Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory

Since we took a more easterly route this year, we decided to visit Louisville to see the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum.  This is where they make baseball bats for everyone from Walmart through Major League Baseball.  

As you may remember, the boys are absolutely obsessed with baseball so this was right up our alley.  There is a little movie (included with the tour), you can hold game-used bats from some of the famous players and you can bat at the batting cages ($1).  You can even choose your bat based on the specs of historical and current players.  James and Zack batted in the batting cages and then I had to go bat too.  I was pleased that I actually hit the ball a few times and was not completely embarrassed!    We all liked the Factory Tour where we got to see bats being made for various groups and for individual major leaguers.  I am always interested in factories and even though it is a small operation, they turn out LOTS of bats!  And everyone gets a free mini-bat at the end of the tour - an extremely exciting souvenir for the boys!

One really nice thing is that it is all indoors so it's a good thing to schedule in the heat of the day or do when it's pouring (as it was when we visited). 

Mammoth Cave in Kentucky

Our first adventure was the Historic Tour of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.  It was a really neat tour, covering 2 miles of tunnels in the cave.  I recommend it if you are ok with that amount of walking!  It was pretty narrow, short and steep in places, but that made for more cave-excitement.  

Our tour guide was really personable and funny and talked about different aspects of the cave formations and the history of the cave and the area as we went through.  The area was beautiful and green.  The air was VERY humid and then became chill as we approached the mouth of the cave.  We were surprised at how cold it was, even though we read about the temperatures on the website!  I had intended to bring sweatshirts for the boys and then had forgotten, but they kept themselves warm enough by being their usual "energetic" (ahem) selves.  

We tried to take pictures but it was really difficult to get good shots (here are some if you want to see more) in the darkness of the cave.  The pathway was lit, but dimly.  There were some very large rooms plus areas we had to scoot sideways through or duck down for quite some length.  At one point they turned off all the lights to show the darkness of the cave, then lit just a kerosene lantern to show what early explorers would have had to see by.  We crossed The Bottomless Pit and heard about how the first explorer of the area crossed on a beam he rested across it, rather than on the steel bridge we had! 

The boys really enjoyed it, though it was a little long for Sammy who said it was "too many walking".  But really, it was fine for him until the very end. If you have the chance, give it half a day or more.  

If you do, one last note - we went to the first tour of the day, buying our tickets online ahead of time to be sure we could go at the time that worked for our schedule.  We were glad we did because the tour sold out, but that was also the downside: it was a HUGE group.  The next tour was much smaller.  We would have preferred a smaller tour because the group had to rush in many places to make up for the backup that would form in the narrow/steep places.  I think a smaller tour would have let us go at a more even pace and see more.

Back from our Big Summer Roadtrip!

Road Trip Stats:
2675 miles
11 days
11 states
7 hotels
8 museums and attractions
12 quilts
923 pictures

We've been gone on a rather long road trip!  Just as we did two years ago, we went to a family reunion outside Indianapolis, but we also went to Louisville, Cincinnati and St. Louis.  Quite the tour of the midwest!

Check back for several posts about various events and attractions!

Scrapbook Layout: Remember When

"Remember When..." is all from our wonderful visit at the end of last summer from my sister Julie, her sons, and my mom.  There were lots of fun moments with different combinations of those people - James with the kids, the various pairs of cousins, Julie and I, my mom and Zack... I wanted to include pieces of all that so I printed a three-by-three grid of the little photos.

Do you have a way you love to print smaller photos?  My favorite is to use Picasa (a free program from Google) to make a collage and then print the collage at the photo shop.  There are lots of things I like about Picasa, but that is for another post!  In this case, I chose a "Grid" collage (where all the pictures are the same size), printed the photo as an 8x8" print at the Costco Photo, then cut the images apart to use in the same grid design.   

The layout itself is made from a kit made at Cheryl's fabulous scrapbook layout class!  Her classes are cool because you can leave with a finished layout ready to attach your 4x6 photos, or make all the pieces and then use them as a kit later.  Since I'm always doing something odd or adding tons of photos, the second option is really fun for me. 

Paper Art

This is a fun paper art thing I made into a regular 8,5 x 11" frame.  I was inspired by this awesome creation by Leann, who was very nice to help me understand how she made hers!  She says she will soon be having this published so if I figure out where, I will add a reference.

I used paper as a base since I didn't have a canvas.  It is made of 2.25" punched circles, folded into squares and glued on the base sheet.  I measured the middle of the sheet and then marked 45-degree lines so that I could get all the pieces angled correctly and that showed me where to stamp and gold-emboss the decorative bits in the corners. 

Once the circles were glued on I was able to make/find a collection of little embellishments to increase the 3-D-ness of it.  The supplies are primarily Stampin' Up! and Basic Grey (from this prize, actually).  Pretty, pretty.

I like it the finished effect.  Right now I have it in my living room, but I think I may hang it on the wall in the craft area, on the logic that beautiful paper always inspires me!

Scrapbook Layout: Your Smile is the Key to my Heart

Here is a scrapbook layout featuring Sammy and his smile!

