Living room

Loving all of my decorations all lit up. The house looks great and I was commenting to Chris that we should have a party. He suggested a dinner party this weekend. So, whoever is in the area and interested, come on over! Consider yourself officially invited.

As only a true scrapbooker would, I changed into this shirt solely for the pictures that I knew would be taken...

Three little pumpkins

Three little pumpkins. Still have the one large one to make. And in case you're interested, the pumpkin frame can be purchased at Michael's. $3 for the small, and $7 something for the large.

I'm wishing I had found some smaller flowers since these seem to overwhelm the pumpkins, but it's raining here and I don't feel like going out again.

Creativity Strikes Back

The journaling is on the back. Not entirely sure how I feel about that, but didn't want to put it on the front. And as I started writing, it became much longer than I had imagined.

Got to love the homemade costumes! Andrew's was pretty basic- just reflective tapeon a plack turtleneck and pants, but what's up with my costume? It looks like it's made from curtains- a staple in the Breecher costume department. (In 6th grade for my oral book report I was Queen Elizabeth I witha costume made from curtains.) Anyway, not exactly sure what I was. Cape and wand says "princess" but the bobbly headband with the wand says "fairy". Whatever I was, it looks like I was having fun.

A creative start to the evening...

Whipped this together as a door decoration. Thanks Christy for sending it to me! Now IMing with Mel. Have to discuss her exciting baby news.

One more closer to being "caught up"

I love my scrap list at the moment!

• Cats (1 page)
• Cow Parade- July 9th and 16th (2 pages)
• CKU- Aug 24th – 26th
• Great Glass Pumpkin- Sep 29th/30th (1 page)
• Birthday Extravaganza- Oct. 8th (1 page)
• Mt. Monadnock- Oct. 14th (1 page)

This makes me so happy. 5 layouts plus however many CKU will be, which is at least 3 pages (a 1 pager and a 2 pager) and hopefully not much more than that.

However, I still have plenty of other projects to work on right now. I'm doing a craft fair on Nov. 18th (my birthday) so have been getting things to work on for that. Now I just need to stop buying supplies and start making things! I have a couple more ideas of things I'd like to make, but need to make what I've got so far before I start buying things for other projects.

I'm making a few of these (1 large as shown and 3 small)- from http://cherylmezzetti.typepad.com/, I've got 9 chipboard accordion albums to make (all 8x8 size), and chipboard shapes that Christy was kind enough to pick up for me. I also have leftovers of other items from previous sales (card sets, individual cards, decorated notepads). I want to make some hurricanes, votives, possibly altered clocks like from Creative Escape... I think almost every day I think of something else I want to make. Which is why I need to make what I've got first.

Anyway, that's my update for now. I realize it's been a while since I've posted.

A very similar design to the LO that I made for my church, but this one is for my album. It has some differnet pictures and the journaling is different.

Probably doesn't show in the scan, but I added some crackle medium over the flames.

I recently went through all of my old class kits and tried to see what might be usable. Came across this tag from a MM class at the CK Convention in 2004. Yikes, that was a long time ago! The tag is hinged and there's a little bit of journaling inside.

Cold (and potentially smelly) at the Bredford House…

So we’ve been having some problems with our boiler lately. It’s a style where from time to time you have to add water to it. We hadn’t added water since we moved in back in June and then a couple of weeks ago turned the heat on for the first time. Since then we’ve had to add water up to three times a day. There’s a sticker on the boiler saying that one shouldn’t have to fill it more than about once a month, so we called to have a tech come look at it.

On Tuesday Chris met with the tech who said it was a cracked boiler and he turned it off, saying he couldn’t allow us to turn it back on. It hasn’t been that cold, so the lack of heat isn’t too bad, but the boiler also controls our water heater. That’s right, no hot water since Tuesday.

Immediately after the tech left Chris had called our landlord and left her a message explaining the situation. Mid-day on Wednesday he heard back from her that she was checking to see if the boiler was under warranty. This morning he got a message from her saying that it wasn’t under warranty and that she didn’t feel comfortable ordering a new boiler over the phone. Since it would be a $5000 expenditure she wanted to meet with the tech to see the problems first hand. She also mentioned that she’d had the boiler serviced in the spring and that everything was fine.

I can understand her wanting to understand the problem more before ordering a new boiler, but she should have done that yesterday! Also, it may have been fine when serviced, but obviously something happened. This has gotten ridiculous.

