now watching

Craft in America on PBS.

Freaking amazingly talented people.

Currently drooling over:
George Nakashima
Jan Yager
Tom Joyce

I love having a laptop so I can watch tv, look something up then blog about it at the same time.

photo taken at the Celebration of Craftswomen last November.

Memorial Day

I hope everyone has been enjoying the long holiday weekend, the unofficial start of SUMMER! Hurray for summer! Our summer promises to be a busy one. Plans already include a graduation in San Diego, a wedding in Alaska, a week with nieces and nephews at the hideaway, a possible trip to Banff National Park in Canada, which would include a side trip to Calgary for some hockey equipment for the husband. It's in Calgary where we first discovered Boston Pizza, one of our favorite pizza joints in North America. I'll definitely splurge on Boston Pizza if we happen to go to Alberta this summer. Oh, and Tim Hortons, too. hmmm...this post has taken a turn towards food...I'm obviously hungry. Ok, moving on.

I know for most of us, the long weekend is a celebration with family and friends including BBQ's, beer and lots of outdoor activities. And it should be! But I'd also like to take a moment and give a little nod to our family and friends who have served in the military. My dad served for just a few months during WWII. But he was a proud Filipino American and enlisted when our country needed him. Peace out.

Fremont - my new favorite city

I think got the attention of my cousin. :)
I'm being a little sarcastic, but I spent all day Saturday in Fremont and loved it!

I found my new favorite scrapbook store. My old favorite scrapbook store closed last November and the other ones nearby don't quite fulfill my scrapbooking needs. Now Fremont isn't right around the corner, it's a good 25 minutes away without traffic. Add traffic, and it could be a good 45+ minutes away. But I'll probably go to this new store more often than the store that's only 3 miles away from my house because the people in Fremont are freaking awesome. Friendly, enthusiastic and helpful. I haven't seen that kind of customer service in a long time - awesomeness. And they have great classes, too. Now, I've been scrapbooking for a very long time, but I still love taking classes for the social part of it. I like the atmosphere of a bunch of creative souls gathered together. And lots of times, I just can't find the inspiration on my own so taking these classes also motivate me to do more on my own. It was even cooler that the group of ladies in this class were so friendly and talked to each other and shared supplies.

So, this is what we made in class today. It's a gatefold minibook. Cute, yea? (doris, we used the crop-a-dile!) I've already signed up for another class on Thursday.

During class, one of the ladies mentioned the new huge Joann's on Auto Mall Parkway. I decided to check it out on my way home. It's Texas sized, people. In that same shopping center, there's a new Lowe's, Costco, 2 Starbucks, lots of other shopping, and most important for the husband, a Chipotle Mexican Grill. Hurray! As long as I bring the boy food, he never complains about my scrapbooking adventures.

Paper Flowers

This month, I filled in to demo for my stamp club so I had to come up with a project quickly. I had seen on Rebecca Sowers blog these cool paper flowers she had made. I thought we could easily incorporate it into a card so I showed the technique to my friends.

We all made this Beautiful card.

Then each person made their own trio of flowers.

This is another card I made using the flower technique.

Random

Got this from Ragged's blog - just a list of a few random or unusual things about me ya'll might not already know.

1. I don't eat cereal. Definitely not with milk but not even dry outta the box.
2. I use to be able to read/decipher bar codes. I probably could again.
3. I own property in a foreign country.
4. I've only colored my hair once.
5. I like to group/alphabetize/organize things. But my house is messy.
6. I'm an aggressive driver, but aside from that I'm extremely patient. I guess that's where my alterego comes out.
7. I keep all of my shoes in boxes labeled with a photo of what's inside.
8. I don't like nuts in my bread or cookies. But sometimes it's ok in ice cream.

Now I'm suppose to tag a few people, too. So if you're reading, please play! I'd love to read a few random things about you, too. But I definitely tag Phin and Green Butterfly. (Ya guys hear me?!) :)

Swap-O-Rama-Rama

Continuing with Maker Faire craziness, here are some pics from the Swap-O-Rama-Rama fashion show. The idea behind this is that people bring in their unwanted usable clothes and dump them in a huge pile. Designers, that would include you if you wanted to participate, rummage thru the pile of clothes to make new clothes. This is what the designers came up with:

Maker Faire

Went to the Maker Faire on Saturday. The Maker Faire (in case you don't feel like clicking over) is:

"A two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It's for creative, resourceful folks who like to tinker and love to make things. We call them Makers."

Lots of inventions, hacks, robots. Several opportunities to make and learn new things. And for me, lots of opportunities to be completely clueless. And I have a fair amount of geek knowledge but nothing even close to this level.

The highlight of the day was meeting a blogger friend. It was the first time I've met one of my bloggy friends and it was really cool. She and her husband had a booth, showing their prize winning Dorkbake oven, giving information about their Hollywood chapter of Mobile Movie and information about 3D imaging. Really cool stuff! I just wish we had more time to chat so we could have gotten to know each other better.

Jimmy also has a friend who had a table there. It was a "Multitouch Multimedia Device". I don't really know what that is, but he had a hands-on table where we could play with the devices. There were 3 touchpads and a video camera and each touchpad created different effects on the screen, all controlled by your fingers.

