journaling with random words and type

one thing I've always loved is reading, and words themselves (can you tell? lol!)... when I was little I would read part of a volume of the encyclopedia, or the dictionary, for fun. (yes, I was a bit geeky, I suppose, lol!) Words and phrases fascinate me; they can be so essential in setting the mood in a novel or story. (an aside: if you want to read wonderful narrative descriptions about the American prairie, I highly recommend reading the novel Oh, Pioneers! by Willa Cather... her wonderfully vivid descriptions of the prairie grasslands make me swoon every time I read them.) 

Anyhow, back to the journal pages... I recently went on a cutting-and-pasting spree through a fashion magazine (including images, words, and phrases) and jumbled it all onto a journal page- here's the result:  

I really like how it turned out! It was done on a previously painted background (painted with bubblewrap, one of my favorite stamps), so all I did was add in the images, a bit of deco tape, the text, and a bit of coloring with gel pens.

So, I couldn't just stop there, now, could I? In addition to using magazines for collage, I also have a small stash of "vintage" hardcover books (nothing valuable, or I wouldn't cut them up) that I use for backgrounds, or if I want a particular word or phrase. For example, I have a vintage Gregg's shorthand instruction manual from the 1930s, a vintage outdated world atlas, and a couple Reader's Digest Condensed books. Although the type is a bit small, these are good for finding words and phrases in, which I did for the page below: 

The background was simply torn pieces of paper that were glued randomly to the page, then I colored the spaces in between with my Stabilo watercolor crayons. There's also a bit of doodling on the different papers. I looked for words or phrases (2 or 3 words in a row) that sounded interesting in my Reader's Digest novel, cut them out, then I piled them together. After finding a few, I started shuffling them around till I made an interesting combination, like this bit of 'found poetry' made from random words and phrases:

And no, it doesn't really mean anything; it sounds kinda cool though, doesn't it? 

In other journaling news, I'd really like to show you a picture of this journal; it's getting pretty full, which is really exciting! But, alas, I accidentally deleted it out of this post... (drat!!)  So, I'll save that one for another post.

wow!!

This amaryllis is just out-of-this world with flowers-- I've never seen one have this many blooms at one time, so I had to take some more photos:

a different vantage point (from a few days ago)

Every night, the flowers go into the pantry for safekeeping from the kitties (I don't trust them with indoor plants!). The amaryllis has to go up onto the top shelf (it's the only shelf tall enough to hold it) , and when I placed it up there I realized it was a really good view of all the blossoms, so I got the camera and snapped a pic.

7 flowers open at once, now... (this was earlier today- Sunday)

I think the first couple are almost done blooming, but the overall bloom time should be at least another week.

same vantage point again, this afternoon (Sunday).

These flowers are beautiful, and have really brightened up our kitchen this winter. I am really glad I picked this plant up (on a whim) when I was at the grocery store. (I just hope it doesn't get so top-heavy it tips over!!)

random photo catch-up

yup, we're still here! We had a pretty low-key holiday that was spent mostly at home, with Christmas day spent at the home of some very close friends. I didn't really take many photos over last few weeks, but here's a few random ones:

Holiday flowers: Christmas cactus and Amaryllis

A couple weeks ago, I went to the local grocery store to pick up something food-related, and came back home with these! I entered the store through the greenhouse section- what can I say? LOL! These flowers remind me of the holidays growing up, because Mom and Grandma would both have their houses full of amaryllis (what's the plural for that, anyway?) and Christmas cacti during the winter. The white Christmas cactus is going gangbusters, while the magenta one, being smaller (it's the one on the left that's hard to see), has only got one flower open right now... the only word to use for the amaryllis is amazing!! There are two flower stalks: the first one has six (!) flower buds, and it looks like all six of them will actually bloom! Hopefully they'll all last, and I can keep them alive through the summer. (I'm not sure if my Midwestern-raised green thumb is up to the task here in the desert.)

