Still Breathing

The house (well, my life in general) is still in chaos but I can check something off every day. Unfortunately, for every item I check off it seems something else is added but hey, that's life, huh?

So, yesterday was the annual Mother's Day/Birthday Bash at my brother and sister-in-law's house. We were celebrating birthdays for my brother, sister-in-law, sister and nephew as well as Mother's Day for my mom. One of the highlights of the day for me is the tour of the garden. My sister-in-law grows some flowers that are a challenge in her climate and this year hit it big with her columbine, foxgloves and delphinium which - after years of struggle - have rewarded her with a huge display. Just gorgeous. She has even tucked two little lilacs into a shady spot and we'll see how they do for her.

We've had really exciting news! DIL's mother will be coming for lunch June 7. It puts the pressure on to get the place habitable again, but that's OK. We're just excited to be able to finally meet her. She loves gardens and I was inspired by my SIL to invest in flowers, which I hope to get into the ground before they die this time. Sigh.

Anyway, I don't really have time for much of a post but wanted to share my crop project from yesterday. Has virtually nothing to do with scrapbooking but turned out so cool I have to share it!

Several weeks ago I visited this post. Since I keep my patterns in these white binders, my fairly worn-out brain started working on a way to liven them up. I thought I had a couple of old Marjolein Bastin calendars somewhere (please! please! I've been flinging like crazy and just might have thrown them out finally.) I found them fairly easily (hooray) and converted my two overfilled binders of cross-stitch charts and embroidery patterns into this:


Yeah, the picture is pretty crummy but you get the idea. I typed up the label part on the computer using text boxes. Cut the calendar picture into four pieces (for these binders the strips were about 2.25" but I had to finagle them a little at the last minute). Glued the picture strips onto the label strips and voila!

My mind boggles with the possibilities. Imagine a kid's favorite team along the spines of his/her baseball card collection (or Star Wars picture along the spine of the Star Wars trading card collection) or Disney posters for my collection of Disney paper or Kewpies for the Kewpie paper collection or - well, you get the idea.

Quilt binders next (Cedar Waxwings this time, I think.)