This is the 2nd year for this event and I had only heard about it last week when Phin and I were in San Francisco and the guy at the Paper Source talked about it. So I expected more crafty things till I talked to my husband about it and realized that it was way more science and engineering oriented. The Faire is sponsored by Make Magazine and I found out through Jodi that the editor-in-chief of Make mag is married to the editor-in-chief of Craft Magazine so the faire is a combination of both of their passions. The crafty part filled about 1/4 of the main expo hall, which included the Bizaar Bizaare, what is dubbed as "Not your granny's craft fair". There were about 30-50 (?) eclectic crafters selling their handiwork. Lots of temptations to spend. Many things called my name. But I left with just one purchase of a pair of silver earrings made by a local artist.

Here are a few other highlights of the day:
A hacked Roomba vacuum cleaner. Make art with Roomba.

The Art Of Motion Control
I want one of these. There's a computer program that controls the magnetic ball that automatically "draws" in the sand. Too bad Jimmy has to work otherwise I'd make him make one!

Of course, a geekfest wouldn't be complete without aliens.

And alien/government (same thing, right?) thought-protecting beanies. Make your own!
edit: oops. I shouldn't have said that about aliens/government being the same thing. I don't wanna offend any aliens. My bad.

Tesla Coils
I don't know much about tesla coils. Something to do with electricity. And some other stuff. So here's a wiki link if you're interested in more info. But it was really cool to see.
These were in the big expo hall. Lightning inside a building. Craziness! (I like how in this picture it looks like the lightning is going thru the head of the kid in red and out of his right ear.)

Now this guy. Take a look at his hair. And eyebrows for that matter. The electricity that's charging thru him. He would touch the tesla coil and when the...victim...went to touch him, he would create a bolt of lightning between them.
If you make this photo bigger, you can see the tiny bit of electricity that's being passed between the scientist and the victim. There were other bolts that were more impressive, but this was the best I could capture.

And a faire wouldn't be complete without carnival rides. But the coolest thing was that all of the rides were human-powered.

A bike powered...
Yo-Yo Swing ride.
Actually, it took 4 bikes to power this ride.

The nose picker was also a carnival attraction. The human runs in a hamster-like running wheel to lift the finger into the nose. A popular attraction for the kids, you can imagine.

Geekfest
Onlookers, ready to watch the...

Life size Mousetrap
Now, I have a unexplainable phobia of cranes. This kind, not the bird. But I clicked a quick photo of this as they were lifting the 2000 pound safe before they started the mousetrap. It's like the game we all played as kids.
Including the bathtub.
They just used bowling balls instead of marbles. And smashed cheese with the safe instead of capturing a big mouse with the trap.

Another fun event of the day was the Swap-o-rama fashion show. Look for that in another post.

BBQ Rules

Since it's all in good fun, I couldn't resist doing a layout with these BBQ Rules (click on pic to enlarge to read 'em) that Phin sent me the other day.
Love ya Sweety! You do make the best burgers and grilled veggies! It's all about timing to make 'em so delicious, right? :)

Check, please

Such a simple but cool idea. The restaurant gave us our bill in a vintage-style "Alice in Wonderland" book.

And customers wrote little bits of wisdom on the pages.

Happy Mother's Day

Tide pools

Decided to go to Half Moon Bay and Moss Beach today. Went to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at low tide to see all the little sea creatures.

There were lots of sea anemones. Saw a lot of other things too, but I am illiterate when it comes to sea creatures. Fact: I can't say anemones. Another fact: someone (in this case, Phin) can tell me what type of sea creature something is and what I hear is 'pzhers.gerapeht.wer'. It's like that Friends episode where Phoebe is trying to teach Joey how to speak French, and he just can't do it.

Here are a few other creatures that I don't know the name of.
But I do know that these are sea gulls and seals.

The funny thing is that I was concentrating on looking for sea creatures in the tide pools, that I really just glanced up to look at the horizon and quickly snapped this photo. I noticed the gulls, but it wasn't till a few minutes later when Phin and I heard one of them honking noisily that we realized the seals were out there. Sometimes I focus in on a certain thing that I don't see the big picture. Case in point: When I took this photo I.Never.Even.Noticed.The.Seals. Not until just a few minutes ago when I was reviewing the photos I shot. Yes, sitting here before you is a big OBLIVIOUS dork.

Well, 90% oblivious. I did open my eyes enough to see this:

A sea rock with a white heart in it. Pretty cool, yesh?
_

A Friday Afternoon

I needed to get the sounds of my last movie experience out of my mind, so I went to see Georgia Rule. It was pretty good. Not what I expected, but good, simple, dramedy.
Afterwards, I walked down the street to see if the Paper Source was open yet and it was. The smell of fresh paint and paper-almost as good as coffee. Note to self, Phin and any lurking stamp club members: grand opening event on June 2nd.

Also noticed that an H&M is opening in the shopping center in the near future. V.omg-you so have to come back and visit when it does! We'll go to Sausalito, too!

There must be an event going on this weekend because there were about a half dozen chalk artists drawing on the street. It was so cool to watch! Amazingly talented!

