my history.

my history
Originally uploaded by mere2007

...the first photo of me and both my parents. age one week. journaling is here.

weekend wrap-up.

...feeling very good about 10 of the thirteen items on my to-do list, done! plus some fun, like watching sara win a tennis match, and making cards with karen, gratia and sharon.

first up, accomplishment #3. my week in the life album is done. I love the way it turned out. especially now that it's finished.
and you can see evidence of accomplishment #2 in this photo of our dining room table, now returned to being our dining room table and not my scrapbook project table. put out our fall decorations.
then accomplishment #9. only one more week to do and I'm back on track with create 08. this entry is for week 42, layers.

almost.

...enough distraction not to worry about all the bad news around us.
almost, but not quite. today's paper provided more than enough inspiration to get me completely caught up with elise's paper adventure. week #41 - worry.

caught up!

caught up!
Originally uploaded by mere2007

yeah, finally!! and I am definitely planning to stay caught up so I don't have to serve up 4 more entries (5, counting week 41 that's up now) in a single week.

pictures and words.

...not quite what I plan to do for the "week in your life" album that I'll be starting tomorrow. but a pretty good step toward getting caught up with create 08. just three more entries to go, or really four, if I count the one that will go up this tuesday. still, no longer unrealistic to think I can catch up (and stay caught up?!). click the photos to see bigger and click these links to read the journaling (teacups, fall, work).

go world.

...my latest create 08 entry. really, some of these prompts are hard to capture with a 4x6 photo!

but finally, I got inspired by the colors at the park and the iconic olympic symbol. I wasn't sure I'd be able to find all five colors, and figured the black would be the hardest, but tree bark and rocks (and even the sunflower center) have a surprising amount of black! for yellow and red, I noticed leaves starting to turn. wow, surely that doesn't happen before labor day, does it?

oh yes, I have been enjoying the olympics - who wouldn't love the inspiration that is michael phelps. what a great story! and I think I totally shocked marc when I got very into the men's volleyball yesterday afternoon (did you see gibb & rosenthal - wow!). and then that totally weird steeplechase event where people act like horses and jump hurdles into puddles?? and the women's diving. we're loving all of it. go usa. go world.

hello august.

...surely this summer has gone by faster than any other? this is the last week of summer break (school starts next monday). Sara and I did a bit of shopping saturday (taking advantage of the georgia tax holiday and for the most part avoiding long lines), and enjoyed lunch at brio.
and yesterday I got caught up on elise's paper adventure - hadn't posted an entry since july 14 (which is only three weeks, I guess, but wow, that was back in july, before the beach, and it just seems like ages ago!)

first up Quiet. I had the idea for this one before we left, and loved being able to capture a beach morning.

then Five. a very cool idea for journaling, but tough to capture with a photo. so I played around with photoshop brushes and text masks.
and finally a Person. I picked my Karen. because I had this great photo of her from a belated birthday lunch back in February. my initial thought had been one of my mom, but I searched and don't think I have any pictures of her by herself. (need to fix that when I see her later this month!)

so far so (very) good.

...the photo was inspired by my 600 mile goal for 2008. I had been keeping up with the daily mileage in an old notebook and decided to transfer the data to a spreadsheet to add it up. I was shocked and wonderfully surprised at the total. 407.19 miles year-to-date! over two-thirds of that logged on a treadmill (at home, rob's gym or various hotels in orlando, denver, houston), and the rest outside, mostly at hembree park, but a bit on trips to dillard, st augustine and new york. not sure what the final tally will be, but I'm definitely planning to take full advantage of the longer days to make the most of the outside while I can.

water.

...this week's prompt inspired by elise's vacation in hawaii. and of course it meant "ocean" and "beach" to me.

this photo wasn't a favorite from last summer's beach trip, so I never printed or shared it - but cropped and autocorrected in photoshop, it shows everything I love about the ocean. the water. the colors. the waves. cresting or "ruffling" as my friend lisa says. and I continued the ruffle theme on the back with a bit of ribbon.

before & after.

create 08 week 23 (wow, yes, 23 - I'm going to need to up-size the binder rings soon!) and a perfect excuse, not that I ever really need one!, to visit my favorite MAC counter at Macy's. I loved everything the makeup artist did, and only hope I can replicate it - even just a little bit - for work tomorrow.

Sara and I are planning what I think is the perfect girls day. the gym. the pool to cool off and have lunch. the matinee to see sex and the city.

happy sunday and happy summer!

catching up.

