pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

If I am perfectly honest, I have no idea where the idea for titles on scrapbook pages came from. If you read a book, there’s just one title for the whole darn thing. Maybe there are chapter titles, but really the only thing that marks the pages is the page number. Yet somewhere along the line we decided to expand that tradition of writing something on the photo into a title for a page. Maybe that’s it, actually! It seems to make sense: some pages will have titles of names and possibly ages; others will have puns or something that sounded funny to us at the time and a few others will have something that sounds like a heartfelt note or the name of a song. The same stuff we used to write on the back of the pictures. Now that it’s on show, I wonder if those titles get stage fright.

Sometimes I think there are titles that wouldn’t have worked on the back of the photo that make the best scrapbook pages for telling your stories. One of those is ‘Let me tell you about…’ and it works because it leads you right into the journaling. There’s no way the journaling can be dismissed in your creative process if you’ve started with that title, because you’ve made a little promise and you need to keep it. You wouldn’t say ‘Let me tell you about the best shoe sale ever!’ to a friend and then keep it a secret. (If you would, then you must have realised that your friend has the same size feet and is likely to go buy all the shoes you wanted for yourself. There is no other excuse.)

So to start February, pick something that could finish the sentence ‘Let me tell you about…’. Don’t use a name, but a label (if you want to feel like English class, we’re talking about pronouns—words that take the place of nouns—but I promise there will be no test about that stuff here) so if you want to write about your daughter, you would start with the title ‘Let me tell you about this girl’. Take a second to get those last two words right because they are going to form the repetitive part of our journaling.

That’s the little (not-so) hidden message in today’s exercise: throughout the month we’re going to look for little tricks that can help your journaling be polished and stylish. Today’s little trick is repetition: the journaling can have five or more sentences, but they will all start with the same words and have a few other things in common too.

Each day’s exercise can be read on your screen or printed out onto a 4×6 index card if you prefer something tangible. I love my notebooks for writing in, but I often wish I could (easily) print things onto index cards instead of full sheets of plain paper. I think really, I love this idea, as I would be much happier in any meeting with a stack of index cards, a bulldog clip and a few colours of pens than a Blackberry. So it’s just a little something I’d like to try—we’ll see what you think. Just remember you’ll need to click on the day’s exercise card in order to get it at the full print size, okay?

Click for print-size image of the exercise

Each day, feel free to share a link in the comments if you’ve written your journaling on your blog or made a page as a result of the exercise or if you found something that just fits the theme. Or just comment to say what you’ll be writing about—nothing like pledging a little commitment to help you do something you’ve been meaning to do, right? Or take a picture of your notebook and pen and share that! I never tire of the feeling of a fresh new notebook and pen. It’s a beautiful thing.

Happy writing!

xlovesx

Comment [27]

I am convinced that people who write tests for a living are a special kind of people. Basically because I don’t know anyone who admits to liking tests. And having written a few for my classes, I found it to be torture. Even classes that kept me up at night with their…level of challenge, shall we say…didn’t make me relish writing a test. Not in any small way.

But I am convinced there are a few nice test writers out there. Like the person who decided that the written test for your Kansas driving license should be ten multiple choice questions as well as open book. (Actually I worry that person may be a bit too nice for the job.) And the person who decided to put those practice questions at the beginning of standardised tests. I always felt a little better after having one answer confirmed before I started. Not a lot better, but a little better. After all, it was still a test.

Now February is definitely not a test. Nope. Totally for fun. Maybe a bit of a learning experience. But definitely no tests at any time. But…there’s still room for a practice question, right?

So for those who didn’t see the lead in to the February journaling project, here it is:

• * * * * * * * reprinted from ScrapBook Inspirations – February 2008

  Looking back at old photos can be fascinating – be they ‘old’ photos that reveal scary 1980s haircuts or old photos in a Victorian sense. Of course there’s one big difference: there’s a fair chance the person with the scary hair in 1982 can still tell you a little something about that hair, the outfit and the other people in the picture. The Victorian photo? No chance. That is why I think journaling is at the heart of scrapbooking…if only because you want to defend your scariest haircuts a few generations down the line!

  I’ve seen many a scrapbooker shy away from journaling over the years, and I have to admit things are getting better! It makes me excited to see layouts that do more than label names, places and dates. Fewer and fewer scrapbookers are leaving their journaling at ‘We had so much fun at the park!’ and adding a bit more detail to complement the photos with an actual story. But now what we hear at ScrapBook Inspirations is ‘I want to journal…I’m just not sure where to start!’

