Scrapbook tip - Liquid Glass

I have often been asked what to do with Liquid Glass! It is one of my favourite items on my desk to use. It can be used as an adhesive or as an embellishment. Liquid Glass dries completely clear so as an adhesive it is great for adhering clear buttons or other clear embellishments to my projects. I love to adhere clear buttons to patterned paper and then cut them out and have coordinating embellishments for my page or card! On these pages you can see the buttons I made to match the blues in the striped paper.

As an embellishment you can use it to highlight certain parts of a pattern, use it on stickers, make a subtle accent by squeezing drops of it in a row or around a photo. In this layout I hope you can see how each dot on the dotted paper and on the mushrooms has a drop of liquid glass on it - giving it great dimension without being overwhelming. I have also outlined a plaid pattern, used it for photo corners, outlined flowers etc. The possibilities are endless!

The biggest thing to remember is to give the Liquid Glass time to dry. Depending on how thick the application is it can take anywhere from 5 minutes to a couple of hours to dry. I apply the Liquid Glass and then set my project aside and work on something else.

If you have any questions or ways you've used Liquid Glass let me know!

As far as the East is from the West

During Pastor Paul's sermon on Hebrews 6 yesterday I was struck anew by his statement that God not only forgives our sin, he forgets our sin! "...as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Psalm 103: 12 Wow! As much as I knew that intellectually, I can easily forget that. I know that I am forgiven but I will replay my failures over and over again in my head (especially when I am tired and trying to fall asleep). What a great reminder that God is so great and loving that He actually chooses to forget our sin and then He chooses to remember our good work that He has created for us to do! So when I can't sleep I need to remember my sin is forgiven and forgotten and focus on what a great God I have.

Scrapbook layout - Escape

Passages Level 2 paper pack, Cocoa ribbon, Stamps: Backwoods, Building Block

I made this layout this summer as the extra two pages for my July 12 for 12 clubs. It was fun to be able to fit 14 pictures on one layout! This layout comes from Imagine. The pictures come from my family's camping trip in the Kananaskis last summer (one of our favourite places to camp!) I printed the pictures through Scrapbookpictures.com because I could pick the sizes of 2x2, and 4x4, zoom in and see exactly what they would look like. They also offer many different sizes (i.e. 3x3, 4x7, 6x6, 8x8, 4x12 and so on!) which are great for scrapbooking.

A new adventure - Homeschooling!

I know many of our family and friends have wondered why we decided to homeschool. We had hoped to enroll Nathan and Noelle into a local private Christian School close to us in Toronto but because the Ontario government doesn't support private education at all (unlike Alberta which provides partial funding) the school was unable to negotiate on tuition. With Daniel in school himself we were hoping to come to an agreement with the Christian School but since we couldn't we decided to homeschool. This has been a decision made with a lot of prayer.

Why not a public school? The reasons that usually come to mind first are the potential for bad influence from other students and anti-Christian teaching. However, when we really pondered it we realized that these are not the main concerns. The biggest thing it came down to was worldview. With Christian education (private school or homeschool) children are taught with a biblical worldview rather than a secular worldview.

What do I mean by worldview? The best explanation I have heard is that it is like the glasses you wear to look at and interpret the world and all of your experiences. (i.e. it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it. Wikipedia) Everyone has a worldview - whether it is a secular one, a religious one, or a combination of views - and recognizing this can help us understand others.

So in a secular setting children are taught to look at the world without a reference to God and to His word the Bible. Now, one may argue that this isn't a bad thing and that parents at home and through church can teach this Biblical worldview but I can't say it is a good thing. It is like choosing white bread for my children to eat all the time - it is not necessarily bad (although too much of it would be :) but brown, wholegrain bread is definitely better and will nourish them more. By being able to choose a Christian education for our children we are able to choose what is better, we are able to teach them through Biblical glasses. I know this is not an option for all Christian families and every family needs to decide for themselves, based on the resources (physical, spiritual, monetary etc) God has given them, how they will fulfill the biblical mandate to "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6)

There are definitely aspects of a school setting that we will miss this year but there are other aspects that I am really looking forward to. It has been a blessing that we are able to register with Alberta Education through Northstar Academy to homeschool. Since Daniel is a student and we plan to go back to Alberta in the summer, we can keep our Alberta health care, licence plates, and now school registration. This will entitle us to some homeschool funding as well as support through Northstar.

If you have any questions about homeschooling (or anything else I post :) please ask!

An Organized Blog :)

So I've been wondering how I should balance what I post - adventures, scrapbooking etc and I came up with the following:
Tips Tuesday - tips I've learned about classical scrapbooking or digital scrapbooking
Whatever Wednesday - anything that doesn't fall into one of the other categories!
Family Friday - adventures we're having in Toronto and anything else relating to my family
Scrapbook Saturday - layouts that I've made (classical or digital)
Spiritual Sunday - insights from books I'm reading, sermons I've listened to, Bible time with the kids

These titles are a little corny and probably don't matter to much to you but they will help me feel organized (and as you probably know - I love to be organized!) I couldn't think of anything for Monday or Thursday but that's probably okay - I don't know if I will realistically blog 5 days a week anyways!

If there are suggestions you have I would love to hear them! This blog is definitely a work in progress but it has been fun so far to share what is going on in my life. I've also had the thought that I am journaling for my scrapbooks before I've even scrapbooked the pictures! This is great because I don't know when I'll get around to scrapbooking our pictures from this summer but I will at least have some of our experiences and feelings recorded.

