Catching up

Wow, I just realized that I haven't posted since Wednesday!

You all know I post almost every day…I think this is the longest I have been away.

So I know you are all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for me to share with you all that I have been up to, lol.

Tonight is the Mid-season finale of the Walking Dead.
This being one of my favourite shows, I had to celebrate this right ;)
So I dressed for the occasion.
Put on my jammy pants, one of my many Walking Dead t-shirts and plunked my butt on the couch :)
Wayne and I were going to make a taco dip/salad to enjoy while we watched the show…but yesterday we celebrated our Fakesgiving, so we had a lot of leftovers, so decided against the taco dip/salad.

Yes, yesterday we celebrated our Fakesgiving with my daughters, their boyfriends/husband and my friend/SIL Sharon and her husband Jim.
Are you are wondering what Fakesgiving is?
It is my made up holiday…actually it is just an excuse to have my family over and eat another turkey dinner :)
Being Canadian, we celebrate Thanksgiving in October, so what better way to get in another big family meal, then to celebrate the American Thanksgiving as well….plus we visit the States so often, we should have dual citizenship and be allowed to celebrate all of their holidays too, lol.

I read this book that I have heard such great reviews on.
I love to organize….I say I keep making a mess of things, just so I can re-organize ;)
One point that I love that she made, for your home to be more peaceful…is to focus on what you want to keep, not what you need to get rid of.
Keep only what you love (or brings you joy) or what is useful…everything else, be thankful it was in your life and then let it go.
Isn't that a great way to look at our belongings :)

I went through my phone photos…again.
As you can see from the photo above, I had deleted 2,846 photos.
I had just recently deleted over 1,000.
I actually froze my phone when I tried to delete them all at once.
Kristy had to help me by deleting them in smaller amounts.

I had also challenged myself to NOT shop for any crafty supplies for the month of November.
It was actually pretty easy.
But when you consider the shopping I did on our few trips to the States last month, and we will be heading there again in December….
But I did pick up some new nail polish colours. But that isn't crafty :)
Ashley always teases me that I always choose the same colours…which is partly true.
I did pick up a fun silver colour….I thought that might be a fun colour for Christmas :)

Well, there you go…that is what I have been up to lately :)
I hope you all have a very Creative day :)

Tracy :)

Whats on my Work Desk

How much mess can I can make working on my planners…
Apparently a lot, lol.

I thought I would share my work desk with the many other interesting and creative desks on the Stamping Ground's WOYWW.

Ashley and I worked on our planners and this is only my mess…Ashley and I had already cleaned up her area, lol.
I seem to like to use a lot of supplies.

I hope you all have a very Creative Day today :)

Tracy :)

Planner Alterations

Decisions, decisions…..
Ashley and I were working in our planners this weekend :)

I have a confession to make…..
I haven't been using my planner for my daily planning lately.
I have been making my "todo" lists on a note pad.

I have been analyzing why I haven't been using my planner lately.
I am thinking it was maybe because of the layout.

I am, by nature a list maker…so I was thinking a vertical planner layout may work better for me.
And because of this, I stopped using mine and started to think of ways to change it up.
The above photos show both a horizontal layout and a vertical layout.
For the vertical layout I just altered a horizontal layout.

I use a Day-Timer planner and like the binder.
So hopefully I can find a layout that works for me a bit better than the one I am (not) using at the moment.

I hope you all had a creative day :)

Tracy :)

My Top 10 Fauxbonichi Supplies….Video :)

I have been missing for a while on here.
I was uploading some videos and they take forever to do.
When I edit them, then finalize them to my laptop and lastly upload them to YouTube, it takes me all day.
Plus I can't use my laptop to check out the internet during this process.

What were the videos I made about, you ask?
They were on my Fauxbonichi.
One was a flip, the other a Fauxbonichi top 10 supplies

Felecia, from our Fauxbonichi Journalers Facebook group, challenged us to share our Top 10 Supplies that we use in our Fauxbonichi Journals.
Here are my Top 10 supplies.

1. Washi Tape…..were you surprised with that one, teehee.
2. Templates….I have templates for my Header and my Sun :)
3. Ruler…I use a small clear plastic ruler to keep my lines straight.
4.Pens…I have a few favourite pens and markers for writing with.
5. Stamps…this includes the Date stamps I use as well as images and words.
I also snuck in my rub-on numbers in there as well ;)
6. Inks….inks I use for stamping and how I store them.
7. Sticky Notes & stickers….I like lined post it notes to keep track of my day or when I am behind, as well as the many stickers I hoard ;)
8. Colouring Mediums….I love to colour and love colouring, so I have many different mediums to use in my journal. Copics, coloured pencils, inexpensive markers, Stampin Up markers etc.
9. My iPhone…I use my phone for the dictionary app. I am always doubting myself on how to spell something, I love this app!!
I also use it for checking out my blog for what I have been up to when I am behind on my journaling days.
10. Focus….Most importantly are my cheater glasses..I really am needing them more and more.
Also a tiny task lamp. so I can journal without disturbing my family as I am usually watching tv with them as I journal :)

Here is the video with these supplies and how I use them in more detail.
If you would rather watch this on my YouTube channel Tracy's Treasures, just click on the link :)
This video took forever.

