Lunch in Luxembourg

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Yesterday's scone experiment turned out GREAT so I'm going to be writing that down for my personal cookbook.  And yesterday the hubs did touch-ups on the living room accent wall that I painted on Saturday and I got all my books organized and put back on the shelves--I am REALLY loving how the dark blue looks on that one wall with the lighter blue we had already painted.  Now we need to get to work on the entryway, up the stairs, and the loft and hallway upstairs.  Slowly but surely this house is turning colors!

Anyway, we're here for scrapbook pages today and I have a sweet little layout to share:

Okay, so it was Very Cool to live in a place where you could decide on a random weekend to drive to a different country for lunch and still be home in time for dinner.  It was a two-hour drive from our house in Germany to the capital of Luxembourg.  We had lunch at a place called the Chocolate House, where Ryan tried his first croissant, and we bought a bunch of chocolate truffles which melted on the way back to the car.  It turned out much warmer that day than we had anticipated!

Today's color palette:  Blushing Bride, Calypso Coral, Coastal Cabana, Crushed Curry, Sahara Sand, Soft Suede, and white.  Blushing Bride was never one of my favorite colors so I'm always surprised when I use it on a layout and I actually like it.

That's it for now, peeps.  I've got to get Ryan to school, do the grocery shopping, take Daph for a walk, do some laundry...all the things!  Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabet Antiques Upper, Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Tulip Fields, Petal Parade
Ink:  Calypso Coral, Sahara Sand, Blushing Bride, Soft Suede marker
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Calypso Coral, Crushed Curry, Thick Basic White, Best Year Ever DSP
Accessories:  None

Heidelberg (The First Time)

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Well, it's almost time--this Wednesday is when the hubs has brain surgery.  We have a friend coming to stay on Tuesday night and get Ryan to school on Wednesday morning so I can take the hubs to the hospital early that morning and be there while he's in surgery and when he comes out.  All the positive vibes are appreciated; he's pretty nervous about this.  I have a friend who had a similar surgery done about 10 years ago so we've been asking her questions about what to expect.

So anyway, I'll probably schedule some posts for the next few days and we'll see how everything goes.  In the meantime, it's Scrappy Monday and I have some pages!

For our very first road trip in Germany, I chose Heidelberg, mostly because Missy used to live there when she was a wee young lass and her dad was in the Army.  We got absolutely poured on the whole way there but we lucked out; the skies cleared and we never got rained on while we were exploring the town.  We went back there a couple of times while we lived in Germany; it was maybe a little over an hour away from our house and it's such a neat little town.  Plus there's a big castle ruin up on the hill and that's always cool.

I was looking for the layout that I did of our house in Germany to share today, couldn't find it in my draft posts and finally figured out that I posted it last spring when we were house shopping here in Colorado.  Ha!

Today's color palette:  Fresh Fig, River Rock, Really Rust, Wild Wasabi, and Very Vanilla.  I got to use purple on scrapbook pages, y'all!  When I do something with fall colors, I like to use a deep blue usually to offset the warm tones a bit, and this time I branched out and went with purple instead.  The Apple Cider DSP I used has been in my stash for a super long time and it was fun to play with that again.  I've been playing with older stamp sets a lot lately, but I've also been making things with my brand new mini catalog haul; it's just that most of those cards are for future design team work so I can't share them yet ; )

Wow, it's almost 7 and I'm still the only one up in this house.  I actually got my entire workout and meditation done with no interruptions this morning!  Okay, the hubs is awake, but he's still upstairs, and since Ryan hadn't come down with the iPad it's been a peaceful morning.  Not for much longer though, he'll have to get up for school soon.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabet Antiques Upper & Lower
Ink:  Fresh Fig
Paper:  Fresh Fig, Really Rust, Wild Wasabi, Thick Very Vanilla, Apple Cider DSP
Accessories:  None

Bacharach

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Man, with Ryan being off school last Friday and today, and then me catching some kinda virus, I'm losing track of what day it is.  Forgot to put the trash out last night and to my surprise, they did pick up this morning, so I guess it'll just have to wait until next week.

Anyway!  We had Ryan's taco fiesta on Saturday and it was good--there were 19 people here and that was just close family.  Ryan had a great time and that's the first time we've had all his family over to celebrate a birthday for him.  And then yesterday he was very nice to me while I was totally out of commission with this cold thing I have.  Maybe it's just the DayQuil talking, but I'm feeling better today.

