Come on now sugar!

Update: we did it!

As you probably have heard by now, they are making a Veronica Mars movie!  (If you don't know what I am talking about, drop what you are doing, quickly watch all three seasons and do a Google search of "Veronica Mars Movie."  You can thank me later).

Well, they have broken tons of Kickstarter records so far (quickest to raise $1 million, quickest to raise $2 million, and largest Kickstarter movie project), thanks in no small part to yours truly, who with my sister, dropped a cool thou to attend the LA movie premiere and after-party!  (Jesse's response: "I'm letting you spend $500, plus your flight and hotel costs, to see a premiere of a low-budget movie based off of a short-run TV show about a teenage detective that has been off the air for six years?"  -- don't be fooled, he was way into it when it was out and I bet he is secretly crushed that I am attending the premiere with Rachel instead of him).

They have just one more record to beat -- to get the most backers for a Kickstarter project ever.  The record is 87,142, and they are at 72,760 right now.  You can donate as little as $1 (and get exclusive updates) or as much as $5,000 (to have them rent out a theater the week of the theatrical release for you and 50 of your closest friends).  If you haven't seen the show yet, I would recommend coming in at the $175 level (which gets you all three seasons of the show on DVD, the movie on DVD including extras, a movie poster, a t-shirt, and a copy of the movie script).  Just four days left to jump in and make history at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project.  

Christmas Cottage

Happy Easter!  I can't believe that 2013 is going by so fast, and that it is already the last day of March.  I managed to get a little scrapbooking done this weekend, and chose to continue working on Christmas layouts (from Christmas 2012) using Teresa Collins' Christmas Cottage line.  We took a lot of cute pictures in and around Southington, Connecticut, with my family, and I put together this layout using Pamela Young's sketch 185b.

Holiday Layouts

I finished off my stash of MME's All is Bright line with a couple more holiday layouts.  In this first one, I used pictures from our trip to the Mystic Seaport.  The layout on the left-hand side of the two-page layout is inspired by a sketch from Paper Secrets, and the right hand side was inspired by a sketch from SBC.

This second one is a layout that displays the family pictures that we took this past Thanksgiving (our last one at Pop-Pop's house).  This layout was inspired by the two-page sketch from Pamela's World of Scrap, which I rotated.

Dash, Splash, and Dash

Jesse and his friend Dave jumped right in (see what I did there?) and did a splash and dash (a 5k run followed by a 400 yd swim).  

Jesse did an amazing job at the run and finished much better than he expected.

And then came the splash, and he killed it!

Jesse passed swimmer after swimmer like a pro.

He ended up finishing in 9th place!!!  Such a stud.

Shortly after the dash and splash, he ran another 5k race along the river.

(You can tell Corrales is nearby because of all of the horse poop on the path).

Despite the cold, Jesse made great time and finished with a great time of 21:40.

In other news, I have neither splashed nor dashed recently.

Crop for Cancer

Wow.  It is been way too long since we have blogged!  This past month was beyond crazy for me with work (jury trial in Santa Fe) and church (on the search committee for a new pastor).  I have also not been able to scrap for what seems like a really long time, so I was happy to attend a crop this weekend that raised money for cancer patients.  

I completed this layout using pictures of Jesse's family from last Christmas.  On the left page, I used My Mind's Eye's February sketch and added layered die cuts and die cut chipboard and buttons from their All is Bright line.  On the right page, I used a sketch from Scrap-a-Doodle-Do.

All is Bright

I haven't had very much time for scrapbooking this month, but I was able to put together a couple layouts using last year's Christmas pictures.

For these layouts I used My Mind's Eye's All is Bright collection for their Gossamer Blue guest designer cost.

This last layout was fun -- I love these crazy pictures that we took with Rachel's computer.  The right-hand side of this two-page layout is based on My Mind's Eye's January sketch.

Maung-Kut

Jesse announced via email that he stopped at the Talin Market (our big international grocery store that neither of us have ever been to) and got me a "present."  I spent some time at work thinking about what that could be (oyster sauce?) but didn't even come close.  Jesse appeared triumphantly at dinner bearing maung-kut!  I was amazed and delighted.  Maung-kut (along with mango, peach, plumb, and berries) are my favorite fruit and until now I have never seen it anywhere outside of Asia except for at Harrod's in London.  I couldn't wait to crack a few open and they were perfectly ripe and amazing!

Most Americans know maung-kut as mangosteen (maung-kut is its Thai name).  I did a little research on the fruit and was surprised to find that it was banned (something about fruit flies) from being imported into the US until 2007.  Currently, the maung-kut that you can find here is almost exclusively from Thailand, which is probably why it is so expensive ($20 for 9 fruit folks!) -- good thing Jesse did not realize this until he got to the checkout line or I would not be enjoying them right now.  It also, apparently, was dubbed the "queen of tropical fruit" by David Fairchild, which sounds about right to me.

P.S.  Jesse and I ate all of the Maung-kut on the same day that he bought it!

Serenity Finale

I can't believe that it has been five months since I last posted a layout of our trip to Asia.  I finally got back to finishing them up and using up my Bo Bunny Serenity stash.  This first layout is from our trip to Bangkok and includes some cute family pictures.

This second layout is the last one from our time in Hua Hin.  You will have to excuse the kissy picture -- it was our 9th wedding anniversary!

This final layout celebrates the amazing food we got to enjoy while in Thailand and Japan.

Since I had so many layouts using the Serenity line in this album, I decided to decorate the album cover with pieces from the line too.

I also had enough scraps left over to do a few cards.  This first one is based on Scrapbook Express's January card sketch. 

Last but not least, this final card was inspired by Bo Bunny's January card challenge: to have 70% of white space on your card.  I love the simple elegance!

Tree Verdict

I am here to report on our live tree experiment.  We really loved the look and smell our our tree for about the first week.  After that, the tree stopped drinking water and began to smell like over-ripe vegetables.  Over the next two weeks, the tree got progressively harder and deader.  Still green, but the limbs started drooping with the weight of the ornaments.  We took our tree down and put it outside before we left for Christmas and just took it to the dump today, where Jesse threw our tree into the huge pile:

Disposing of it was pretty easy, and Jesse wants to give the live tree thing another go next year.  I am less excited, but could be convinced (I am quite a push-over when Jesse gets excited about something).

Last Hens' Den Post

This Country Boutique layout is both the final layout of our trip out east this summer and my last layout as a design team member for the Hens' Den.  I truly loved working for the Hens' Den this past year, but felt that I should step back from design team work in 2013, which is shaping up to be quite busy!  Don't be surprised, though, if I come back as a guest designer for the Hens' Den at some point.  Head over to the Hens' Den blog for more details about this layout: