An oldie but a goodie... December Daily 2011

In November, I reminded myself just how much I love seeing how much the boys have grown...in something tangible, not on Facebook or online...so I committed to doing the December Daily for our second December together.  As last year's December was a bit more "exciting" than anticipated with Alexander's early arrival...I was excited to refocus and spend a few minutes each day documenting what is happening.

My last full December Daily was in 2010...when we had just one Wee Ski (here are a bunch of pages from it).  I looked at my 2011 files on my hard drive, and realized that I had about 10 pages to finish...and I decided to do just that.  I took my first "free" evening in weeks (since my time at my computer has been nonstop editing and designing for Finian Road)...and made this just for me.

I sent it to Shutterfly, and last night the familiar orange box showed up on my doorstep.

AND I LOVE IT.

They offer lay-flat pages and I upgraded again to the padded cover, and the boys were thrilled to go through things, page by page.  They were pretty confused by how it was John Paul as the baby and not Alexander...so maybe by 2015, I will have last year's done too.  :)  I had read the quote "perfection is the enemy of completion"...and it couldn't be more true than here.  I chose to not worry about missing a day or detail. I just wanted to have it in hand.  I AM SO GLAD I DID. 

This should be a link to the full album. 

It's now a little "blast from the past"!  :)

The Newest Wee-est 2011 Grand Club Member

John Paul went to his first Relay For Life of Thurston County meeting tonight at 22 days old.  He beat his brother, who attended his first Relay meeting at 54 days old...but that was a Great West Division meeting.  So they both hold their own records - one for a local meeting, one for the division.  :)

He got the best Relay baby surprise EVER tonight.  John Paul qualified for the Grand Club with our family (we all got our tees tonight)...and our amazing staff partner Janell ordered the smallest size for Thomas, and a second one for John Paul.  She then customized the tee BY HAND into a newborn sized onesie, complete with snaps on the legs!  So thoughtful and an awesome surprise after being "out of the loop" for a few weeks!

The first photo is his best "CANCER SUCKS" face, followed by a shot of the back while being held by Papa. 

Both boys will be sporting their Grand Club shirts at the end of June at our event!

Sweet design goodies...

Just a quick post to point you over to a sweet little design giveaway on the Finian Road blog...celebrating the launch of my personal design line over at Etsy!  Don't delay - the deadline to win is tomorrow night (Tuesday, February 1) at 6 pm Pacific!

In the works.

Over the past few months, we've been making a great deal of progress around the house -- cleaning out, decluttering, organizing, starting to paint and finally starting to decorate. It's been a long process combining three different 'families' worth of stuff: from my home, from Jonathan, and things from his parents'.

It's the fine balance of deciding what's useful, what's meaningful, and what needs to move to a new home.

At times, it feels like there are a number of simultaneous projects going on. We just remember that things will never "be done". Everything is a work in progress. :)

I have hopes for an awesome mud room in our garage, with a spot for a big freezer + big fridge + big sink and lots of storage.  Last weekend, Jonathan tore out all the old shelving and cleaned out everything in spot for the mud room.  He found mincemeat canned in 1984, lots of old papers, and a ton of random things in the process.  :)  I was busy sanding down a very awesome old filing cabinet that we found (!) in the garage.  Pretty sure it was a military cabinet, and it's the coolest organizing metal cabinet I've ever seen.  Simple + useful.  Cannot wait until that's done too.

Onto little projects to celebrate right now...things that I love around our house right now.
The black frame.
It kills me that I didn't take a "before" photo.  Jonathan actually had two of the same images hanging in the house - one in the front room and one in the nursery.  We left the one in the nursery, and I took apart this one.  Saved the glass and primered the wood.  Sprayed white primer, then the same metallic silver paint that i used on the lamps below.  After it dried, I sprayed a flat black paint, and used a paper towel to sponge back some of the paint to antique it and bring out the silver below.  Totally love how it turned out. This will probably end up over the piano between the two silver lamps. 



The cross-stitch from Mary.
Jonathan's mom was a fantastic cross-stitcher.  We have a number of pieces by her, but this is my favorite.  "Spierewka" was the surname that our family had before reaching America, changed when arriving into the States, as "Sprouffske" would be easier to use.  (huh?)  Anyway, I love this farming scene -- it's nearly 4 feet wide.  It greets everyone who comes into our home through the front door.

The candlesticks.
Beneath the cross stitch, in the entrance.  A handmade gift from Matt and Lisa, when I was in their wedding nearly 10 years ago. 

