Tuesday, July 31, 2012

And then there was a layout with a puppy dog

I've been creating so much lately but with no camera (it still has not been returned) I'm limited to borrowing one when I can. Which means I'm stretching out all the layouts I've made in the last few weeks so that I can claim to at least pretend to be a good blogger!



I'm pretty sure I mentioned in an earlier post that I was scrapping without photos. Which for the most part is indeed true - however, I did an order through Printstagram about a week after the fire and they showed up shortly after I had made those "photoless" layouts. Hurrah! So now I'm doing a bit of both - layouts without pictures, layouts with printstagram photos, and even a few layouts with old photos my mom has laying around the house (and there are a load of those, let me tell you!).


This layout was just made with a bunch of scraps I had left over after attempting to make a starburst shaped background. Well, let me tell you - that turned out horribly. It's sitting somewhere on my borrowed scrapping desk - perhaps I'll take a picture of it one of these days just to show everyone what a disaster I turned an apparently simple task into! Lol. In any case, I used the scraps to make a square background with a lot of color, popped some doilies on, and used a few of the overwhelming amount of printstagram photos I ordered of Stella!


Here it is in its entirety. I've entitled it "Oh the life" because Stella really does seem to have it good! Hah. I've utilized Studio Calico's June kit, So Cal, along with the add-on, Malibu. I've managed to get quite a few layouts from this kit despite not being totally struck on it in the beginning. Though you probably cannot tell, I've used the white woodgrain cardstock as the background, which has quickly become a favorite of mine. The texture is just so subtle and the weight of the paper is just slightly heavier than AC white cardstock - a point that makes me not so nervous when I layer on heavier embellishments. Another new favorite item is the Mister Huey I used on the background - this color is 'clay' and I discovered it in my mom's collection and have been borrowing it for weeks now! Last but not least, I threw in a few flair buttons from A Life Handmade. I'm totally loving all the buttons I ordered from there a few months ago and they seem to be finding their way into almost everything I make!

**Side note: I just realized that I never got around to putting thread in my buttons - oops! Not sure if they're looking too plain or not so if you think they need some thread, let me know! I'm open to opinions! :) **

That's all from me for now! I really should be getting to bed - just under a week until Paul is home from work and I still have many loose ends to tie up before he is home to start work on the house again! I dread the constant phoning - but I guess someone's gotta do it!

Hope you're all having a lovely start to the week! Thanks for reading :)

Sunday, July 29, 2012

And then strangers pack up your house

It's been a few days since my last post so I thought I'd write a little something something here while I'm still hyped up from work - I worked until midnight and stupidly drank a red bull at 10 so here I am, w i d e  a w a k e.

I'm still working on that whole house fire post - it's coming along slowly. I'm really finding that it's somewhat therapeutic for me to write it all down. With that said, it's a long process as I'm still in shock (two months later) and find my heart beating a little faster and my mind going a mile a minute when I think about it too much.

The idea for today's post was to show you all some things I've been working on lately scrapbook wise, but I then realized that I still do not have a camera (still at the cleaners) so instead I thought I'd tell you a little about the whole post process of a disaster (the company's words - not mine). I did not know a lot of these things until June and I found it somewhat interesting to find out that there were actual companies who do nothing but clean up and restore people's homes, belongings and really their lives.

First I'd just like to say that I figured we would go in the house ourselves and start cleaning everything. This was pretty daunting to me - the entire kitchen was covered in oil - walls, ceilings, floors, counters, everything. The stove was burnt up and so were a few cabinets. The burnt items were nothing though when you started to tally up the things that had smoke damage. Apparently smoke is a lot more destructive then fire (who knew!) in that it basically gets everywhere. So needless to say, when our insurance adjustor told us that there was a company to take care of all this, I was pretty happy.


The company we went with is called Antrim - they were recommended by our insurance company, who uses them a lot and we were pretty much ready to deal with anyone who could come in and fix this big mess.

So they started. And they packed everything on the main floor of my house (two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, living room, and a kitchen). My house is not very big by any means, but they packed it all up into four pods and away it went. From there everything went into cleaning. Paper, books, the recycle bins, clothing, electronics, you name it - it went. Food was thrown out - didn't matter if it had been opened or not. And I mean every bit of food - even bottles of wine that had not even been opened - I guess the cork can absorb smoke or fire extinguisher powder or something. Any items deemed non-salvageable by the company (that was not food) were bagged and tagged but a list has been given to me and anything that I want to keep they have to give back to me (I've opted not to keep anything as I had already removed the items that I wanted to keep regardless of damage). Electronics go into a special type of cleaning system, paper items (books, scrapbook paper, etc) all have their own special system, and hard items (dishes, glass items, etc) have another process that they go through. Anything "delicate", such as eyeglasses and such, get handwashed - and this all gets done at a large facility.

Then they bring all your stuff back. In pods.

It's all boxed up with labels that really mean nothing - one box had "car keys" written on it, but there was a heck of a lot more then just car keys in there! And it feels so weird - I've gone through a few of the boxes to find different things we've needed, and it's so strange to pull out my own belongings and know that they were packed by someone else. There were strangers in my house touching my things and packing them away. I'm sure it's probably the same when you hire movers, but at least when you move you have time to purge out all the things you no longer need. They literally keep everything that can be salvaged - bits of paper, things that were really just garbage but happened to be sitting on a desk or the couch or were in a box. It's a very strange experience.

All of our clothes were packed up and washed - there was even a large box of dry-clean only clothes that were all nice and dry cleaned on hangers in a wardrobe box. The only complaint I have (cause everyone knows how much I hate to do laundry so I really shouldn't complain!) is that every.single.piece is tagged with a number and therefore, every.single.piece of clothing needs to have the tag taken off.
After the packing up is done, while everything is getting all nice and clean, there is yet another division of the company that comes in and takes care of the "burnt bits". For our house it was a matter of ripping out the counter-tops, the cupboards, removing the stove, and sealing the walls. Though only a few cupboards were actually damaged, because they could not match them to the other cupboards, everything went.