  My best suggestion is to start with a notebook. Get something small in a style you like and a nice pen. This is the easy part – scrapbookers usually enjoy buying new stationery! With a small set, you can keep it in your handbag and be ready for ideas to hit. Don’t worry about the pressure of filling the notebook – I have some great ideas to get you going. Here’s a favourite:

  Start a new page and number 1 to 9. In each of those spaces, write down something you love. They can range from your spouse to your favourite soup! Once you’ve made the list, go back and add some description to each one. A bonus if you can play with alliteration—adding words that start with the same sound. So you might have ‘sunsets’ on your list, and transform it to ‘shimmering summer sunsets’. Once you’ve added a little something to each word, you’re ready to turn your list into some fabulous sentences. Just fill in these blanks with the phrases on your list:
  I love _____, _____ and _____.
  I love _____, _____ and _____.
  I love _____, _____ and _____,
  but I can’t stand ______________.
  Add something you don’t like to the last blank for a punchy element of contrast.

  Once you’ve finished the exercise, you’re ready to start a scrapbook page. Find photos that fit what you’ve journaled and enjoy your crafty process with paper and embellishments. When it’s time to add your journaling, it’s ready in your notebook to be copied out or printed on your chosen paper. Hey presto – a well-journaled layout to give someone else a better idea of what’s going on in your photos…or a balanced explanation of the strange hairstyles of the late twentieth century!

• * * * * * * *

And oh my goodness, I actually write things like ‘hey presto’. I’m not sure which is funnier: the pigtails or the presto.

Something to get you started, and give you an idea of what’s to come. 29 days, 29 ways to write it down.

And a few embarrassing haircuts along the way. Maybe you’ll share yours.

To make me feel better.

xlovesx

ETA: Now that February has finished, here’s an index of the whole month of Write it Down prompts so you can find them any time.
01.02.08: Let me tell you about
02.02.08: Setting the record straight
03.02.08: Parts of speech
04.02.08: The word is (and also a blank card)
05.02.08: Not because
06.02.08: Dear Sally
07.02.08: Checking it thrice
08.02.08: Overhead
09.02.08: Retrocake
10.02.08: Grey can be beautiful too
11.02.08: Pressed pages
12.02.08: Round and round
13.02.08: Also on index cards
14.02.08: In which I talk way too much about teaching English
15.02.08: Pinecones and kitty cats
16.02.08: In response
17.02.08: Chalk, paint & shoes
18.02.08: Control
19.02.08: Mapped disagreement
20.02.08: For the love of thin mints
21.02.08: Now with space for brainstorming
22.02.08: Girl Power
23.02.08: She made me do it
24.02.08: Who’s there?
25.02.08: Planning for travel
26.02.08: Predicting things
27.02.08: Bad girl bumpers
28.02.08: Really I know how to spell ‘you’
29.02.08: Progress review

Enjoy!

Comment [18]

Somewhere along the lines of teaching the stick-and-go philosophy, I have managed to rewrite Will Smith into ‘getting sticky with it’, and let me tell you that is just plain wrong. But as those annoying refrains do, it is stuck in my head now. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na. (If you do not know this song, don’t feel out of touch. Feel grateful. The rest of you: you now feel my pain.)

If you can manage to put that aside, you might be interested in this, which takes a step-by-step look at stick-and-go scrapbooking.

Things that are inspiring me right now:
...this quilt in progress
...this project between two friends
...this artist’s process
...this girl’s style
...this chair.

The last one being one of those long-running obsessions that sits at the back of your brain saying ‘you really love this’ for a long time until you can’t stand it anymore and everything you see reminds you of it. So now I am contemplating how to put that chair on our wedding list. In blue, perhaps. But maybe that’s a crazy idea.

Much creative energy to you and yours.

xlovesx

Comment [5]

As a teenager, I had a friend called Melissa who lived just around the corner from my top-rate job at the Dairy Queen. Her parents would host fabulous parties in the summer, with everyone coming by for something for the barbecue. The kind of party where you knew hardly anyone there but you still felt perfectly at ease. The kind of party that would end far too late for you to get home at a sensible hour, so you would just know you would end up crashing on the floor. Which in this case was very good because Melissa also had MTV and an amazing collection of Lisa Frank stickers. So cleaning up a little after the party was totally acceptable as it was rewarded by writing the cutest pen pal letters in the universe while watching Kennedy host Alternative Nation and squirming when they would show Joe’s Apartment. But also I think those parties were the first place I learned to cook anything outside the confines of the kitchens of my immediate family or, indeed, the Dairy Queen.

