43 New-to-Me ... #10 Boondi

First, a quick reminder:

I hope all of you can join me this weekend for a fun and fabulous National Scrapbook Day Online Crop! Details are here.

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I'm making great progress with my 43 New to Me album, as it's only been about 7 weeks and I'm already on page 10.

New-to-me food #10 was boondi. I found this package at a local Indian market. Like the papdi, this product is made of gram flour. Unlike the papdi, there were no mystery seeds (fruit pods?) to mar the taste. Unfortunately, the taste was marred somewhat by the oil used to cook these. They were quite greasy and there was a not-quite-fresh taste to the oil. Too bad, as I think they would have been pretty good otherwise. I gave them a four.

Join Me Saturday for National Scrapbook Day!

I LOVE National Scrapbook Day. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's my favorite day of the year. For years, I've always celebrated the same way: I get up before dawn, complete as many NSD online challenges as possible, chat with crafty friends around the world, visit blogs, watch scrapbook videos, enter every prize giveaway I can find, and collapse into bed after midnight. I love it.

I'm not a fast scrapper 364 days of the year, yet on NSD I always manage to finish at least 10 layouts. The challenges push me out of my comfort zone and the time pressure helps me commit to decisions about design and product quickly. I'm really proud of the layouts I've made during past NSD events.

Over the years, my various online scrapbook homes have stopped hosting NSD events. It's been disappointing, but I could always count on Scrapbook.com to have a fantastic online crop. But this year, Scrapbook.com has changed their NSD format to one that is month-long and based on the free classes they offer, with no special events on the actual National Scrapbook Day, May 2. I've checked out a bunch of alternate sites, trying to find something that is a good fit for me. There are a few that look ok, but I haven't seen anything that is exactly what I want. So....

I'm hosting my own NSD event, here at My Creative Life! All of you are welcome to join the fun.

Here's how it will work. I'm starting with a list of challenge components, like these:

                  Only 1 photo                           5+ photos
                  No patterned paper                 Large circle
                  Use a stencil                           Polka dots
                  Black/white only                     3+ stars
                  Stripes                                    Bling
                  Wood                                      Now and Then
                  Speech bubble                        Rainbow
                  Stamping                                2+ punches
                  Chipboard                              Chevron
                  Stitching                                 2+ hearts
                  Ribbon                                    Washi tape
                  Follow a sketch                       Primary colors only
                  Animal                                    A number as a title
                  Trees/Leaves                          Triangles

I will combine these items randomly to create 10 different challenges. Some challenges will have two components (for example: use chipboard and bling) while others will have three components (such as: use a stencil, 2+ hearts and stitching). I will post the challenges at 5:00 am PDT this Friday, May 1. 

Once the challenges are posted, start creating! This online crop is not just for scrapbookers. Card makers are welcome too. In fact, I'd love to see how one of you would incorporate 5+ photos on a card! I also encourage scrappers and card makers from anywhere in the world to join me here.

As you finish each challenge, upload it to an online gallery or blog. Then leave me a comment with a link to your creation. To accommodate different time zones and potential schedule conflicts, the crop will run all weekend (from 5:00 am PDT Friday 5/1 to 5:00 pm PDT Sunday 5/3.)

   

Starting on Monday 5/4 and continuing for at total of 10 weekdays, I will share the layout I made for each challenge along with one or more of others' creations. On Friday 5/15, I'll use Random.org to pick one participant to win a $20 gift certificate to Scrapbook.com.

Any questions?

An Alphabetical Photo Contest

As I mentioned Tuesday, Steve's boss was in town last Thursday through Sunday. Andy is from England and this was his first visit to northern California. We wanted to take him to as many sites as possible and show him just how beautiful and diverse the San Francisco Bay Area is. We are blessed to live near so many amazing sites, areas people come to visit from all around the world: San Francisco, Napa Valley, the redwoods, Tahoe... the list goes on and on. Obviously, we couldn't take Andy to see everything in just 4 days, but we did hit quite a few highlights.

