be AUDacious

Photo 365: Week 17

April 23:
The lawnmower, a rock, a busted back windshield. A great way to kick off the weekend, especially with severe storms on the way.

April 24:

This picture really doesn't capture the way the sky looked, with the dark clouds in the east, lit up by the sun from the west. It's such a saturated level of color, especially against all that spring green.

April 25:

An early morning, which is rare. The house was quiet. I fixed peanut butter on toast, with a banana on the side, and spent some time just reading poetry.

April 26:

It's so good to have fresh flowers back in the house; they were the first thing I saw when I grabbed my bag for work this morning.

April 27:

Yesterday's track meet and today's practice made for an achy knee and tired muscles. She's in the middle of a book she just can't put down (except for the occasional text).

April 28:

Love watching her pass the time with a book, instead of TV or the computer. This Disney fairy series has definitely been a hit; she's started her own collection, which is sitting on the shelf below her older sister's hand-me-down copies of Junie B. Jones.

April 29:

Having one car this week means doubling up on errands and picking up the girls from school and practices. To be honest, I've enjoyed having everyone together to make the trip to and from school and work each day. Part of me is wondering if we could make this work fulltime.

two of my favorite things

If you've spent much time on this blog, you know that I love to read, and that I read a lot. I am not exaggerating when I say that I can not remember a time when I was not a reader. It's just something that has always been a part of my life.

So whenever I get a chance to combine reading with other things that I enjoy...well, I jump on it. Rewind to a couple of months ago, when Wendy Smedley contacted me and wanted to know if I would like to participate in a book-themed scrapbooking project. I didn't even have to read the details...um, HECK YEAH!

Each of the participants created a two-page spread (multiplied times the number of participants in the project) and then Wendy bound them all into albums. Each spread had to contain a photo of the participant, as well as something reading-related. Some people wrote about their reading habits; others included their reading lists for the year, reading stats, top 10s, and more. Here's what I came up with:

I just got my bound album this week, and I have enjoyed looking through it so much. It's a great mix of traditional, digital, and hybrid layouts; plus, I've really enjoyed getting the new book recommendations and finding out more about the reading habits of my friends.

I thought I'd give you guys a look at the album. Make sure to keep on reading, because I've got a great idea I want to share with you at the end of this post. Here's the front of the album:

Angie: blog | Goodreads
I love how Angie's layout was numbers-driven; the stats were a fun and interesting approach.

Beth: blog

Beth's picture was great (I want bigger bookshelves) and her design was simple and graphic. Really eye-catching text.

Elizabeth: blog | Goodreads

I am not playing favorites (really, I'm not!) but I ADORED the pennants Elizabeth put on her layout (made from scanned book covers -- I think I might have squealed when I saw them) and her journaling is really my favorite. 

Jill: blog | Goodreads

I love Jill's layout very much too -- the star theme is a perfect choice, her photo is ADORABLE(!!!!! -- which means more squealing might have been involved at this point), and I covet her handwriting.

Kelly:

Kelly's page had a great collage feel to it, and her colors were awesome. Plus, I found some new must-reads on her 2009 list.

Lisa: blog | Goodreads

Lisa did a GORGEOUS digi page, and I'm going to admit, her journaling really makes me want to give e-readers a chance...my curiousity is definitely piqued.

Wendy: blog | Goodreads

Wendy decorated both the front and back of her pages (why didn't I think of that?). I love how she used three different categories to break down some of her favorite reads; I'm definitely going to check out some of her dystopic fiction choices.

This was a great project to participate in, and ever since Wendy approached me with the idea, I've been mullling over a couple of additional ideas that combine books and scrapbooking.

I would like to start a series of scrapbooking challenges here on the blog that are inspired by the books I love. It could be a book that I'm currently reading, or one of my all-time favorites. It might be a mystery or thrilled, a children's picture book, a YA fantasy novel, or a nonfiction book. Each blog post would talk a little bit about the things you love about the book, and then you'd list 3-5 challenges inspired by the book. One might be a journaling challenge, inspired by a scene in the story. Another might be a text challenge or a color challenge, based on the book cover. There are so many different ways to use books as scrapbooking inspiration.