When Chris went home for lunch at 12:30 he saw the truck from the oil company outside, so we know they were meeting at that time. It is now 3:00 and neither of us have heard back from the landlord. I just tried calling the oil company to see if they could tell me the status, but the tech hasn’t returned yet, so the guy I talked to didn’t have any info to give me. He did say that he was aware that we were without heat and hot water and were trying to find a niche to fit us in. I asked it that might be tomorrow, Saturday, or Monday, and he said he couldn’t answer that until he heard back from the tech about what happened when they met this morning.

This is so frustrating. I feel absolutely disgusting because sponge baths just don’t cut it and I really don’t feel like taking a shower in cold water. There are some showers here at work, so although the concept of showering at work really weirds me out, I think I’m about at that point.

We’re debating getting the board of health involved but don’t want to create huge problems. After all, we like the apartment; it’s a good rent, etc. We don’t want to upset the landlord too much so that she won’t renew our lease.

So yeah, no real point to this post, just venting a bit. Thanks for listening!

EDITED TO SAY... Saturday at 7:00 am they will be coming to replace the boiler. Glad to finally be getting it fixed, but sad that I won't be able to sleep in. That's 4 days without hot water!

Last night's creativity...

A couple of cards...
In case you can't read what's written on the green one, it says:

Remember: Somewhere over the rainbow there's a ghost in the LIGHTS room drinking 30 beers for the price of 24. !Que una ganga! From one Fut to another..."

All of that are various inside jokes between Darlene and I. We first met (although didn't become firends) in 3rd grade ballet where we did a routine to Somewhere over the Rainbow. In 6th grade we teamed up for a school project where we wrote a story called A Ghost in the LIGHTS room. In high school we always drove past a billboard for beer, advertising 30 beers for the price of 24. We said that if we did drink beer, we would be sure to buy that since it was such a deal. (In Spanish, una ganga.) And in college we developed a "record" label for our various mix tapes we made for each other- FuT Productions. (Fut= Nucking Fut.)

These were layouts that I started a few weeks ago at a crop, finished up over the past week or so, and now I'm finally getting around to posting.

























Mel, recognize anything about the "fun" layout? I'm finally going through my stash of class stuff!

Fall Frolics

This weekend I decided that we should take advantage of the nice weather and go climb a local mountain. Chris and I wanted to hike it for a while now, but we just hadn’t had the time. I had been hoping to get some good foliage pictures as well, but that didn’t work out so well.

However, it was absolutely insanely packed with people! First of all, Mt. Monadnock is the most climbed mountain in the world. I’ve hiked it a number of times before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people there before. There were actually three rangers acting as parking attendants since there were so many people there.

Hiking with so many people also presents a number of challenges. There are a lot of rocks to climb to get up this mountain, and we were constantly waiting for others to climb so that we could go. Also a lot of waiting on the way up for others to come down as parts of the path were only one person wide. (And also there were those rocks to climb.) On the way down we were going pretty quickly, or at least we wanted to. But again we were stuck behind slower people. At a couple of points we asked the various groups if we could pass, or at others climbed quickly off the side of the trail a bit so that we could get around.

So I guess it was kind of fun, but I certainly wouldn’t want to go back at such a popular time again. I much prefer it when you only pass a few other people out on the trail.

On the way up we had passed through a town that was having an event called “Scarecrows on the Common”. There were so many scarecrows through that they were all up and down a couple of the main streets, up to mile or so away from the common. I stopped and took pictures of a few of them. I liked this one because not only did they make the scarecrows, but they also made instruments to go with them.

Fall/Party decorations

Took these photos on Sunday during the birthday festivities.

In the first one you can see our collection of glass pumpkins. The flat purple one we got the first year. We went late in the day and there were very few left at that point. The green gourd we got last year, and then the other two were this year's acquisitions. Also got one for Liz that had been out, but we had to hide it while Liz was over. Liz's is clear with a plain green stem, smaller than our clear one. And she did comment that she liked our clear pumpkin, so maybe we picked a good one for her.

We actually only finally got around to hanging the mirror over the mantle on Sunday. Chris had tried it when we first moved in, but it's only a layer of sheet rock over the brick chimney and what he was using woudln't go into the brick. So I suggested using something different to hang it. Only problem is that now the picture hangers show. I'll have to think of something to drape over the mirror to hide the hangers.

And finally, we have the table setting. The cats now are jumping on the table during the night and trying to eat the flowers, or at least the wheat stalks sticking out. I keep finding plant matter on the table in the morning. And the flower arrangement in the background, I think I need to change out those flowers. They're a bit too springy. Oh well. I think my decorating happens in baby steps.

Happy Columbus Day!

