cousin Tom & Madtown fun

Cousin Tom Wopat was in Madison performing in "Chicago" so some of the family decided to go see the show. We enjoy seeing Tom perform, and always hope to see him either pre- or post-performance. Well "Chicago" was definitely not a letdown; the show was great, and we did get to see Tom afterwards, if only for a few moments. Tom signed autographs and chatted, not just with us family, but with anybody who stopped by. How many actors/singers do that nowadays??!! Altho I've never talked with him about this, I'm guessing that Tom is one of the few stars who realizes that it's the public, the fans, that have enabled him to earn money doing what he enjoys.



It was an interesting night in Madison for another reason: the big Halloween bash on State Street. Because the show was at Overture Hall, which is right on State, we were able to see a bit of the madhouse. Greg and I stuck around after the show to people watch, until I got too cold. There was pretty much a constant parade of costumed people up and down State; it was fun to watch. There were a lot of "typical" costumes, and a lot that obviously didn't take much time, but there were a few pretty kewl ones too. Even tho I knew ahead of time that 400 police officers would be patrolling State St and surrounding area, it still blew me away seeing them EVERYwhere, always in groups. Altho I'm sure the police presence prevented a lot of the harmless hijinks, it was comforting to me to see so many officers, considering the problems with rioting in the past.

the fun never ends

This past weekend was Madscrappin' Diva crop weekend. A couple of the girls put together a fantastic crop 2 - 3 times a year. They put a lot of effort into it, making sure that everyone has a really great time. And a great time we have!! We always have a costume contest, usually there's a theme of sorts (ie 70s, western, etc). This time there was no theme, so there was quite the variety of costumes.

I rewore my Provo Scrappin' Biker Babe outfit, with the story being that at a "big event in Provo" I was crowned Scrappin' Biker Babe. I sang a small clip from our cheer/song, but without the music and the other Babes, I pretty much sucked. LOL But apparently it was identifiable, as the rest of the Divas started singing along.

Anyway, I finished 13 pages at the crop. For anyone who knows how SLLLOOOOWWWW I am at scrapping, how much of a perfectionist I am - you know that that's purty darn good for me! I was quite happy. And even more important, I had lots of fun!!!

Arguably the funniest moments - after the three nuns led a heart-wrenching version of the Lord's Prayer (ok, fun scrap version), while the judges were deciding who would win the costume contest, the three nuns were out front smoking, and then were drinking alcohol as the winners were announced!!! ROFLMAO

my kewl studio

I emailed Emily today, a fellow scrappin' biker babe from our great dorm at CKU Provo and someone I consider to be a good friend, because I was all excited about my studio being almost done. yes, that's what I call my scrap/hobby room. After all, I am an artist of sorts! ;-) Anyway, Emily said she wanted to see pictures. So here they are. Now... I am going to hang some of the photos I've taken over the years on that big blank wall... and I'm not completely done organizing yet... so it will look better. But I really LOVE my new setup!!!


The main area is only 10 x 10.5 feet but with the little extra nook and my open closet, the room is big enough. I have a 5 foot table in front of the window where I currently do most of my scrapping. Greg and I built the shelves along the long wall. The long shelves are 8 foot; the top one is at the perfect height for me to stand and work at, and the bottom matches up to my table height, which in effect extends my table and provides a great place for some scrappin' supplies. We put two 3 foot shelves above for more space - got my pretty things up there! And underneath the shelves are sterilite containers for more "stuff." This layout is SO GREAT because pretty much everything I want/need while I scrap is right there, within arms reach!


This shot is to the right of my table. My pretty ribbon hangs below my tv and my CKU Provo clock. :-) My photo albums, cardstock and patterned paper, CDs and projects-in-progress are in the closet, which I took the doors off of. (The door you're seeing a little bit is the door to the room itself.) I figured the closet looks pretty and organized enough I don't need to hide it. Plus everything's within view; I don't have to slide the doors one way, then the other...

