An exciting weekend all around

The weekend of Oct 10 - 12 was a very exciting on for me all around! On Oct 10, my Goddaughter, Annabelle Powers Hennessey, made her debut into the world. Jessica was almost a week late and waited patiently (well, that word is used loosely with us!) for her baby to arrive. It wasn't as smooth as Jessica and Richard would have liked, but baby and Mom are doing amazing. She has a full head of red hair to follow her father and uncle. I can't WAIT to meet her in person. In the meantime, I will hear all about her from her Mommy.

The other exciting event was Heather and Ryan's wedding. I am going to wait to post any pictures b/c the bride has not posted anything yet. I've seen some incredible pictures taken by our dear friend, Frances and her husband Bill, but Heather has not seen much yet. I'd like to let her be the first to post. Then I will post a beautiful picture of the bride and groom!

Over all the weekend was incredible. We had hand picked weather, incredible foliage colors, great company in all the guests and wedding attendants, and mostly Heather's impeccable taste and style that made this one of the most gorgeous weddings I've seen and been a part of. There will be many pictures to come.

A day with TIM!

As I always say... I am LUCKY to have Absolutely Everything in my backyard in MA... to have these wonderful women and Kate's talent and business... again, I had an amazing opportunity last night and today... I got to learn from TIM HOLTZ! What FUN.... he is such a nice guy and his teaching mannerisms make you feel like you are the most talented person in the world! He has a way of teaching classes that allows you to understand why and how you use the products that he has chosen to represent, design and use in his creative endeavours. If you have ever logged onto his blog and taken his monthly 'lessons' or the 12 days of Christmas from 2007, you know that he walks you through the process step by step, teaching you to use a product, how you use it with other products, how it's going to interact with products, why he would use it in a certain way and then wa-la you have an incredible finished design! I learned so much from his 12 days and the monthly tags. Learning it in person was incredible!

Tim came to AE for one of 2 "Holiday Festivals" that he is teaching.... If you click on the link you see the design he made for these classes... well, he shows with a canvas bag using this design for each and every person that is taking a class! For going last night, that bag was full of goodies to make the make n takes - lower collage - and other fun stuff to play with!




Above is a picture of Heather taking a break from all the crazy wedding plans with me and Tim... He was just so sweet and was so happy to take pictures with us, talk to us...
Below is a picture of the album that we did... go to his blog and check out the Festive Windows picture... yah, that's an acrylic album! We sprayed this amazing frost stuff on the covers of the album that create that look. We then learned how to use alcohol inks and paint the 'Paintables', acrylic line from Prima... a technique that I was a bit afraid of and he made it seem like we were picking up markers and coloring!

As always, I leave AE spending money and so excited to start a new project. Maybe someday I'll finish all those projects!

On a side note - I am SO excited b/c my favorite kit designer ever had been on a bit of hiatus and re-appeared this week. Fran introduced me to Scrapologie about 2 years ago, probably more, and I always wait for new kits. She no longer does a monthly kit, but does them throughout the year. Tonight she put up for sale her Provence inspired kit... her blog can be seen by clicking on the above link. Ranjini's talent is just so incredible and she continues to 'awe' me with her creations. Someday my final projects will look this exciting (esp when I learn to use photoshop on my new computer!)

Just a vew more pictures....

I can only upload 4 pics at a time... A few more from the day...

Heather's getting married!

Heather is getting married in THREE weeks!!!! Wow... it's almost here. It's been an incredible 2 year journey. I am honored to be the maid of honor and with that have had a wonderful time organizing her shower (back in May) and then last weekend our bachelorette soiree...
Heather is the star of the 4th picture down... her creativeness is going to result in one of the most incredible weddings. She has spent the last year organizing, brain-storming and spending countless hours in her "ladyland" doing what is known as DIY projects. From pom-poms on flip flops for the guests, to out of town gift bags, amazing packages for the wedding party, ribbon wands for the ceremony (in lieu of rice), felt bags to hold the wedding programs, plastic holders for the pictures that everyone can take part in with the photo booth, all the vintage elements that she's adding to round out a vintage themed wedding... the list goes on. A local photographer, Kristin Spencer who is doing HJT's wedding, created a blog last year called Chatty Brides for local women (it's gone national now) to post about planning weddings... to view a lot of the projects that Heather has done, visit the site. It's incredibly inspiring.
I wanted to organize a day with Heather's closest friends doing activities that she and I enjoy and also partook in when we lived in Newport together. We started the day at Greenvale Vineyards in Portsmouth, RI - down the road from where the wedding is going to be at Glen Manor. Greenvale is a small vineyard focused primarily on whites that grow well in NE along the coast. We had an amazing tour guide, Bill, whom took us through the vineyard pointing out the various grapes and the process of growing. That was followed by a tasting of the wines. Greenvale has jazz on Saturdays and encourages you to bring a picnic, or they have boxed lunches you can order ahead of time. I made a picnic for the 8 of us that included wonderful cheeses, salad, soup and cookies. We relaxed, had wonderful conversation with 8 incredible ladies, drank wine and laughed a lot. Thank you to my dear friend, Frances, who took these pictures. Fran has spent many hours this year working on her photography skills and it shows.
I haven't seen pictures of the rest of the day yet... I can only imagine! We took a ride out Ocean Drive for afternoon cocktails at Ocean Cliff - a spot that Heather and I often haunted! We had a hotel room in town so we went back there to spruce ourselves for an evening out... another favorite haunt was Cooke House right in the heart of Newport. We had a wonderful dinner followed by dancing in the Boom Boom room! Late night we visited a place we also spent a few hours at... Pelham.
All in all it was a successful, relaxing fun day in preparation for what will be a wonderful weekend for Heather and Ryan.

