Lil Black and Bling French Craft Room

Decorating a room is so much like making a scrapbook page. First you start with your inspiration pieces. Mine were my scrapbooking totes of all things. All black and bling with flourishes and little touches of Paris. So I found a black trundle bed online - so cute! and two white desks. So what color for the pages? I mean walls? I chose a light grey, and today I finally got to paint! My sister-in-law helped me do all the prep while she was here for Thanksgiving. I hate the taping, and removing all the switch plates part. Ugh. So the wall color is Monorail Silver from Sherwin Williams. Well, that sounds contemporary doesn't it for my new contemporary house?


Ah, the worst is over. The cutting in bit is at least as painful as the taping and prep part. No fun. I was so ready to get on with the rolling. At this point the grey looked a bit scary - more like I was priming a car than a finished color. The blue tape doesn't help one bit!

Ahh! The walls all rolled and painted and the furniture in place! Getting so much closer to my vision!

I've had these two harp back chairs from an adopted grandmother since high school that I'd already reupholstered twice. I spray painted them flat black, added some foam to the seats, and upholstered them for a third time with sweet black and white French toile. They look so up to date with their new finish. Love them!

Now it's time to embellish/decorate the room. I have some posters of Paris all framed and ready to hang, some chandelier print curtains to put up, and some black framed shadow boxes to put up with my favorite scrap pages, or calendar pages of Paris. That will be next weekend. I love having this little nod towards my former career as a University French teacher. It's so far from my current career in the Forest Service. For now I'm off to Santa Fe for the week for the Regional Fire Management Officer meeting. Work seems a world away. Guess I'll need to get reacquainted with work abruptly tomorrow morning! Until then, I'm living in my own little idealized bit of Paris.

Here Kitty Kitty...

Yesterday George and I took a bunch of family to Out of Africa, located between Camp Verde and Cottonwood. It was windy and cool, but it was so worth the trip. First there's the "Serengeti Safari" bus tour to see the giraffes, camels, lots of antelope and ibex animals, followed by all the time you want to wander around the other big cat, wolf, bear, lemur, coati, javalina, prairie dog, and other habitats. I was so impressed at how content the big cats were. The only ones pacing were those that knew they got to go put on a show at the Tiger Splash. The rest were just lazing happily in the sun. Many animals are rescue animals, and obviously living the high life. Nice! The Tiger Splash show was great. The cats have a relationship with the players in the event, and so as "friends" they don't bite or claw them except in play. So fun to see them frolicking. None of the people at the site ever consider the cats tame or domesticated. They know they are wild animals, but work with their instincts to interact with them. I'm generally against caging wild animals, especially large cats, but these animals are very happy, playful, and content. We will go again, especially now that it's so close and we can bring our grandson!

Capitol Christmas Tree

This year the Christmas Tree for the White House was cut from the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest here in AZ, and it made a tour through many of the Arizona Forest towns on its way to the White House. Monday it passed through Williams, AZ on its journey, and was greeted by 400 school children lining the downtown streets. Also there were Smokey Bear, his friend Sami Schinnel, the Prevention Officer in Williams, and long time seasonal Forest Service employee, Denis Kirkley.

You really get the feel for how big the tree is when the tractor (painted patriotically in the stars and stripes) is followed by a trailer at least 60 or 70 feet in length. We never really got to see the tree, all covered in its tarp, and signed by the thousands of AZ residents that have signed it. At the tail end of the trailer you could see that there was an evaporative cooler, or some environmental control to assist it arriving at President Obama's residence in prime condition.



At the main intersection in town, the whole process was held up by the sherrif's posse from the nightly Wild West ShootOut. "They need to have a federal permit under section xxx of the federal regulation of xxxx" Well, if you've ever been on a street with 400 school children, you'll understand that no amount of loudspeakers will overcome that, but they did try to put on a show. Eventually, the highest power, Santa Claus, (who evidently has more influence than the President) turned up to present a permit to allow the tree to progress on its way.

Beach Book

I thought I had posted pics of this book already, but evidently I had not! The very first night I went to scrapbook at AM&M Lyn was making a word book like this, and I was fascinated. Her's was a Bo-Bunny word book of L-O-V-E. B-E-A-C-H was a a better fit for me, and I bought this book at Archivers in Colorado when I went home to visit my folks. (I always feel guilty about buying scrap stuff from someone other than AM&M, because I really like to support the local economy. Sorry Kirsten! ) I put this book together during scrap pink, and it was such a refreshing change from doing 'pages'. My favorite bit is the shark peeking through the letters on the last page. I just love sharks.


