My new venture with Anthology by Lisa Bearnson, and Youngevity products.

    

     With one local event on the records, and a busy summer ahead with ( a surprisingly EARLY Memorial Weekend this weekend, our son's cub scout campout next weekend, the end of the school year with all it's activities, graduations, etc.,   I will be trying to fit in progress on my little home based business.
     Merging and/or expanding fb pages, updating my blog, contacting friends and family as well as the public in order to tell them of the wonderful opportunites with Anthology, as well as the Health and Wellness benefits of the 90ForLife products that we are now utilizing, wow... it's a bit overwhelming.  Thankfully, there are SO many people in the Anthology/Youngevity FAMILY, yes, it feels like family, who WANT to HELP us succeed with this venture and transformation!!!
     Speaking of transformations, I have also signed up for the Healthy Body Challenge, and hope to lose 20 pounds, and rebuild some of the muscle that I have lost from no longer wading upstream for hours a day while streamshocking for Salmon and Trout, or setting and lifting nets every day.  Those nets were loaded with the wonderful bluegill, pumpkinseed, perch, large and smallmouth bass, dog fish, etc that we are so blessed with as part of our natural resources here in Michigan, which I was BLESSED with helping to manage for over 10 years.... How I miss my job with Fisheries Division. 
     But as people say, one door closes (my former relationship with a beloved scrapbooking and paper crafting manufacturer) and another one opens.... the new relationship with Anthology by Lisa Bearnson and Youngevity's family of products.
    Okay, am I getting a bit too sentimental?  Oh well, that's me.  What can I say?  I'm a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and SCRAPBOOKER.
    If you would like to learn more about Anthology by Lisa Bearnson or Youngevity, please contact me at:
                                                               231-845-2906
                                                   scrapstreams@yahoo.com
                                            www.scrapstreams.youngevity.com
                  https://www.facebook.com/groups/ANTHOLOGYwithDaleRoseStream/

More studio progress.... Documenting it with 3 Birds Graceful Seasons collection, &....I have HEAT!!!

    
     Wesley helped Michael install the venting for my stove recently.  Michael and Wesley built the stove pedestal frame, Michael and I tiled it, then we were finally able to place the stove on the pedestal (photo 1). Wesley always enjoys some good bubble wrap, and after adding the doors and lid to the stove, I knew he'd want to play with it, but I didn't expect him to WEAR it like a cape or robe! LOL. 
    The 2nd photo is of Wesley and Dakota's 1st cuddling opportunity in front of the stove after Michael and Wesley installed the venting and I was able to FIRE IT UP WOO HOO!
    Now I am able to walk down to my studio, turn the stove on, and within a few minutes the room is warming up, with myself enjoying the cozy warmth of wood heat in the upper 70s within an hour!  I could heat it more quickly, but we are still burning off the new paint and ceramic log smell, which increases greatly when it's run at the higher heat outputs, so I run it on the lower 2 settings most of the time, otherwise the odor gives me a headache and makes me nautious.  I just turn on the furnace fan or open my door and the odor dissipates quickly.
  AHHH warmth!

Progress on the egress window stairwell....

 The egress window stairwell is framed in & we began backfilling with dirt. The outside cut through the foundation blocks was done with a diamond tip skillsaw blade.  Michael needs to do the same cuts on the inside, and then we need to chip the remaining block depth by hand.  Today Wesley & I finished with the backfilling of the stairs after I put in the bottom stair and added more stones.  Hopefully by the Sunday night I will have an egress window installed!!!

Foundation blocks had to be cut with a diamond tipped skillsaw blade.

Wesley is a hair shy of being tall enough to reach out of the hole with a shovel full of dirt.

Yes, those are screws in my mouth... don't you love the fashion statement that I am making while working both inside and outside of my studio lol!

YEY!  All but the bottom step is framed in in this photo.

 Today's early afternoon photo, showing the soil that Wesley & I backfilled this afternoon, along with more stone added.  I am going to create a garden in the terraced stairwell, with miniature roses and other English garden plants, as well as any that reflect the purple, white & pink in my studio.

Insulation, dry wall & framing materials are all ordered...

and will be delivered TOMORROW WOO HOO!  I was really disappointed that Lowe's no longer rents trucks from our location, so I have to bite the bullet and wait until it is delivered tomorrow.  Therefore, I have reopened my yard sale for a few hours today to make a little more money toward the cost and pass some time.  Have a SAFE & happy Memorials Weekend!

Old carpet, carpet padding, and two, yes, TWO layers of tile are gone!