A frame from my mom.
My mom doesn't get the itch to 'craft' very often, and she usually skips the crafty projects and leaves them to me.  In 1997, before I started my junior year in college and Mike began his freshman year, our family went to Art & Soul in Gig Harbor, for all of us to paint pottery.  If you know our family, you can only imagine what that experience was like with my mom, dad & brother.  :)  But it was a great afternoon of bonding and laughter, and this frame from my mom is still one of my favorite things.  I am going to find a photo of her + Thomas to add to it now.

A handmade bowl.
This is probably one of the coolest Relay For Life gifts I've ever received.  One of the volunteers in Phoenix, Arizona was a ceramics teacher, and his class made a ton of these bowls for all the participants in the Phoenix Relay Regional Summit.  He shared a very cool personal survivor story and everyone received a handmade bowl. 

Silver frames.
I found these frames probably 10-12 years ago at one of my old favorite stores, Import Outlet, before they went out of business.  At my old house, they had the frame mats with lots of little openings and tons of photos.  I wanted to simplify them with bigger images, and searched all over to find mats with larger openings.  After searching several stores and not finding anything I liked, I decided to just design the mat right into the photo.  Using Photoshop, I made a thin keyline around each image with rounded corners, and converted them all to a milky black & white.  Saved $$ by not buying mats, and really love how they turned out.  They'll all be hung next to one another shortly.  And I love the duo from the wedding -- the coloring contest pic + us holding the pic. I had them finished as metallic prints, and they have a gleam that I adore in black & white.  All of it just makes me happy.



Silver mirror + frames. 
These used to hang in my front living room, on the plum colored wall.  Both images at the time were tinted plum to match.  Now, there's an image of Thomas.  The plum shaded image that I took in Italy will swapped out sometime soon.  Not sure into what.  We need as much light as we can get in the house, and the reflection of the lamp into the mirror  helps brighten things, especially at night.

And that's all for now.

More projects to come.  :)

The 2010 Shoot to Fight Cancer is LIVE!

Our Relay For Life team (Team Connolly Tacon & Meserve) is off to a fantastic start -- we passed the $20,000 mark in funds raised over the weekend!

For the last two years, I have donated a photo shoot from Finian Road and raffled it off to benefit the American Cancer Society.  More than $3200 has been raised in 2 years from these shoots. 

This year's shoot has already sold nearly $500 of tickets in the last 4 days.

I introduce this year's fabulously awesome Shoot to Fight Cancer.

A photo shoot with your fam from Finian Road + the digital negatives + two incredibly beautiful gallery-wrapped canvas of your two favorite images from the shoot, all while fighting cancer at the same time?

The newest addition to this prize are the two gallery-wrapped canvas. They are beautiful prints on canvas, wrapped around stretcher bars so the image continues over the edge and onto the sides of the canvas. They need no frame and are ready to hang! You will love them!

With the exception of the cure for cancer, I can't think of a sweeter deal.

Tickets are $25 each, and there are just 125 tickets available. Great odds for a prize package worth $750!

100% of every dollar from every ticket goes to support the life-saving work of the American Cancer Society...saving lives and creating more birthdays by helping you stay well, helping you get well, finding cures and by fighting back.

Check out the beautiful shoot from last year's Shoot to Fight Cancer with winner Candice Iverson and her husband, Brian.

You can use the shoot yourself, or give it away as a gift (and you would be the best gift giver EVER!).

Here's how to buy your tickets:

• Go to our online website for the Relay For Life.You'll see a very cute photo of the Wee Ski fighting cancer in camo.
• Click on the blue "donate" button under our names.
• Enter the amount you wish to donate under "select gift amount": $100 buys you 4 tickets, $75 buys you three tickets, $50 buys you two tickets, and $25 buys you 1 ticket. And you can always buy more than 4!
• Follow the prompts to complete your donation to the American Cancer Society.
• We will receive a notice that your donation has been made and your ticket stub will be in the mail to you within 48 hours. It will go to the billing address for the credit card used to pay for the ticket.

The drawing will be held on Friday, April 30th at 6:00 pm, Pacific time. The winner will be announced on the blog that evening, just after drawing!

Remember, you can't win if you don't buy a ticket! Good luck!

Pennants: How to Festively Trick Out Your Pad

In December, I got on a pennant kick. I love how festive they are. I realized with Costco's fabulous pricing for 4x6 prints (13 cents per print- decorating a 10 ft wide mantel could be less than $4), that I could make my own very inexpensively and have them customized for whatever event was happening. You can hang them in doorways, across rooms, over fireplaces, whatever.

