The Sprague Lab

So the evening TOTALLY got away from me yesterday. Tonight I’m just carving out time (in between working on a huge project, taking a bubble-bath - with Lavender foam bath from Body Shop  - to finish Harry Potter #6, and  continuing work on the huge project).

CHA at CK Online

Erin Lincoln is starting to put up some videos from CHA on the web site at CK Online.  The first clip right now is Erin’s visit to the Epson booth, where she completes the make and take I designed for Epson (you can see the page as she works on it). Neat! :D

Epson partnered with Prima to design a hybrid make and take this show - so you complete a quick page on the computer, print it out right there on an Epson R1800, and then embellish it with mini-brads, ribbon, and Prima flowers.  Retailers also got to take home a CD full of quick pages from various designers, that they could develop classes around, or use to teach their staff more about digital scrapbooking. Epson’s booth was hugely popular at this show, and I was so happy to be part of it. :) 

51-60 

So I’ll just take up where I left off on Monday, and we’ll push our final day back a day. :D All suspenseful, right?

51. Inside jokes. Tell about some of the inside joke or funny phrases you have with your family. Whole mini-albums could be devoted to this topic, and you could keep these out on coffee tables or mantels for your family to remember how HILARIOUS your life is. :D

52. Take one of the silly quizzes that get forwarded around sometimes by email. Like this one, perhaps.

53. Or, send a quiz like #52 to a bunch of friends and make a mini-album to give as a Girlfriends Gift.

54. Start a digital circle journal. Perhaps consider uploading your completed pages to Shutterfly to have them bound into a book for each of you. 

55.  Scrap a grocery receipt. Won’t you be nostalgic when you look back in 20 years when milk cost *only* $4.00 a gallon?

56. Check out the link to this blog entry, for 34 places to get inspiration. ‘Nuff said there. 

57.  Print a digital frame onto a transparency before adding it to a paper page.

58. Journal onto a pre-made tag: Measure the tag, create your journaling box to the appropriate size, print onto plain letter-sized paper. Then affix the tag directly over the printed text using repositionable adhesive, and run the page through the printer again.

59. Check out this amazing sketch blog, and create a layout using one of the sketches (don’t forget to give credit when you post!)

60.  Download some design-ey Photoshop brushes (perhaps from here - all free, or here - some with a small fee)

Today 

We were watching Arthur and coloring this afternoon, and I overheard Buster say something about trusting… and all of a sudden Rowen says,

“If you can’t trust a little girl, who can you trust?”

She had clearly inserted “little girl” in there and was pretty darned proud of herself. As she looked at me with a big grin on her sweet face, I had to laugh - first of all, it was so sweet, and so smart, and secondly, because man. She’s right.

The kids were very patient with me today - we took our lunch to eat it at a park shelter near the soccer fields by our house. After lunch we ran in the field - it’s so much fun when the kids just get to run wherever they want. Elliott went over to a little tent thing they have set up between the soccer fields (presumably so the refs don’t die from heat exhaustion), and was climbing on one of the cement blocks they have to anchor the poles down. I went running for the soccer ball with Rowen.

All of a sudden Elliott is screaming and shouting something. I run over there, and he’s stepped in an anthill. Of course. The kid who finds the poison ivy, who always gets attacked by mosquitos (and who had just dumped half a bottle of chocolate milk all over himself so he was extra-tasty), steps in an anthill on the soccer field.

I only saw two ants on him, so I brushed them off, and made sure there weren’t any lurkers, and took the kids home for a much-needed (for Ele anyway) bath. By the time we got home he had several raised bumps on his arm and foot. They don’t seem to be bothering him much - I guess ant bites don’t itch? But scary still - there were a TON of ants in that hill.  

Have I mentioned that I loathe and despise ants?

I have?

Okay.