In honor of this fine holiday, I now give you a song written by my friend Steve. The thing about this song that always amuses me though, is the fact that he wrote it in the middle of the summer. He was at work one night and was inspired. So, with no further ado, I present you with Steve's song.


Many hundreds of years have gone,
Since those three large ships sailed on,
The deep blue sea which carried he,
Who founded this untamed country!

(Chorus)
Oh, Chris Columbus,
He didn't need no compass,
He sailed those ships,
On through the mists,
To find this land,
Where we now stand.
Hooray, for Chris Columbus!

Some people say he lost his way,
While sailing out from port that day,
It's true that China was his goal,
Until he found this rocky shoal!

(Repeat Chorus)
END.


Perhaps it loses something if you don't know the tune, but every year I always think to myself, "oh Chris Columbus, he didn't need no compass". And there the thought ends because that's the only line I ever remember.

Hope you're having a great day.

Day of scrapping...

Spent the day scrapping. Here are the completed layouts. Still have some others to finish up. Plus need to make two cards before tomorrow evening.

"Caught up" with High Points

Not that he's actually hiked Mt. McKinley... The journaling on that page talks about a trip this summer to the national park that the mountain is in. And about how he'll never hike that peak.

So now I'm semi-caught up on these pages. Done with all of the pages that I have journaling for. 3 or 4 more states that he's hiked that I still need to get info about. And then I just have to wait for him to hike more high points.

I had been planning to work on more pages for my dad or on some birthday cards, but instead I put this page together. Chris has a haircut tomorrow, and the gals at the palce where he gets his hair cut scrap and he's been wanting to show them some of my stuff. and he's told them about our Derby, so he wanted to bring them in Derby pictures. So, I figured I should probably get this page finished.

And in other news, Andrew has a flight home! He'll be back in Massachusetts on Sunday evening. We had been hoping to have a homecoming/birthday party on Sunday afternoon, and then we realized that with timing it probably woudl need to be postponed two weeks, and now we're back to wondering if it can happen on Sunday or not. Hopefully by tomorrow we'll know for sure what's happening.

Some more pages here for my dad's album. He's got a birthday coming up, so trying to get a bunch of pages done for him. Two more to go...

A nice fall weekend

Friday evening Chris and I went into Cambridge to check out the Great Glass Pumpkin at MIT. Friday evening they were having a showing of all of the pumpkins that would be on sale on Saturday. The show ran from 5-7 and Chris was getting really annoyed with me as we were driving in and it was getting closer and closer to 7:00. By the time we found parking it was just about 7. (Later we realized it was a permit only spot. Good thing we didn’t get ticketed!) Luckily they were really in no hurry to kick people out. So we had a chance to look at all the pumpkins, get a sense of some that we liked, marvel at the uniqueness of some of them, etc.

After checking out the pumpkins we headed to Bugaboo for Chris’ birthday dinner. And of course I had to embarrass him by having the servers all come out singing with the big moose puppet.

Saturday we got up bright and early and headed back to MIT for the pumpkin sale. The sale was at 10:00 (we got there at 9) and if you arrived before 9:20 you would get a ticket to save your place in line so that you could go get coffee, etc. So we got our ticket, went to Dunkin’ Donuts and then walked around the perimeter of the patch trying to see some pumpkins to try to get. Around 9:30 they started to get all of us with tickets organized. Having arrived an hour early, there were about 200 people in front of us. Eek! Supposedly people start showing up 3 hours early for this thing. Once they start letting people in, it’s pretty much a free for all. The signs say no hoarding, but people ignore them. You pretty much grab a bunch (or at least a bunch in your price range) and then start deciding which you want to keep. And in about 5-10 minutes almost all of the pumpkins have been grabbed up. We really lucked out and actually got the ones that we had seen while walking the perimeter. We knew exactly where that pile of pumpkins was, so Chris walked straight towards it. I made a slight detour towards another one that had caught my eye (in case the first one had already been taken) and then I met up with Chris. We walked around a bit more looking for some more options, and I think we did find another one that we liked. In the end we got two for ourselves and one for Liz for Christmas.

The rest of Saturday was spent running errands. I stopped at the LSS and picked up some of the new Karen Russell Fontwerks stamps- my first red rubber unmounteds. After using clear acrylics lately it was a bit of a switch to go back to red stamps.

Sunday was raining, so I spent most of the day being a bum watching TV. I had hoped that this weekend was going to be productive scrapping wise, but I only got one layout done. It’s posted over at 2Peas. I did manage to spend some time cleaning my scrap table though, and that was definitely needed!