Less than 3

In my household we have a good few cell phones.  My oldest has one, my second oldest has one, my third oldest has one, hubby has one and I have one.  This is just the reality of living in a busy, crazy world.  Because we live in a country where it is wicked cheap to text we do the majority of our communicating via text messages.  It is quick, convenient and costs close to nothing.  The thing about texting though is that it has it own form of slang.  Many words are shortened even to just a letter, are is "r" and you is "u."  I am sure you are all familiar with this text slang.  And most of the world knows that when you type the less than sign with a three you are making a heart and it means love, i.e.  <3.  Just like when you type colons and a hyphen and a close perenthesis you are making a smiley face, i.e. :-)  

I say most of the world, because apparently my hubby did not know what <3 this meant.  His response made me laugh out loud!  I love him for that, and much, much more. 

Buttons that I flipped over and then stamped on.  

The star was a kraft die cut that I covered with washi tape. The Real Life is an Ali Edwards stamp that I stamped onto a beer coaster and then cut out. 

Totally digging the washi tape.  Why did not have this before now?  It is awesome.  I am now an addict.   

I "less than 3" this amazing life. 

Have a good one, 

T. 

Life Lessons From Popeye

I L. O. V. E. capturing real conversations from my kiddos and preserving them on my scrapbook pages.  This conversation took place about a month ago during breakfast.  I had made muffins, who knew muffins could be the topic of such a delightful conversation. 

Some background -  My daughter is a classic pull-the-muffin-top off kind of girl.  Always, she pulls the muffin top off to eat first.  My son is a pull-the wrapper-off-and-eat-from-the-bottom kind of guy.  

On this morning E looks at K and says:  K, it's bad luck to eat the muffin top first.  The whole time he is slowly pealing his wrapper from the muffin. 

 K responds:  Nuh huh, no it isn't.  The whole time she is pulling the muffin top off.  

E says:  Yes, it is.  It's like opening an umbrella in the house or going out on Friday the 13th.  

Well, now it time for me to jump into this conversation, because it is just so funny and odd.  So I say:  Did you guys talk about superstitions in school?  

To which my son replied:  No.  I watched Popeye. 

Enough said. 

Have a good one. 

T. 

No way Jose!

That's what my kiddos and I say to each other whenever we share a story or event that has happened to us... Well I have an event that happened to me and when I told my kiddos they said "No way Jose! That's so cool!"  I am pretty chuffed that they think it is cool.  I thought maybe they would be all like, 'huh?'  Anyway my really cool "No way Jose!" moment is this, I was a guest on This Memory Keepers Life.
You can check out the podcast by clicking on this link.  And while your there you should take some time and listen to the other featured ladies.  I think it is just so cool to hear everyone's story about how they scrap, why they scrap, their motivation and any other tid-bits of info they share.

Debbie Hodge is so, so sweet.  I really enjoyed chatting with her.  I have been a fan of hers for some time now.  For those of you who may not have heard of Debbie you can find her over at Get It Scrapped a wonderful tool that I use for getting inspired and for getting tips and tricks regarding really good design.  Her articles are always filled with great information and stunning visual examples illustrating good design principles. I highly recommend joining her newsletter, which is free, but also check out some of her classes.  They are filled with great content.  I have her booked marked on my favorites and am a frequent visitor.

Have a good one!

T.

Collateral Damage

Wikipedia defines Collateral damage is when something incidental to the intended target is damaged during an attack. 


In scrapbooking this is what collateral damage looks like . . . . 

Not pretty!  I was just finishing taping down my pictures.  I wanted the center picture on my LO to be popped up a bit.  I don't like it when a popped up item is saggy in the middle so I LOADED it with a ton of pop dots.  As I turned it over  to put it in place, I dropped it.  I know!  Crazy, silly me with the clutzy hands.  Anyway, it's not like when you drop a piece of cookie on the floor and pick it up and dust it off and all is ok. Oh, no.  This was stuck, like, really, really stuck.  So, what's a girl to do?  Yup, you guessed it.  I had to pull the damaged picture up and reprint the silly thing.  I am glad that that was the only damage.  Can you imagine if it landed on several pictures... I would have had to re-scrap the whole page.  