I designed a template in Photoshop for a single pennant, and customized the heck out of it. I made a set to celebrate Liz's passing of her last major licensing exams (featuring a photo of her with different phrases), a set for Mom's birthday in the hospital that matched her birthday book and signs (great decor that was allowed in the ICU), and just finished a set for our tailgating Super Bowl party next Sunday. I shrunk them down to make mini pennants, which are awesome to decorate drinks with - when adhered to a long 'kebab-style' swizzle stick. Jonathan is my best helper with this -- he just cuts them out while he's watching Sportscenter. (Creative AND manly at the same time!)

I was going to simply share the Photoshop template, but realizing that a number of people don't have the full Photoshop program, I'm going to teach you how to make your own. (It will be really helpful if you are already a bit proficient with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements -- if you're not, see if you can adjust to use your own program!)

HOW TO MAKE CUSTOMIZED PENNANTS

1. Start with a blank canvas of 4 inches wide, 6 inches tall.
2. Paint the canvas black. (This will make more sense later)
3. Using the custom shape tool, add a triangle on a new layer. You'll notice that the triangle does NOT cover the whole canvas, it's about 90% of the size of the canvas. The main reason is that I always want to give myself a little "wiggle room" when printing these. Often times, photofinishers will slightly enlarge prints automatically, and it's easy to cut part of your design off if you carry it out to the edge. For these, I center them in the canvas and don't align them to any edge for that reason. (Printers call this the 'bleed area')
   
4. I like the look of a pennant that has a white edge around it. To do that and still be able to customize the pennant, I made the white edge a separate layer. To do this, simply duplicate your triangle layer and color it white. (For help with recoloring elements, see Ali E's awesome tutorial!)
5. Move the white triangle layer beneath the original triangle, and enlarge it by 105%.
   
   
6. You can move the white triangle itself up or down as needed to create a neat border around the triangle.
7. The gray triangle is the base pennant that can be changed. Remember the black background? With the white edges, it's very easy to cut out the pennants by hand -- if it were a white background, it would be impossible to see where the edge was. The black is just easy for me to be able to visually cut. Keep it simple, I say. :)
8. If you want to use simple colors and phrases, all you need to do is change the color of the pennant and add text. Simple as that.
9. If you want to use digital scrapping papers or photos to customize, it's simple! You'll use your "clipping mask" tool. (For a more in-depth instruction of clipping masks, Misty has a great step by step tutorial!) Pull whatever paper or photo into the canvas. In Photoshop, I just open the other file, and click and drag it into my project. Your photo will most likely be much larger in size if it's high resolution. Don't worry about that yet.
10. Make sure the new layer is ABOVE the triangle/pennant layer.
    
11. Right click on the layer of the photo or patterned paper. The box that comes up will have "Create Clipping Mask" as an option. Click on it.
    
12. After clipping, you'll see that the pennant is now showing, with your photo neatly inside!
    
13. Save this as a .jpg file, and you have your first pennant! You can do an entire set of just one photo or paper, all identical, or you can mix it up a bit. Only using one style for the whole thing? Simply print the one design as many times as needed. For Mom's below, I added a "K" only to the gold pennant. I printed each pennant about 15 times and it made for several great strings of pennants around the room.
    
14. I upload my images to Costco, have them printed, and then head over to pick them up.
15. Cut out the pennants.
16. If you are hanging them against a wall, it's very easy to finish them. Cut your ribbon to the desired length and lay it down on the floor or a long table. Slide the pennants face down with the back side up, just under the ribbon by about a 1/2 inch. Tape the ribbon down in the middle. Each pennant will have one piece of tape securing it to the ribbon.
17. If you are hanging them in a doorway and they will be seen from both sides, it will need to be double-sided. (Note that you should print twice as many pennants in this case) First, follow #16 for the length of the ribbon. Then take your cooresponding pennant for the backside, and secure it to the first pennant using double sided tape or a tape roller. Takes a few extra minutes, but it quickly becomes double sided!

Here's a few freebies in case you need a bit of pennant fun for the Super Bowl this weekend. I designed these today and will have them hanging at the house this weekend for the big game. You can download them, just click on the link and right-click "save as" to your own desktop. They are all 4x6 prints.

• The Saints Logo
  These are the majority of the pennants I printed.
• Geaux Pennant and Saints Pennant
  I added a few of these to hang in the mix with the logo above.
• Mini Pennants
  These are cute mini pennants that you can cut and use as decor in drinks, on top of cupcakes or staked into plants, flowers, etc. Normally, I use a long "kebab style" wooden stick, like a giant toothpick for drinks, plants, etc and little toothpicks for food.

Let me know if you have questions...enjoy! :)

...and geaux Saints!