. I don't remember what she put in hers, but from here it looks like it might be salt and pepper shakers. 

Pam chose to do her layout about her complete kitchen remodel. She used a file folder cut and attached on each side to hold more pictures. That's one of the easiest ways to make a fold-out and add more space.

Jeanne's January layout.

She started with our house growing up (she's my sister) and then showed all the houses she's had. I realized I took the picture wrong. The layouts should be swapped--ending with her house she lives in now. She included the address of each on the little envelopes.

Nancy did a cute and creative take on the kitchen layout with "Someone's in the kitchen with "Fancy"!--think of the song "Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah!' You started singing it, didn't you? You can't help it! "Fancy" is Nancy grandmother name. 

She was able to use the journaling sheet I included.  Those cupcake liners were a perfect embellishment for her page. 

Jeanne hopped on Pam's bandwagon with her utensil rack. It's too darn cute not to use! 

On the right page, the top photo strip lifts up to show more pictures. 

Karolyn also featured all of the places she's lived. 

She just about always stitches on her pages--which I love. 

This is Nancy's "home" layout. She did her layout on the building of their house in Devon Park. She was the first person I met when we moved to Nashville. Most all of our friends are from DP.

Nancy is the newest scrapbooker among us. She didn't start until she retired--about 10 years ago. She didn't need much in the way of a learning curve. She always comes up with some cute idea. I love how she made her journaling block look like a house! 

My house layout is all about our move to Nashville--everything was brand new--including our baby, Mindy. I also included our two previous homes and a little background on them.

My pages are always going to be more about the stories. My friends kind of roll their eyes when they see them--thinking I'm going to read ALL of it. But, I don't. I just give them the gist of each picture and just read the main part. I made a shaker box which included the year we moved to Nashville. 

This was a layout Jeanne did about their Alaskan cruise. 

This is Karolyn's "kitchen" layout. She always has so many old pictures to choose from.

Her page focused on the yellow stove they had in their kitchen growing up.

Pam also used the building of their home in Devon Park for her "home" page. They were our backdoor neighbors. Her oldest daughter, Anna was the same age as Mindy. Her daughter, Lauren was a year younger--they were babies back then! Those girls were back and forth all the time!

It looks like she and Karolyn had the same "house" background paper. 

Another layout for Jeanne. When we have "show and tell"--I try to take pictures. 

Jeanne cut everything you see on the Cricut. 

This is my February layout. I decided to go with the colors of pink and red to go with the month. I decided to use hearts and added "X's & O's" too. I also inked the background with a heart stencil.

I included a story about each of the girls and something that happened in the kitchen. My main story was about a dead spider that I picked up and tossed in the sink. I had no idea it was a mother carrying her babies on her back. Those teeny things started scattering all over. I ended up washing them down the drain--AFTER I got a picture--of course! I didn't like that the picture seemed kind of creepy. So, I typed my journaling on the pink vellum house paper that Susan shared with us. I also pleated it and sewed it to the hearts for fun! I put the quote about the kitchen being "the heart of the home" in the pocket--attaching it with a heart paper clip. 

Also, we did our title and end page for the album.

I design them every year--it's something I really enjoy doing. I saw this idea and adapted it for our theme (HOME) and thought it would be the perfect thing for our title page. 

Pretty easy. Print two large pictures. Print a full page of the map. Cut the map into a heart and fold in half. Sew a line of stitching up the middle and stamp whatever word you want. Using the folded heart, lay the 2nd house picture on top and cut out. Adhere to heart. Line up over the base photo and adhere. Use a photo turn to hold the heart closed. I cut a whole 12x12 page of little houses. That took a long time to cut--maybe 10 or 15 minutes! 

This is the end page. We did a simple weaving technique. Basically, I cut all of the strips and the base frame. I didn't have paper to waste for any mistakes. 

After the weaving, you cut it to size. The saying is printed on a transparency and attached with glue dots. Floss-filled buttons add a little extra texture. Make a little house with scraps and staple a ribbon across the bottom. 

We surely missed Janet on our retreat. Jeanne said that she would love to know what was on Janet's scrapbook table. Most likely she was working on either of these AYM layouts, or packing up for the retreat. I would love to know what was on her mind. I still can't believe she's gone. 