But I don't want it to be all about me -- I want YOU to be involved as well. I can't do all these challenges myself, and I don't want to do them all myself. So if you LOVE to read and you'd like to come up with a challenge to contribute, leave me a comment and let me know. You can leave your email address in the comments and I'll contact you with more details, OR you can email me at audneal at gmail dot com to find out more. I'm excited about this project, and I hope you are too!

Design House Digital: new releases and iNSD

You definitely want to make sure you hit up the shop this weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday. There will be a number of different products on sale each day, with all kinds of fun events going on. I'll be hosting a chat in the forums at 7 pm MST (that's 6 pm PST, 8 pm CST, and 9 pm EST) so stop by and visit with me. I'm trying to plan out some fun, fun stuff -- I think you'll like it.

In other news, I've got a slew of products releasing today; I've put all my fonts in the shop, as well as one of my self-paced journaling class kits and a new template, plus some new word art. The template is based on the layout below, which I created for a special blog post over on Liz's blog. Stop by and read it, if you've got the time. It should be posting around 9:30 PST.

 

credits are available on Liz's blog

ETA: a quick layout share (all products by Emily Powers Designs)

guest blogger: Lee Currie

One of the things that I love about blogging is that it gives me a chance to interact with people that I otherwise would never have met. I've been inspired by photos and words from so many different people, and Lee is one of them. I asked for camera advice one day, and Lee sent me this fantastic email that contained so much great information. From there, I checked out her blog and started reading on a daily basis, commenting when possible and just getting to know her. What draws me to Lee's blog is the way she captures her daily life with photos and words; it's the same goal I have, and she's always a source of inspiration and ideas for me. More than anything, though, I like getting to know her in this way, through our similarities and our differences.

It was such a thrill to receive the e-mail from Audrey inviting me to participate here on Fortune favors the AUDACIOUS as a guest blogger! I’m such a huge fan, and thrilled to be in such tremendous guest blogger company! It’s such a thrill to have this opportunity to share some of my interests with you.

Like everyone, I am busy. As a result of my lifestyle, I have become a big believer in the idea that you do not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to blogging, scrapbooking and creating and still end up with a fun, creative and meaningful result. 

One of my favourite short-cuts to creativity is to participate in memes and challenges – more often than not, they are the same thing: challenging memes.

The result of my participating in these challenges over a period of time? They give me oodles of creative content: photos + words which I can use to create collections.  I find the consistency; routine and similarity in form appealing. They can be done with a partner, within a group or as a stand-alone project within a larger group. They make awesome, simple and meaningful scrapbook pages!

* * *

I suppose the best way to explain is to show you what I mean. To varying degrees, I participate in:

TEAM-UP THURSDAY

Challenge: Few Words + Photos

This is a new team photography meme my friend Shirley invited me to participate in with her.  The brainchild of Melody and Megan in which we have been participating for a little more than a month and I’m enjoying the collaborative effort required. We have been taking turns selecting the theme and, lucky for me, I send my photo to Shirley and she magically creates a diptych and posts it over on the Flickr Group: All of our submissions can be found here: Team-up Thursday. A couple of weeks ago the challenge was “pastel” and this is the diptych result:

 

SOOC SATURDAY

Challenge: Few Words + Photos

This is a perfect photography meme for me! Why? I never “fix” my photos, I have no idea how to use actions and a histogram gives me a headache. Melody has a nice little, and growing, group of participants who have interesting perspectives to offer. I am all about learning visually and I really enjoy looking through photos and learning from others. I’ve got a pretty nice little collection of SOOC photos  I’ve submitted for this meme here. The most recent:

 

MY BEST SHOT MONDAY

Challenge: Few Words + Photos

This challenge is hosted by the multi-talented and energetic Tracy Clark over on her blog, Mother May I. Tracy may be best recognized as a founding member of Shutter Sisters and a current member of the teaching roster over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. The idea is for you to go through your photos from the week and select your best shot and post it on Monday. Over the months of doing this project, I’ve come to realize that “best” is subjective and often my best shot is not my most technically accurate shot, but the one that evokes the most emotion. My current shots can be found on http://thelinarstudio.typepad.com/embracelife/my-best-shot-monday/ and the older ones can be found on my now defunct blog: Lemons2Lemonade  After looking at all of my shots again, I can’t even select a FAVOURITE of the Best Shots, but, boy, I do take a lot of floral pics, but my favourite topic:

 

WISHCASTING WEDNESDAY

 Challenge: Words 

Jamie Ridler, a creative self-development coach and fellow Canadian, asks: what would happen if every week you made a wish? What magic might start to stir? I enjoy this meme so much as I often get lost in the day-to-day of my life. Raising four active kids can keep me from focusing some time on myself, so first thing Wednesday mornings, Jamie proposes a question, if it strikes a chord, I write a post; if not, I don’t. Jamie strikes many chords! I hope to collect all of my wishcasting and make a quick mini-album of her questions and my answers. You can find my Wishcasting Wednesday on my Embrace Life blog. Jamie has amassed a lovely community who, if you leave your link, will visit you and support your wish.

 

12 of 12

Challenge: Words + Photos (and a layout!)

If it’s true that my children will remember the every day occurrences of their childhoods more than the special occasions then they will certainly have vivid memories of the12^th of every month! Susan Keuter started this challenge a while ago and it has recently been moved onto Facebook where there are quite a number of participants. The idea is to go through your day, the 12^th of each month, and take 12 pictures that best represent your day. Now, inevitably I take about 100 photos, but over time it’s become easy to narrow things down and give a good representation of what our day and life routine is all about. Of course, adding the journaling definitely helps! I’ve been participating in this project the most consistently, and the longest, of all the challenges. I just love it. And ta-da, while typing up this entry, I finally figured out how best to put it in scrapbook form! So far, every 12^th has been posted on my blogs: new and old  but I’ve never settled on a scrapbook layout format. Since this project is for my kids, I’d best get at it. This is my plan, what do you think:

 

*8 THINGS

 Challenge: Words

The way Rachelle (Magpie Girl) put it, *8 Things was a game she made up to quiet her “monkey mind”. I could relate and I found her challenge appealing. Though, I have to admit, I’ve fallen off a bit recently. Too many other things to do! But, I have very much enjoyed this meme. Again, easy to transfer to layout or even simple digi-book form the thoughts and ideas expressed. I have about 20 entries sitting in draft form ready to be finished off and published. Like Rachelle, I’m filled with countless half-formed ideas and creative passions; this has proven to be a wonderful “catch all”.  On her blog, my friend, Jill, participates in a similar meme called Thursday Thirteen, I don’t because it just means I would have to come up with five more ideas, so I’ll stick with my *8 Things!

  

WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Challenge: Words + Occasional Photos

I’m sure somewhere this exists as a challenge, but this has been my thing. On occasion, I’ve put together a post on wellness: spiritual, health, children … if it falls into the category of my own personal well being then I write about it. Eventually this will translate into something. A scrapbook? A digi-book? Or *gasp* a book! All of my recent posts can be found on Embrace Life. 

 

PROJECT 365

Challenge: Photos

This project is being done EVERYWHERE! It is quite an undertaking. I’m in the first half of my second year and I’m really enjoying it - though I still occasionally forget to bring my camera with me when I leave the house. There are countless blogs and Flickr groups dedicated to this idea. I am in the process of moving my project onto my Embrace Life blog.

 

WEEKLY GRATITUDE

Challenge: Words + Photos

Hosted by Karen Grünberg and Lori Gentile at this is a wonderful opportunity to express your appreciation for the little things in life. After all, it’s the little things that make everything so lovely, right? They provide a monthly theme (so far topics covered include: Work, Soul, Home and Nature) and they have offered a few communities in which to participate: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and the Willow Traders Gratitude Forum. I started when they started, at the beginning of 2010 and, with help from Karen (and the lovely Audrey), I managed to figure out how to use the digital template created and freely shared by Karen. You can find my contributions here in my Weekly Gratitude Gallery (http://thelinarstudio.typepad.com/photos/weekly_gratitude/index.html).

