Two blog readers will each receive a $15 gift card from Freckled Fawn to spend as they please.
ABOUT FRECKLED FAWN: Freckled Fawn is an online shop run by Doe and Deer. The shelves are packed with washi tape, fabric tape, labels, tags, doilies, and more. Go ahead, have a little shopping spree, and freckle your creativity with loveliness.
TO ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY: Leave me a comment today and tell me the last scrapbook item you purchased. I'll choose the winners on Sunday night.
OBSERVATIONS: Well I guess the card says it all: what a fun week! Kicking off with Mother's Day and ending with dinner at the Space Needle in Seattle, last week was fairly atypical for this homebody. Up until last week, I hadn't flown since Simple Scrapbooks folded. I used to fly a lot. Now, not so much. It was a real treat to fly out to my home state, and that dominates the week's images.
Side note: I don't love flying. I think the older I get, the weirder it seems to me to be hurling through the atmostphere at ridiculous speeds. And honestly, how do those planes stay in the air? I mean, really? At one point, on the way home, we were heading into Minneapolis storms, so they were going to divert us to Fargo. The turbulence wasn't crazy, but it made my stomach drop a few times and in order to keep my cool, I had to picture that scene in Bridesmaids when the woman turns to Kristen Wiig and says, "I had a dream last night. That we went down... You were in it." Always makes me smile.
Second side note: Yes! I used washi tape this week for the first time ever. Who says an old dog can't learn new tricks?
Onto the week's pages!
Who doesn't love cute little blond girls? P.S. Molly, why didn't you make them my God children again?
This week I dropped a couple of type treatments onto a few of the Seattle photos. I like the way that looks. Simple and not in any distracting area of the photo.
Project Life, created by Becky Higgins, is a flexible, easy-to-use, highly customizable way to save your memories in a fun, stress-free way. Learn more about getting started with Project Life by clicking here.
Last week a business meeting took me all the way to Seattle, the city that I love and the city in which I was born. It's been over three years since I was last in Washington, so I tacked on a few days in order to spend it in my true hometown, Everett. My best friend, Molly, still lives there where she's married and raising her two adorable and precocious daughters, Anne and Aida.
There is something about the air there. It smells different. Maybe it's because you can get close to the water and smell the salt in the air. Or maybe it's all those pine trees and all that moss and all that rain. It's a verdant land, that Pacific Northwest.
After my visit with Molly, I headed to Seattle for a meeting with the folks from Big Picture Classes.
Lucky for me, that meant getting to hang out with Ali and Stacy and my new friend, Tracey.
We stopped at Ivar's on the Pier for a fish and chips snack.
We headed off to the Space Needle for a tasty dinner with a 360-degree very slowly rotating view.
We left Seattle to head over to Carnation where Stacy's parents live and held our meeting on Saturday morning before all boarding planes to our respective homes.
I always get a bit nostalgic when I'm home for any length of time. Though I wouldn't trade the path of my life for anything, I still wonder what it would be like to live in the town I'm from.
This is a picture of Silver Lake. I spent every summer there, trying in vain for that Washington tan, swimming in the lake, and probably doing a few things I ought to not have been doing. So many memories wash over me just looking at this Instagram shot.
A song came to mind, a song called "Hometown" by the insanely underrated Joe Jackson. If you're a fan, you'll know it. If not, here's a little taste of the lyric:
Hometown by Joe Jackson
Of all the stupid things I could have thought This was the worst I started to believe That I was born at seventeen And all the stupid things The letters and the broken verse Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer They'd always been And now I plough through piles Of bills, receipts and credit cards And tickets and the Daily News And sometimes I just . . .
Wanna go back to my home town Though I know it'll never be the same Back to my home town 'Cause it's been so long And I'm wondering if it's still there...
For anyone who somehow became separated from the place in which you grew up, it might resonate with you. In fact, sometimes this song breaks my heart in the best of ways.
Do you feel like you spend all of your creative time sifting through creative clutter?
Does it feel like as soon as you haul out your supplies, it’s time to put them away again?
Are you regularly surprised to find supplies or tools you forgot you had? Or worse, are you regularly frustrated when you can’t put your hands on the things you are sure you have?
Do you feel like your creative space (or the lack of it) zaps your creativity?
If you answered “yes” to any of these, there is a better way. Aby Garvey at simplify 101 has created a brand new workshop—Organize Your Creative Space—to help you find the perfect balance between creativity and organization. In this workshop, you’ll find out how to pull together a space that looks like you, thinks like you and allows you to enjoy your creativework even more. Best of all, you’ll learn how to create an organized space that inspires you and fuels your creativity.