    Last night I was happily surprised to find Michael beginning to remove the old, nasty carpet padding, so I jumped right in!  We were able to remove it all within about an hour because, as with the walls, it was NOT properly installed.  It's as if they occasionally spilled a foot wide area of adhesive, and the rest was barely attached.  This could also be because of the age of the adhesive, possibly installed 20 years or so ago???  Anyway, it is so nice to have that nasty stuff OUT of here!  The timing of doing this while I suffer from terrible sinus/allergy problems is not great, but oh well... I'm already severely congested. 
     Wesley also helped, even though he is also fighting allergies.  Last weekend he even had a fever and his sore throat, which I believe is from the sinus drainage, knocked him down, so I kept him out of school on Monday.  He has been feeling much better and tomorrow is their (rain day from today) Track & Field day at school.  He is VERY excited about that... He is participating in 4 or 5 events including a relay.  That should be interesting, and be fodder (sp?) for SEVERAL scrapbook pages lol.
     I have been planning my annual Memorial weekend yard sale for months, and after purging so much during the Organizing FUNdamentals class through BPC, I am adding my SCRAPBOOK PURGE to the sale;   Michael apparently forgot... he is planning to start installing my floor on Saturday... He'll have to wait until 3pm for my help.  I had planned to do most of it myself, but oh well... I hope to have the floor insulation and underlayment done by Monday!  Wish us luck!

New 3 Birds goodies are on their way to me & DOWN come the WALLS! YEY!

    I have received my shipment confirmations from HSN so I should be holding the wonderful new goodies in my little chickadee wings within a few days... Woo hoo!!!!
     We didn't get ALL the walls down last night, but they are about 2/3 complete.  Wesley's soccer practice was replaced by a make up game that was rained out earlier this season, so the work was interrupted a bit, plus I had stopped the demo around 2 pm when I discovered that a previous owner HAD installed some insulation.  I didn't want to remove the entire wall in case Michael wanted to keep it and only paint over it.  This is the only wall that is not covered in that nasty textural material that always reaches out and grabs the skin from your hands as you approach it, so it could have been painted instead of removed if we had wanted. 
     I'm glad we are removing it as planned, because the installations they had done were very poor.  Not only are all the trim pieces barely attached, easily popping off the walls & ceiling with very little effort, but the insulation panels are literally 'scabbed' in.... bits and pieces were used in several places, and even the adhesive they only used in SOME areas of the wall wasn't holding onto the insulation either.  Even the framing (whose pattern doesn't make much sense either) is easily removed!  Michael had anticipated that it would be a bear to remove the nail-gun-driven attachments but he has easily removed them with a crowbar!  YEY for us, as this is making the demo go very quickly and SO VERY easy compared to what it SHOULD have been. 
     I do wish that they would have done a higher quality job in terms of the insulating that they had done though, as that would save us a fair chunk of money if we didn't have to replace it all.  Also, the basement walls are not entirely insulated, only a portion of it, so we have to insulate the remainder as well.  The floor is not insulated at ALL, so between those two situations, that's why I've been freezing down there for the past 8 years.... onward and upward we go.  It can (hopefully) only get better from here lol.
    

Purging continues in my scrap studio!

    Continuing to purge as part of my Organizing FUNdamentals class through BigPictureClasses, I have purged so much paper.... Yes Dawn,  I purged PAPER... a ton of it in fact... so much that I have emptied a 3 section 4' high paper rack.  Not all at one sitting, but over the past year.  I gave in to the inspiration and emptied the last third or so of it the other day.  I then took a hammer to it, began tearing it apart, hubby finished the demo and carried the scraps outside!  Dakota IMMEDIATELY came down and claimed the empy space!  " MOM!  FINALLY..... an empty spot on  the floor for me to take a nap!"

For my bpc classmates, this is the "nasty popcorn walls' that I've been complaining about...  EVERYTIME you even THINK about reaching for something as it rolls to the back of your table, or you try to move a paper rack to a new space...... ouch.  Less skin on your fingers, knuckles, etc.  OFF IT IS COMING!  We are going to be RIPPING OUT ALL THESE WALLS, reframing, insulating, and putting up new drywall.  YEY FOR ME!!!!!  WOO HOO! 

A new heat source, as we are no longer dependent upon the furnace, raised floors for further insulation from the cold, a bar height island to replace my current 4x8' crop table,... WOW will I be one happy scrapper!

Organizing FUNdaments class from Big Picture Classes (BPC) is great!