After that is all said and done, they bring back your stuff (in the pods, like I said earlier) and they unload it all into whatever rooms you want. They can also do the construction to return your home to it's original state but we opted to do it ourselves as we've been planning to renovate the kitchen eventually anyway.

We had our belongings returned about five weeks after the fire. Our electronics are currently MIA but I've been told they will be delivered sometime next week (week eight). We have not begun unpacking as we still cannot live in the house but it's nice to see all our things so nicely stacked in boxes. I'm anxious to go through and see how things survived but that will have to wait for now. We will be able to move forward with construction soon and I am very anxious for it to start.

That is all I've got for now. I actually did not mean to be so long winded, so if you've stuck with me to the end, I thank you very much! I'll leave you with a picture of what my kitchen currently looks like and perhaps later I will do a post about the changes we will be making. For that though, I need my camera back! I'm missing it very much, but hopefully it will return soon!


Hope you're all enjoying your weekend!


Wednesday, July 25, 2012

And then the renovation began


In an attempts to do a "Wordless Wednesday" I found myself unable to not write at least a few lines... Oh well, I was never one for following the norm anyway.

This would be the view from my living room into my kitchen. We opened up 11 feet of wall between the two rooms and I am oh so excited to get to work. Well, more excited for it to progress, or be finished, or even have a ceiling.

Have a happy Wednesday!

Monday, July 23, 2012

And then you make do with what you have

Several weeks ago, June 7, Paul and I had a kitchen fire. The details will be in another post that I've been attempting to compose for a few days; and while I'm slowly getting the whole story down, it's going to take a bit more time.

In any event, as a result of this fire, most of our things are now in storage or at a cleaning facility, or just plain old in the garbage. We are living at my parent's house until we can move back home again. It's been stressful but we're making the best of it.

So I'm lying. I cry about it all the time. There's just really no place like your own home. But anyway...

Because I had to leave most of my scrapbook supplies at the house for cleaning, I've had very few things to work with. Including pictures. Which to most scrapbookers may have been a problem, but I've been so deprived of anything to do, that I forged ahead and worked around that problem.

I have had my Studio Calico kits re-routed for delivery to my mom's address until we can move home again, so I have managed to get my hands on some supplies. Plus, my mom had an extensive (and I mean extensive) collection of scrapbooking materials so it hasn't been that terrible!

So I started crafting without photos. And just gluing paper to paper. There's no titles and there's no stories, but I feel like they're complete. And there will eventually be a story and a title and a photo, but for now I'm making do. And that's okay.

Untitled
The above layout was created with SC's So Cal kit (and the Malibu add-on), along with some added doilies from A Life Handmade. I threw in some stamps from Summer Stamp School and a border punch (Martha Stewart).

This next layout is probably my favorite at the moment. I'm so excited to find a picture to go with it, but of course that will have to wait for a bit :)

Untitled

Again, I used the So Cal kit from Studio Calico, with the Malibu add on. Chevrons have been sprouting up everywhere these days and I just love piecing together patterns so this was a really fun layout for me. Here some of the embellishments overlap where the photo will go so I was mindful of that and made sure that there was no glue behind those parts just to make placing my photo and eventual title into place a little bit easier. My only regret is not sewing on this layout - but oh well - I might just have to do that another day. :)

The chevrons were pretty easy to make - I wish I had taken some pictures to show you, but there's lots of tutorials out there that show how it can be done. I just cut squares with my paper cutter, then cut the squares diagonally. Then glue them into place! Pretty easy.

Thanks for reading! I hope everyone has had a lovely weekend. I know I am looking forward to Monday - nothing proceeds with the house over the weekend, so I'm hoping to hear from the various companies involved with the restoration soon!

Friday, July 20, 2012

And then there was the first post.

I will admit - I've tried this whole blog thing already.

Many. Many. Times.

And I'll probably start out well. Or this could be the last post - who knows? But for now, I'd like to believe that I can possibly make it through the summer and actually put up a few posts!
Me

I suppose all first posts should be about the writer. So here goes: My name is Jennifer. I hate being called Jennifer - I prefer Jen, but when I write my own name I think "Jen" just lacks finesse. A strange but very true fact. You can call me Jen though.

I am Canadian. I was born in Newfoundland and lived there until I was ten. I am now 25 (26 in September) and still living in Alberta. We go back to visit every few years, but no, I would never live there again (sorry family!). My boyfriend of six years (Paul) is an Albertan and wouldn't last two seconds in the humidity! Actually, he's a better Newfie than I am... His accent (fake) sounds better than mine (real). It's very unfair. I have two pups - a term I use loosely, they're 3 and 2.5 years old. They are rottweilers and their names are Dexter and Stella. **Public Service Announcement: Rottweilers are not dangerous. Stupid idiot owners are dangerous. Talk smack about my dogs and their breed and you will suffer. That I promise!** I talk about them a lot and I take lots of pictures - mostly of Stella - she's my shadow and follows me absolutely e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.
My Babies
I am a paper crafter. I love to create and if I don't push some paper around at least once a day then I feel unaccomplished. That is not to suggest I make something every day - some projects take me days, others just hours. I am addicted to scrapbooking. This year I've taken on Project Life so hopefully you'll get to see some of that - I say hopefully as I'm pretty far behind!

The intent of this blog is to share my creations, my everyday life, and just record life in general. I'm not professing this to be just a "craft" blog or a "personal" blog - it's just my life in progress.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope to be back soon with some recent layouts and probably more pictures.