So, on to Scrappy Monday!  I chose one of my more recent layouts to share:

Bacharach is a small town on the banks of the Rhine and honestly it looks like it could be the setting for a live-action adaptation of Pinocchio.  This was one of our first day trips in Germany in the fall of 2020.  Because of those beautiful flowers in the focal point photo, I busted out the Delightful Floral DSP that's an Online Exclusive on the SU! website.  I didn't buy the coordinating Translucent Floral stamp set so I just cut some flowers out of one of the patterns and used the nice green wash for my page borders.  The page base might look black, but it's Blackberry Bliss--I almost never manage to use purple for my page bases so I'm chuffed when I work it in.

The colors are taken straight from the DSP except for Terracotta Tile, but I thought it looked good with the flowers that are supposedly Calypso Coral.  And Tempting Turquoise isn't in the paper either, but it matched the color of my fleece in the photos.  So the color palette is Blackberry Bliss, Lemon Lime Twist, Granny Apple Green, Berry Burst, Lemon Lolly, Terracotta Tiel, Tempting Turquoise, and white.  Pretty much a full rainbow today.

Have a great day, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabet Antiques Upper & Lower
Ink:  Blackberry Bliss
Paper:  Blackberry Bliss, Lemon Lolly, Berry Burst, Granny Apple Green, Terracotta Tile, Tempting Turquoise, Thick Basic White, Delightful Floral DSP
Accessories:  None

London Calling!

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  We spent three and a half days in Northern Ireland last week and we LOVED it.  Had such a good time and took a ton of pictures for future scrapbook pages : )  I just started posting pics over on my other blog.  In the meantime, how about some London scrapbook pages!

You can see the pics here and here.  What's funny is for this first layout, I originally planned for the pages to go opposite of how they are here (so the page with the title to go on the right).  But then I got mostly done and decided I liked it better this way.  I had so much fun working on these, that Sweet Sorbet page base is so cheerful and fun and I paired it with a wild floral print from the Flowers & More DSP from the mini catalog.

Second layout!  I bought those London/UK themed stamps from Amuse several years ago since SU! hasn't had a stamp set like that.  Made for fun page accents on here.

Today's color palette was drawn from the patterned paper:  Sweet Sorbet (how do I love this color), Starry Sky (how do I love this color even more), Tahitian Tide (it's like Tempting Turquoise coming out of retirement), and Crushed Curry (probably my favorite yellow).

Okay, it's been six weeks but I'm going to try doing a workout today for the first time since coming down with that nasty cold turned pneumonia.  I'll try to ease into it...wish me luck.  Cheers!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Alphabet Antiques Upper, British Invasion (Amuse)
Ink:  Sweet Sorbet, Starry Sky, Tahitian Tide
Paper:  Sweet Sorbet, Tahitian Tide, Thick Whisper White, Flowers & More DSP
Accessories:  None

Paris (Invasion)

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I have two layouts to share today, from back in 2013.  Hubs and I were living in England at the time, and my whole side of the family came out to visit, so we spent time in Paris, at our house in England, and then London, and I jokingly called that "the Invasion" and it stuck.  So here's the first Invasion layout:

You see that big flower that kinda looks like a dot on the I in Paris?  It's actually covering up a giant ink smudge that I got on there after I had finished doing all the stamping and most of the coloring on the image.  I just really didn't want to redo the whole thing, so that was my fix to cover it up.

If you're wondering about the pics on the bottom of the right page, my mom's name is Nina so she liked that restaurant's name, and my dad's name is Richard, so they had to take a picture of the saucer at breakfast one day.  And there's also a picture of my dad arguing over a map with the hubs and my other brother (actually my brother's best friend but at this point they're part of the family) because for some reason I find pictures of people arguing over maps to be very, very funny.

And here is layout number two.  I've done quite a few page bases lately that are red or pink, sometimes I go through color phases when I'm scrapping.  I really like that pink paisley print from the Raspberry Tart DSP from ages ago.  I paired it with a pattern from the current Flowers & More DSP, which I've used on several layouts lately.  And it's layouts like this that necessitated the purchase of more Starry Sky paper, I flew through a pack of it using it on scrapbook pages like this.

Today's color palette: Pretty in Pink, Rose Red, Starry Sky, and Cucumber Crush (just a smidge).