  I am in the midst of the sort/organize session of this class, as we are in week 3.  Wendy Smedley and Aly Dosdall have offered this great class to help us to practice methods, make realizations & insights into how WE think and craft, & therefore make OUR spaces more useful & pleasant for US.
  Although I have been purging my studio at least twice a year for the past 3 years or so, there is ALWAYS something to be discovered which we no longer love, have absolutely no use for as we move on to other stages in our children's/grandchildren's lives (ie I no longer really need all that cutesy newborn boy product since Wesley is now 9 years old),  does not fit our current 'style' of scrapbooking, cardmaking or papercrafting (I'm very into shabby chic and layering now), or is simply taking up TOO MUCH SPACE and cluttering our lives, minds & hearts.
  Because this class is offered through BPC, it is a "FOREVER" CLASS.....all the material listings, handouts, VIDEO tutorials, etc are ARCHIVED on their website...you can access it at ANY TIME, DAY OR NIGHT, even on CHRISTMAS EVE as a gift to yourself if you see fit!
  Come on over to www.bigpictureclasses.com to check it out, as well as see all the other wonderful offerings, including FREE CLASSES!

New wall color.... & much clearer work spaces!

     I was not happy with the first color of paint, as it did not seem rich enough. The second color which I purchased was darker than the chip/sample, so.....after living with each color for a few days, I made myself two color mixtures to try out on my wall for a bit. The mixture of 2:1 dark to light color won out over the 1:1 mixture, so......here it is. I still have to put up the wainscoting & stenciling, but I'm on my way to a happier wall.

     I have been brutally honest with myself as I sort through my "stash", adding PILES of product to my already over-flowing "scrap sale" items.  It is very freeing to have more space in my studio & clearer countertops!

  Now I have to find a spot to store my "scrap sale" products!  I always give my niece Sarah first choice of my yardsale stash, which helps fuel her scrapbooking while helping to clear out my own space.  She has a lot of shopping to do!

EXTRA Valentine's Day treats & Studio Update

  This year I received EXTRA Valentine's Day treats....a 3 Birds & HSN delivery!  This shipment contained the newest 3 Birds Estate Collection piece, their Estate Collection Doily Elegant Card Kit & Claudine Hellmuth's chipboard kit.  The doily card kit is GORGEOUS & I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE all the PURPLES & PINKS used in this kit, along with the 3 dimensional embellishments....they've even included TWINE!  I've been waiting to try this new medium....yey! 
     Claudine launched her first series of products on HSN recently, and of course, I HAD to try it!  The chipboard embellishments are contained within an adorable ICE CREAM TRUCK!  As I quickly sorted through the HUNDREDS of pieces in this kit, I quickly imagined several pages that I can create utilizing these adorable pieces.  In fact, I wish I had several of them to use on layouts I recently created.
     Both the permanent packaging & the shipping packaging of these two kits is AWESOME, some of the best I've seen in a long time!

          Now for my Scrap Studio update:  My new studio wall is becoming dusty lavender!  This is the first base coat with the second coat to be applied later this afternoon.  I hope to be able to stencil tomorrow.  I'll have to see if I'm happy with the colors first.  I didn't want to use too dark a shade since it's in the basement & I only have one window to supply any natural light.  That window isn't even on this side of the basement, so I dream of one day having a large fire-easement window installed, or maybe even two of them.
      Uh-oh...Michael just discovered that with some color on the wall, we can now see that the drywall seams need to be re-mudded.  The drywall is contoured along the edges & so he needs to make up for that.  I guess we should have gone with the non-rounded drywall.  Live & learn.  He thought that his seams were nice & smooth.  They were pretty smooth, but you couldn't see the wave in the wall before there was any color added.  Take 2.

My Studio wall is closer to being complete...& Wesley is a 3 Birds & Teresa Collins scrapbooking product user & fan!

     A few more pics of the ongoing upgrade to my studio.....      




  




 
     Now, for Wesley's Valentine's Day gift projects.  Wesley has ALWAYS loved to craft & scrapbook, & getting 3 Birds shipments is always a GREAT day!
      Wesley made his teacher's card with...of course...3 Birds supplies, which HE SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR!  He has GREAT taste!  Since I couldn't find a heart-shape in the new Honey of a Card kit, I tried altering the shape of one of them...it worked pretty well, so WE USED TWO! 

      I received my Signature Series Teresa Collins book in the mail yesterday & I later discovered that Wesley finished his teacher's gift using ....wait for it....TERESA COLLINS scrapbooking supplies! I told him who made them & that we HAD to take a picture of it with her book! I always take pics of his gift projects, but this one needed extra photos!

Our son is VERY creative & has GREAT TASTE in scrapbooking & paper crafting supplies!