Using distress paints...

One of the things that I've been focusing on this year is using different mediums that are new to me. I know I've said this and sound like a broken record, but being able to go to such a wonderful store like Absolutely Everything is the best thing for me! I have learned so much. At the end of last year I started to learn how to use distress inks and embossing powders by Tim Holtz through Ranger. I have posted a little on this before... throughout this year I have been accumulating those products and then started in on the distress paints.

At the end of the summer I had some time to really start playing in my craft room so I made some thank you notes, but really made tags and wrote on the back. The first 2 are the tags... the second one had a mini tag attached that I wrote on and it went right into a little pocket on the front of the bigger tag. For both of these I embossed using the harlequin stamp, painted over and then using a wet paper towel removed the paint from the embossed part. Then I stamped the clock with black Staz On. Once you get going on these projects they are pretty easy.

This is a card I made for my cousin Erika for her birthday. She lives in CA with her family, but her husbands family is from CT. They Christened their daughter, Clara, in CT so we were able to go for a visit and finally meet little Clara - who is a hoot! Definitely a descendant of the Mayer women (my Mother's family!) Erika's birthday was that week so I made this card. My latest thing are the chipboard keychains from Maya Road... they make the best tags on gifts! I used the cupcake for the front of the card. I did the same embossing and painting over on the top. For the rest of the card... this is a 6x6 card... I used paper from the Graphic 45 line - a wondeful, vintage inspired line of papers that I can't resist - and cut that 5.75 x 5.75 to fit over a red card. I distressed the edges and used a little distress ink. The sticker on top is from the vintage poster labels that Cavallini put out - another wonderful line that you can watch out for at Home Goods, if you're lucky! Add some fibers... ok, fibers... it started with Heather buying them at Michael's in bulk... then we scored one day at Joann Fabrics when they were having a huge sale. Last week I found them at Ocean State Job Lot for a $1. These bad boys are the best! I now have 2 tupperware containers full of them!

My first pictures.... well...

Not really the first b/c I've taken about 200, but these are my first as I learn...I FINALLY got my SLR camera that was my birthday present (June 10...) a week ago. I got the Canon Rebel XS. I was so fed up with my point and shoot Kodak b/c the batteries fall out and don't last long. Other than that it is a pretty good little camera to have around. As a scrapbooker I decided that in order to start making wonderful lay-outs I should upgrade the camera! I also just want to document my life better, I want to learn to take fabulous pictures that tell stories. You get to a point where the camera is the key. It's an exciting, new journey for me. I have more to learn than I can comprehend, but I'll take it one step at a time (as much as I can given my need to accomplish things asap!) I really hope to take the Karen Russell photo class in the winter. By then I should have the basics down (like how to focus!!!) and will be ready to step it up. I awe at her pictures regularly.

As most know my garden is one of my top 5 loves. I have such a big project to bring Keith's yard back to it's glory. Being the daughter of a landscaper I am up to the challenge. I started this year with some simple cutting flowers and annuals - snapdragons (my personal favorite after peonies), petunias, zinnias (although Mom ended up with the bright colors and I have all yellow and light green!), cosmos, verbena, morning glory's, Cleome, daisy's, and then a random pack of seeds that came up really cool! Also worked a little more on the perrenial border - 15 peonies that are gorgeous and added some phlox, shasta daisy's, sedum, there are iris and day lillies... I have a battle with a ground hog and a few deer so I need to work on that. The damn ground hog munched the phlox right down along with the cone flower when I first put them in, the phlox are blooming now - just not the height they should be. I moved the Cone Flower so I won't get them until next year. I am putting Russian Sage that should ward off the bunnies, not sure about the deer. This fall I have to finish the other side of the peony border. Oh... and daffodils. If they were gold we'd be millionaires I have NEVER quite seen anything like it. I dig them up in clumps of NO JOKE 100's... I pulled out another wheelbarrow full 2 weeks from an area that I had already attacked. I would be fine with them if the flowered, but they don't the way I want so I am just trying to thin them. It's a big joke on me.

Above is a little collage of pictures I took yesterday...I wanted my first lesson to be how to take pictures close and somewhat blur the background. What better subject than my beautiful blooming flowers! It just so happens that this is the first topic in the Scott Kelby books (but know I have much more on this topic) I learned to focus close with a low aperture and get down with the flowers. I also saved the mirror lock-up which I think helped b/c the other day I tried to take similar photos and they were somewhat blurry. (Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.)

If you've read this far... thanks! I'm rambling... I may blog as I learn to use the camera. It's fun! I have 3 books plus the manual plus about 4 computer programs with manuals! Then I move to photoshop...

Ribbon Anyone?

Ahhh....ribbon! Looking at this you wouldn't think that I don't buy as much as I did at one time... the truth is that I am drawn to it! I love to use it on projects, wrapping gifts with all different kinds, tying it in my hair... the possibilities are endless and the colors just call to me! Now I tend to get a few different styles in each of my monthly kits so I don't buy as much... but if I had my way the wall of ribbon at Absolutely Everything would be in my craft room. But alas, I settle...

The room is still a work in progress as far as storage goes. I am a pretty anal organizer so there are a few things that I still need to work on. Ribbon was one of them. I have seen lots of options for storing ribbon, but this one was definitely the winner. This is called the Ribbon Ring, and the designer/ creator Melissa is a genius! What she did was design these little plastic things that you can weave ribbons through and then hang them on basic rings. Once you thread the ribbon through, it doesn't move! These things have been thrown around and nothing is falling off. I do recommend that you have time to assemble... it did take me most of Sunday to do this! Then again... maybe you won't have as many ribbons as me. Keith threatened to call someone in for help b/c he just couldn't believe the never-ending pile of ribbon!

Look at all the color!!!