Organizing and creativity go hand-in-hand, so I’m really excited about this new workshop! As with all their online workshops, it’s designed to let you tackle your organizing projects on your time schedule, with the support of a creative organizing expert and a friendly online community. Best yet, with their generous refund policy, you can try this workshop for one week completely risk-free.
TODAY'S GIVEAWAY: One lucky reader will win a seat in this class. Here are the ways to enter this giveaway (up to four chances to win!):
Leave a comment on this post telling me where you do your creative work. (And if you care to elaborate, how’s that working out for you?)
Subscribe to simplify 101’s blog. Come back and leave a comment letting me know you did.
Sign up to receive simplify 101’s weekly quick tip, then leave a comment letting me know you did.
Pin the Organize Your Kitchen graphic on Pinterest, then come back and let me know you did.
I'll randomly select a winner on Tuesday night by 9 p.m. CST. Good luck!
Bonus: Though only one of you will win a free spot, all my readers get a 15% discount from simplify 101. To take advantage of this offer, CZ15MAY during checkout. This coupon may be applied to any of simplify 101’s current online workshop (instant downloads are excluded) through May 28, 2012 and may not be combined with any other offers.
Comments are now closed. Check back to see if you're a winner.
One blog reader will win a seat in a new workshop with Renee Pearson, iScrapit.
RENEE TALKS ABOUT THE CLASS: Mobile scrapbooking is the logical next step for the modern memory keeper. My iPhone and iPad are with me all the time. Even when I sleep, they’re resting on my nightstand, ready for a little “sleepless night” entertainment or productivity. In fact, that’s exactly how I started scrapbooking on my iPad…late at night.
There’s an app for that! There’s an app for almost anything you want to do on an iPad or iPhone. My app of choice for mobile memory-keeping is Apple Keynote for iOS.
In iScrapit, you’ll learn how to create beautiful digital albums using Apple Keynote for iPad or iPhone. Over the course of 3-weeks, I’ll cover everything from adding images and text to animations and transitions. You’ll also learn how to convert your digital kits and templates to sizes that work with your mobile device and how to take your Project Life mobile.
TO ENTER: Leave a comment and tell me if you use your iPhone or iPad in any way to presently record your memories. I'll choose a winner on Sunday night.
Comments are now closed. Check back to see if you're a winner.
The Designer Digitals 2nd Quarter sale is on now through next Wednesday at 3 a.m. E.S.T. Everything in the store is marked down 30%. You can find my collection by clicking here. It's a great time to save on anything you might have your eye on or what to try out!
OBSERVATIONS: Another week, another set of photos and stories I love. The process of putting this together each week is really becoming a true labor of love; a chance to look at the notes I've taken and the photos I've shot, and see what our lives looked like for another one week stretch. It's good stuff, people. It truly was a joyful week. Here are my pages.
My favorite photo this week is a tie between me and Dan, and the red heart. The red heart came home with Dan and serves as a reminder that our time apart was a key for re-connection. Using InDesign, I typeset a line of text from an email he wrote while he was there.
Sigh. A little slice of romance indeed. Moving on…
Thank you, Aidan Zielske, for taking this picture. I love your eye.
And speaking of my first born, here's a wee story about her.
And no early summer would be complete without the Zielskes finally getting around to burning our Christmas tree. Note to self: up your homeowners insurance for the next round. That thing was a pyre of potential disaster.
And that concludes our coverage of Week Nineteen for Project Life.
Project Life, created by Becky Higgins, is a flexible, easy-to-use, highly customizable way to save your memories in a fun, stress-free way. Learn more about getting started with Project Life by clicking here.
I'm getting on a plane tonight for the first time since the fall of 2008. I don't really go anywhere very often via large metal flying machine. I used to, back in the glory days of Simple Scrapbooks magazine, when I'd fly to beautiful Salt Lake City (read: Draper) for editorial meetings every 8 weeks.
Even though I got good at packing light, carrying my bag on, keeping my liquids in their tiny plastic 3-oz containers, I never really loved the traveling.
I remember thinking back then, "How did this get to be part of my job as a graphic designer?" Graphic designers sit alone in darkened rooms very much engaged with terra firma. Flying places for work was something my Dad did when I was growing up. Was I really that grown up?
I made this page in 2008 to document the fact that I'd become a fly girl.
It's funny. I still carry the same purse (although my present one is in black) and I still bring as much in-flight entertainment as possible (my iPad is loaded up with three flicks). Hopefully, it'll be smooth sailing all the way to good old Seattle, Washington, the city of my birth.
One thing that hasn't changed for me as a traveler is that even though there is always a bit of excitement or nervousness on fly day, there is also the part of me that truly wishes her feet wouldn't be leaving the ground at all.