Making Memories

Summer is well underway

I don’t know what the weather is like were you are, but in Utah it’s getting HOT.  To me, this means summer is well on its way.  I’m sure you have already started to buy new flip flops for this season, so I wanted to give you a cute idea to help you turn your flip flops from ordinary to extraordinary.  Plus it helps you use up some of the ribbon that you collect (if you are like me).  This idea is also found in the Ribbonrie book. 

 

how to: Cut pieces of ribbon and trims of various widths and textures into strips measuring 4 ½ or 5 inches in length.  Tie strips in tight double knots around plastic straps, making sure that strips are close together with no visible space in between.  Where straps meet, add a Ribbon Charm Alphabet letter to one of the strips before tying.

Enjoy!

Jenn

My Trip Continues & Ends...

Pook and I landing in Amsterdam, May 18. Unfortunately, Pook’s luggage did not! How does this happen...it’s a one hour flight! After waiting and waiting and filling out paperwork to get her luggage sent on to us at Scrap-a-ganza, we went out to find the driver that was going to take us to the event (about an hour away at Egmond aan Zee).  Anyway, Heidi Heideveld-Hasz (the event grand poo-bah) had told me that I would be met at a red and white something…actually, she had said the red and white “meeting place” (everyone seems to know about it but me). Anyway, how we missed it in the middle of the airport, I will never know, but we did so we wandered outside in search of something red and white. We found a huge triangular sign that was kind of red and white that was on a traffic island...and we actually stood there for about 15 minutes until my daughter came to her senses and suggested that we give Heidi a call to see exactly where we should go. As I was heading for the phones, Brittany spotted the huge “meeting place,” wandered over there and of course, there was the driver!

The next few days was filled with classes, fabulous people and an excursion to Keukenhof, which the best way to describe it is a huge theme park for flowers. Tulips (of course), lilies as big as your head, amazing! 

Since I had been gone for a 1 ½ weeks by then and needed some laundry done, Pook and I ventured off to the nearby village to find a laundromat (no such thing) and finally ended up washing it in our bathtub (that is never a good idea). It actually would have worked except that it wouldn’t dry.  It was cold and rainy and some of our clothes ended up blowing into the village, I think!

Before I knew it the event and our adventure came to an end. It was time to return home. I will never forget the wonderful students and staff that went out of their way to make me feel welcome. Also thank you to all the people that made this possible for my daughter and I to have this adventure..Dennis, Jodi, Paula, Allison, Nicki and Heidi, thank you!

Gail

Pictures: The "meeting place," the village that the event was held in Egmond aan Zee, washing our clothes

The Adventure continues………….

The first order of business when I landed at the Gatwick Airport was to get me and my 100 lbs. of assorted luggage, supplies and computer to Birmingham (about 2 hours north of London)! I decided to take a train which would have been a great option if I had taken the right one. The lesson here is when the train is scheduled for 11:25; don’t take the train that shows up at 11:22! That would be the wrong train (I thought it just was making better time than expected!). Luckily, I have learned to appeal to everyone within the sound of my voice to help me find my way in these instances (inexplicably, there have been a lot of them). After wrangling my gear off and on a couple more trains, I arrived at the site for Bonanza scrap event!

The Bonzana coordinators, staff and participants were awesome! It is amazing to me that no matter where I go in the world the same spirit of friendliness, camaraderie and passion for scrapbooking exists. I met a lot of wonderful people who taught me a lot about their culture and their lives!

The Monday after Bonanza, my darling daughter Brittany (I call her Pook) met me for a few leisurely days in London!!! I use the term leisurely loosely……Pook loves to sightsee, hike, walk impossibly fast and go for hours without food…….and that pretty much describes the next 3 days. Every morning we started out running in Hyde Park for an hour, having breakfast and then hitting the underground and walking to every point of interest in the London area. We would drag ourselves back to the hotel sometime after 10:00 at night to fall into bed! We saw 3 museums, and countless monuments, castles and jewels.  I wore my cute little sandals the first day instead of walking shoes, after that the phrase of the day was “NO CUTE SHOES” ……….we only got lost a couple of times (Pook has a good sense of direction) all of this at about twice the rate of speed that I normally can walk (and I’m a fast walker!) It was fabulous, a blur, but fabulous!

Next…on to the Netherlands

Gail

 

Photos:

1. Victoria Train Station in London(sound familiar to any of you Harry Potter fans out there?)
2. The London Eye (the worlds largest observation wheel) overlooking the city near the River Thames
3. Touring the city on an open-top double-decker bus

Summer Travel Challenge

So, anybody out there have travel plans for the summer?  I do, and I can’t wait!  I thought it would be fun to create an opening page for an album on my summertime travels, so I pulled out some of my favorite Making Memories products!  The result is my layout seen here…”nothing but blue skies ahead”.  MM has so many travel themed products that I can’t keep up with them all, but I definitely have my favorites.  I reach for the mini rub-ons, the wordage/image rub-ons, and word fetti stickers again and again—I can’t get enough!  I combined all of my favorites on this page, but kept the look clean by grouping items together and by sticking to just a few colors.

I love the photo I used in this layout. While I don’t recommend taking photos while you’re driving (*wink*), you can pull over and get a cool shot from inside your car.  To get this shot, I used a filter called a circular polarizer.  A circular polarizer really makes the white of the clouds ‘pop’ against the blue of the skies.  It’s probably my favorite filter I own!  Most cars have a tinted strip along the upper edge of the windshield and it does the same thing as the circular polarizer…the clouds really ‘pop’ when you look through it.  Experiment next time you’re in the car and see if you can get a fun shot like this to show your travels ‘on the road’.  Be sure to upload your travel layouts to the MM idea gallery so I can check them out.  Maybe I’ll even discover some new vacation spots!

erin t.