And this space is to the left of my shelves. I have a little nook area that has a bookshelf in it. You can also see my "big boy" (the black thing in front of the bookshelf), which is my kewl Menards rolling toolbox that I use for crops - it is AWESOME!! And then I have another matching bookshelf that you can see part of - it is directly on the left when entering the room. That needs to be organized and prettied up yet.

So this is my studio. This is where I spend hours upon hours. Whether I'm working or watching tv, it just doesn't matter. I'm in my own little haven.

cute projects

Had time to scrap this weekend!!! Actually, I MADE time to scrap this weekend. I'm going to a crop this coming weekend, and I needed to do a recipe page (11 of them!). My recipe needed to have chocolate in it. I had a few ideas, then inspiration struck - I have this cute Bo-Bunny paper/sticker set that has a cherry theme. What would be better than using that with a Black Forest recipe?? mmmm.... I used a dark brown paper as the background and a reddish chalk ink to complete the chocolate/cherry combo.



I also worked on finishing some of my cute CKU projects. One that is adorable, but I have absolutely NO idea what to do with it, is the matchbox mini album. Yes, what you are seeing below is a regular-sized matchbox, covered with paper and inked. And yes, that is a tiny little accordion album inside. The accordion mini album has 5 "pages" on each side, all decorated with coordinating papers and inked.

fun fun

Greg's uncle Ned and aunt Chris and cousin Blair were in the area for a brief visit this weekend, so we joined them and Greg's folks at the Milwaukee Art Museum, along with other fun activites. WOW - I had never been to the Art Museum yet - believe that!! A lot of folks call it the Calatrava, because that's the name of the architect - it is a most amazing building. It's right on the lakefront, and it's a fragile-looking building with "wings" that open and shut. We were fortunate to still be there when the museum closed, so we were able to see the wings shut. VERY kewl! And the inside has lots of angles and curves. We saw a short movie clip about the creation of the building, quite interesting. And the artwork was very intriguing too, of course. We all had our favorite parts. And there were some that we just looked at and didn't "get."

this fall weather

has been so absolutely fab! Altho there are many reminders that yes, this IS Wisconsin! Yesterday we reached a record high - 85 degrees! Tomorrow is supposed to be 81, and then Thursday's high is expected to be 54 - yowza, that's a big, quick drop. But that's Wisconsin for ya. Since I just love warm/hot weather, the past couple days have been SO great.

woohoo

I finally finished my A-Z Personal Treasury album from my album track at CKU. OMG - it rawks!! It is such a great "snapshot" of the things that are important to me at this point in my life - both serious and fun. I put a lot of thought into this album, mostly prior to going to CKU, and spent some good quality creative time on it both at CKU and here at home.

I'm also midstream on rearranging and reorganizing my studio. Greg and I are building a counter for me to stand and work at, as well as some shelves. I've been mulling this over for weeks, and I sure hope it works as well as I'm visualizing! Now I can't wait to put those shelves/counter up, so I can finish reorg'ing and CLEAN my studio! It's still a zoo from working on my precious album - altho it's way better than it was a week ago!!! LOL

Yes, right now, scrapping is taking over my life again... I seem to go in phases: motorcycle, scrap, trip, motorcycle, scrap, trip, motorcycle, scrap ... hahahahaha Oh yeah, once in a while I fit other activities in! ;-)

greg

I just gotta say - I have such a great husband! And no, he didn't do anything particularly spectacular today. He was just being himself, taking care of the house, the finances and us. Even though in some ways he grounds me and keeps me in the "real world," he also allows me the time I need to dream and be creative, which keeps me balanced. What a guy! For the many times I neglect to tell you - Thanks, Greg!

one of my biggest pet peeves

On our way to dinner tonight, we passed a big billboard, entirely in Spanish. Everytime I see something like that I get po'ed. The last I knew, English is still the official language in the good ol' United States. When immigrants moved to the States in years gone by, they learned English. That's just the way it was. There weren't ads or signs in Polish or German or whatever other language. But so many things now are written in both English and Spanish. Why? Because people who move to our great country think they shouldn't have to learn the official language? They want to keep their own customs? Ok, that's fine and dandy - keep your customs at home. Or if you don't want to be an American in ALL ways, stay in your own durn country. Americans speak ENGLISH!!