Holiday dogs! L-R: Prescott, Bisbee, Krista

 One of the Christmas presents we gave to the dogs (and ourselves) was taking all three of them to the groomers... don't they look pretty?!? It's a big job with a long-haired dog (way too big for us to want to tackle it on a regular basis), and the groomers definitely earn their money! (by the way, Tom is off-camera holding up a treat- that's why they're all sitting so attentively. They don't sit still on command for more than about 1 1/2 seconds, otherwise- lol!)

winterizing in the AZ desert!!

We've actually had a freeze warning in effect for the last couple days, so we had to 'winterize' a few of our plants- the Styrofoam cups protect the growing tips of the cactus arms from getting frostbit. It looks goofy, but it works! This is our night-blooming cereus, which is doing really well, so I don't want it to get frostbitten.

Winterizing method 2- this method doesn't work on cactus, lol!
The plant under here is a natal plum, a low-growing evergreen
shrub native to South Africa: click here to see a photo of it

Mom was asking me recently what winter in AZ is like, and if we really notice a difference. Besides the obvious temperature changes (it does get down to freezing occasionally at night, and every once in a great while- like every 5-10 years- there might be a visible snowflake or two falling somewhere in the Valley), there are some other differences. There are some deciduous trees that lose their leaves; the quality of the light and sunshine is much weaker (it's still lots better than having gray skies for months on end, though); it gets dark much too soon for my taste; and it rains occasionally (not like a monsoon storm, but a wet, damp, cold rain).  

One other way I know it's winter is when I'm running the water inside the house- the water takes forever to get warm or hot when you run it! LOL!! It's an odd thing, but there's a good reason for this: since the ground doesn't freeze here, our water pipes are buried very shallow underneath the ground. Because of this, the water never actually gets bona-fide 'cold' during the summer, and it also takes much longer to heat up during the winter. 

Afternoon-sun-basking kitties

One other way I know it's winter is that the cats get a lot friendlier, both with us and with each other. They get very 'cat-like' and hang out in the sun, or curl up on any blanket or afghan that looks comfortable. (including right on top of us, if we're sitting still!) They would never do this in the middle of the summer (not that they could sit in the sun even if they wanted to, since we have the sunscreens up to block the light). 

So, now it's on to 2013- both Tom and I are sort of glad to have 2012 over with, actually... what with my two surgeries and a cancer diagnosis, a cat illness and surgery, and a mysterious dog sickness (he's finally back to normal, thankfully), 2012 wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, and we're not sorry to see it gone. Here's looking forward to a year of better health and good things to come, for all of us! 

(except for those pesky New Year's resolutions, one of which is for me to clean up my craft room: we were watching a Hoarders television show marathon over the holidays, and some of it was hitting a bit too close to home for comfort-- lol!)

journal pages: history in flowers...

apparently, I have somewhat of a habit of writing posts, then forgetting to hit the 'publish button. I wrote this post about a month ago, and just never published it: 

Another journal page, this time a '2-page spread' that started with a background collaged when the book was made. The background papers include scrapbook papers and brown- paper bag (? I think) which made the pages a bit stiff-- note to self, don't do that again!

history in flowers... 

Above is a close-up of the left-hand side; I added an image found on the internet (from the Graphics Fairy, again, maybe?), deco tape, and some souffle pen details. The writing was done using one of my newest items, a set of Italic lettering stencils... (I love playing with new stuff!)  Below is a photo that shows both pages:

history in flowers... both pages

What's on the right side (the entire page topic, really) is a newspaper article about gardening that my mom sent me a couple weeks ago . I thought it was really interesting, and didn't want to just recycle it after I read it, so I pasted it into my journal. 

I don't know why it took me so long to do this sort of thing in my journals; I still have fond memories of the big 'scrapbooks' my Grandma had that we used to flip through whenever we visited her. The pages were made from wallpaper sample book pages, and were pasted full of newspaper articles, quotes, comic strips from the Sunday funnies, and other interesting things. Sadly, I don't know whatever happened to them... I guess there's not room to keep everything, but I can keep a few of my favorite things in my journal, at least!