Scrapping College Style

I've been a bad blogger this month. Life has gotten super busy. I have midterms on Monday and Tuesday. Then it is spring break. Normal as usual, there is a blizzard threatening my departure for break. I am hoping to pull out of town in front of the storm.

Life has been exciting lately. Lots of classroom time. I am writing and teaching my own lessons in the special ed classroom where I am placed this year. I was very excited with how my lesson went last week. I also was able to attend an exciting Special Ed conference last week. I went to a day long seminar on Aspergers Syndrome. I learned so much.

Now to the real stuff. Scrapping in a small college apartment. My apartment is so much better than the dorms, but still crammed for space.  My rolling cart stays in my living room, and my cricut stay on top of it. The contents in the draws vary. The best part, the cart fits right behind my passenger seat in my car....if the seat is pulled all the way forward. I picked up the cart at a thrift store, but the tags were still on, and it was from the Target office section.

I store the rest of my scrappy stuff under my bed. Its really the only space I have. But its still more storage than the dorms. I have my rolling tote, an arm tote (my favorite thing ever), my cuttlebug, and some extra reusable bags (my cricut tote).

Inside the rolling tote I have two Iris cases. I use these to store paper and my premade kits. I just bring it own when I want it all. I keep my extra adhesive in one pocket, embellishments in the second side pockets, and cricut mats in the front compartment. I would love a bigger tote if I had the funds.My arm tote (also from Target) holds all the essentials. I have a big paper cutter back at home, but I just use a small Fiskars here. I have my small Creative Memories Guillotine Cutter. I also keep my ATG, Sew Easy mat, and a variety of adhesives, pens, and other tools in the arm tote.

My kits are the key to traveling lite. I am a chronological scrapper. I print my pictures ( I love snapfish) and then make kits. My kits include pictures, patterned paper, cardstock, any ribbon, or other embellishments. I just stack them in my Iris cases. Sometimes I will use scrapbook folders to organize a supplies for a specific group of pictures. This eliminates me bringing a lot of paper, since I don't have an elevator. I make new kits every time I go back to my parents house. So I am swapping supplies every 4-8 weeks depending on when I can pull off a trip home.

I will admit it takes a lot to keep stuff organized going back and forth. I have a notebook keeping track of layouts. I write down the name of page once I have the kit together. I have a running list of what pictures I have with me here at school. I highlight the page once it is done. I would like to move this to a spread sheet when I have time. I would like to start keeping track of everything together. Pictures printed, pictures printed and with a kit, when it is done, etc. Someday I will have time. And to think I am almost done with college!

This is the shelf my sister took to school with her. I wish I would have had this in my dorm room. Its super tall and skinny, and doesn't take up much space. Tall albums fit on the shelves. I would have done a combo of text books, binders, and scrappy stuff.

Eben Ice Caves

Senior year is quickly passing, and there is so much left to do. My friends and I wrote a bucket list of things to do this year. One of our activities was a return trip to the Eben Ice Caves. We went 2 years ago and had a great time. This morning we packed into 2 cars and went out. Of course the weather has been glorious all week. Today -1 windchill and windy. But we made the best of it.

Of course the road going into the trail is horrendous. We had snow yesterday, and it wasn't plowed. So you pretty much stay in the path. There was a minimum of a foot of snow at all times on either side of your car.

We had a great hike. No one got hurt, which is always a plus. The trail is icy and steep. I had rented a pair of snowshoes from my gym. Totally worth every dollar. It made it so easy on the hills. But sometimes it is still fun to slide on your butt.

The ice caves are a small water fall that freezes in the winter. We have had a very mild winter, so not much precipitation. They have been much bigger in previous years. But they are still a gorgeous sight. Its about a 1.5 mile hike from the road to the caves.

 

You can even walk behind the frozen waterfall into the cave. The icicles have a cool blue-green tint to them. The floor of the cave is pure ice. The claws on the snowshoes were great to help walk easily. 

And if you are a monkey like my friends and I, you can even climb to the top. Its hard to get up, but it is a cool view from above.

I love the sunny days hiking in the woods and seeing all the beautiful trees! Next weekends adventures are the sled dog races. One of my favorite activities of the year.

Wedding Fun

This past July, my cousin Brian got married. Needless to say, I love wedding pages. I like to keep them simple and elegant, and tie in with the wedding theme. The colors of their wedding were black and ivory dresses for the bridemaids, with purple flowers and accents. It was a super fun wedding. My mom has a big family, and it is always fun to get everyone together. My sweet little goddaughter danced the night away. She loved all the oldie songs.