This manner of expressing gratitude replaced:

TGIF

Challenge: Words

Brené Brown is such an incredibly inspiring woman, I have learned so much from her this past 18 months or so. I’ve participated in her read-alongs and her blog is in my reader. Her TGIF meme, which stands for Trust, Gratitude, Inspiration Friday is set up to make you more aware of those things in your life you are trusting, for which you are grateful and what inspires you. I stopped participating after a time. I felt my posts were becoming redundant and I felt self-imposed pressure to be original, creative and heart-felt when I find it hard to express in this format. It certainly isn’t because I’m not grateful or mindful, just that I would rather live my gratitude than express it. My last posts were here: http://thelinarstudio.typepad.com/embracelife/tgif/

 

* * *

 

There are oodles of memes and challenges that can be found all over the Internet. Some have McLinky applications where you can add your link when your entry is completed – and you can visit others participating in the same challenge. I’m terrible at adding my link but have added many of my fellow contributors to my google reader so I don’t miss out on theirs! Some have branched out to Facebook and Flickr. There is so much inspiration out there that requires consistency and routine rather than creativity and originality. This doesn’t mean I’m not original or creative, but these memes and challenges give me a chance to be productive. In the end, to me, it’s about collecting those consistent bits of goodness and creating something that best represents me and still gives time for me to be original, creative and free with my other endeavours.

* * *

 I am:

mother | photographer | writer | friend | artist | student | wife | designer | laundress | volunteer | entrepreneur

 

I can be found writing, reading, talking or taking photos:

hockey rink | grocery store | football field | school blacktop | parking lot | rugby pitch | waiting room | auditorium

 

I enjoy:

laundry | laughter | a clean house | california rolls | white wine | hugs | scrapbooking | blogging

 

I avoid:

cooking | grocery shopping | talking on the phone | drama | the dentist

 

 

10 on Tuesday: the eye candy post

Just a quick posting today -- 10 photos I've recently added to my inspiration files. (These are not my original photos; however, I am bad about noting sources. Normally I pull photos I like to an inspiration folder on my laptop. If you know the source and want to leave a link in the comments, that's great.)

1. I want this couch and chair SO BADLY. I just love the lines and how cozy they look.

2. Here's another view:

3. Love the wallcolor in this bedroom and the cool media storage at the foot of the bed.

4. So much to love here: the globe collection, the shelves, the open floor plan.

 

5. Love those pops of color against the white background. The lamps are great, and that headboard is genius.

6. Cool barstools. I'm hoping our next house has something like this -- we all like to be in the same room while we're cooking supper, and I like how this is small but functional in terms of space.

 

7. Yes, it's tiny but I love those pops of red against all that white. It's just happy.

8. Love the bedframe and the colors/textures of the bedding. Just a great vintage look.

9. No, I'm not in need of a nursery, but the colors in this room grab my attention every time I see it. And that paper airplane on the wall? Brilliant!

10. This is a great room -- and not just for a boy. That map mural rocks, and I love the green and orange. Lots of cool stuff put together here.

layouts to share: Emily Powers and paislee press designs

Liz has a gorgeous new kit debuting today; it's called Wallflower, and I'm absolutely in love with the color scheme (it totally reminds me of the interior of Making It Lovely's living room and office!)

I pulled together a quick layout -- and I do mean QUICK! It took me less than 20 minutes to do this one. Those little swatch pieces are perfect accents, and these pieces come together superfast. This is probably one of my favorite kits by Liz, just because of how flexible it is.

Make sure you stop by Liz's blog today because she's giving this kit away for free to one lucky reader. In fact, she'll be having some fun giveaways all week long; you won't want to miss a day, believe me!

I also sat down to get some pages scrapped last night and turned to my stash of Emily Powers products. One of the things I love most about Em is that her kits, while very artistic and fun and funky, have a core set of basic materials that are super-flexible. Here's what I was able to come up with:

credits: Experiment #10, Foam Alpha, Everyday Ordinary Alpha (collab with paislee press), A Beautiful Mess papers and elements (collab with Taylormade Designs) from Emily Powers

credits: Funky Love Song papers and elements, Lovebirds elements, Experiment #9, Life Snips 1 and 2, Everyday Ordinary elements (collab with paislee press) by Emily Powers

credits: Life Snips 2, Foam Alpha, Itty Bitty Acrylic Alpha, Funky Love Song papers and elements, Experiment #7 by Emily Powers

blueprints: tools for managing a long-term album project

In my last blueprints post, I set a number of "next steps" for myself towards the completion of the girls' school albums. For quick reference, here they are again:

1. Sort through my "finished digital pages" folder and upload layouts that need to be printed and added to this album.
2. Create a set of "grade level intro pages" that collects basic information about each school year.
3. Sort through my photo folders and determine which photos need to be scrapped (some will be stories that stand alone about the school year, others will support the memorabilia in the album). Use sticky notes on the memorabilia pages to note accompanying stories. Create a master list to help keep this organized.