3 BIRDS, DONNA STORK & HSN...GREAT DAY!!!! Plus, my new STUDIO WALL is up!!!

    A few days ago, I told you that 3 Birds' Donna Stork would be presenting their new ESTATE COLLECTION DOILY CARD KIT...I just HAD to reschedule my day to fit around the HSN SCRAPBOOKING PRESENTATION schedule haha!!!
    Also, I had mentioned that we were going to be drywalling my STUDIO WALL from nearly 2 years ago...."THERE BE WHALES".... NO, DRYWALL "HERE, CAPTAIN!"  That was an edited quote from my favorite movie EVER....Star Trek V, where they go back in time to retrieve/rescue 2 HUMPBACK WHALES to SAVE THE EARTH (my favorite mammal ever, which I had originally planned to study as they migrate between Hawaii & Australia, or California & Alaska each year)...sorry I'm rambling....back to MY SCRAPBOOKING STUDIO!
   After only a couple of hours, the wall was up, and in only a few minutes the following night, the very small corner wall was up!!!!!  This should NOT have taken us nearly 2 years to complete!  Anyway, after getting home from work tonight without my drywall compound, etc.....I asked Michael to make me a list of supplies needed, or him to pick them up tomorrow after work....he'll be bringing them home for me tomorrow (HOPEFULLY)....gee can you guess what I'LL BE DOING THIS WEEKEND!!!!

    Anyway, I have included a couple of pics....

The construction chaos begins again...

     After removing the SW wall from my studio to push it back two years ago this coming April, we are preparing to put up the drywall.  We framed it back in right away, but that's as far as we got in the construction.  I have had 3 of my lovely dusty lavender curtains hanging there as my 'false wall'.   I look forward to painting & wainscoting this wall.  I am planning to paint the wall dusty lavender, adding a stenciled flourish in a slightly lightly color.  The wainscoting will be white, of course, like the majority of my studio.
      The external walls were already finished in a nasty texture, almost like "popcorn" ceilings, which totally tears up your fingers, knuckles, etc any time you reach for an item near the wall!  Ouch!
  I'll try to keep up on postings of the progress.  I also can't wait to install my second mini-chandelier, possibly more!!!  A girl can only hope!

My (belated) Bday Crop & (almost) clean studio...

    My birthday crop wasn't held until January 29th this year & between getting permission to post some pics & digging out around here, I'm just getting around to posting some of my pictures.

    Two of my local scrapping friends, including my 1st & BEST scramping friend Dawn (that's scrapbooking AND stamping for those of you not familiar to our crafts), came to spend some time with me. 

  Dawn brought me this AWESOME adhesive gun!!!!!! plus refills, stamps & rub-ons!

Dawn even brought gifts for Wesley...bath paints!  I've been thinking about getting some of these for him....she read my mind.

    Michael & Wesley were just leaving for GR (Grand Rapids) to go sledding with his family as my girlfriends arrived.  Because my GOOD camera (my digi Rebel) is in need of work & Michael took the CoolPix with them, I was without my camera...."feeling naked" as I usually say upon these rare occasions!

     I apologize for the remaining clutter & in-progress demolitioned state of my studio.  The area beside my former "cutting station" cabinetry used to be part of our utility room's storage space.  When we moved here, Michael built shelving units to house all of our boxes of "stuff" until we finished unpacking the household items, and then stored our ever-growing collection of Christmas decor.  The floor and walls of the utility room were not finished when we moved in, so the new square footage of my studio needs the floors to be brought to level with the existing floors, and one exterior wall needs to be brought flush with the wall behind my former cutting station. 

    We have the new walls framed in, but currently they are curtained off until we spend the money on drywall & paint.  I am planning to complete the sw wall with white wainscoting below & a shade of dusty lavender above, similar to the color of my curtains that hang there now (I robbed them from another portion of my studio & our bedroom).

    Hopefully this summer we will scrape down the textured walls so I can do the remaining wainscoting & painting, as well as add insulating flooring.  I can't wait to rip out the orange carpeting that is on the stairway & office/mini-store area of my studio!

   

 My former cutting station, now my Cricut station, plus storage for all my additional cutting & embossing supplies.  

 Tables for guest scrampers, the first of which Wesley now claims as his own!

 

 

     Anyway, this is the cleanest my studio has been since we ripped out the walls, and even though it is still decorated for my belated birthday crop, this gives you an idea of what I'm working on.  I'll also include some pics of the layouts I've been working on, as well as other layouts I've done with my 3 Birds products. 

Last Christmas

Last Bday's layout pg 1-2

Last Bday's layout pg 2-3

3 Birds paper

Last winter

Stamp Rack

Okay, I'm REALLY frustrated with this program not letting me put things in the correct order!  One last time & I'm gonna post it....

My 3 Birds main display