Have a great day, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Paris in the Spring, Bold Basics, Alphabet Antiques Upper
Ink:  Versamark, Starry Sky, Pretty in Pink, Rose Red, Cucumber Crush, Cinnamon Cider, Petal Pink, Basic Gray, Gray Granite, Crushed Curry
Paper:  Pretty in Pink textured, Starry Sky, Rose Red, Thick Basic White, Raspberry Tart DSP, Flowers & More DSP
Accessories:  Clear EP

Chinese Lantern Festival and New Year's Goals

Happy New Year and Scrappy Monday!  I read somewhere once that you should spend New Year's Day doing the things you want to do for the rest of the year, so definitely don't do any laundry or housework.  With that in mind, yesterday I spent some time in my craft room, I worked on two different stitching projects, I read a bit (starting off the year right with S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure), and hung out with the hubs and the kid.  So that's what I want to do this year--work on creating things, reading good books, and spending time with the fam.  More on New Year's goals at the end of the post but for now, scrapbook pages!

My parents visited us in North Carolina for Christmas 2019, and during that visit we went out near Raleigh to a Chinese lantern festival.  That's the first time that the hubs and I have done anything like this and it was beautiful!  I had a hard time narrowing down which pictures to use; we took zillions, I printed out a big stack, and then I tried to squeeze in as many as I could on two layouts.  And then it turned into three layouts.

There were so many neat things to see!  I'd love to do this again sometime but I suppose for now I'll stick to the European Christmas markets : )  Fair trade.

I knew right from the start that I wanted to use black for the page base, so then the question was what color(s) to use to mat the pictures.  In the end I went with a whole rainbow:

Basic Black with Poppy Parade, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Emerald Envy, Bermuda Bay, Starry Sky, and Orchid Oasis.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Alphabet Antiques Upper & Lower, Flores Misticas
Ink:  Poppy Parade, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Emerald Envy, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Basic Black, Poppy Parade, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Emerald Envy, Bermuda Bay, Starry Sky, Orchid Oasis, Thick Basic White, Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP
Accessories:  None

Okay, so time for some new goals!  I don't make resolutions per se, more like I set intentions.  You can see my goals/intentions for last year here; I always go back and reread what I wrote a year ago and kind of assess how I did.

1.  Scrapbook layouts:  I didn't have a set number in mind, but I made 136 pages in 2022, so not bad at all!  For the past ten years or so my goal has been about 100 pages per year; some years I don't quite make it and others I blow right past that number.  I do want to buckle down and do more scrapping this year so I'll stick with the usual 100 pages, and hopefully the upheaval of our move this summer won't last too long.  It'll be harder to scrap during the summer with Ryan off school anyway.

2.  Organize and pare down pictures:  still ongoing.  I haven't been as diligent for the past few months as I should be, so I need to refocus on this one.  But I have made quite a lot of progress over the last couple of years and I do pretty well with getting new pictures organized into the proper folders (with labels!) as we take them.  I may have to find a new photo printing service though; the last batch I got was just much poorer quality than I want.  Hmph.

3.  Reading:  According to Goodreads, I read 102 books in 2022.  A few of them were novellas and the very last one was a 9-page short story, but quite a few other ones were epic-length books (including several 700+ page chonkers) so I think it all evens out.  I ended 2021 with 390 unread books on my Kindle, and that number is now 545 so I will never, ever run out of things to read.  A couple of weeks ago I dipped a toe into Terry Pratchett's Discworld books because Hogfather was on sale for $1.99; I've now read three of the 41 books in the series and will likely continue for the foreseeable future.  I think for all three books I spent the first 75% pretty much confused as to what was happening but I was having such a good time that it didn't matter.

4.  Stitching:  I currently have three projects in the works.  The first is a Ghostbusters stitch; I finished the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man but I need to decide placement for the words to go with him, so it's on a break at the moment.  I'm working on Pretty Little Dublin from Satsuma Street, and yesterday I started something new to me, a temperature tracker.  I love how this one is potions bottles and makes me think of going to school at Hogwarts.  Yesterday I had to choose fabric and get out all the colors for it, and I stitched my first potion bottle : )  This one should be fun to work on all year.  After Dublin and the Ghostbusters, I have three more Pretty Little Cities and a slew of other patterns I'd love to work on, so I definitely need to clone myself several times over.

And when I'm not stamping, scrapping, organizing, reading, or stitching, I'll probably be cooking dinners for the fam and traveling.  Which will then involve taking more pictures to organize and eventually scrapbook : )  Hope your year is off to a good start, peeps!  Back tomorrow with this year's first SUO Challenges card.