just tell me to RELAX...and BREATHE

a day at the market

 

My cute buddy Rachel, who I met through our now defunct LSS, scheduled a day of thrifting last Saturday, and away we went to A Paris Street Market.  I've been to several of these over the years, but this was by far the biggest and best yet (although the wind was DISASTROUS, to both vendors whose merchandise was damaged and also to patrons like us -- keep reading).  Tons of eye candy for a crazy ladder-lover like me...

 

and plenty of other goodies to ogle, dreaming of new uses for all these old darlings...

 

Well, as we were excitedly checking out these wooden soda crates (above), Rachel commented that she's always wanted a Dr. Pepper crate but hasn't had luck finding one...I had just taken the above picture and said, "I'm pretty sure THAT'S a Dr. Pepper crate, isn't it?"  As we crouched down to look at our find, a huge gust of wind picked up a metal tri-fold screen and threw it into Rachel's head!  Poor thing was hurt something good -- a big ol' goose egg formed on her head almost immediately, and she was seeing stars.  We ended up calling it a day so that Rachel could take a rest at my house and I could keep an eye on her for a few hours, but not before the vendor gave Rachel the Dr. Pepper crate for free!  Here she is with her bump AND her "free" crate...

Never fear!  I left with a few goodies of my own (bought and paid for - luckily no injuries sustained by me)...I bought this funky screened-in window for $10...James had already pulled the screen out for me before I took a photo...

 

...and after a little paint it's starting to look like this...

 

The final step will be to add some corrugated metal to the back so that we can hang it in Ripley's room as a magnet board.  She's very excited.

I also picked up a groovy metal gate with peeling green paint.  No pictures yet, but I'm planning to use it as a trellis in the yard.  Stay tuned!

what do you do with scraps?

As you all know, I love PAPER.  I do not get rid of any of my scraps -- I try to use every little bit in my own projects, my client projects and in crafts with Rip.  That's why I just loved this idea for using scraps in childrens' projects.

This layout ("R is for...") is one of my favorites from a while back.  I used a square punch to put all of my scraps to good use, then inked the edges.  The journaling lists all of the R words that described Ripley at the time (2005, when she was just a babe!).  You can click directly on the picture to expand the picture and read the journaling.

Here are a few cards from the past year that I've made entirely from scraps (excuse the crummy scanning job I did on some of these). 

This last card was one I made for James to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary last October.  I borrowed the title from one of my favorite Jack Johnson songs "3 Rs" -- Reduce Reuse Recycle -- in it, he uses lines from "3 is a Magic Number" from School House Rock.

I've got an all-day all-night playdate/scrapdate planned with Ripley, my buddy Kasey and her kids for tomorrow, so I hope to have a few new things to post in the next week.  Stay tuned and have a great weekend!

Birthday/Earth Day

Today was my darling husband's birthday, and to celebrate it and EARTH DAY, Ripley and I crafted a few things from discards...

This is a card I made from packaging (the plastic and all of the paper), discarded yarn from the school recycle bin, and a few old sticker letters.

We wrapped James' present in unused coloring pages (also from the school recycling bin), and Ripley colored them in.

We added a decorative "ribbon" (made from a piece of discarded plastic, several yarn remnants from school, and a curling ribbon from an old balloon)...

We also decorated a large banner for the occasion, using all kinds of interesting extras, including netting from our store-bought tomatoes, a broken Mardi Gras necklace, brown paper wrapping from a framed picture, clippings from the newspaper, and more finds from the preschool recycling bin.  Here is just a small portion of our masterpiece.

Ripley's favorite part was making and eating the cupcakes (I definitely recommend the Arrowhead Mills organic chocolate cake mix and the Dr. Oeteker's organic vanilla icing mix -- tastes like it is all from scratch, but it is NOT, believe me).

For the rest of James' birthday week, he will be attending the Churchill Invitational in Biloxi for golf and gambling with 19 other guys.  Happy Birthday!

For more on what we've been up to for Earth week and for International Downshifting Week, click here.

Repurposing scrapbook layout

 

OK, just fun stuff today.  This is my Effer Dare #73 (if you don't know about The Dares, click here to go to their website) -- Make an entire layout using NO scrapbooking supplies.  As you all know, I save EVERYTHING with the intention of finding a way to reuse or "repurpose".  This was some serious repurposing.

Items used:

Page from a personalized desk calendar given to me by my sister-in-law

1 paper clip

1 Garfield sticky note

1 envelope, given to us at check-in at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder (for my birthday) - it held our room key card

2 dark blue ropes -- from a J.Crew shopping bag that I've been using to hold/transport recycling for the past 6 months.  It finally got a big enough tear in it that I had to recycle it:)

2 flag sticky notes (1 orange, 1 green)

1 Target photo card - actually just the packaging (the top part that allows the card to hang on the display)

1 used plastic gift card - the larger picture of Ripley is mounted to it

2 plastic garden tags

1 price tag from the Sundance store

1 rubber band

2 staples

Tiny pictures from the Target print-out at the end of my orders from the past few weeks

Pencil, ball-point pen, 2 Sharpie markers, glue