Spirograph Update

I "won" the auction on a regular Spirograph for $38. I was happy with that!

However, I lost my first bid on a Super Spirograph. It went for $57. I'll keep at it for awhile...hopefully I can get one of these, too.


I will let Minda and Susan play with it sometime. If any of my other readers want a chance to play, let me know.

I'm sure there's gonna' be a page in there somewhere...I wonder if any of my pigment pens will fit in the wheels?

Nancy

One Done...One to go

Just finished this. Time to start #2. Starting is the hardest part, so I think I'll be waiting 'til tomorrow to start that.

Spirograph Fever

OK...I have Spirograph Fever. Vintage, REAL Spirograph fever. And despite a friend's recent problem with E-bay, I find myself inexorably drawn to it to find a Spirograph. One is selling for $80 right now. $100 for a deluxe Spirograph. Turns out that they are quite the collector's item (Drats! I wanted one for the fun of it, not for the collection value)

I had both of these and the Spirofoil when I was a kid. I LOVED them. I was looking for one for my daughter for Christmas, but what Hasbro sells now is a pale imitation of what we had in the 60s.

Here's what I want...and I will bid until I get one for under $50 (if that's possible!)



And if you know you have one that you'd like to sell to make some money...or you ever see one at a garage sale, PICK IT UP!!! I'm in the market for one.

Mater

The girls bought "Cars" for their dad for his recent birthday. We have watched it many times since then. The girls talk about it and the characters. Deep love for Lightning McQueen and Sally. General disdain for Chick Hicks. And our favorite character...Mater the rusty old tow truck.

You MUST see this movie if you have not. It is great for all ages.

Anyway, Margaret drew this picture of Mater tonight on our white board easel. I think it's sweet.

A crafty weekend

I made my BasicGrey Stars this weekend. I finally decided on a liquid adhesive by 3M. I think it was in the tool kit from CKU. Here they are...all six of them.

Now in this shot you may notice the oddity of my stars... Some of them have nine points!

The kit came with nine pieces per page. You were supposed to use eight of them. I (as usual) skimmed through the directions briefly and forged ahead. And built my first star with nine points. When I was putting the ninth point in, I said to myself..."self, you could almost leave this last point out." Joke's on me, right?
I liked the nine-pointed stars so much, I made half with eight points, and half with nine. I didn't follow the assembly directions in the end, either. I made each point and then put together. The directions had you make one point, join the next piece and then make it into a point. I liked my way better.

So there.


I also started teaching the girls to knit this weekend (their request). It got me in the mood to knit, and I ended up with this!

Of course I'll finish it and its partner. I love knitting mittens...they go so fast. I remember the one sweater I knitted. It took FOREVER. Mittens are better. The girls don't like them, though...too itchy. Oh well. I'll just make 'em for me!

Warm Thanksgiving

Yesterday, our temperatures were in the 50s, and we took the girls to the Hyland Park recreation area, locally known as "Chutes and Ladders". Wow! It was glorious. I walked around the trails while Charlie sat and read a book and "watched" the girls. You gotta love it when they run off into the playset and wave...and you have to hunt them out an hour later.

I knew Margaret needed her bangs trimmed...this picture surely confirmed that (and will embarrass me into trimming her bangs)

Hyland Park is a huge winter recreation area for folks. They have a lighted sledding slope, lighted ski trails, and paved walking trails where they clear the snow. The park is all set up, ready for snow. I saw at least half a dozen folks out on the paved trails with their roller skis and poles...wishing for snow, I'm sure.
I thought these pics of the park ready for snow (especially the one with Margaret and her popsicle) were good.



I took this one, because I thought it might come in useful for a scrapbook page some day.

The dry, winter foliage was beautiful in its own way. The blue, blue sky and bight sun help with that.

Gobble Gobble

We had a nice day at home yesterday. We ate the traditional foods...turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes. Pumpkin Pie.
Here are some pictures...with my little helper at the stove.


What was NOT traditional was that we were at home. Usually we travel to Wisconsin. It was weird to be cooking. But I didn't overdo it and we did just fine.

And more about cameras...

My mom recently moved and gave me a rather large pile of pictures (I also got a large pile from my mother-in-law, and one from the choir reunion I just went to...I have quite the large selection of pictures that need to be scanned, documented, and put into albums...yikes)

I was glancing through them this weekend (getting all those extra pictures into one place) and I found this one.

This is a picture of my bedroom when I was in high school (late 70s). See the groovy purple stripe? I still can't believe my mom let me do this to my room. Pretty cool lady, eh?