Lovebirds

submitted to ShutterDay: Bird

_

Sausalito

Today Phin and I went to Sausalito, a cute little town on the bay, just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It has great views of the city. It was a little bit chilly and hazy, but we had lunch outside at a little cafe, then browsed the art galleries and quaint shops.

Code Monkey

My husband is a code monkey. He totally relates to this song. Hilarious! I liked this version:


But he preferred this one: (if you can handle listening to the song again)

Beautiful

If you've thought about trying digital scrapbooking, here's an easy page to do. Download the kit from Creating Keepsakes here. It has easy instructions in the txt file. All I did was dragged in a photo, typed in some journaling and it was done. There are also individual elements so you can create your own page design. I usually prefer doing it that way, gives me a little more creative control, but this "Quick Page" was so pretty I had to use it as is.
I used Photoshop, but I think you can use any photo editing software.

Project StampWay

Another fun stamp club meeting tonight. We did this simple but useful triangle box. Imagine the possibilities for this one: gift boxes, party favors, Christmas ornaments...all you gotta do is change the paper to match whatever event you're creating for.

We always do an un-themed card exchange for the meeting. This was the card I made for tonight's meeting.

Last month we made this cute transparency card. It's a 4 page mini-booklet and each page has a different flower layered on it. Cool dimensional effect when you look at it from the front.


And the card I made for the exchange.
_

Who's that knockin' on my dogwood?

When we got to the cabin Friday night, it was a crisp 50 degrees so no chances of snow. When we got there, I did a little dusting and found just one spider in the sink. There’s almost always a spider in the sink when we get there, no matter if we’ve only been away for a week or 3 months. Much scarier than the spider were the items in the fridge. The fridge that hasn’t been opened in 3 months. The fridge that had food left in it because we didn’t think we’d be away as long as we were. You see, if all is good with the universe and all the planets are aligned, we like to go up to the hideaway every weekend. Or at least 3 times a month. So I usually don’t worry too much about leaving food in the fridge. Now, I don’t leave prepared food, I’m not that naive. But I will leave milk, eggs and cheese. Well, they don’t last 3 months. So you can imagine how…pleasurable that task was to my olfactory senses. But when all those little duties were done, we settled in for a nice, quiet weekend.

Saturday we had to go into town. I keep the pantry fairly well stocked, but I needed those valuable perishables and Jimmy had to look for some sort of rock to fill a ditch we had to have dug for water drainage. We stopped at a favorite Mexican restaurant for fish tacos and crab enchiladas to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Back at the hideaway, I snapped a few photos of our dogwood tree, catching the blossoms before they died.

I also snapped a few photos of my lilac bush before pruning the flowers to bring them in the house. My mom had a lilac bush in our yard in the desert so I always think of my mom whenever I smell lilac.

I donno what happened to Sunday. I went out a couple of times to take more pictures of the dogwood and this woodpecker. Then before I knew it, we were packing up and heading back home to the Bay Area. A great, but way too short weekend away.

It's almost like a vacation

Hurray! We're going to the hideaway this weekend! We haven't been up in 3 months. We pretty much missed the whole winter season because we've only been up 3 times since Thanksgiving. So here's a photo from last winter. Believe it or not, there were threats that it was going to snow up there this weekend. It's May people. Even if the hideaway is at a higher elevation, still, snow in May in California? Actually, I hear it's not that uncommon, just really weird for a now coastal-ish Californian who grew up in the desert to conceive of snow in May.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. After clearing the cobwebs and dust, I'll be lounging around, breathing the mountain air, catching up on some reading and hopefully taking lots of photos!

Why I relate to Bambi so well

You Were a Deer

Graceful and gentle, you appreciate beauty and balance. A giving soul, you are able to sacrifice for the greater good.

What Animal Were You In a Past Life?

LOL! There's the grace thing again. In a silly little meme.

Motel AMC

I tried to go to a movie today. I went to see "In The Land Of Women" and from what I could hear, it was good. There were 3 of us in the theater. The couple sat in the very back and chatted thru the previews. A lot of people talk thru the previews, so I didn't mind. There's only been one other time when I was annoyed by chatters during a movie because most of the time, people are considerate. They also came to watch a movie, so they're paying attention.

Most of the time.

Not today.

When the movie started, they chatted a little, but were also making out occasionally, so I'd get breaks where they weren't talking. Then her phone rang. She carried on a 15 minute conversation, obviously upset because her voice kept getting louder and louder. Finally, she hung up, but now she had to tell her boyfriend all about it.

Thru all of this, I'm thinking, "You guys just paid $8.25 each to Not Watch A Movie. What the...heck."

After a little bit, they were "quiet" again, till she got another phone call. This one didn't last as long, because she was anxious to get back to what she was doing. And then, the making out...went to that place where you really don't wanna hear.

Then I realized that $16.50 is a lot cheaper than a motel.

Celebrating May Day

Didja know that May Day was the traditional summer pagan holiday? Or that May is celebrated by the Roman Catholics as Mary's month and they honor the Blessed Virgin on May 1st? I didn't. I love Wikipedia. :)