Today, I want to share with you the tools and processes I've created to handle those three steps. While I'm nowhere close to being finished with this album, that's okay, because by necessity this album has to be an ongoing project -- both girls are still in school. And even though I'm not "caught up," I do have a process in place, which means that I am working on this project as I go, instead of allowing these things to just pile up.

Let's just tackle these in order, shall we?

1. Sort through my "finished digital pages" folder and upload layouts that need to be printed and added to this album.

This is in process. Uploading takes a little bit of time, but it's one of those tasks that I can start and then walk away from my laptop to do other things while it's going on. I have a couple of different folders that hold my finished layouts, and once I upload them to my printer of choice (I use Scrapping Simply), then I make a backup to my EHD and remove them from my laptop. Once those layouts get printed, the backup files are deleted; there's no need to keep the digital file once I have a hard copy. For more information on printing, I recommend this post at The Daily Digi, as well as this one.

2. Create a set of "grade level intro pages" that collects basic information about each school year.

After sorting through all of my memorabilia for each grade level, I realized that there were some basic things that I needed to capture about each year. The easiest way to do this, I thought, was to make a simple 2-page template that allowed me to include the following information: a school photo, the grade/school/year, and general information about the school year.

The template is designed so that the main photo and school information goes on the left page. On the right side, there's room for three more photos (I always seem to have some random extra photos that don't really fit with anything else floating around), and plenty of journaling room. In terms of journaling, I plan to use the following categories: teachers, schedule, friends, sports, clubs, awards, trends, field trips, and favorites. I fully intend to have the girls fill out this information in their own handwriting (which means I'll probably build my pages as hybrid pages, since I'll need to add the school pictures each year, too). If you'd like to download this template, it's available here.

3. Sort through my photo folders and determine which photos need to be scrapped (some will be stories that stand alone about the school year, others will support the memorabilia in the album). Use sticky notes on the memorabilia pages to note accompanying stories. Create a master list to help keep this organized.

I've created one more simple download for you to use to help keep your stories-in-process organized and ready to scrap.It will easily coordinate with the other graphic organizers I've designed for album planning, as well as the basic layout planner I created for this class.

The download allows you to keep track of the basic idea of the story that needs to be told, as well as the photo file names (and folder locations) and the related memorabilia. This way, you can jot down these stories as you work through your folders/content, and then scrap them as the time becomes available. Keeping a list of topics to scrap on hand has always been a real life-saver for me, because it means that when I sit down to scrap, I don't waste any time trying to decide what I want to scrap about.

Download School stories graphic organizer

Here's a sample of what this page would look like filled out -- I've printed several of these pages and tucked them into a 3-ring kraft binder where I keep a number of scrapbooking tools and notes.

With these tools and processes in hand, I'm finally on my way to getting caught up on the girls' schools albums. You know, out of all the boxes of photos and papers and items that my mom has stored away in her ceder chest, the thing I love to look at the most is my School Days book (one of those fill-in-the-blank kind from Lillian Vernon or something like that -- does anybody else have one of those?) I think that's why getting this album planned and underway is so important to me.

As always, Liz and I welcome your questions and comments about this album series. You can leave them here on the blog, or you can stop by our Formspring sites as well:

ask Audrey  |  ask Liz

#book review: Finnikin of the Rock

taken from Goodreads:

"At the age of nine, Finnikin is warned by the gods that he must sacrifice a pound of flesh in order to save the royal house of his homeland, Lumatere.

And so he stands on the rock of three wonders with his childhood friend Prince Balthazar and the prince's cousin, Lucian, and together they mix their blood. And Lumatere is safe.

Until the 'five days of the unspeakable', when the King and Queen and their children are slaughtered in the palace. And an imposter king takes the throne.
And a curse is put on Lumatere, which traps those caught inside and forces thousands of others to roam the land as exiles, dying of fever and persecution in foreign camps.

But ten years later Finnikin is led to another rock to meet the young novice, Evanjalin. A girl plagued by dark dreams, who holds the key to their return to the Land of light..."

