Life Update - July Edition

Life Update bullet style!

Shana: 

• The night of July 12th, little one decided she was either extremely bored or extremely hungry because she ate a shoelace in the middle of the night. How do we know? She decided she must of been full after devouring 35" because we found 6" nicely chomped off by her bed and the rest was no where to be found. The other tell tell sign of her eating it was when she vomited 8" early Friday morning. To this day remaining 27" is still inside of her.
• If remaining shoelace doesn't appear by Friday, we have to schedule a sonogram with the vet as she may have a partial blockage. She will be given an additional 4 days to produce said shoelace or else she gets a belly shaving. I keep reminding her that!
• Last night, she played like she did before she ingested the shoelace. We are taking this as a positive sign that maybe said shoelace has vacated her small intestine and has now taken up residence in her large intestine just waiting for eviction.

Travel:

• I decided to take a little vacay to visit my family in Georgia this weekend. I will be doing laundry and packing like a madwoman tonight as I fly out tomorrow afternoon.
• Leaving hubby behind to look after our little one and assist with removal of shoelace if needed.
• I am hoping little one won't miss me too much or be mad at me when I return a week later. We shall see.
• Also looking forward to heading to Acadia National Park in Maine for a week in August.

Knitting:

• Still knitting away on those little socks I talked about a few weeks ago, here.
• Need to bind off the toe on Sock #1 so I can use the needles to finish Sock #2.
• Mission tonight before going to bed is finishing off Sock #1.
• Need to finish this pair before I leave Georgia next week as the recipient lives there and I can save the postage from having to mail them.
• Already have my next sock yarn balled up and ready to go.

Scrapbooking:

• I've completed a few more pages since my last layout update, here, which is one of four parts. I've done three more for my backpack album and one from adopting our little fur ball.
• I haven't completed any pages for the past week and a half as my thoughts and time have been consumed with little one and the shoelace ingestion.
• Looking forward to going to an actual scrapbooking store with my sister during my visit in GA. The price she has to pay by me assisting her with her craft room purging/organization. Of course I didn't have to twist her arm and after seeing pictures of the room situation, I think my price will have to go up.

Reading:

• Still plugging away on my reading goals for the year and have now finished 21 books of 40.
• I shared all the books I've read so far this year here.
• Loving that Goodreads is emailing me "Goodreads Deals" for purchasing books in genres I elected to receive deals for and so far have purchased several through these emails at $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 or free.
• For some reason the first five or six books I purchased, I got for free. Amazon must of been having a promotion that day. 

Exercise:

• Started running more consistently lately. Gotten myself up to running 2.5 miles without stopping. Starting over sucks.
• Need to start incorporating weight workouts again and even HIIT workouts.
• Started a Midori Notebook to keep track of all this. My thinking is that by finding a crafty way to record all of this will keep me motivated as I am physically writing all of my accomplishments down in this notebook.
• I've been hitting at least 10,000 steps a day almost every day this month.

Nutrition:

• Need to start meal planning again.
• Bought two new cookbooks to assist with my planning - "Oh She Glows Cookbook: 100 Vegan Recipes to Glow from the Inside Out" and "Deliciously Ella: 100+ Easy, Healthy and Delicious Plant Based, Gluten Free Recipes". I have quickly looked through them and they look promising.

That's it! Now tell me what you've been up to!

Reading More

As a young girl, I always had a bookshelf in my room filled with tons of books. My mother is an avid reader and I think she felt it was truly important for her children to always have books on hand to read.

I have very fond memories of going to the public library and obtaining my first library card. I remember enjoying spending so much time perusing all the books that I could potentially bring home.

While I always had books, and enjoyed looking at them, I remember the younger me taking forever to finish a book. I also remember as a teenager and having to read books for school was something I struggled with, not sure if it's because I was being told I had to read these books or if the subject just wasn't for me.

Fast froward to my twenties and all of sudden I became an avid reader and as time went by I couldn't get enough. I have been known to stay up way past my bedtime because I couldn't put a book down or even devouring a 1,000 page book in just under a week.

Since 2013, I have participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. My goal has always been to read 40 books and I have yet to hit it. The closest I came was in 2013.

2013: 36 books read
2014: 32 books read
2015: 24 books read

This year; however, I think I just may hit my goal.

For the first time in years, I am 50% to meeting my goal halfway through the year!

If you were to look at my bookshelf, you would see a wide variety of genres. I like to pick books that suit my mood. Sometimes I want funny or an easy young adult book to read. However, by far my favorite is a mystery/thriller. As a young girl, I had Hardy Boys and Agatha Christie books on my shelf. Some things never change.

Here's a peek at what I've read so far this year:

There is definitely a variety in here. If you want a good paranormal book read "The Piper", couldn't put it down. A good tear jerker, "Me Before You". A funny feel good book, "Big Girl Panties". Pyschological suspense, "Black Eyed Susans". Need a vampire fix, "Lover Reborn".

I am always looking for my next great read. Let me know what you recommend.

2013 Europe Backpacking Album - Part 4

Today may be the last of the layouts I completed immediately after taking Shimelle's "The Scrapbook Process" class, but there will be many more layout shares to come in the future. If you missed Parts 1 through 3, you can check them out here, here and here.

I'm sharing two layouts in the same post today, because while they are not a double page spread, I created them with each other in mind. I wanted to make sure they complimented each other as they will be facing pages in the album and of the same location.

For both layouts I used the My Mind's Eye "Hello World" collection and used a Bazzill cardstock for my background.

Layout #1 was based on this sketch.

I kept all my embellishing really simple. I'm loving that I have started using my roller stamps more in my layouts. I have a few that work really well with travel pages. As you can see I did some more floating embellishing and I felt adding the enamel dots to the stamping helped ground it towards my title. The floral chipboard is from the same collection as it the brad.

My journaling wouldn't show up on the floral background paper, so I added a journaling card. Even though it's a dark background, my writing is still legible. I added a couple of chipboard pieces on top of each other. Another brad, flair, geo tag and enamel dots bring it all together.

I turned to the 6x6 paper pad that I had for the collection and used both of the orange diagonal patterned paper pieces. After placing my photo on top of one piece, I randomly cut up the second piece and layered it all together until I liked it. Adding ink to all the edges helped make the layers stand out more.

After adding the orange paper layers to my photo, I felt it didn't stand out enough when I placed it on the background paper, so I added the mint patterned paper behind the photo/paper cluster and it helps your eye focus on the picture instead of it all blending in together.

Layout #2 is based on this sketch.

What can I say about this layout? I think I kinda love it. Even though I have quite a bit going on with my layering and embellishing, I think the photos still stand out.

I recently purchased the October Afternoon travel stamps and love, love, love how they look on the kraft cardstock. I think the stamping made perfect embellishments.

Even incorporated more of the roller stamping too!

Let's take a closer look at all the little details of this cluster.

I  can't get enough of the royal blue enamel pearls!

I used Kelly Purkey's grid rubber stamp on the same kraft cardstock as all my other stamping to give myself a place to journal. I didn't want to use a white pen on the background.

The Tim Holtz "Small Talk" phrase stickers didn't have a problem finding a home on this layout. 

So there you have it! I hope you have enjoyed taking a closer look with me at the 4 layouts I completed.

I can't wait to share additional layouts with you for this album. My hope is to have all of Barcelona completed by the end of August, if not sooner. I estimate I have about 12 more layouts to go in this section of the album.

As my husband said the other week, "For us only spending just over a day in Barcelona, there sure are a lot of layouts for it!" Why yes. Yes there are. And that's ok because stories are being told!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Happy 4th of July to all my American friends!