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суббота, 29 октября 2011 г.

Hello Snow!

Remember I just shared a fall picture with you earlier this week? Well, that was yesterday. Today is a totally different story. Today our view is a lot whiter!

We constantly have to remind ourselves - It is still October!, but this:

...looks more like Christmas time... I don't know about you, but my kids were very excited to see that snow! The little one put on her gloves and a hat before she even brushed her teeth...

Seriously. We don't usually get much snow even in December... but October? This much snow?

In one day the view went from green and colorful to winter white...

Would that count if I use some of these pictures for my December Daily? What do you mean no?

This fifteen minute joy ended up in a pile of wet clothes, but I remember myself being a kid... we didn't care about the pile, we just wanted to play outside...

It's a whole month to Thanksgiving yet...

My kids asked me when are we going to put our Christmas Tree up...

My little Japanese Maple Tree looked a little confused...


Just a reminder... this is how our October here usually looks like - sunny, colorful and warm:

These pictures were taken only a week earlier!


Hope you enjoy this weather just as much as my kids do!

See ya!


четверг, 27 октября 2011 г.

Not feeling good...

Sometimes this beautiful weather brings all kind of not so beautiful conditions... Part of our house wasn't feeling the best this whole week, including myself. Medicine, missed school days, lots of sleep... Nothing creative was happening. But I still had to feed our family. This is a picture of our dinner on Tuesday:

Такие пирожки делала т. Валя П. для гостей в субботу. Мне очень хотелось попробовать такие же. Она делала с мясом, а я в наши добавила еще капусту с грибами. Самая лучшая часть в этих пирожках, это то что тесто самому делать не надо. Его покупаешь готовым и уже предварительно порезанным на правельные кусочки. Получается очень легко и вкусно. Кушали мы их тоже с бульёном.

Надеюсь что, в отличии от нас, все остальные чувствуют себя хорошо!

До новой встречи!

вторник, 18 октября 2011 г.

Whatever you call them

"Draniki", "Kartoplyaniki", "Kartofel'nie Oladi" - whatever you call them, we love them all. My mom shared with me that adding cooked potatoes to the recipe, as she read in one of the magazines, will make them even better. And it totally changed the way these taste and look.

I might be the last one to find out about it, but just in case someone didn't know just yet, now you do. Now every time I have some cooked potato leftover, I make Kartoplyaniki.


We serve them with sour cream or Adjika. Or both. Some of my family members eat them with ketchup, but I don't like ketchup as much, I think it kills the taste of whatever you are eating. What do eat Kartoplyaniki with?

понедельник, 17 октября 2011 г.

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa, if you've been making your lists already, can you add this little tiny tool for me, please? You don't even have to wrap it up in a pretty paper. I will except it in the ugliest box... Hope you have some extra Silhouettes laying around...
Is it really that time of the year when we get this type of mail, already?


I guess some people think about Holidays ahead of time (then they don't have to do last minute shopping like me). And nothing gets me thinking about Holiday season as much as the composition of a new December Daily. Today Ali posted her first post on that subject. You can check it HERE.



I used this piece of mail and a few circle punches to make my first few embellishments for 2011 DD. I love the whole concept of this project - taking pictures everyday for entire month of December, writing little stories... but what I didn't like about it last two years was - finishing it all the way into February. I'll try to make pages along the way this year. Keeping simple design and fewer decorative pieces, concentrating on documentary part of this project, might help it.


Hope you enjoy your new week and start having some Holiday thoughts too!


четверг, 13 октября 2011 г.

How to make 5 layouts in one week

I thought I'll share one of the ways how you could do more pages in less time. Five layouts a week is a lot for many of us, including me, but if you have a plan, it could easily happen. Here's what my plan was:

1. Look through magazines or online galleries for ideas and pick 5 favorite layouts. Make your decision now and try not to pick anything way too complicated.

2. Think of the pictures you could use for your layouts. Find pictures or order them. Planning ahead of time gives you opportunity to pick your picture size and their position. My photo box was full of pictures, so I didn't order any this time (but did order some before with a layout or sketch in mind). In this case I needed to make a little more cropping, since all of photos were 4x6.

3. While waiting for your pictures to arrive (if you order online), write journaling for each layout. By knowing what the story is going to be, it will be easier to pick a title for your page.

4. Pick two to three colors to work on for each page. Go with your gut. If you think this paper looks ok, it probably does. Don't go looking for more perfect piece of paper. Working with scraps might help the process. If I already got the piece cut in my drawer - I'll go ahead and use it. For all of my pages I only used one new piece of pattered paper - the rest came from the drawer of scraps.

5. Assemble your pages one at a time - one a day. That's the fun part! You can scraplift your page very close to the original (like I did in my first and fourth layouts) or you can use just one idea from original LO, like photo placement (that's what I did in second layout). I made them all in smaller format - 8.5x11, which saves the time for me too.

