Digi Dare + WCS Nov Layout Sneak

I did a layout for this week’s Digi Dares.  It is all about what could have been!

Digi Dare #343 | I Was Going To Be…

Credits: At the Moment, Creator digital kits by One Little Bird, Star On Top by One Little Bird & Amy Martin, Splatterific 21 by Karah Fredricks, Lobster Two font, Collegiate Black font, and Collegiate Outline font.

Journaling: In 2004 I wanted to be a NFL cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers. I was a cheerleader in my teen years, and was in jazz dance for numerous years. I thought I had a chance at Charger Girl tryouts. So I showed up at the pre-tryouts to learn the routine. Wouldn’t you know it, it was a routine to a Britney Spears song. We only had an hour to learn the routine and then we had to perform it in groups of three in front of the judges. If I had more time to learn the routine, I could have done ok. But as it was, I was eliminated. I’m totally ok with it now, but back then i was disappointed. Oh what could have been!

The photo was a promo shot that I brought to the Charger Girl tryouts.  They wanted a full-body shot and a headshot.  What I forgot to mention in the journaling is that I had been taking an adult jazz dance class for a few months as a refresher, since I hadn’t danced on a team since high school.  The instructor of the class was a Charger Girl, as was the owner of the dance studio!  While I didn’t make the Charger Girls, I did get to dance in a recital that summer with the studio at the Escondido Performing Arts Center, so at least there was that.  :-)  I’m glad I tried out for the Charger Girls even though I didn’t make it.  My motto in life is always to try.  It is better than regretting not doing something, or always wondering what could have been.

It is almost November and I’ve got a sneak peek of my Write.Click.Scrapbook. November gallery layout for you!  Can you guess the theme?

Hope you had a nice weekend! 

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Settling Into Autumn

While San Diego doesn’t have the full four seasons, we are definitely into the autumn(ish) season now.  The days have become shorter, and the air is cooler and more crisp.  The skies are bluer than ever, and some leaves have changed colors and fallen.  The nights are cooler, and I’ve even been wearing long-sleeves and boots.

Another way I  know it’s fall is when soups and chilis make their way back into the dinner rotation.  We made America’s Test Kitchen’s “Our Favorite Chili” last Saturday and brought it to our friends AJ & Meera’s house for dinner.  It’s pretty fantastic, and very beefy.
 

And we got to meet baby boy Raidan, the newest member of their family.

Todd and I went to URBN on Friday night for dinner.  I’ve been wanting to get the baked chicken wings there ever since we went there with Monika & David last month.
 

And the salads there are good too.

On Saturday I had a milestone run at the lake.  It’s the first time I’ve run the five miles all the way around the lake in a long time.  My pace was surprisingly good.  I think the cooler temps in the fall definitely helps with my running.

I scrapbooked a page over the weekend for the November gallery at Write.Click.Scrapbook.  I enjoyed it, but it must have taken me about three hours to do it.  Maybe I’m out of practice, lol.  For the layout I printed a screenshot of my food board on Pinterest.  Perhaps that is a hint of what the November gallery theme is… or perhaps not. :)

Just as in past autumn seasons, my scrapbooking has slowed down.  In 2011 I completely stopped doing my Project Life album in September.  I’ve noticed that my scrapbooking productivity goes way down in the autumn.  I think it has to do with many things:  the new fall TV season starting, football, and the busiest months of the year for me at work.  When I’m so busy at work, when I get home I don’t really want to do anything.  I don’t want to blog or scrapbook or anything that’s “optional” and not a “have-to”.  I also think I scrapbook less in the fall because of the amount of time I spent making handmade Christmas cards in November.  And Christmas crafting in general. 

So yea, I’m settling into fall.  It’s been a transition but I’m finally getting there and excited about the season and all that it holds.

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Five on Friday

One:  What could be construed as “Fall” has arrived in San Diego this week.  This past weekend we had temps in the 90’s with the Santa Ana winds.  But a few days later, “fall” arrived.  The leaves on the trees at work have turned colors and are falling.

And last night was the first night since April that we had to pull out the comforter for the bed.  That’s pretty epic.  Temps inside the house went down to 68.

 

Two:  since it’s finally cooler now, I pulled out the afghan that I’ve been crocheting since… last spring?  (2012)  Time to make some progress again.

 

Three:  I’m totally thinking about signing up for Urban Craft Camp, run by Ana Spick of We Love Citrus and Jen Byard of My Three Songs Designs.  I had a great time at their String Art Workshop this summer.  The new workshop I want to attend is book binding.  It is 11/9 at Pigment in North Park. 

{Photo from the Urban Craft Camp website}

Four:  I am slowly yet surely making progress with my weight-loss goal.  I’m now about 6 lbs from my goal weight.  I started on July 1st, but the last few weeks I haven’t lost as much weight, even though I’m still making small progress.  I’ve started back up with weights and strength training because I want to build more muscles.  Twice in my life in the past, when I’ve lost 10 or more pounds, I had incorporated weight training.  Hopefully it’s the trigger that I need to jump start my weight loss again and get to my goal weight!

Five:  I’m loving One Little Bird’s mobile font Key Notes!  I use the font inside the Phonto or Over app on my iPhone to overlay words over my photos.  (Such as the ones above.)  And this one of Noodle.