After video taping, transferring the video from my camera to my laptop, then editing…I then have to finalize the edited video to my laptop, which takes about 3 - 4 hours.
Then I had to upload it to Youtube, which took 9+ hours.
Well…not only did I do this once, but I had to do it 3 times.

Day 1…Friday
After doing all of the above, I watched it on YouTube and noticed pieces of my video were missing.
My laptop wouldn't finalize my edited video as it indicated I didn't have enough room.
So I deleted my unused portions….little did I know it also deleted some of my used portions.
I emptied my trash folder and I formatted my camera…so I couldn't retrieve any of my files.
Plus, It was too late to do anything as it was after 3:00am

Second day:
I re-taped (1 hour)  the parts of the video that were deleted.
Edited it (1.5 hours), finalized (3+ hours) and uploaded (9+hours).
When it was up on YouTube, I noticed that my music was in the wrong spot.
This was about 1:00 am.

Today:
Fixed the music.
Had to finalize it yet again (3+ hours).
Upload to YouTube at 4:00am….went to bed, lol.
I had to stop the upload every once in awhile today, to had to let my family use the internet for a bit today, lol.
This time upload time was over 10 hours
It was finally up on YouTube after 4:00pm.

Man I am one determined lady, lol

I hope you all had a creative Day :)
I did, since I had all of the down time (as I couldn't use my laptop during finalizing, and the family couldn't use the internet when I was uploading to YouTube) I spend most of the weekend with my daughters.
We were all around my large craft table chatting, while Ashley and I were working on our planners :)
So besides all the frustrations of this video, I had an awesome weekend with my girls.

Tracy :)

Autumn & Rain Girls

It has been pouring the last couple of days….great days to stay inside and do a bit of journaling :)
Here are my pages (before adding my journaling) for today and yesterday.
I am trying my hand at drawing faces (again) and adding different looks to these girls.

For yesterday's girl "Autumn Girl" I stamped her hair to look like fall leaves.
I used my Blick's coloured pencils to colour in their faces.
I can't find a great flesh tone in these pencil crayons….this is more of a yellow tone :(

Because it has been raining here so much, my second girl "Rain Girl" has hair to represent rain.
I first added some Tim Holtz faded jeans distress ink for the colour of her hair, then drew in the rain drops with the same colour in Tim Holtz distress markers.
The girls eye colour is opposite of each other…meaning, Autumn has Rain's hair colour for her eyes and Rain has Autumn's.
I am really happy with how my girls turned out….even with the skin tone not being the colour I intended.

Onto My Day:
Even though it was a rainy, stay in bed kind of day….I was thinking of putting my PJ's on and watching YouTube in bed all day…but, I had to bring the red jeep to the shop.
Ashley has had the use of it for 5 yrs and now it is Heather and Kristy's time to have it.
I brought it in the shop to make sure it is up to safety standards.
I did have to get the wheel bearings replaced on the one wheel…..so got the mechanic to do the other one as well.
He said the one didn't need to be changed right away. Then asked me "It is just driven in town right?"
I thought to myself, if it was to be driven on the highway, is it not as safe ?!?
So told him to change them both….better safe than sorry when my babies are driving.

I hope you all have a very Creative Day :)

Tracy :)

Deconstructing a Stamp

I found a cool site through the Fauxbonichi Journalers FB page.
It will blur your words or faces in a photo.
Here is the site http://www.facepixelizer.com
I have only used it this one time…so I am not an expert.
But it took me a bit to figure out how to get my photos on the page to alter, as I am used to using  http://www.picmonkey.com and love it.
I had also had trouble figuring out where my photo went once I saved it.
But I do like the effect that it gave my text and photo :)

I then used my iPhoto, Retouch in my edit program.
It may not look as nice….as my pages look like they are dirty, lol.
But it is so much easier for me to use.

I was looking for a large leaf stamp  to colour on my journal pages.
I had this stamp from Inkidinkado.
I didn't really care for the circle design behind the leaf…so decided to try and remove it.

So lots of cutting and snipping.
And then more snipping and even a bit of filing.

I was happy with the outcome of all of my work :)

I really liked this page even without me colouring up this stamp.

But aren't they so much prettier with some Autumn colours :)
I used my Blick's coloured pencils and mineral spirits to blend the colours.