...barely! and needing to post about the boy birthdays, dillard (sock knitting!), and the latest two paper adventures. here goes - this one's a long one!

first up, the boy birthdays and dillard. a great time as always. thank you mother & daddy! I uploaded a lot of photos from the weekend - all favorites - click the descriptions below for a larger image.
1. pj, 2. andrew, 3. birthday boys!, 4. phase 10, 5. prepping dinner, 6. up close, 7. knitting, 8. phase 10 (again), 9. scene it!, 10. zombie socks with their knitters, 11. zombie socks, 12. birthday brownies
note to self AND OTHERS! we need to be sure to get a real group shot next year. with everyone. from ground level.

at least we got a good one of us siblings:

special attention for the socks. thinking we must plan a follow-up to show completed works, as opposed to works in progress. and melanie, I am certainly in agreement now that the pooling is my problem, not yours (for those of you who read this and don't know "pooling", it's what happens when the hand dyed yarn doesn't stripe - note that lydia and karen both have stripes on their socks and me - wide stripes is maybe a generous description!)



and the paper adventures. weeks 21 & 22. week 21 very late and week 22 very early (at least for me!). both good times with the photos AND the journaling. honestly, the trust prompt for week 21 threw me for a loop. I picked up the prompt when I was in Orlando last week, and kept thinking "believe" instead of "trust" when I tried to journal about it. friday night, I finally looked up the word "trust" and printed out a very long definition and tucked it in my bag for the weekend. sunday morning (not quite dark early, but still early :-) I had a chance to read it. and saw "reliance on the integrity of someone", "confidence", "hope", "belief", "to depend on". and realized I have a lot of TRUST in my life. the journaling came. and then the idea for the photo.


and week 22 was easy. or maybe I made it easy. favorites. a favorite (recent) photo, but not of people, and journaling from today. honestly, capturing my "favorites right now" is a staple of my journaling. looking back at lists like this really help me focus in on who I am/was in that moment (really - I've been journaling for just about 18 months and I'm still amazed at how different me today is from me twelve or even 2 months ago!)

a morning person.

...elise's prompt this week - three words to describe you. and believe it or not, these were not the first three words I picked! I was planning "loves pretty paper", with an accompanying photo of the hundreds of sheets of paper and embellishments and other stuff that clutter my scrapbook table. or maybe "I make lists" or "a big smile". but friday morning, at the end of my 6:00 a.m. workout, rob asked me why I got up so early every day, and these three words just flew out of my mouth. because I am "a morning person". so true.

details.memories.

a brief intro. elise had "details" as the prompt for week 19. and i'm not sure my details are what she had in mind, but i guess that's what happens with a "prompt" - we get to take it where we want, right? I think I knew on wednesday that I wanted my details entry to be about the journaling. and mother's day (duh, right?, perfect subject). but I couldn't pull it all together til sunday. and my first entry with multiple pages for the journaling (I did try to squeeze it onto one page and print using the computer...nope!) so now there's a bit of blue pinked card stock edge peeking out from the cover of my create 08 book - very cool! (and I do have a few pics from yesterday and today's dinner out to share...tomorrow....)

p.s. to see all the journaling, go here, and here.

five senses.

...a lovely lunch with karen at pastis. perfect prompt for this week's paper adventure (inspired by marta)!

and the photo of the two of us. yes, my knit-round scarf is done. and garnered many compliments at cast on cottage (where we visited before lunch). five sweaters worth of yarn on sale, but that's material for a later post

something new.

...paper adventure week #17. growing my hair (not trying for anything truly "long" here, just enough to have more curls and maybe get to use a few fun pins) and an awesome new orange shirt. and admitting right from the start that the "growing my hair" part in this photo is probably only noticeable to someone with r-e-a-l-l-y short hair (like me!). but 12 weeks into growing out a pixie cut is a big deal! promising another check-in 12 weeks from now (beach trip time!) to see if the reality of southern summer humidity will throw me off course!

the new orange shirt is kind of a big deal, too. because it's my first orange piece of clothing. and I love it. and it was a great confidence-builder for the presentation I gave at work on Tuesday about "building your leadership brand".

now if I could just learn to take these self-portraits! this one was something like take 34 of 36... there must be some trick to it, right?

inspired.spring.

...not at all the entry I first imagined for week 16 (which included a front with all sorts of "inspired" paper and embellishment scraps - no photo - and some journaling on the back) because I've been inspired by so many things lately that I couldn't imagine a single photo - or even a collage - capturing all of it.

Photos and two cupcake scrapshop kits to create my nyc album. Vogue to see the world in a new way (and maybe to pare down my wardrobe to a very few pieces that make me feel fabulous). 1st leafling sock from the latest socks that rock kit to make me feel superhuman in my knitting ... and maybe to try new techniques, or maybe just to knit more? Bon Appetit/Orangette to attempt a cheese souffle or homemade mayonnaise for Saturday lunch [note - later inspirations decided these might be better for later!] Daily read blogs like Ali and Kal and Elise to pay attention to the details and embrace life as it happens. And I was very busy on Saturday and Sunday knitting the twisted float shrug (and no, I still don't have a photo to share but I will soon, promise)...

but then I stepped outside Sunday evening.

and was totally captivated by the spring sunshine. evening light. and decided that might be the best representation of all this inspiration. a new season. longer days. warmer. brighter. more colorful.

so this week's entry - my first real photoshop'd one - and note to self - next time need to note which effects I actually use on the photo (or maybe I can figure out how to tell after I've applied them?) I think it's a combination of pastel and watercolor, but who knows!

p.s. the lentil and bulgur salad was delicious for lunch on Saturday; we used Harry's salad bar mix-ins (capers, artichokes, cherry tomatoes, roasted garlic, roasted red peppers and feta cheese) in place of the recipe's red peppers, feta and kalamata olives. and two viewings of juno - still love!