There are several different options for purchasing Key Note (png + cut files, ttf font, or both), so please check the One Little Bird blog post and the Lilypad store listing for more info.

Need instructions on how to install any font onto your iOS device so you can use it on photos?  Here’s a handy blog post with instructions at The Lilypad.

Happy Friday!  Have a good weekend everyone!  :-)

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Concert | Philip Phillips & John Mayer

Besides eating, working out, and college football, one of our other favorite hobbies is music.  Todd is a musician (piano, keys, trumpet) and used to play in many bands.  His first music love is jazz (the real kind, not the smooth kind), but he won’t totally reject other music that’s well-written and interesting.  And he won’t outright reject music that I really like.  And for the last 10 years, I’ve really liked John Mayer.  I do like his earlier CDs better than his last two CDs though.  So, over the last 10 years, we’ve gone to see John Mayer in concert three times.  I don’t think we’ve seen him as much as we’ve seen the Barenaked Ladies or Earth, Wind & Fire, but it might be close. 

On Friday night (10/4), we went to see John Mayer for the fourth time, at Sleep Train Amphitheater in Chula Vista.  (I liked it much better when it was called Coors Amphitheater.  Heck, I’ll even settle for Cricket Wireless Amphitheater.)

No, we weren’t this close.  Photo courtesy of our friend Maria, who was in the good seats!

We got home from work and had some takeout sandwich and salad for dinner.  Then we left for Chula Vista at 6pm.  With the Friday after-work traffic AND concert traffic, we didn’t arrive at the parking lot until about 7:10pm.  We were able to get lawn tickets to the concert for $20 each on Groupon!  That was such an awesome deal, because there was no Ticketmaster fees or anything.  Just $20 straight up.  Print the Groupon out and that was our ticket to the show. 

When we got in, there were plenty of lawn space available, even with center stage view.  So we put our blanket down. 

As soon as we sat down, Philip Phillips started playing, right on time at 7:30! 

We were pretty far from the stage on the lawn, so I wasn’t able to get good photos.  Todd got some Coke and popcorn from the concession stand, which he loved.  A selfie with our Canon point & shoot. 

Philip Phillips saved his crowd favorite song, “Home”, for last.  Then there was a half-hour break to set up the stage for John Mayer.

And boy, were people there to see John Mayer! (Photo by Maria again.)

He started the concert with “Queen of California” from his “Born And Raised” CD.  (Quite appropriate for where he was, I suppose!) 

I really liked the moving backgrounds that they used for the show.  Lots of cool graphics.

Including this one with moving stars on strings.

And I liked how this photo turned out.  Kind of cool.  Kind of eerie.

We left a little bit early to beat the traffic out of the amphitheater and Chula Vista.  Yes, we were those “old” people who didn’t want to get stuck in traffic for two hours getting out of a concert on Friday night!  And yea, I’m ok with that.

I posted a photo to Instagram at the concert.  Then a couple of days later, I got tweeted at by Crowd Album, saying that I contributed to their 10/4 John Mayer concert album.  So I clicked over and was amazed at all the great photos that the crowd captured at the concert!  What an awesome idea to have a crowd-sourced album based on social media sharing!

Here’s a review of the concert by the San Diego Union Tribune:  John Mayer meets humility in San Diego

And here’s the setlist.

I just love how the internet and social media helps me capture event memory details that I may have forgotten!  We totally enjoyed the Philip Phillips & John Mayer concert.  What a great experience for $20!

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String Art Workshop

I went to a local craft workshop in June, but since I was on blog hiatus, I never blogged about it.  I think the String Art Workshop was really cool, so I’m blogging about it now!  :-)

I won a seat to the String Art Workshop on Instagram, thanks to Anna of We Love Citrus.  So on Saturday, June 8th, I drove down to the North Park neighborhood and attended the workshop at a super-cute house, Jen Byard’s house.  There was a juice & champagne bar.

And lots of awesome snacks too!  Yum!

This was one of Jen’s creations.  So cute!

The String Art Workshop was held out on the deck by the side of the house.  I loved the set up and how cute it was.

The tables were set up with lots of goodies and our supplies.

And a goodie bag filled with awesome stuff from local crafty artisans!

I didn’t take photos of what was inside, but here were lots of goodies from the sponsors of the workshop.

Ana of We Love Citrus
Jen Byard of My Three Sons
Julia Perez of The Love Stitch
Colleen Townsend
Marcie Hicks of Red Star Ink 

They asked us to bring our own hammer, so I did!  First I cut out a black printed image of the state of California.  Then I positioned it on the 12x12 piece of wood where I wanted it, and started hammering some nails around the edge of the shaped paper.

The hammering took a while, because I’m not a strong hammerer. 

Finally almost done!

After I had the shape totally surrounded by nails, I carefully cut the paper away and removed it.  Then I started stringing the white string around different nails in a random pattern.

It took a while but finally I felt satisfied with the string patterns filling up the shape of California.  With a heart near San Diego.  (More like inland from San Diego.)

Another look at my finished California string art piece.

I loved the workshop and had so much fun!  Big thanks to Ana & Jen for putting the workshop together and giving me a seat.  I still need to find the perfect place in my house to display my string art creation! 

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