So I found lots of great tropical papers at AM&M, I applied generous amounts of Glitter Art Glue to adhere them to the pages, and used sandpaper to finish the edges to give a more rustic finished look. I'm loving using sandpaper versus inking edges! (Vicki will attest. I love inked edges too! Just don't like the cut white edge from a piece of cut patterned paper. ) I see so many sanded edges in Scrapbooks Etc, and Creative Memories, but it seems like I'm the only one making paper dust at the store. I always apologize when I'm sanding, because I know it must irritate some people.

Choosing photos for this book was hard. I wanted to use all my favorite photos from all our beach/diving vacations, but soon found out I had way more favorites than I realized. But it's a fun book. I used lots of Stickles glitter glue around the photos, and I'm totally happy with it. And it was fun to make. My Exacto knife got lots of use, and it was lots of fun doing the cutting and Stickles.

I was always hesitant to do mini-books, because what use do they have? Ali Edwards to the rescue again. She said she keeps all her mini-books in a basket in the living room, so people can pick them up and look at them when they want to. Her son often gets attached to one, and keeps it in his room to look at. I can't wait to have a basket of mini-books under the coffee table for guests to look through at their leisure. And if the grand-babies want to take one home to enjoy for awhile? Cool! Heck! Company is more likely to look at the mini-books than take the time and space to look at full-sized scrap-books.

It's funny, but when I read a scrapbook magazine I focus on the journaling more than the layout & for inspiration of pictures to take, and stories to tell. But when most of my family looks at scrapbooks, they just look at the photos, and the embellishments. To me what's important is what I have to say about the photos. Someday, someone will care about the journaling, right? That's where my emphasis is. The story behind the so-so photos. I know that some grand kid will hate the fact that I GLUED the photos to the page. I think I'm going to put a disclaimer in the front of every book to say I left a hard copy, and a digital copy of every portrait quality picture, and if they don't like the glue, Get over it! Scan it! I only say this because I have cursed pictures glued to pages myself. What were they thinking? Hee hee. I just wish they'd said who was in the picture, and why they took it.

One recent note from working with my step-daughter. In the thousands of photos that my mom has collected of our heritage, there is NOT ONE picture of a pregnant lady. There are no pictures of my mom pregnant with my sister or me that I know of. Seems that was too private of a thing until this latest generation. Where it's seen as so beautiful. I've hounded Jessie, and she assures me she has pictures of her pregnant with Mason Scott.

Waiting...

So a la Ali Edwards, and making an effort to scrapbook everyday things, and the not so fun stuff as well as the good, I decided that I should make a scrapbook page on WAITING. It's funny because we're trying to buy this foreclosure home from the same bank we're getting our financing from. And the selling half is pushing pushing pushing for closing, and the lending half is just dragging on and on. The right hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing. So we're trying very hard to be patient, but then we can't really make plans to do anything because we're WAITING. George and I are both "get 'er done" kinds of folks. For George, if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late! So WAITING is painful for both of us. So to fill up the time? I took a couple of WAITING pix of us, and pictures of several clocks in the house to do a WAITING scrap page in the mean time. Ha! At least I've gotten something done! I've taken some pictures! I love that George has a pen in his hand, WAITING to do some signing! Totally unplanned.

Do I look pensive, bored, and a teesnsie bit apprehensive? That was the goal! :) I feel like I've had this deer in the headlights glaze for at least a month. C'mon! Let's get this economy moving! Let us buy this house!

Long Time No Post...

I haven't taken a picture in weeks. First there's this business of buying one house and selling another. And then there was the escaped prescribed burn on my forest that led to evacuations for several days in Williams, AZ. Kind of distracting, all that. The house buying? It's inching forwards, but at least it's not going backwards! The house selling? Had another showing today. Yea!


I haven't done anymore of the 30/30 pages since 19, but I do have a couple of other pages I made during ScrapPink!

I've been scanning a bunch of the cute old pictures of my wonderful step-daughter and my husband. The pictures all have that yellow fuzzy patina that all photos from the 70's seem to get. So I printed them in black and white to refresh them a bit.

When I saw this paper at AM&M, well I just had to make a page using it. It's even got a bit of a retro 70's flair that goes with these 70's pictures.

George has always told me that the middle picture of "Jessie lookin' sideways with that izzee gonna get me smirk" is one of his favorites. That made the title and the brief journaling easy as pie!

I had bought the August contest kit, but then the fires came thick and fast that month, so I'd never used it. It turned out great for scrapping more of these pictures of Jessie and her Daddy. I just love these old pictures. It just makes me happy how much they love each other - then, and now.

Page 19 of 30

Okay, so the photo rendition of this page is not good. But I did make it to page 19 of 30. Better than I thought I'd do.