I can’t remember who taught us how to make these, but I distinctly remember that mystery person was cooking something else at the table while giving us instructions at the stove: boil this, heat that, add some of that. It was crazy-cooking, I tell you. The kind of cooking that required no measuring spoons. I didn’t know what hit me.

But they were yummy. So I made them at home a few days later and everyone there agreed they where yummy. For a while they were that dish I was expected to make when we would have guests, and I must admit I have always thought it was pretty cool when people start to hope you’ll make something. (The Boy’s dad makes this rice in the summer and I go into mourning when it is too cold to have it any more…so if it’s a summer event and there’s not the rice…oh goodness, there will be disappointment. I just hope he is cool with that, because it is certainly meant as a compliment.)

I haven’t made them in ages, but when I read this I was taken right back to Melissa’s kitchen, so I went to get some little potatoes and try them again. They are still yummy. And they are actually even better reheated the next day, so perfect to have a few for dinner one day and a few for breakfast the next. And so easy:

*Wash small potatoes.

*Boil in skins until just soft.

*Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan.

*Add the boiled potatoes (still in skins) and move around until coated in oil.

*Add salt, pepper and a handful of poppy seeds.

*Smoosh around in the pan until everything starts to go just a bit brown and crisp around the edges, then at that moment, stir in a spoonful of butter and mix around until all melted and absorbed.

*Eat.

And since I am still being a little nostalgic about France, it’s acceptable to pair it with this French-ish omelette (which I stupidly broke, so it is not very pretty). It is French because a) it is an omelette b) it contains a bit of Roquefort and c) it contains herbs de provence, which Ariel gave to us when she was living in Paris and I have used at least once a week ever since and still have plenty to go. Anyway, it was an ugly omelette but it tasted just like it did at the top of the mountain. Except it also had potatoes.

Comment [9]

If January has been my calm, February may be a bit of a storm. But hopefully that good kind of storm…the kind where there’s nothing really to worry about, but it’s lovely to watch, curled up with a blanket and a good book next to a window. That kind of storm.

Everything’s starting on the west coast. And I figured if you’re gonna be in California, you might as well make a statement, right? So when the girls at The Scrapbook Oasis asked me to teach in their tiki hut, I asked if I could share a little book I call Kill your Television. It’s one of those books where making it is just half the fun. In class, we’ll make a mini with half the photos already included, then you finish the book with your own photos…the idea being that you try to switch of the TV in the evenings for just a week and see what you get up to. I haven’t had a television for about five years now and I love the stumped look that people have when they learn that. It wasn’t a purposeful thing, just happened by chance and I haven’t regretted it for a second, but I also know it is a bit extreme for some. But one week of TV-free evenings isn’t extreme or troubling, and if you pick a week with nice weather, you can (re)discover some things that are probably free and nearby, even if it’s just going for a walk. So if you’re within a do-able distance to Irvine, join us for a night of crafty fun (the kits are starting to look so cool for this…it’s like chipboard heaven here at the moment!) and I will dish the truth on how and why I ended up ditching TV. Kill your Television is Sunday night, the 10th of February—following the first day of CHA—and you can find all the details here.

After CHA (which still has some surprise news to come, let me tell ya), I’m heading out to the East Coast for ScrapBowl, and my goodness does it look like these girls know how to party. So many croppers! The weekend crop experience places are all filled but they let you sign up for workshops without coming for the whole weekend, so if you’re in the DC area, you can still make your own scrap weekend with classes from crazyfamous scrapbook people. And me. Seriously, my mind is still boggling with this one. But so cool. You can see all the classes here. I’m teaching four: a 9×9 album workshop with lots of pink and Japanese stationery, a minibook workshop to record a weekend in your life, an artsy paper-quilting class that you can frame and a class with four layouts that includes my top ten tips for never falling out of love with scrapbooking.

But you know with a storm, there is always the good and the bad, right? (Growing up in Kansas, I remember the good being we need the rain and the bad being a tree just fell on the car...or something like that.) In this case, all that stuff and a few other things…very good. The bad: I am missing both Valentine’s Day and (more importantly) The Boy’s birthday.

Ouch. Yes dear, I know I am rubbish. I know, I know, I know. I’m sorry that I have done this two years in a row. Rubbish, I say!

(Sadly, I don’t think he’ll be quite as excited with pictures of all the new product lines from CHA. There’s just no pleasing some people, you know.)

And then you know what? I think after that I will come home and sit on the sofa for a little bit. I am not above grovelling to get someone to sit next to me. But I promise, it’s just a little temporary storm. That’s the plan.