Here's a few of my pages from the wedding. I have more in the works, but the homework is starting to get pretty heavy. Can you believe we are 1/4 of the way through the semester?

I really like this page. The program and the save the date are both double sided. I wanted them both to be accessible, so I used brads (by recollections) to secure them down, but you can still lift them up and see the other side. I got to play with a friend's score board, and I am totally in love with the folded rosettes.

I really like to save people's invites and other memorabilia that they send out. I love how the paper all coordinated so nicely.

I am looking forward to this weekends adventure. I am going to snowshoe with some of my friends to the Eben Ice Caves. I went in 2010, and they are gorgeous. It is a decent hike, but it is totally worth it.I will get some pictures up when I come back. They are quite a site.

Finishing Door County

If you haven't already figured out, Door County is my favorite place to scrap. We spend lots of our time each summer up in Door County. From the beach to shopping to eating out, we have a blast. During my crop this weekend, I finally wrapped up my Summer 2011 pictures from Door County. If you don't know where Door County is, its on the eastern edge of Wisconsin. Smack dab between the Bay of Green Bay and Lake Michigan. Needless to say, you can see why I seem to be always swimming. Though I have relatively few beach pictures from this year. Since 4th of July weekend was so hot, we were all in the water.

So I wrapped up all my pages. I am really excited with how these turned out. The red and blue paper is an old line by EK Success. I've had it for quite some time, but it seemed perfect for these pages. These pictures were taken in the Bailey's Harbor Town Hall. The Women's Society had an ice cream social fundraiser. It was such a hot weekend we had to partake in some cool treats.

Of course we love the peace and tranquility of staying on the lake. We love the sunsets on the bay side. The title is strung together with my favorite MME Twine.

This last page was one of the Fast Scraps at Skrap N Chat. We had an hour to complete the challenge, which was to have a one word title, with letters, and small embellishments. I love the details of the trees and the little buttons on them. These pictures were taken up here in Michigan. My parents came up for a visit, and we stopped at a road side stopping point along the highway. The was the trees were reflecting off the lake was gorgeous.

I have another crop this weekend with my church. I should have more fun pages to share afterwards. I am looking forward to scrapping my cousin's wedding. Here's a little idea of the fun I had today with my friends. We had a little sledding adventure.

Having a scrappy weekend

This weekend I am participating at Skrap N Chat's 3rd Birthday Party. I was thrilled to finish my homework and play along with a few of their challenges. My first page is the introduction to my cousin's wedding, which was over this past summer. The challenge was to use hearts in a way other than just putting them on the page. So I cut 7 hearts (of each color), folded them other, and made them into a flower.

The second page was for my own album. I did a page with the same picture for my sister's album. I am really enjoying playing with mists. And of course twine is also another one of my favorite materials to play with.

Materials:
Paper: The Paper Studio, Ek Success, Coordinations
Twine: My Minds Eye
Mist: Smooch
Adhesive: Scotch ATG, Glossy Accents
Pen: American Crafts

The much awaited for....

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!! This is the first one in quite some time. It is my senior year of college, we didn't have any my junior year, and the one we had sophomore year I didn't have any classes. So it has been well over 3 years since we had a snow day! I love our schools system. They just send out a mass text message. So I didn't even have to turn on the computer. I went straight back to bed.

Of course no snow day isn't complete without lots of picture taking, going outside, and scrapbooking! I took a friend from California out to play in the snow. She finally got to make a snowman and a snow angel. It was a fun day!

Back to School

I am officially back to school. The picture above is the snow drifts behind my building. I took that Saturday afternoon, and we still haven't seen a plow. My car is kinda crooked in its parking spot. We got a lot of snow last week.

I had my first class this morning, and I am pretty excited. My social studies professor seems really cool. He expects so much of us, especially from our lesson plans, but I think I will grow a lot from his class. He is a big believer in active teaching styles, and this is something I want to learn about.

On Friday night, I met my friend Em over at a scrapbook store in Green Bay, called Creations Galore. They have crop night. You can come at anytime, and scrap until 9pm. We had a very fun time. My favorite moment was when she couldn't find a big circle to trace. So she took a clock off the wall. Check out her blog for the fun pictures.

I did this page from a trip to the amusement park over the summer. Every year I take my two cousins for a fun day. They love the carousel, ferris wheel, big slide, and the bumper cars. Hopefully next year the oldest will be tall enough for the roller coaster. Nothing like summer pictures on a cold winter day!