Onto My Day:
We have been busy getting Wayne's "Man Cave" comfy for him.
We had to replace a couple of ceiling tiles and another light cover…as he broke the last 2 trying to put them up.
His new ginormous TV came in and so did his leather reclining love seat.
Awwww he thought of me when ordering it :)
So right now we are relaxing in his room watching The Dirt and then Gold Rush…a manly thing to be doing, lol.

I hope you all have a very Creative Day :)

Tracy :)

Visiting the Cottage

Just thought I would share some beautiful photos from our cottage yesterday :)

We closed up the cottage last month, but we had things to bring up and it was a lovely day for a drive...so we went. 

One last look at our stunning lake. 

We are so lucky to have a place like this to relax at. 

On our drive home I went through my phone and deleted over 1500 photos. I didn't even get through them all in the 1 1/2 hour drive. I still have over 1500 to go through :0

I hope you all have a Creative day. 

Tracy :). 

Defunkifying my Craft Space….one challenge at a time.

You have seen me post and have seen photos like this from me over my 5+ years of blogging.
I love my room…but why is it such a struggle to keep it organized.
This is the "after" photo if you are wondering, lol.

6 yrs ago (when 2peas in a bucket was up and running ) I did a whole room re-do following Wookiemouse's challenges.
I loved that my hard work paid off…I loved my room and could find anything I was looking for :)
Here is a link to her blog with the prompts My Life with the Label Maker

I am going to do it again :)
I am following both the challenge prompts that I did 6 yrs ago that Wookiemouse put on, but I am also following another challenge site.
The Keeper of Memories 
Two challenges are better than one…right ;)
I have done the first few challenges that Cristi has put on and I am also checking in on her FB page to keep me motivated.
Today I had to clean my desk…..again.

These are the challenges I have done so far :)
I cleaned off my desk.
I did a space audit.
I cleaned off my desk again.
I created a project.
I cleaned off my desk..yet again ;)

I still want to fine tune my desk organization…but that will get done with the upcoming challenges.
Plus I am re-thinking my desk set up.
For one thing, I need a new desk, this one is really warped in the middle…if you look closely, you can see the stacks of post it notes keeping my drawers straight, lol.
But I do have a bit of a dilemma, as I like my drawers there to set up for shooting my videos.

Here is the overall look of my, kind of, clean room.
What you can't see is all of my supplies that are hidden under my desk, teehee.

There is a challenge a week, for 52 weeks.
Some challenges may take me longer to complete, and other shorter than a week.
If you need some help in this area..come and join me with these challenges, we all can encourage each other…and what else is there to do with the cold weather here :)

I hope you all had a very Creative Day :)

Tracy :)

I love my planners

Boy, am I a sneaky one ;)
I told myself I can't buy any crafty supplies for the whole month of November.
When Ashley asked me to go to Michael's with her, I told her I couldn't go with her because of my goal.
She guilted me, by telling me that she just wanted to spend time with me.
We have had snow most of the day….but when my girls need me, I'm there.

Ashley and I are both planner girls and we both loved this one from Heidi Swapp.
I reminded her that I wasn't suppose to be buying myself crafty goodies for this month.
Well, being the clever girls that we are, we came up with a genius idea.
My girls would give this to me for Christmas.
This way I still get it without breaking my goal.
I then grabbed one for Ashley for Christmas….pretty slick eh?

Kristy suggested they get me these for Christmas as well…but on the way home, I convinced her to just give me them now, teehee.

I need another planner like….well like I need more scrapbooking paper, teehee.
But there is just something about planners, the excitement of decorating the pages, dreaming of how much more organized I will be when using it….and just looking at it, lol.

I hope you all have a very Creative Day :)

Tracy :)

Fauxbonichi Journal..Day 19 & 20 and my Honey's Booboo

I wanted to share these 2 pages in my Fauxbonichi journal as I really like how they turned out…even though I am almost a month behind in sharing them.

I used a large oval shape stencil and drew the oval.
I had this small flower stamp, but I wanted to stamp many of them and wanted them to over lap.
So I had to make a mask.
I stamped one flower on a post it note…but made sure to stamp it where the sticky part of the post it note was….then the fun part, fussy cutting it out.
As I stamped, I would move my mask on top of the flower I had just stamped.
Lastly I drew the sprigs along the oval.

I repeated this for the second page :)
Then added some colour to the flowers with my markers.

You all know how much I love my washi tape…but I decided to stamp my borders on these pages.
I did this for 2 reasons
1, I have a few (a lot) of border stamps I have yet to use.
2, I want to lessen the bulk that washi tape makes to the borders.

I really like these fall colours.
If you look closely, I added a couple of colours to the leave border stamp before stamping.