I have been wanting to do a layout to focus on Sammy's smile - how engaging it is and what a charmer he can be!  Then I found I was able to use the just-the-face images in Picasa's facial recognition to find all the perfect photos.  It was great because Picasa makes a thumbnail of the face for you to confirm the facial recognition and by selecting those thumbnails and using the collage feature I could print a bunch of small images without having to find, crop and collage the images myself.  It made it soooo much faster!

This beautiful color combination and a lot of the embellishments came from Cheryl's great Scrapbook Class, where I always learn something cool!  Here (on the right) is the design we made in class.  It is designed to have several large photos in a grid pattern but since I had just done some grids and I had a bunch of teeny photos, I had to mix it up.  Which was ok because I like to mix it up anyway! :) 

The original title was "Key to my Heart" but I really wanted the "Smile" aspect so I added some elements from a very old embellishment pack with a matching stamp, epoxy sticker, and chipboard piece.  The journaling is a little letter to Sammy that I wrote and then cut into strips to match the strip-y page design.  I also added some extra hearts to fit the wind-blown design and inserted one extra color (I can't seem to help myself, I almost always find myself adding one extra color after the page is almost done!), the bright pinky-orange (Calypso Coral by Stampin' Up). 

 

And you notice that I couldn't resist the counter-example photos - three little frowny faces by Sammy in the bottom right of the layout.  Those are "so Sammy" too!!

Handmade Cards: Quilted Stars

A while ago I saw some cards that used this Square Lattice embossing to create a quilted look.  Last week I was looking at the most recent create blog challenge gallery and loved that first card with the triangle-pieced stars.  I couldn't wait to put the two ideas together in these two cards!

I made the triangles by punching squares using a Square Punch and then cutting the squares in half.  The papers were just scraps of patterned paper that hat been languishing (some for years!) in my paper scraps.  The old ones were not particularly loved papers.  Some were kindly handed down to me by a friend moving overseas.  None of them really go together, but the embossing still makes them pretty and ties the whole look together!  

To make the design I arranged my scraps how I wanted them first.  You can see that in one card I arranged the colors randomly and in the other I used yellows in the center, pinks next, then greens on the outside.  I like both looks.  I put adhesive on my background paper in approximately the right spots, then moved my design onto the adhesive.  In some places there wasn't enough adhesive to keep a triangle down and I had to add some liquid glue under one side.  In other places adhesive was showing with nothing glued to in and I had to remove it. 

Side note: Do you have one of these adhesive removal tools?  They are sooo handy!  Just rub the sticky off!  

Then I took the entire design and embossed it through the Big Shot with the Square Lattice Embossing Folder.  This is a 5x7" card so I had to run the white piece through twice to cover the entire surface.  Of course, this folder is such a regular pattern that it was easy to line it up correctly the second time.  One thing I'm still working on is trying not to get a flattened out area just beyond the overlap - if anyone has any tips on this I would love to hear them!

No time to craft?

Hey everyone!!  Been wanting to make some stuff but regular life keeps getting in the way?  Wish you could just set aside some time to create?  You would but the kids would interrupt you every ten minutes?  ("Ten minutes?!" you say, "try every 30 seconds!!") 

Well, I am so excited to be attending a crafting retreat at the end of June!  It is Cheryl's Rockin' Retreat and it is an entire weekend to create, chat, relax, learn or any combination thereof!  It's going to be awesome!  If you can be in the Central Texas area, how about joining us?  

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I'm even teaching an optional class and so are several other people:  Bits and Pieces: Designing to Use Your Scraps $10

Are all those pretty paper scraps landing in the trash bin?  Use them instead! 

We will make three projects while learning to use the little bits and pieces we normally throw away.  We'll also learn a basic system for organizing scraps so they are easy to save and use. 

Even if you have no idea how to start designing something to use your scraps, this fun class is for you!

Handmade Card: Baby Dear

Here is a pretty little baby girl card to share! I made this for a friend who was going to a baby naming celebration - I was so thrilled she was taking it in person rather than mailing it because that meant I could add some thick embellishments!  I love that pink rose - it is so shimmery and pretty but it was languishing in my embellishment stash since it was too thick to mail on a standard card.

 I love an occasional chance to go girly!

Scrapbook Layout: Ninja & Shark

I might be a little off-season with this layout, but I have really been wanting to use these awesome photos taken by our friend Brian Dewey at Halloween!  He's a talented professional photographer and also part of our kids' carpool so it was really exciting when he offered to take Halloween photos of the kids at a neighborhood party.  The images are so different than what I could manage with only the available lighting and my point and shoot flash, that even though I don't normally do a Halloween layout, I wanted to this time. Doesn't Zack's intensity about his costume show through the picture?

I was glad to use it as a chance to capture how their ages and personalities showed in their costume experiences, so it wrote on die-cut Top Notes*, one for each boy.  I wanted a spooky but elegant look without using pre-made Halloween products (since I don't do a lot of Halloween scrapbooking, I didn't want to buy any custom product with spiders or what-have-you.  Also, I just like the less Halloween-specific feel).  I choose black background paper and a dark brown transparent overlay made by Slice/Making Memories (I can't find a link to the transparency sheets so maybe they don't make them anymore).  I intentionally left a strip of the transparency without any backing.  I plan to do another layout to back it with that will coordinate with that spot, but I don't know exactly what- wish me luck! 