(On a silly side note, we’ve had a really lovely weekend here. I hope yours was just as fabulous!)

xlovesx

Comment [5]

So we came back from the snow and the mountains to find…we had no internet.

As if this mere fact was not annoying enough on its own, we also found that due to some massive clerical error on behalf of either the phone company or the internet company (each blames the other), we will be without internet for an undefined number of working days. All I know is that I spent pretty much the entirety of two working days on the phone to various support numbers trying to get an answer from someone, all the while getting very, very frustrated by knowing we were actually paying for internet all these days. It’s crazy and stupid and I will stop talking about it now before I explode.

Suffice to say, I am back to hot spots and open networks. But we’ll make it work so my head can stay intact.

The boy was out with the (other) boys today so actually, it was okay for today to be a working day to make up for those days on the phone. And oh my goodness, my frustration must have fueled some sort of get-up-and-go, because it has been a hive of productivity around here. Sorted all sorts of logistical things that needed sorting for CHA (exciting news about that but…can’t share just yet! Soon!), worked on kits and such for classes at The Oasis and ScrapBowl (big post about both of those tomorrow!) finished six layouts that I can photograph in the morning when there is light, some emails caught up on…and then lots of work done toward the little project you might have heard about in the magazine this month.

If you didn’t see it…the fine print right at the bottom of that We {heart} Journaling article mentions that every day in February, there will be a journaling exercise here on shimelle.com. Yep, every single day! (I’ve even learned how to load everything up early so, fingers crossed, it should work even without internet in our house every day!) So if you want to follow along, you’ll have 29 pieces of writing by the end of the month…that you might like to turn into 29 layouts or art journal entries or blog posts or pages in a diary. The artsy part is totally up to you. But every day there will be something to focus your pen on making it easy to write something that sounds polished. To find your voice. Which makes me all giddy, just thinking about it. I hope some of you will join in. After all, it’s a great excuse to go buy or make a pretty notebook. And I know how you like pretty notebooks.

You have until Friday to find a pen.

xlovesx

Comment [18]

Don’t you hate it when one bad experience ruins something for far too long? At some undetermined meal, an undetermined number of years ago, I tried a risotto and it was terrible. Really, really terrible.

For many years, I had the phrase ‘Oh no, I don’t really like risotto’ in my vocabulary. In a very polite tone, mind you. But I was quite convinced that I didn’t like risotto.

Then at some point last year, The Boy had the day off while I was at work, and he decided to cook something he had never cooked before. I came home to a house that smelled lovely, promptly got excited for dinner and then realised it was…risotto. And became terribly nervous.

Obviously I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, but after all, ‘I don’t really like risotto’. What’s a girl to do?

This is what: eat the flipping risotto and learn that you do like risotto after all. You just had the bad experience of eating a rubbish one in a restaurant that really should have been sent back to the kitchen, but being a risotto novice, you didn’t know this, and instead have spent upwards of five years of your life going around thinking you don’t like risotto when really: YOU DO.

Now we make risotto a couple times a month, just to remind me of my stupidity.

We are quite fond of one from the veggie Leith’s book made with courgettes and cheese, but I found myself with sweet potatoes and no cheese and this worked just fine. I am of the camp that you can do no wrong with sweet potatoes. I would eat them for all five of my five-a-day if it was allowed. But The Boy is rather paranoid about them currently, having read an article like this, and also, he thinks they are really too sweet for most dishes. But he ate this and didn’t complain. And more importantly, didn’t die. Which means I think I will make it again sometime, so I better write this one down.

Sweet Potato Risotto
(serves two people who are going to eat more than they really should, or more than two who know that there will still be food in the world tomorrow.)
3/4 cup (before cooking) risotto rice
1 cup white wine
4 to 5 cups very hot vegetable stock (no, I do not make stock. Unless boiling water + OXO cube = ‘making’ stock. It works just fine.)
3 sweet potatoes
salt, pepper, oregano and coriander
olive oil

*Wash the sweet potatoes and bake them until soft. Set aside to cool.

*Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan. Throw in the rice and mix around in the pan until covered with oil. Keep on medium heat until the grains start to become transparent (a minute or two). Reduce the heat.

*Start to add the liquid. Add 1/2 cup wine and 1/2 cup stock and keep slowly stirring. Set the temperature to just barely simmering.

*Then there is this lovely process of adding more liquid and stirring more. All very slowly. Like ‘bring a good book to read’ slowly. Or ‘practice your pirouettes on the kitchen floor’ slowly. If you just sit and stare at it, it may get a bit boring. Never fear. Just add little by little, stir it so it doesn’t stick and whenever it starts to get too thick, add more liquid.