We spent all of Sunday in San Francisco. Andy's one request was to ride a cable car, so that's how we started our day. We had to buy tickets and then wait through 5 cable cars before we could get on, so I suggested to Trevor that he and I pass the time by having an alphabetical photography contest. Steve offered to judge and clarified the rules. Trevor and I would each take pictures of anything we saw during our day in San Francisco. Once home, we would select up to 26 photos and caption them with "A is for ____" through "Z is for _______." For each letter of the alphabet, Trevor and I go head to head. Whoever had the better photo for that letter would win a point.

It worked like a charm. Not only was Trevor occupied during long waits, he took a lot of pictures of things in San Francisco he wouldn't ordinarily have necessarily even noticed. By the end of the day, Trevor had taken photos for every letter except Q, X and Z. For some letters, like S (seagull, sea lion, sourdough, etc.), he took dozens of pictures. Here are some of my favorites of Trevor's photos (in chronological order, not ABC order). They're straight out of the camera with no cropping or processing at all. 

C is for Cable Car

Y is for Yachts

B is for Bushman

H is for Hungry

S is for Seagull

D is for Don't Walk

L is for Lighthouse

Here are some of my photos, also in chronological order, and also with no cropping or processing:

R is for Rotate

  

H is for Hill

A is for Alcatraz

S is for Selfie

   

C is for Cannon

G is for Golden Gate Bridge

 

K is for Kid

F is for Ft. Point

E is for Engineers

We had such a fun day! As far as I'm concerned, we all won.

Little Passports 50 States Album - Another Update

Time for another Little Passports update! Trevor has received the USA Edition of Little Passports for 1.5 years now (thanks, Aunt Teri!) which means that he's learned about 36 of the 50 states so far. We've been working together to make an album with a page for each state that includes the Little Passports postcard, a photo of Trevor's first visit to that state, and a journaling about the visit. You can see the first completed pages (Washington and Hawaii) here and the next set of completed pages (Florida, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey) here. 

Trevor recently received the packet that included his home state of California. After some discussion, we agreed that the day he was born was the first time he visited California. So we selected the first-ever photo taken of him. As we agreed, I did the writing, as he was clearly too young to remember being born! Fortunately, I remember it well. 

Next, the completed page for Alaska. Trevor's first time out of California was on an Alaskan cruise when he was 12.5 months old. We sailed out of San Francisco. Our first port of call was Victoria, B.C., meaning that Trevor visited a foreign country (Canada) before visiting another state for the first time! I imagine that's fairly unusual. He absolutely loved Alaska. Even though he's been back to Alaska and has memories of the more recent trip, I did the journaling in the album with information about his first visit. 

We're anxiously awaiting the Little Passports packets for Maine, Nevada and Oregon. Trevor has already picked out the photos and done the journaling for those pages, so as soon as the postcards arrive, he'll slide those in to complete those pages.

In my previous update, I mentioned that we're planning a summer visit to two new states. We have good friends in northern Colorado, so we'll be visiting them and doing a day trip (and possibly an overnight) to Wyoming. We're all really excited. Just this week, we made plans for a summer road trip to a third new-to-Trevor state, Idaho, where my brother-in-law will soon be working. We're looking forward to that trip too! If all goes as planned, Trevor will have visited 14 states by the end of the summer. So expect another 50 States Album update then!

43 New-to-Me... #9 Kombucha

Item #9 for 43 New-to-Me (and the second item I tried with my teacher friends) was kombucha. If you are not familiar with kombucha, it is a slightly sweet, fermented, yeasty tea. If you have a hard time wrapping your head around that combination of ingredients, give it a try. It's unusual.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I gave it a 5. I'd drink it again, but I wouldn't buy it. And next time I had it, I'd probably filter out the floating stuff that was somewhat off-putting.

Have you had kombucha? What are your thoughts?