Tag Archives: Everyday Life

Super Casual Craft Room Tour

Posted in Craft, Creative Practice, In the Studio by

Hi everyone! Writing to you from Boston on a very cold and dark and rainy day. It is super miserable and the twinkle lights are on all over the house.

I’m a part of the Simple Scrapper community, and a few weeks ago, I posted an idea for whoever wanted to, to post a super casual video of your craft room… not spic and span and fancy but a “real” video. I volunteered to go first, and so I did. I thought I’d share here on my blog as well. Completely amateur video skills happening here, but hope you enjoy a slice of the craziness over here.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you are staying well and safe during the Pandemic. xo Sue

December Daily 2018-Loose plan & Day 1

Posted in December Daily, December Daily 2018, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Memory Keeping by

Well then… one post every six months seems to be the way we are going lately!  Not that there has been a lack of making…there has just been a lack of posting.  Lots of making getting done and hopefully I can get around to sharing some here soon.

It’s the first day in December and in the memory keeping world that means it’s time to get started on December Daily. December Daily is a memory keeping project brought to life by Ali Edwards, awesome all around person and memory keeper extraordinaire!  I have documented December every year since 2009…tho in truth…last year’s is not complete but I am hoping to correct that this month.  For fun, I’ve gathered all of my past albums together and am keeping them in a basket in the family room for the season.  It is so much fun to go back and look at prior years and see what we were up to.  

 

I wanted to get day one completed and posted before I go out of town for a few days to kick things off.  I am very motivated to complete this year within a few days of the 25th… I have not decided if I’m going until the 31st or just the 25th.  Some years I have and some I haven’t, we’ll have to see.    My plan right now is one 6×8 photo with some embellishment and one 6×8 page of text for each day…we’ll see how that shakes out.  I’m hoping that only having to work with 6×8 for the main part of the album will make it quicker and easier to complete.  I am planning to be almost all digital only adding in tactile elements as I come across them and I’ll probably hold everything until the end and decide what to do with the ephemera then.  I have the kits I’m using and templates all ready to go in one file on my computer so I will not have to go hunting each time I want to make a page…we’ll see how that goes!    So with out further ado…here is day one:

 

I will be out of town for days 2-6 so I’ll have lots to share later this week.   Happy December everyone!

 

You can learn more about Ali Edwards and December Daily HERE on her blog.

Home Made Goodness

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Food, Layouts, Scrapbooking by

In an effort to ATTEMPT to spend my time creating more and consuming less (GoT excepted)… tonight I sat down and instead of scrolling FB endlessly…I made a scrapbook layout (!) gasp.  I know, I know.  We have actually been super busy in a good way this summer so lots going on but not a lot of sharing. In an effort to remedy that, may I present…

yep, Christmas baking layouts in August!  I had bought the cutest baking kit from Pink Reptile Designs and a template kit from Scrapping with Liz at The Lilypad (one of my fave digi-scrapping shops) and tonight was the night to use it.

Last night I spent my evening catching up with my 2016 photos in Lightroom, and I’m thrilled to say that I believe that 2016 is all done, edited, rated and tagged.  That is why I could find these photos about baking…from my “baking” keyword.  I have a lot of memory keeping to work on.  I have realized that I’ve been catching myself thinking 2 more first-days-of-school until the girls go to college, 2 more back-to-school shoppings until the girls go to college … you get the idea.   One layout to make a dent in the memory keeping list!

Once school starts and we are on a more normal schedule, maybe more posting  (?!)  best of intentions…. enjoy!

1/14: The Big Gray Pot

Posted in Around Here, Cooking, Creative Practice by

Happy Middle of January !

Winter had finally arrived here in New England.  It’s cold, it snowed (not enough to really shovel but enough to look pretty), the sun is out and it’s cold.  Just the kind of weather for hearty yummy carb-laden goodies made in the Big Gray Pot.

This week (so far) I made risotto with shrimp and peas.   Risotto is one of those dishes that everyone in the house loves, but I kind of forget about when I’m thinking of things to make.  It is super easy, I use the basic recipe from an old, old Williams Sonoma “Risotto” cookbook.  There is half an hour of minding the pot on the stove as you add the chicken stock but easy to do while you are puttering around the kitchen making salad or cleaning up.  Add to that peas in the freezer and frozen cooked shrimp on sale at MarketBasket and it’s risotto for the win!

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The night I made it was my basketball carpool night, after the risotto was finished, I put the lid on and put it in a 200 degree oven to stay warm while I picked up and dropped off hoop stars.  I’ve never “held” risotto in the oven like that before and I think were I to do it again, I’d add a little extra water on the top to keep it moist.  The rice kept sucking up the cooking liquid and wasn’t dry but not quite as creamy.

Hope you try something like this, I love the fact that I can cook something on the stove and then hold it in a warm oven rather than letting it get cold and them microwaving to heat up later.

Have a great day everyone!!

 

…It was supposed to be a quick project…

Posted in Around Here, In the Studio by

How many times have we said that??  Come on, raise your hands, I know you are out there.  It seemed so easy.

Me:  Hey honey, I decided I want to use my birthday money from your folks to help pay for a new worktop for my studio, can we go to Ikea and pick up the new furniture for my studio?                                                                         Charlie:  Sure!

That was the easy part.  Actually, I should say going to Ikea and actually getting the stuff, easy peasy.  I had made a list of what we needed.  I’d even mapped out the entire project step by step.  Yay for organized!  We brought everything home and put it all together in a few hours.  PicTapGo-ImageLooked great!!  Of course it did, fit just like I’d planned.  So excited to have drawers!  So many I’m not even sure what I’m going to put in them (ha ha ha).  On my list of things to do was to clear out the shelves and re-organize them, and take down all my notes on the wall from 2015.   PicTapGo-Image copyYay organizing project.  In addition to cleaning out, I found $6, and a bracket for the shade I would like to hang on the driveway side window (hopeful bracket #2 will turn up soon), and I cleaned.  I am going to swap the workstations with sewing on the right with the ironing board behind me and computer/memorykeeping on the left.   All was going swimmingly, until the subject of this came up… PicTapGo-Image copy 3and yes, people I went down that path.  I thought I’ll just put a coat of poly on the top so I don’t mess it up.   Um no…. old poly, wrong brush means took for.ev.er. to dry and didn’t cover well.  One new fresh can of poly later (read on the This Old House blog you should toss poly after it’s been open for a year….yeah, that can came from our old house 😉  ) here we are.  Looks much much better!!  Dried perfectly, nice and smooth, full coverage (just a tiny bit of fine steel wool polishing will happen today) All ready to go!  PicTapGo-Image copy 2Put the stuff back in that’s been junking up the upstairs hall.  PicTapGo-Image copy 5So excited, can’t wait to work on one long continuous counter, spread out my fabric or my projects, a home for the scanner and maybe the tablet, this is going to be great!  Or not, wait, it seems a little low for me.  Get out the tape, measure, yup, the worktop needs to come up 1″ – 1 1/2″, and I need a big piece of something for on top of the cart to make up the space on the back that won’t be covered by the top, since I have to move it forward to the edge of the drawers (overhang = not getting into the back of those drawers) *sigh*

Honnneeeeee  !!!  I have a little project for you !

Pray for me…hoping to have this all sorted out on the weekend and be making stuff in here soon… this wasn’t going to be on of my 52/16 projects but it is starting to verge in that direction!