Archive for October, 2009
October 29th, 2009 -- Posted in family, house to home, pics |
As much as I love those new picture gallery kits (with paper you place on the wall that shows you where to hang frames of certain sizes), they are out of my home decor budget at the moment. So I put together my own wall of framed photos, with lots of measuring and planning beforehand. It was a lot like the colour-blocking scrapbooking technique I’d used a lot a few years back (and taught in my workshops).
And the final result turned out pretty well!
I was really at a loss for a few spaces and was contemplating going out to find a couple of frames that were about 4×4″. But I realized that the kids’ wood letters (”A” and “H”) were about the right size and didn’t need to be squished into the square open-back frame with the parents’ letters anyways. Our hallway wall space is significantly increased from what we had at the old house (and it’s not gray! I’m so sick of gray that I don’t think I could bear to paint any room gray for at least a decade or more).
I actually came back to the project later on and added another couple pieces on the left side – a wall sconce for candles and a black chalkboard with art inset. They were conveniently the same height as my photo “square” when placed one above the other.
Speaking of family photos, here’s some helpful info on current bargains in the photo-printing options world (just regular links, no affiliation):
* Kwikpix.ca is offering 5 cent prints for the first order. I ordered a bunch last summer and it was really great… even shipping was reasonable and they were really quick. I’m in such a brain blur these days though that I ordered just *over* 100 photos to try to pay less for shipping but of course I was confusing it with things that you order more to get a bulk discount and I paid more. 
* Kodakgallery.ca currently has a 25% off coupon for their new pocket photo books (regular price $9.99). Use the coupon (PKBOOK25) and if you pick up the book at a local store that they ship to, you can get a book for about $8.50 including tax. Just be careful to keep the album at the 14 pages to avoid paying the extra “per page” cost, which does not show up on the album-maker until you go to the order section. They are really plain unfortunately, but it’s a good cheap way to have a bunch of quick photos all together in one book and since you can add captions, I’d argue that it’s at least more improved than tossing a couple dozen pictures into a plastic flippy book with no journalling whatsoever.
October 26th, 2009 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
So before the move, I’d been hosting a free monthly crop for my friends… I just loved getting together to scrapbook so much I couldn’t kick the habit even after I was no longer a Creative Memories consultant. 
So after taking a break all summer to settle in and unpack, I kicked off the first crop here at the new house on the 2nd weekend of October. Although it was officially a “Croptoberfest” Crop by name, the layout I worked on was not at all fall-themed. I instead picked up where I left off in our Family 2007/2008 Ablum at *last year’s* Croptoberfest. That weekend I’d caught up on a ton of layouts (January to July 2008) but the album hadn’t seen any action since.
So where I’d left off was with a blank set of pages for August 2008 (I’d slowed down to only one 2-page layout per month in the family albums from my previous pace of two 2-page spreads per month). And I’d already had the pictures printed out so it was a matter of choosing all the right colours and embellishments, etc. I decided to do the pages as separate (but coordinating) layouts.
L side:our 5th anniversary & my MIL’s bday: colours are Chocolate Chip, Pixie Pink, and Certainly Celery, with a patterned paper by Creative Memories (I think?) that’s very close to the celery colour. Also had a bit of Riding Hood Red and Pirouette Pink (which are NLA because they were Stampin’ Up’s “in colours” last year… I just stocked up ). The vellum paper is a really old pattern of SU’s. I also used white ink and white gel pen.
R side:baby Eve’s arrival!: same colours, with an added sheet of patterned paper from one of SU’s previous collections in the Bold Brights set. For this layout, I pulled out my word search stamp, which I don’t use often because it’s one of the really big ones (and I’m really not a fan of those, especially cleaning them!). But I’ve realized I really don’t have a lot of “baby” themed stamps, and I wanted some baby words in there. I also used a leaf stamp with my new Chocolate Chip marker and left off the middle leaf to make a stem. 
That’s all for now ~ happy scrappin’ & stampin’!
October 23rd, 2009 -- Posted in family, people suck |
So this summer we really let Harmony have it easy… she had few responsibilities other than some unpacking and got to go out a lot to various fun activities. Her biological grand-parents (my ex’s parents) even took her on a trip to Niagara Falls!
When fall came around, we established a routine and asked her to help out more around the house. She seemed to be mostly “over” her anger at us for moving her across town, but her behaviour still wasn’t at all stable. Every time she came back from visiting her grand-parents, it would be worse.
Now, at not even 2 months into the school year, the situation is dire. She has been bucking her chores every week and staging larger and longer protests against her responsibilities. Her current chore strike has lasted almost the entire week and as a result, the kitchen is disgusting. Her only big chore is taking care of the dishes. We have a spiffy new dishwasher and she’s the one in charge of most of the loading and emptying. She has a few other chores but otherwise everything is done for her.
Unfortunately, her crazy new doctor and the bio-grand-parents are on her side and reinforce her complaints that she is overworked. They’re the generation who had a huge back-lash reaction to the overly-strictcparenting of the 1950s where spanking and smacking were the norm. However, many of them swung the pendulum much too far and started spoiling the next generation (like kids of the 80s) so that the kids ruled the roost and the mothers were these self-sacrificing martyrs without a life of their own.
Harmony’s new doctor literally told me that children should be allowed to get away with “almost murder”!!! And her bio-grand-parents are now arguing and pressuring us to let her have more dessert and less responsibilities.
Below the cut, there’s an e-mail I wrote to them yesterday explaining and correcting some of the incorrect assumptions they seem to have. But I suspect they’ll keep at it, and I think continued exposure to them just feeds Harmony’s twisted perception of herself as this “poor victim” and encourages the lies that she tells them.
For example: you know how siblings always blame it on the other kid? Well of course her side of the story is that her little brother starts the fights. So her grand-mother coached her to just start “hitting him back”!!!
Are we over-reacting here or do we need to limit the negative influence that these people are having on our daughter? The only person in this family they care about is her and they’ve made that clear lately, so how can we fight against that bias they’re pushing???
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