need more consistency

Tonight was volleyball night. Love it! But tonight just wasn't a good night for me, and I don't know why. Drives me crazy!!! You would think that after playing for so many years, I would be at least somewhat consistent, but NO. I'm thinking that maybe I'll try to pull together a co-ed quad team to start in January... now THAT's fun!

sometimes I forget

how much time can be spent planning a cruise. You'd think - sure, easy enough, just pick your itinerary. Well, that is the easy part. The hard part is trying to get a good price on air, hotels pre and post, figuring out what to do for insurance and for transfers and stuff. If we had unlimited funds, well, then it would be easy - but since we don't, we try to get the most bang for our buck. And that's still just the beginning. Since we prefer using local tour guides rather than being herded around with 100 other people on a ship excursion, I do lots of research on various cruise message boards to find out which companies are best, and which places to tour at each stop. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but yikes,it really does take a lot of time!

please excuse my negligence

Krista & Dave - please forgive me! I had separate little posts thanking both of our other hosts, and only a little byline thanking you two. How incredibly rude of me!!! It was so wonderful seeing both of you again - it seems like we've known you guys for such a long time... :-) And you made us feel so much at home. THANK YOU!!

B&Bs

We've stayed at B&Bs a bit throughout the years. Some definitely seem like you're staying in some stranger's home. Others are more like you're staying in a period show home - like a museum. And some are more like small inns. Some places have only one guest room, and some may have many. I always try to choose carefully by researching online, comparing them, looking at pictures, etc., to kinda read between the lines. KWIM?? (know what I mean??) And sometimes we're still surprised!!

We only stayed at two B&Bs this trip, and both were very enjoyable - neither one had the "staying in a stranger's home" feeling. Both had great hosts, wonderful breakfasts, etc.

The place in Sundance, Wyoming, Sundance Mt. HideAway, (http://www.sundancemountainhideaway.com/) has three cabins of varying sizes, and they are probably going to convert the Antiques store cabin into another guest cabin. We were in the smallest one, which was very spacious. We got to Sundance too late to really enjoy the property, but we had a nice chat with our host - that B&B seemed geared more towards people who aren't into socializing with strangers, because each group has their own individual cabin. However, breakfast is usually in the family home, but you could probably request to take it to the cabin if you wish!

The place in Interior, South Dakota (at the edge of the Badlands) is on a ranch, and was designed specifically as a B&B: http://www.bbonline.com/sd/circleview/ http://www.circleviewranch.com/guestrooms.htm. It's more like a small inn, with guest rooms on two levels. The ranch has a guest living room, kitchen and game room! We reached Interior pretty early, and had lots of time to socialize, play games (ping pong and foozball), hit the internet (they have a PC setup with high speed internet for guests), look at picture books, and walk down to the creek. We also enjoyed a pretty sunset from the deck.

Because Greg and I are both pretty social and sociable creatures, we really have no problem with most of the B&Bs we've stayed at. I usually pick them for unique qualities. A couple examples: In Newport, Rhode Island, we stayed at a big ol' historic home http://www.agincourtinn.com/. It was built in 1853 as a summer home, and is furnished with period pieces - it was kewl, like staying in a museum home. Near the Quad Cities, we stayed in a caboose: http://www.bbonline.com/ia/caboose/. That was pretty neat too.

how many photos???

Such a great question! I have no idea at this point how many pics I'm actually going to print. I can tell you I took over 650 on our trip!!! OMG LOLOL I just kept snapping away! (I probably would have had over 700 if Idaho hadn't been so blasted cold!) And with digital, that's ok. Now I just have to figure out which ones are worth the cost to print! Of course, I already have some of the best picked out, because they're the ones I put on this blog!