I just came across this! For old time's sake...

We went on a scrapbook cruise with my mom years ago. I cannot remember what year it was, but you can tell by the picture it was before phone cameras.

Okay, that's it for now.

Friday Funnies

In honor of all the amazing animals we've seen this week, here are some cartoons of animals we did not see on this trip!

Five Things Thursday

A few more pictures from our trip.

Yesterday, we had an amazing private wildlife boat tour--seeing 27 species of birds, assorted other animals and two types of monkeys--howlers and white-faced monkeys (think Marcel on Friends--Ross' pet). Those monkey actually jumped on the roof of our pontoon boat and perched on the rails. It was crazy and the babies are so cute!! 

I don't have those pictures yet. Olly is our in house professional photographer. He has one of those fancy cameras with long lenses and knows how to use it! He's going to create a shared album for us when he has the time. We've been on the go constantly!

In the meantime, the photos I'm posting are ones I've taken or Nicky took--our second family photographer. Basically, the only pictures I take are the ones no one else is interested in--like flowers! And boy, do I have some good ones! that will be a different post. Hmmm, maybe "Flowers on Friday!"

1. Last night, we had a private sunset tour on Lake Arenal. This picture is in front of the Arenal volcano. Butch, Stephanie, Nicky and most of the grands hiked part of that volcano yesterday morning. 

This trip was a bit boring compared to our wildlife ride, but it was still fun. They prepared a huge snack of fresh fruit: pineapple, grapes, watermelon, guava, assorted plantain chips, cookies and nuts. They also had a cooler full of beer, juices, water and Cokes. This type of snack is included in all of our tours. 

All of the food here has been delicious. Several of our tours have included lunch. Our breakfast is included at our resort. With the added snacks, we've only had dinner one night. It's been a lot of food.

2. We got this picture after our wildlife tour in Los Chiles.

3. On our first day, we visited a family farm. They had award winning members of the local high school dance team perform for us. Of course, we had to join in--sort of like a conga line. 

After the tour, we had a delicious buffet lunch--it was ridiculous--the amount of food they prepared for the 12 of us. We figured the leftovers would probably go to the pigs. Costa Rica is known for their sustainable lifestyle.

4. We're staying at the Tabacon Resort and Thermal Springs. 

This was one of the pools. I love this picture of Stephanie with her fancy Pina coladas--she didn't realize she ordered the expensive ones in the pineapple! One is Nickys.

5. I have never experienced anything like these springs. They are hot and cold. I like being more in the middle so you get both circulating around you--cold then hot--really relaxing. The waterfalls are cold.

The springs are free for the public to use, but the resort has a private area. I don't know how many individual pools there are, but we've been able to have one all to ourselves every time we went! This pictures shows us in two of the pools. You can order festive drinks or food. I had a couple BBC's (Baileys, Bananas, & Colada--one of my favorite drinks). The downside of the springs is that the bathrooms are all the way at the bottom! We stayed at the second to last pool from the top! Awesome. This might be the highlight of my trip! It was just the best experience--something so different and new to me (us). At my age, new experiences are few and far between!

Today, as you are reading this, we are off on another new adventure. We are riding ATV's. We've never done it before. I'm anxious to see more animals and flowers. I'll be going slow! We'll end the day with a night hike. 

Friday, we head back to San Jose where we'll have a day at another resort before flying home on Saturday. As always, our trips fly by! Fingers crossed that the airlines don't ruin this trip!

Travel Tuesday

Okay, so we're in Costa Rica with the fam. It's beautiful. It's the cleanest country you'll ever go to. It's hot. It's humid. I'm drenched all the time. My hair is frizzy. Oh well. We're having a great time, so none of the matters.

On our way to Arenal, we stopped for this photo op. 

Everyone is taking pictures, but I haven't gotten them yet. I don't bother with the people pictures--or even the animals. The rest of the family is busy with them. I take flower pictures. I've already taken about 50 flower pictures. I love flowers. Especially in other countries. They are so unusual. So, here are a few:

Our guide told me the names, but not only do I not remember them, I couldn't even repeat them at the time. I do have a flower identification app on my phone, but I don't even care what the names are. It's not like I can find them at home. 

