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!