The writing took me forever to come up with on these pages.
I wanted to do different fonts for each word or sentence….but as you can see, I ended up just doing my own handwriting.

Second page.

I added colour to some of the words, the reason being, if you only read the words with colour it says "Being Creative is a Way of Life"

Onto My Day:
I didn't post last night as I was at Emergency with my husband Wayne.
He banged his hand on the cupboard when putting his razor away.
He tried to hide if from me…but when he did show Heather and I we made him go to the Hospital.
It looked like his knuckle was out of place and sticking up.

Good thing I told him to take off his wedding ring before it swelled up too much.
Supposedly it isn't broken…..but that is what they told him about his wrist when he hurt it last year, which was broken and still hasn't healed.

I made Wayne take the day off of work today.
So my day was spent watching movies with my Honey :)

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Work Zombies

Walker Sunday and because of it, I will share with you a project I made tonight ;)
Pretty fun file folder..right?!

The girl in the office assigned this pink file folder for my husband.
If you remember…he didn't like the tie he was going to wear (for Ashley's wedding) at first because I pointed out that the tiny flowers in the design were pretty…so the pink file folder….not his style, lol.

So I gathered my materials.
Pink file folder
Zombie themed scrapbooking paper
Camo duct tape
Large Xyron adhesive machine
Lable maker

I know it is pricey to use the adhesive in the Xyron sticker maker but for this project, I wanted full adhesion.
And I wanted to complete this quickly.
I used the camo duct tape for the bottom of the folder as I thought it needed to be re-enforced…and I didn't have any zombie duct tape….hard to believe, I know, lol.
I used my label maker to print up the name on the folder (not pictured).

That this is my husband's new file folder…I have to admit, I even like it so much better than his pink one as well :)

I am off to watch some zombies….or I should say Walkers ;)

Hope you all have a creative day :)

Tracy :)

A Girl and her Tools

I have been busy the last couple of days helping out a friend.
She wanted to re-do her laundry room and needed my help.
We put up a wall of peg board, a hanging rod for her laundry and a long shelf.
When ever she needs help and power tools are involved…she asks for my assistance :)

Every women should have her own tools….and know how to use them.
But that doesn't mean we have to have a boring tool box…oh no.
I keep some of mine in my pretty pink tool tote :)

I keep a mixture of tools in here.
Hammer, nails, measuring tape, level, utility (exacto) knife, power drill with various sizes of drill bits and screw heads..as well as a multi head screw driver…as well as various sizes of screws.
I also carry a short and long extension cords in here….nothing worse then needing your drill and the plug in is too far away.
I don't carry a rechargeable drill as they would run out of power just sitting in here.
I also carry heavy string, different sized hooks and other  miscellaneous pieces in here.
Depending on the job, I will add other tools as well.
Today I needed my jig saw.

I have to say, my tools and this tote sure do get around :)

I hope you all have a creative day :)
It is Friday Night Scrapbooking, so hopefully I will get some creating in…as I seem to chat more than create during these nights, lol.

Tracy :)

Fauxbonichi Journal Day 17 & 18

More pages in my fauxbonichi journal…I will get caught up on my photos on here :)

If you remember from yesterdays pages…I coloured those beautiful sunflowers with my Chameleon markers.
But I forgot to add a blotter in between on one page…so got some bleed through.

One of the drawing challenges on the Fauxbonichi Journalers FB page was to draw a pumpkin.
So I used this prompt to clover up the bleed through :)

Once I coloured it in…you could hardly tell that there was any bleed through at all :)

As you can see, it was a Walking Dead viewing day :)

I was quite happy to see that the city came and filled in the lake at the end of my driveway….I had only phoned them 3 times, starting in April.
Sadly it is now a muddy mess….but I guess that is better than a water hole.

I am also catching up posting my YouTube videos.
Here is a flip of my June Fauxbonichi journal.
If you would like to watch it on my channel…just click the link Tracy's Treasures24
I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Fauxbonichi Journal Oct. 15 & 16th 2015

More Fauxbonichi pages :)

I dug out these stamps I purchased 4 yrs ago and this is the first time I have used them.
I know for a fact I bought them 4 yrs ago, as I purchased them when we went to Montana Aug 22, 2011…oh my.
This looks like a black and white photo…but its not ;)

I used my Chameleon markers to colour these images.
I have been asked my opinion on these markers…and will do a review of them soon…I want to get a better feel for them first.

Here are the semi completed pages :)
I didn't get a photo with my journaling, but believe me, it wasn't all that exciting, lol.

As I had mentioned yesterday, November is my month to catch up.
So with that in mind….here is my Fauxbonichi Flip for May :)
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel…just click the link Tracy's Treasures24

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)