*Once pretty much all the liquid is absorbed, add the salt, pepper, oregano and coriander. Keep stirring.

*Chop the cooled sweet potato into bite-sized pieces and throw into the saucepan. If the risotto is looking too thick or the rice isn’t soft enough to eat yet, keep adding more stock.

*That’s it. Put in bowls and eat. Try to come up with a good retort to ‘They are called sweet potatoes because they should be for dessert’, but fail miserably.

(Can totally be made without the wine—but seems to need more stock and a while longer to break down without it.)

Comment [14]

For the nine years I have lived in England, I have constantly been mystified by the sheer prestige of shopping at Waitrose. We seem to have a pyramid of the grocers in this country. I remember a professor (who, ironically, was British) discussing how in a town of not-that-many, Wal-Mart was the great leveller. Everyone in that town had to go into Wal-Mart now and then because it was virtually impossible to get some things elsewhere, as the town wasn’t big enough to support a giant Wal-Mart as well as smaller shops dedicated to each section of Wal-Mart’s wares. _I know this has long happened in so many towns, but unless you visit this place you will never quite grasp the wrongness in proportion of the supergiantmassive Wal-Mart to the town. All I can say is the CEO of Wal-Mart lived there once, and he decided to go back and leave his mark._ Anyway, this professor, in a voice that we all thought was terribly posh but now I know…wasn’t…said that if the Queen herself had lived there, she inevitably would have had to go to Wal-Mart, and if someone had declared themselves homeless in that town, they also would have had to go to Wal-Mart, and that both of these events would probably have several pages of coverage in the local newspaper.

From what I’ve seen here though, we don’t have that great leveller. And for a few years now, we’ve even had Wal-Mart (in the guise of Asda, which Wal-Mart owns). But there’s always been this pyramid of who goes where…not so much a leveller at all. When I first lived here I was a student and as a foreign student I wasn’t allowed to have a job, so I was basically more broke than I had ever been in my life. There were several places within walking distance to buy groceries, but most of the students went to Safeway. If someone had send me a card with some spending money, I might go to Sainsbury’s, as they had food I still missed from home, but it really was a special treat. A few years later I discovered the glory of the Marks & Spencer Food Hall, and I might as well have taken out a loan just to eat. I was convinced that there was no better food in the world and that everyone I saw shopping in there was leading a life of amazement and decorum. (Yes, it amazes me now that I was so obsessed by people’s shopping habits. Perhaps I missed my vocation in some level of grocery marketing research.) But after M&S, everything just hit a plateau. Surely there was nowhere to go from there.

It was only after that that I started hearing about Waitrose. Never having been near one, I was convinced that they would be exceedingly posh stores with everything organically grown and ethically packaged and everyone who shops there would happily pay ten times the price of anywhere else because it would really be so good as to be worth it. This was partly because the people I knew who did live near Waitrose shops were all spectacular people with spectacular lives and despite the professor telling me the Queen would shop at Wal-Mart, I didn’t believe that these spectacular people bought their groceries at anywhere less than…spectacular.

So the other day I went on a little journey to a fabric wholesalers in search of twenty metres of something that would make fabulous curtains, all at a price that would be lovely. When I found the wholesalers (where I did find some lovely fabrics at ridiculous prices), it was in true bargain-basement fashion, where a building has been gutted and the fabric has been thrown in, without worrying about increasing the overheads of the business with things like finishing touches. Just fine for what it is. But next door—as in sharing a car park – there was a….Waitrose.

Now clearly I had saved enough on my fabric that I could buy just one meal’s shopping at this store that promised to be nothing short of amazing.

But really? It looked just like the Safeway where I bought my bargains as a student in Brighton. Though the employees did offer a lovely level of chit-chat, there was no spectacular! spectacular! to be seen.

There were, however, blueberries on offer. And carrot and hummus sandwiches and raspberry lemonade. So yes, there are some lovely, lovely things. But I didn’t see anyone resembling the Queen. She must have gone to Wal-Mart after all.

And why record my silly obsession with the status of British grocery chains when I could tell you about this lovely blueberry buttermilk cake from Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros? Because everyone else has been making it too. So you can read about it here and here and here, just for starters. It is lovely, and indeed like a fluffy giant vanilla pancake with blueberries. I do believe you could even serve it to the Queen. Although I served it to two of my bridesmaids, which was just as good.

xlovesx

PS: Yes, I am saving Fortnum & Mason for a day that will need to be very, very special. I might need a new dress for such an occasion!

Comment [8]