The title is done with Thickers in felt - I love how they feel!  You can feel the texture even through a page protector.  Then I added black, die-cut leaves and black, hand-cut branches.  Branches are not hard to hand cut, especially when they are supposed to look bare and spooky!  I got the idea for the row of paper flag/pennant pieces at the bottom of the pictures from somewhere else but I can't find it (not for lack of trying!) so thank you to a nameless inspiration!  To finish it off I stamped the bird from the Stampin' Up! Notably Ornate* set, embossed it and cut it out.  That bird can look pretty or spooky!  Or maybe both!

*If you use the links above my friend and fabulous Stampin' Up demonstrator, Cheryl, will benefit, but so will you since you'll get the preferred pricing by checking out through a demonstrator! 

December Daily: pages part 2

Today I'm showing a few pages from the middle of the book where I worked on capturing the boys school art and events.  They bring home so much stuff that I'm always completely overwhelmed.  I am ok with recycling the worksheets but the stuff with their writing or art on it is harder.  I try to narrow down and keep only best or the most representative items... but that requires thinking so I put it off.  And when I do bring myself to do it, I find that even the "best" stuff still ends up just sitting there, without anything done with it.

For this album I picked one page from each boys stash of creations and folded it up to 5x7 and put it in the book.  I really like it in there.  Because it is squared off, it has a neater look than I though it might.  I added it on the day I was showing pictures and journaling from Sammy's program and Zack's class party.  These were also their last days of school for the semester so it forms a big finish for the "at home" portion of the book.  After that it's all travel - a "most delightful journey" (if the fortune cookie says it, it must be true).

December Daily: Pages part 1

Sammy was so funny with the chopsticks this day! I couldn't resist pulling out the camera in the restaurant and getting a series of pics. Then when he resorted to the fork it was priceless! I didn't show the picture here, but on the back I put in our fortunes from the fortune cookie - it said Sammy has "a magnetic personality". Well, I think so!
I wanted the pictures all in one long row, so that the progression would show, but to print them small enough to do that in 7 inches really wasn't cutting it.  I ended up making this accordion fold so that you have to pull out the tab to see the final (fork) picture.  I just used three sheets of heavy cardstock with "hinges" made out of brown paper punched with the Stampin' Up Modern Label punch.  

I like the view of various pages and embellishments that peeks through when you are looking at a different page. Here, the little heart from the picture of James reading to Sammy shows up after two more pages are turned.

And how could I have a December Daily album without a Starbucks sleeve? That would be as wrong as a December without a Peppermint Mocha! In this case it gave me a place to talk about the evening James and I spent shopping, just the two of us. I didn't have any pictures of us but it was a memory I wanted included.

I'll be back tomorrow to show how I included some of the kids school events/work!

December Daily: Finished Album!

I am sure many people are soooo over the holidays and December, but I'm excited to have finished my December project!  I don't care that it's the end January - I'm thrilled to have finished anything.  I mean seriously, how often do I start AND finish something, and all in a row too?  (You don't need to answer that.)

This is a December Daily album, as inspired by Ali Edwards and many others (here's another extremely pretty one). I showed my kit a while ago. I finished (notice how I am repeating that word finish?) it Monday but it took me until today to work up the energy to photograph it! It turned out kind of large. But hey, it's a whole month!

I do this project a little differently than some - I don't fully make the pages ahead of time and I don't work on it daily. The upside of making a kit instead of pages is that I can choose the papers that I like for each photo and I'm not locked into a certain page size for each one.  The downside is that it takes a little longer during December, a month that is already over-full.  But, the creative part is what interests me and draws me to the project, so that's better for me.  One big mistake I made was not making the cover ahead of time.  Somehow I had a hard time getting started on the pages without a cover to draw a color scheme/style from.  And making the cover was daunting so I kept putting it off.  That led to me starting way late in the month, which I hadn't intended.  Next time I want to stick with making the kit rather than finished pages but finish the cover ahead of time.

There are a couple of reasons that it works better for me not to work on this daily.  The first is that I print my photos at a photo shop (meaning not at my own house, on my own printer), so I don't have the photo for today at the end of each day.  I like the color by sending them out to be printed and Costco is close, cheap and our local Costco's prints are great (I think they calibrate their machines more often than other places).  I don't my going by there a few times a week so it isn't a big delay, but it isn't daily.  The second reason is that I can't really work in the time to make things every day.  My time is organized more by week.  I have two or three two-hour blocks that I try to use for creativity.  A lot of times I can do a little more here or there, but I just don't like the pressure of trying to work EVERY day.  Too much stress!  And this is supposed to be fun :)  When I realized that my time is structured weekly like this, it was very freeing and inspiring.  And fun!

The think I like best about my finished album is the way the pieces peek out the sides and top, and out from behind the other pieces, but without the whole thing feeling too messy.  And the fact that it is finished!

I'll be back with some pages to show soon.