It was really great having the laptop on this trip, because I took my pics at 4 meg, and downloaded to the laptop pretty much every day or every other. When I started getting low on memory chip space, I burned the pictures to CD, JUST IN CASE something happened to the laptop hard drive, and then, and ONLY then, did I delete them from the memory chip!! I'm pretty obsessive about that - I've heard too many horror stories of people losing years of pictures when a hard drive crashed.

scrappin' lady

I've been ignoring most of the stuff I "should" be doing to scrapbook. As soon as I got back from Provo, I was spending every spare moment planning our bike trip. So I never had the chance to finish all those really kewl projects I started at CKU. I've accomplished quite a bit this week on what will be the best ever album - from my main album track, A-Z Personal Treasury! It is turning out oh so awesome. I can't wait to finish it so I can share it with those I love. (Of course I've been showing Greg pages as I complete them - as I told him, sometimes I need an ego stroke!) Once I finish my Personal Treasury, I can pull out the smaller albums and items and work on them. I have a weekend crop coming up in a few weeks; hopefully that will help me get caught up!

My challenge to myself: I'm taking the photo a day challenge. I thought it would be convenient to start it on our trip, since I was already taking pictures. But now at home, I'm not doing so well. I think it'll be fun to put together a "Year in the Life" album with my photos from each day - it'll be more of an everyday kind of album, versus the highlights I do now in my normal chronological albums. We'll see how that goes!

barely finish one trip...

gotta start planning the next. It looks like we're booking a Mediterranean cruise for next year - woohoo!! 12 days on Holland America's Rotterdam. The Rotterdam is supposed to be HAL's flagship - supposedly that means better service and stuff - we'll see! ;-)

I'm a little leery of HAL, not because of the ship itself, or the food, or the service. I'm leery because of our experience on Princess, where the ship basically shut down at 10pm. Now granted, we're not exactly the party couple, but we do like to have activities going on, like maybe a deck party, or whatever. And demographically speaking, HAL will probably be pretty similar to Princess. But maybe it won't be such a big deal on this cruise, because with 8 long port days, and only 3 days at sea, we may not be up to lots of activities ourselves! I'm definitely guessing the sea day activities will be very different from those on Carnival - I can't imagine HAL cruisers having the hair chest contest!! LOL

The itinerary is SO awesome - Venice (Italy), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Corfu (Greece), Cairo/Giza/Alexandria (Egypt), Ephesus/Kusadasi (Turkey), Istanbul (Turkey), Constanta (Romania), Odessa (Ukraine), Varna (Bulgaria) and Athens (Greece). It'll be way expensive, but I think it'll be so very worth it! We've been pricing the cruise, airfare, hotels prior/post, etc. YIKES!! But Greg is ever the trooper, trusting my judgment on travel matters - apparently I haven't steered us wrong yet!

someone asked me today...

what was my favorite part of our trip? what was my least favorite? what met or didn't meet my expectations? any surprises? hmmmmm.... I really didn't know what to say. It was a great trip. And due to the variety of stuff we saw, it's really hard to compare. But I pulled together a quick set of lists (perhaps not complete) - I LOVE lists!! ;-) However, the items are not listed in any particular order!

things that exceeded my expectations:
1) the Badlands
2) the Sawtooth Mtns
3) certain "scenic roads" - denoted in our atlas with little green dots!
4) the weather - we usually managed to dodge the rain pretty well; yeah, there were a couple days that were kinda cold, a little snowy, and yeah, South Dakota was windy as all get out, but overall GOOD weather
5) the Navajo fry bread at Twin Rocks Cafe in Bluff, Utah - NUMMY
6) Custer State Park, S.D.
7) the Lehman Caves in Great Basin Nat'l Park - very kewl to see and walk thru, very educational - wish our timing would have been right for the 90 minute tour instead of just the 60
8) the teepee in Idaho - very unexpectedly nice
9) wildlife sightings - lots of bison, and several elk herds in Yellowstone, many many antelope in central to western Wyoming, some white-tailed deer, and TWO bighorn sheep herd sightings!!!