Anyway, I managed to get it all fixed and I think it turned out pretty cute.  

Whew!  That was a close one.  

Have a good one, 

T. 

Alanya, Turkey

The Ringing Bells

This is a page that has been on my list of things to remember about living in Cyprus.

This is our neighborhood church, Ayios Panteleimonas.  It sits on hill less than half mile from our house.  Every morning at 6:30am I hear the first church bell ring, just a simple bong. One bong and then it is finished.   At 7:30am, every morning, I hear bong, babong, bong, babongbong, babong, bong for about 3 minutes.  It sounds like a celebration. Each morning is a new celebration.  In the distance I can hear the church bells being echoed throughout Nicosia as each local church is also ringing the bells.  After my mom’s visit she sent me note asking for a recording of the morning bells.  She said she missed the sound.  I know what she means.  For me, I think it is an affirmation to rejoice at each sunrise for it is another day that will be filled with new adventures, some big and some small.    

In researching the significance of the bell ringing I found at e.how.com the following:

For centuries, church bells have summoned, celebrated, reminded and commemorated. Originally, they served communities as a tool of mass communication for both spiritual and secular matters. Today, though the onset of modern mass communication like radio, television and the Internet has decreased the breadth of church bells' communicative role, they nevertheless retain much of their original meaning.

Read more: The Significance of the Number of Rings From a Church Bell | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6579946_significance-number-rings-church-bell.html#ixzz1ttDDHrwQ

For me it is a reminder that each day should be celebrated and commemorated.  The everyday, ordinary and even mundane things are what make up our lives.  These are the things, like the church bells ringing every morning, that I want my children to remember, that I want to remember, after we have moved on to our next assignment.  Each of these little memories become a thread that is woven into the tapestry of our life.  The more of these little bits you grab onto the more rich your life tapestry will be.  I want mine to be thick and glorious. 

Layout in progress.  

Decisions, decisions.  What to use. 

The finished LO.  Simple.  Basic.  But the most important part - documented. 

I should be scrapping a page but . . .

Instead I am blogging.

Well, first I started out downloading pictures from the last week.  Then I was sorting those, rating them, adding metadata and the like.  Then I uploaded a few photos to Facebook.  And finally I headed over to my other blog and updated a post.  Which then led me to this blog.  I noticed that it looked a little sad.  I was thinking of getting rid of of this blog, but then I changed my mind.  Sooo, I thought I should take a minute to say "Hi."

Hi!

Now that that is off my chest, maybe now I can scrap a page today.  In case you are wondering I am doing it again.....LOAD.  For those of you that don't know LOAD stands for LayOut A Day.  Yup, for the whole month of May I should be making a layout a day.  Well, guess what?  I am already behind.  Actually, I don't believe in the whole "being behind" thing, nor do I feel guilty for not scrapping a page yesterday.

Yesterday was a holiday were we live so we took advantage of it and packed a picnic and headed to the beach.  If you are curious you can go here to check out that post.  I chose to spend quality time with the family making some quality memories so I can scrap some quality pages later this week.  At the end of the month I may not have 31pages done, and I am OK with that.  But what I will have gained is the challenge of trying to get a page a day done and that is just plain fun.  Sometimes I get so in the groove that I end up making a more than a page a day.  I won't win any prizes, and I am OK with that, too.  But what I gain are finished LO's that go in my albums telling more stories about the great and not so great and just plain ordinary things we have done.  And that, at the end of the month, is a really cool thing.

If you are curious about LOAD you can go get more information over at http://www.layoutaday.com/.  Lain Ehmann is an awesome source of inspiration and celebration of all things scrappy.  You won't be able to join me on this LOAD, but you can learn more about and look forward to participating in the next one.

Hope you have a fantastic day!

T.