And here are my five pages. First one is a scraplift of Denine Zielinski layout. Unfortunately I don't have a link to the original LO because it was from a magazine. I repeated her color choices and added just a few little details.

Title letters are stamped with words stamp from Technique Tuesday (thought it fit the theme):


For my second page I used THIS layout by Ali Edwards as a guide line. I wanted to make one of the layouts very simple, plus there's not much you can put on a teenager page anymore. I picked grey as my first color choice (it was her favorite color, the last time I checked... but these change twice a day) and an orange, since it's the color of their school.


The letters "Y" and "N" don't stand for Yes and No. Those are initials of their first names. I'm very happy that she has another Russian speaking girl in school and journaling cards include what she has to say about it.


For the third page THIS layout by Roby Werlich. I love her work. By changing colors, page format and other details - your page may look a lot different from the one you started with. Even though I don't worry about that. These pages will go into my album, and not too many people will recognize that it was a scraplift.


I just had to add some rhinestones for a Baby Birthday page:


Next two pages were both scraplifts from Stephany Dagan's layouts. For some reason I could not find this one online (had it saved in my favorites).


Again, I didn't do much thinking here at all. I liked her color choice, so I just repeated them here too. Same with cluster of embellishments:


And the last one for today. It was cold enough to scrapbook fall page finally. I love Stephany's work and could scraplift all of her pages. I started with THIS layout to make my page.


... and a last close up:


It was a lot of fun to work on these, especially that all of them were made SO quickly! By doing so many layouts in such a short period of time you can learn a lot about your personal style too(later about that).

p.s. I did lie again about posting this on the promised day... well, my DH came home earlier then usual and you know... there was no blogging happening for me...

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

среда, 12 октября 2011 г.

Simple LO

That was enough of gray for me (talking about the background on my blog). I knew it wouldn't last long. Each time I came here it felt a little gloomy, but this was supposed to be a fun and happy place. White will do it for now.


Something I've noticed earlier - there's no scrapbooking or blogging is happenning for me when my husband is home. He was off work for two days this week and I just proved it to myself once again. For some reason those too don't work together. Now back to scrapbooking...


While back, when we had a challenge on grid layouts, I printed these pictures, punched them out with circle punch, but never made a page. Now, I found these pictures but didn't feel like making another one of those grid type pages, so I played and played... placed and replaced... almost glued and almost gave up... and then found letter stickers which helped this page to happen. "Love 4 Cupcakes":

Colors in real life are a lot softer then here. I guess I should've adjusteed WB before taking pictures...

Used foam adhesive to pop up one of the pictures. And cut the word "love" with Silhouette:


These are some of Liana's favorite pictures. I hope to share the other five layouts tomorrow. Have a great day!

четверг, 6 октября 2011 г.

Thank you!

I shared that travel page on Two Peas in the Bucket gallery, and when I came back there later, I found this:
It was chosen as a featured project of the day. You can see it HERE. It may not be a big deal for many, but I was pretty excited! Thanks Kristina! And thank you all the girls who left a comment there too!

среда, 5 октября 2011 г.

Travel page

This is one of those pages that has been sitting on the shelf, waiting for a title to be cut out some day. Straight letter stickers just didn't work for this page. So, I was finally able to finish it with the title cut out with Silhouette. I think, my favorite part about Silhouette is that you don't ever need to buy another set of stickers!

This idea came to me one night when I was falling asleep... so I had to get up and sketch it on a piece of paper, so I don't forget. I kept this page pretty simple, since it includes fifteen photos already. Just a few journaling strips and a row of black stitch rubons, which reminded me of the lines on the road...


I wanted to include a PDF of the layout pieces, but was too lazy to do so. If anyone would ever like to repeat this crazy idea, just let me know, I still have the template.


Another crazy idea was to make stuffed peppers tonight this size:

... but they were delicious. Liana loves them so much! (Well, she only eats the stuffing. And there has to be plenty of sour cream with it too)

And before I go. I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to one of the three sisters I was blessed with:
Happy Birthday Sister! Best wishes to you and your family!

вторник, 4 октября 2011 г.

Still here...

Hi, I'm still here... It was just a little busier here then usual. I have a lot of things to share... and a very sick child... not to share... I told you that I couldn't stop using Silhouette, so I made a new page almost every day last week. All I need now is to take pictures of them. Hopefully, I can get to it tomorrow.

Am I the only one that takes so long to get use to a new month? And as soon as I do... the next one is already peaking in. August - did it even end? I don't remember. For three weeks I was getting used to September, and today, I've heard rumors that it is October already! Ahh...

Yes, it is October. And here is a proof of that:


Apple picking season. Love it so much! If you have never been to apple orchard... umm, well you just have to go!

... And as much as I like fall, I just wasn't ready for it yet. I still think that it would be fair if we had two Augusts a year...



See you soon!