About 1/3 of the pictures I have are of this ilk... done on the instant camera where it pushed out the picture and you watched it develop before your eyes. They were never very good pictures to start with; I don't think time will be kind to them. And remember old polaroids where you pulled out the photo, waited one minute, and then peeled off the paper (and wiped some chemical over the picture)? I don't think I have any of these. I think they are pretty poor archival quality, also, but don't know for sure.

About 1/3 of the pictures I just took posession of were taken on the 110 type film. Remember the slim camera? With the blue flash arrays you stuck on top of them to get flash? Really bad, grainy photos. And my whole high school career is on these.

The remaining 1/3 are split between early color pictures from the sixties (these have probably fared the worst in terms of losing quality... they are in the square format...I don't recall that film type, but I remember having a Kodak "Brownie" camera that you held at your chest/belly and looked down into the view finder from the top) and black and white pictures from before then. The black and white pictures are as clear as the day they were first developed. Funny, huh. The oldest pictures are the ones I'm the least worried about preserving...I need to start on the newer ones, first!

What about a WebCam?

OK. This is too weird.





Yep. That's my scraproom in the last picture. To quote my friend Linda... Bwa Ha Ha (Did I spell that correctly?)

If you give a mom a camera

I love the picture quality!
Hate that it's three weeks after the event and I'm just looking at the pictures for the first time. And that I have to pay extra to get the pictures put onto CD. sigh. Maybe Santa will bring that SLR Digital I really want.
Then I can really get rid of film. (Yeah, like I would actually ever give up my film)

**edit** To allay any confusion. These awesome pictures (of which I love the picture quality) were taken with my film SLR. My nice camera. The one I can't give up. The one would probably still use if I had a digital SLR.

If you give a kid a camera...

We received disposable cameras at the "Zoo Boo". Here's what I found on Margaret's when I got it developed.





There were five more shots like this on the other disposable camera. Here's two of them:



That was supposed to be Amelia's camera, but I guess Margaret got a hold of it.

Can you tell that I get a big kick out of these?

Signs that they're growing up

My five year old can reach the button for the garage door opener. That's new for her. Just this summer I was lifting her up so she could do that!

My eight year old wanted to walk to the bus stop herself today. My husband sneaked (is it sneaked? or snuck? I think sneaked is correct, but snuck sounds right) along after she left to make sure she made it. It's only one block, but it is around a corner and across a street.

Some new, easy layouts

Here's my new favorite layout. What I love about new products is that you really can create a delightful page in 15 minutes or less. The papers already have the colors and borders and you don't need to do much at all. This picture (which I love!) went perfect with this BasicGrey product.

Here's another new layout. I did this at my friend Minda's house. If you read her blog, you've seen this already.


On to more Saturday stuff. It's a nice leisurely weekend at the Clauss house. Cleaning, paying bills, laundry, playing with the kids. Fun!

In with the new!

In the course of conversation with a friend, I realized it was time to do some updating on the structure/look of my blog.

Here's the results. I just used one of the available templates and updated my links. You may see more changes in the links over the next few days as I continue to get it updated.

Thanks for reading!

Nancy discovers IM'ing

First the blog, now IM'ing. What will be next? A podcast?

Anyway, I've been scrapping this weekend with Minda. We each are in our own house, but we chat back and forth with Instant Messaging and sharing pictures. How cool is that?

I actually have gotten eight pages done this weekend. Four for the store where I provide samples, and four for me! Things have been flowing and I'm feeling creative. With these great papers, how can you go wrong?

Here's my favorite from the weekend that's not going to the store. It's from Amelia's first day of Third Grade.


I may scrap more this evening, I may not. But if I do scrap, I know that Minda will just be an IM away!

Photo Block

I think I know the source of my lack of scrapbook pages lately. I think I have photo block. Not writer's block, not lack of desire to create pages and art, but I keep getting hung up on which pictures to scrap, and what they match with. The paper or products I'm inspired to work with don't match the picture I have handy. I think I have too many pictures.

The problem is that I am inspired by products and techniques, not by photos (usually).

Tell me..how do you deal with this? How do you determine which photos to use?


Speaking of product, Scrapbooks Too has some new product in. I was a good girl and only got 4 sheets each of the DaisyD Christmas, Magnolia, and KI Alpine. Plus a few of the picture transparancies and flowers that go with the Magnolia line. Here's a sample of the KI paper.

Cute! Cute! Cute! Now I just need to find those snowman pictures. The black and white ones I took 3 or 4 years ago. Where are they? I need them for this project. I'm inspired...

Hallowe'en

This was Margaret's pumpkin. She wanted it to look like a Kitty. Pretty good, eh?

And here she is as a woodland fairy. Those darned coats and sweatshirts just ruin the costume, don't they?