things that confirmed my expectations:
1) S.D. east of the Badlands is BORING!! Hot, dry, windy, flat, yuck.
2) Wall Drug is huge - bigger than I remember from many many years ago - very tacky, packed with tourists - they were expecting 21 buses on a Friday!
3) the U.S. has a fabulous park system!
4) 5,000 miles on a motorcycle, mostly in 14 days, is pushing my limits. (Greg did 6,000 in 17 days - thanx, honey, for suggesting I fly to Denver and meet you there!)

biggest disappointments:
1) After driving on a soft gravel road, we were not allowed by park staff to continue driving to see the Medicine Wheel (a Native American circle of boulders that represents many aspects of life to them, and is an important part of their life). We didn't have time to hike the 3 miles round trip, so we didn't get to see it. :-(
2) it was so cold on our beautiful ride in Idaho - I didn't get any pictures, and it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been
3) we didn't see the Sawtooth Mtns until almost dusk - too late!!
4) it was too cloudy and snowy to see and enjoy the Tetons
5) the corn palace in Mitchell, S.D. - my childhood memories are WAY better than current reality; the palace is in the middle of redecorating (?), and there wasn't much done
6) the "scenic road" in Nevada - yuck, boring
7) we didn't get to spend nearly enough time with friends and relatives:
Tim & Michelle
Krista & Dave
Maria, Dave, Katie & Shannon
8) the part of Minnesota that we drove across was quite boring - of course, that would have nothing to do with the great scenery we had been seeing for days previously!!

it's a small world

This is a little weird, a little freaky... now, to start from the beginning...

Saturday the 10th - When we stayed in the teepee in Idaho, it was at a lodge in the Sawtooth Mtns, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The closest town, over 30 miles away, is Ketchum, population 3800. That particular night, Ketchum hosted a concert by Willie Nelson (wow), which we didn't know about. The next morning, we were chatting with someone who stayed in the cabin right next to our teepee, and she told us all about the concert - that was the only reason she was staying there - it was the closest accommodations she could find available.

Fast forward to Thursday the 15th - we stayed at a B&B ranch on the edge of the Badlands, near a really teeny town called Interior, population 67 (no joke). The owners had gone to town that night to meet up with her sister and her sister's DH (dear husband), so we didn't see them until the next day. That next morning, after all of us had breakfast together, Greg and I were talking with the female owner and her sis and sis' DH about some of the things we did, the weather we encountered. We mentioned spending the night in a teepee in Idaho. The owner's sister blurted out the name of the lodge. We looked at her a little odd. She recalled the conversation we had with HER in Idaho. She was the person who went to Willie Nelson and stayed in the cabin next to our teepee!!!

OMG (oh my gosh/goodness) Unbelievable!! Here we were in a B&B pretty much in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota, talking with a girl we had already met at a lodge in the middle of nowhere in Idaho!!!

south dakota, part II, aka the badlands

I really liked the Badlands. To me, there was a lot of variety that some of the other Nat'l Parks didn't have. The first picture is what I expected to see. The second reminds me of Canyonlands in Utah. And the third shows some pretty kewl coloring: green, yellow, pink, purple and grey.

south dakota, part I

The Black Hills area and particularly Custer State Park were fun for driving on motorcycle, lots of twisty roads, and interesting scenery: trees, rock, cliffs, vistas...

What a monumental undertaking! (ok, yes, pun intended) Wow. It's kewl to look at, but to really get the impact, ya gotta see the movie and/or read up on the creation. The museum was pretty neat, too. It's interesting to think about the four choices - why each was chosen - not just because they were the most popular presidents - each one represents a specific strength.

Crazy Horse, hmmmm... in some ways, even more impressive. Way bigger, and "in the round" - meaning that it will be carved and viewable on three sides. It's been over 50 years in the making so far, and will probably be another 50 before its done. The most interesting thing to me is that the creator (now deceased) and his family who took over the management refused federal funding, not once, but TWICE! They feel it would detract from the meaning of the Crazy Horse Monument. They also feel it would be less likely to ever be completed if the feds took it over. There is also a very interesting plan for creating an entire complex of a school, medical facilities and more here.