This was the most unusual thing I've seen so far--and my picture doesn't do it justice. I wish I'd had more time to get a better one, but we were on a tour. As it is, I'm the one lagging behind looking at the flowers!

It is the world's tiniest bee hive!! That greenish thing is it! It's about 1/2" and the tiny bees--which are really hard to see in my picture--are 1/8" in length. There are about 6 buzzing around here. They are called Mariola bees. Here's the picture I pulled off the internet, so you can see what they look like up close:

They are stingless bees. Their honey is used for medicinal purposes! They were the cutest things I've ever seen!

Okay, that's it for today. We had two hikes today ("hanging bridges" and "sloth hunting") and I'm really tired!!

Me on Monday

Greetings from Costa Rica. 

Posting will be sporadic this week as I spend time with my family. 

Something for Sunday

Today, March 8th is International Women's Day. 

It's a day to reflect on the most influential women in your life. For me, that woman would have to be my mother. 

I cannot believe that I have so few photos of her. I guess I've scrapbooked most of them. I should have thought to take pictures of them so I could refer to them again and again. So, these few will have to do.

When she was just 22, she had 4 children under 2! We were all born in January, me--1952, Ronnie--1953 and the twins (Janice & Jennifer)--1954!

Whenever I felt sorry for myself that I had a husband going to school or traveling with work when I had babies, I just thought about her and how hard she had it! 

To top it off, she was widowed at 35 with 7 children! I was the oldest---15 at the time. My youngest sister was just 2 years old. I admire my mother so much. She was a "stay-at-home-mom" and managed to continue that for 16 years after our dad died. She was committed to staying home and taking care of us. She took in typing to earn extra money. She worked through the holidays on a part-time basis at a local department store while we were in school. She did it for the extra money and the store discount she received to buy Christmas presents. She had other small part-time jobs, but for the most part, she was always home when we were.

She canned everything and made assorted jellies. The freezer was full of the fruits and vegetable the local farmers gave her to help out. She bought "day old" baked goods from the Hostess store for our lunches--I still remember she got 6 packs of Twinkies or Ding Dongs for a dollar!

She was an original "refunder." In the early '70's--I guess you would call it a movement. People saved and sent in boxtops and assorted other proofs of purchase to receive coupons for free stuff. She could go to the grocery store and get a cart full of food for the cost of the tax! She was a hard worker--always. My memories of her were either doing dishes or laundry. She was always working. 

When my youngest sister, Joyce was a senior in high school, she could no longer afford to stay home. She went to work full-time and was ultimately transferred to South Bend, IN. We were all grown then, but still couldn't believe that our mom was moving!! Joyce--the baby, graduated from high school and went with her. It was fortuitous for me as Sandy was starting college at Saint Mary's in Notre Dame, IN. It was comforting to know that her grandma would be there--"just in case!"

Here is Sandy with her great-grandma and grandma.

I think this picture was taken about a year before mom passed away at 78. Much too young! 

She was an incredible woman--very strong for the times. I'm proud she was my mom! 

Okay, this could be a Mother's Day tribute too! I love you mom!

Scrapbook Saturday

First off, I want to mention that yesterday, we broke a record here in Nashville, TN. We reached 85 degrees for a high temperature! Our norm for this time of year is 58! It actually got warm in the house!!

Now on to my regular post. This is sort of scrapbooking. 

Today is Janet's "Celebration of Life" memorial. My niece, Jackie, asked Jeanne and me if we would make the photo boards. We did what we do best--scrapbooked them! Janet was our scrapbooking buddy, so we wanted to honor her this way. She was always self-conscious of herself in pictures (as most of us are). She was usually behind the camera. We picked the very best of her and we had plenty to choose from. 

These 9 boards (foam core) represent 16.5 hours--between, editing, cropping and printing pictures and then laying them out and adhering. We used 188 pictures in all. 

They turned out pretty good--don't you think?

This is my favorite picture of the bunch! It epitomizes the 1970's! My brother and Janet look so young and cute! 50 years ago! My how time has flown!

My brother, Ronnie passed away in 2018. I'm so happy that they are back together again!