When I heard that one of my most favorite YA authors of all time was writing a new book, I was just ecstatic. But then I heard that it was a fantasy novel. Hmmmm....this had the potential to be one of the coolest things ever, or it could be a complete and total failure.

Luckily, the things that make Marchetta such an amazing realistic fiction writer also set her up for success is any other genre, because the key to her novels are the characters, and she definitely doesn't fall short here. Finnikin and Evanjalin are complex and real, and their relationship just completely pulls you into the novel, to the point that the fantasy background is secondary to what's going on with the characters. Sometimes invented lands and languages and everything that goes along with them have to almost become like another character in the novel, partly because everything is so unfamiliar. But that doesn't happen here, and you realize that this novel could just as easily have been set a historical fiction piece, rather than an epic fantasy.

It's a gripping read, and I highly recommend it to fantasy and YA lovers alike.

#book review: A College of Magics

taken from Goodreads:

"Teenager Faris Nallaneen is the heir to the small northern dukedom of Galazon. Too young still to claim her title, her despotic Uncle Brinker has ruled in her place. Now he demands she be sent to Greenlaw College. For her benefit he insists. To keep me out of the way, more like it! But Greenlaw is not just any school-as Faris and her new best friend Jane discover. At Greenlaw students major in . . . magic. But it's not all fun and games. When Faris makes an enemy of classmate Menary of Aravill, life could get downright . . . deadly."

This book has been on my to-read list for years and years, and I finally came across it at my favorite used bookstore in Nashville about a month ago. Right off the bat, I knew that I was going to love it, but I hesitate to recommend it, because there are some -- well, some people might call them flaws -- aspects of the story that I loved and other people always hate. See, I love books that are set on a college campus or at a boarding school but nothing really seems to happen. The characters just go about their daily lives, and we get to ride along with them, watching them grow and interact and laugh and fall in love and fail tests and whatever else normally happens at college or boarding school. And then, suddenly, halfway through or even three-quarters of the way through, something DOES happen and things take off at a rollicking pace for the rest of the novel. See, that bugs some people. But not me. Love those kinds of books.

And that's really the kind of book this is. In many ways, it reminds me quite a bit of A Wizard of Earthsea. Aside from that, though, Stevermer is a great writer with an ear for historical nuances, a subtle and sly sense of humor, and an original perspective on fantasy and magic. I'm definitely going to be on the lookout for the other two novels in this collection.

weekend inspiration: 10 things I love

ETA: I fixed the link to the grocery planner. Sorry about that.

It seems that my bookmarks have filled up quite quickly again, so I thought I'd share with you some of the things that have caught my eye recently.

1. I posted last week about Cassidy's new loft bed. Here's the website where David got the basic plans, although I think he made some modifications of his own (and some based on the photo bottom, too). (You don't know just how badly Cass wanted to paint her bed lime green -- or cover it in paint splatters. Both were vetoed, simply for the sake of future redecorating. I have to draw the line somewhere.)

2. I've had this bread recipe bookmarked forever, and even though winter really seems like a more appropriate time for fresh-baked bread, the fact that the local farmer's market is opening soon makes me want to make some now.

3. I keep thinking about making a quilt for my bed rather than buying one, and this site would make it possible for me to design EXACTLY the type of fabrics I want. It's so tempting...

4. This blog features some of the most amazing photography I've ever seen. The light -- oh! the gorgeous light!

5. One of the things we try to do every week is to make a menu/meal plan and a grocery list. It just makes the whole process SO much easier. Here are some great resources for an easy DIY project.

6. More tutorials -- 100, to be exact. There are some fantastic projects in this list. 

7. These cool iPhone photography applications -- I've been playing around with a few and they've changed my mind about my iPhone's camera (I was not so much a fan before this).

 

 

8. This pallet bed shows up on lots of blogs, and while I love it, I love the cluster of pom poms and paper lanterns above it even more. One of these days, something similar will hang over my dining room table.

9. Has anyone tried out this technique? I bought a couple of small Raynox macro lenses for my camera, and I love them. I'm still getting the hang of them, but I'm curious as to whether this technique is as effective as the author claims.

 

10. This blog just rocks my socks off -- love this whole concept so much. And this one in particular, is one that I just love -- in fact, I've used these lyrics on a layout before. It just speaks to me on so many levels.