Layout - Sand-Sun-Mud

This has to be one of my favourite all time layouts that I have ever made. I think a large part is due to the great picture of Noelle on the muddy slide and ones of her second cousins! They had a great time that day!

If you were in one of my 12 for 12 Scrapbooking Clubs you should recognize this layout from June.  It was one of the summer Workshop on the Go kits. It uses CTMH's Splendor paper, Irresistibles Miracle Chipboard Die-Cuts (these come in white that have a pattern that resist whatever colour ink you use on them - great for matching any paper you want), and Glitz Stardust Glitter Glue.

CN Tower!

Nathan and Noelle loved the CN Tower! They talked about it for days. We went Sunday afternoon after touring Daniel's school. On the way back to the subway station we stopped at a Eastside Mario's for a delicious supper. What a great day! And of course, anything with Lisa and Travis will be fun!
 Here are some pictures:

Nathan lying on the glass floor. It was a very strange feeling to step on it!

From the skypod 447 m high!

Jeremy's place to hang out. He also fell asleep in Daniel's arms later in the afternoon - what a trooper though!

From the observation deck - feel the breeze!

This picture is for my Dad - we'll have to go to the CBC Museum when you come!

Toronto Islands

We enjoyed a beautiful day with Lisa and Travis visiting Toronto Island Park back in the middle of September. Daniel stayed home and did homework all day but the rest of us drove downtown to the lakeshore and took a ferry across to Centre Island. If you are like me and hadn't ever really heard about the Islands before, they are on Lake Ontario just off the northern shoreline.


View Larger Map

The kids were so excited to be taking a "boat".

The islands were beautiful with majestic trees, beautiful grassed areas, a quiet river flowing through, and sandy beaches. We only explored half of one of the islands (there are three in total).

We did get to spend a couple of hours at Centreville Amusement Park though. It is a small park perfectly suited to my kids' ages. Nathan said his favourite ride was the log ride and I think Noelle and Jeremy loved driving the little cars. I once again forgot my camera but Travis had his ....except his battery was dying. We did manage to get 13 pictures!

One really unique feature was "Franklin's Garden". It was very sweet and kids loved running around discovering Franklin and his friends and following Snail's path up the hill.

This post wouldn't be complete though without telling you about the traffic on the way home (we should have taken a picture of that too!) We had 40 minutes to drive to Nathan's music lesson at 4 pm and thought that would be plenty of time to drive there. The GPS estimated 17 minutes. First, we took a short detour downtown (our fault) and then we tried to get onto the Gardiner Expressway to make good time - except all off ramps were closed! We found out later that they had closed sections of the Expressway to work on the bridges that weekend. That meant everyone was on Lake Shore drive and we were all inching our way forward and stopping for all the red lights. We did eventually get to Nathan's lesson but 45 minutes late! I was going to phone his teacher and tell her but I couldn't find my cell phone and Travis' was dead (I know, not our best technological day!) Anyways, it was one more Toronto driving lesson learned! The next day we took the subway downtown.

Scrapbook Page - Calgary Zoo

I took Friday evening and scrapbooked! In a way it didn't seem like "real" scrapbooking because I was finishing journaling and putting together an album but it was still fun. Here are two of the pages I finished journaling on - I started the pages in July at a farewell hosted by my CTMH team in Edson. I had lots of pictures from our trip to the Calgary Zoo in August 2008 when we went with my Mom and Dad. I didn't really want to have 4 pages in my album but there were so many pictures. Then Denise Swelin gave me two of Close To My Hearts brand new 6 x 12 Flip Flaps which let me fit a lot more pictures in but still really only have 2 pages! These pages were fun to make. The Flip Flaps have a self adhesive strip that I attached to the bottom of the page and the top of the page.

Things I'll miss when we leave Toronto

We've only be here a month but already I can see there are some things I will miss when we leave!
1. The Italian bakery 4 blocks away. The kids love the Sicilian icecream (gelato) there!
2. The Italian Vegetable market 4 blocks away. They sell horse meat too but we haven't tried that yet!
Last Saturday I walked down, did my shopping for the day and walked home. What a novelty for me! There is also a meat market and a few convenience stores in the strip mall.
3. The City of Toronto comes and takes our compost once a week and our big recycle bin every two weeks in addition to our garbage (coming from Edson where we had to sort our own recycling and take it down to the depot this is a treat).
4. The beautiful September weather! I'm not sure what winter will be like but so far we are enjoying the balmy days, the flowers that are still blooming, and the beautiful fall colours - red, orange, yellow mixed with the green.

One thing I won't miss though is the traffic!

Scrapbooking Room

Thanks to Luella's help I have my scrapbook space organized! Daniel found a desk for me when we first moved and were looking at a used hotel furniture store. It is a two desk combo - the shorter piece is on wheels and slides out from under the top desk. This way I have a big work surface but can clean it up and push the desk back in when I'm not working.

Daniel also put two shelves above the desk and we are going to add one more. My albums are stored on the top closet shelf. Since we are living in a duplex with only three bedrooms, space is at a premium. That means my scrapbook space and Daniel's "office" is in our bedroom.

I know my space seems way bigger than Daniel's but in my defense, there are four bookshelves in Nathan's room (we tease him that he sleeps in the library!) and one and a half bookshelves are already filled with Daniel's books and  I know he will be adding more books over the years. :)

Thank you Luella for your organizing ideas! Now, I'm off to scrapbook, well, not really but I plan to start this weekend!