Open for Business! Yay!

This took all day, and a few late hours last night, but my etsy shop wanderCRAFT design is finally open for business! I've been thinking about doing this for at least a couple years, so I'm quite excited! Lots of dreaming, planning, gathering and creating went into this day.

I have about half of my items listed at this point. I had a couple unsuccessful rounds of photographing my photojournals (terrible light here) so I'll have those up later this week. I may need to get a lightbox. I'm also continuing to work on my handpainted chalkboards, so that they will be just right for you!

In the meantime, there is a lot of good stuff.

Here are a couple of the photojournals:









And a few of the very reasonably priced ($3) mini-inspiration kits, that can be a great jumping off point for a scrapbooking page, card, artist trading card, or an art journal page.







And lastly for now, these cute mini Tweet journals, for recording your favorite one-liners. They are available in three color combinations. The bird design is mine. I haven't block printed since middle school and am very much looking forward to doing more!



A huge thank you to the very inspiring Madeline of Barn-Raising, who tested out one of my photojournals and blogged about it not just once, but twice. So great to see it in action.

I considered taking out ad space on other blogs to promote the shop, but I want to keep prices low so I'm going to rely on word of mouth for now. If you buy something, please consider sending me a couple photos of your creation or a blog post review that I can link to.

Thank you so much and please let me know if there are other items you'd like to see in the shop. My mom has requested greeting cards with some of my photographs so those are on their way as well!

What mom wants, mom gets! :)

Etsy on the way!

On Sunday, as you're recovering from your sugar coma, come over and check out opening day at wanderCRAFT design @ etsy.com.

There will be handmade photojournals, embellishment packs and hand-painted chalkboards, and a little block printing thrown in for good measure.

I'll be busy this weekend pulling everything together so I can ship the lovelies out to you!

Between Us

A conversation late last week:

Me: Oh, on my lunch break today I finally went to that yarn store in Dorchester. They had some fabric too. The store had a really nice selection, but I didn't buy anything because I just bought some yarn when I was with Stephanie.

Matt: Oh, yeah? I know a place that has a really great selection.

Me: Really?

Matt: Yeah, your closet.

Worth the Wait

My dad was in town for a conference and stayed over for the weekend so we could go hiking together. Saturday was supposed to be cold, rainy and windy, so I picked him up in Cambridge on Friday around noon, right as President Obama was leaving MIT. Students and state troopers were lined up along Memorial Drive. That morning I'd woken up to very loud helicopters and airplanes overhead, which I later found out was Air Force One on its way into Logan Airport.

After I picked up my dad, we headed back east on Memorial Drive. We must have missed the President by a minute or two because the crowds of students along the Charles were dissipating as we passed.

We drove up I-93 to New Hampshire. I'd picked the Welch-Dickey Loop because I'd heard good things. It was on the southern side of White Mountains, was only about 2 hours away from Boston, and could be completed in three hours, just before sun fall.

I can't believe I've waited five years to take this hike, but I'm glad I did so with my dad. It was flipping spectacular.

There's Dickey and Welch, the two granite peaks we'd just climbed, on possibly the most pleasant hiking day of the year.

Quite simply, it was a fantastic day.

Change in Plans

Man, it's been totally crazy this month. For those of you who followed me over from my old blog, you may remember a post about how Matt was laid off last year. I talked about it this spring when we won a trip to Vermont as a result - the amazing Rabbit Hill Inn's Pink Slip Giveaway. God bless those folks. That weekend getaway in the spring was a godsend, mainly because they'd been through what we'd been through and came out on the other side just fine.

So the good news is that Matt got a job! After hundreds upon hundreds of applications, he got a job he didn't even apply for. Figures right? He got it by calling up an agency in the local area and saying he wanted to come in to talk to them. So our advice for all the unemployed is just to keep hacking away at it from every angle you can think of until something gives. That's all you can do. In the meantime, I'm well aware of how stressful it is to be out of work, but please try to spend a bit of that time doing something enjoyable, while you have the time. Playing hockey and spending time with our dog Kaia did a great deal of good for Matt. Life is short so make the best of it.

So anyhow, that chapter is behind us, thankfully, although there were some benefits. Mainly, Matt was home more. Which meant he covered a lot more of the weekly tasks and errands while I worked feverishly on my doctoral work. This fall, we've been extra busy adjusting to this new schedule for us. As he started this job, he also joined a band and started taking a class two nights a week! It's good though. Every season brings challenges and rewards.

I said at the end of the summer that I wanted to hike a mountain every weekend this fall. With everything going on in his life and mine, that didn't happen. But that bold wish did motivate me to get out a little more than I would have otherwise.

A couple Sundays ago, I corralled Matt and our dog Kaia into the car, after letting them sleep in. I think I'd declared on Facebook that I was going to hike Mt. Cardigan that day. Well, that didn't happen either. We made it as far as Bear Brook State Park. We'd been there a few years ago to mountain bike, and enjoyed it. It's not the White Mountains, but it is beautiful.

There was still a lot of yellow and green about, which made the reds and oranges just pop.

Our dog, Kaia, was so incredibly tweaked. Actually, she's tweaked most of the time lately, which is a big problem. She basically wanted to run this entire 2 hour hike like it was a cross country course.

Near the end, we arrived at this amazing stream. It was about 5pm. The light was absolutely perfect.

Kaia loves coming to streams on our hikes, so we usually linger there for awhile. We'd love to let her off leash, but she gets so excited about running and hunting, that we can't be sure when she'd come back. So I held her leash precariously as I crossed the stream and let her play in the water. Guess what happened next?

Soggy cold feet. Luckily we only had about 20 more minutes let, and somehow my feet warmed up along the way.

Did I mention the light was perfect? The colors, the water, the light. It was mesmerizing.

We made it home, somehow managed to eat dinner, and promptly fell asleep - satisfied and tired.

Hopefully I'll be back here soon with more fall photos. My dad is in town for a conference and I'm picking him up tomorrow to go hiking again in New Hampshire.

I won't reveal where we're going. But I will let you know once we return.

Story Boards, Circa 1978

I've started taking this Yesterday & Today scrapbooking class online. For awhile, I have wanted to get more into scrapbooking older photos, and recording stories from my childhood. One of the great things about the class is that it is going to help me do layouts that compare different points in time, and to tie together memories from my various family members' lives. For the class, I've been going through and am starting to scan older photos.

It's an ambitious task.

I have a lot of great photos to work with. I think I've mentioned here before that my grandpa was a semi-professional photographer. He moved out to New England after being newly married to go to photography school for a year in New Haven, thanks to the G.I. Bill. Near the height of McCarthyism and the communist scare, my grandfather benefited from one of our country's largest social welfare programs.

After that adventure, he spent over 30 years working at a bank downtown Flint, Michigan. When not working 9 to 5, he freelanced for the company newsletter and for the Flint Journal. He developed the photos in a

dark room below the stairs in the basement of his small 1950s style ranch.

A couple years ago, this small collection of proof sheets found their way from my parents' house to my place in Boston, and I look at them often.

Each is a fascinating little glimpse into life around the time I was born.

This first collection shows a farmer's market in downtown Flint, as well as a few buildings under construction (oh, how times have changed). There is also a little garden plot, complete with a scarecrow. And the building at the top says "part of the new spirit of Flint".

My grandpa really did love Flint and it's cool to see the hustle and bustle there before a lot of the jobs left. But my guess is that there are a lot of people in Flint right now taking up gardening again.

The next is a series of portraits of my great grandfather, RJ. My grandma, his daughter-in-law, said he was a very hard worker. He and his wife owned a farm where they raised silver foxes, among other things. He also worked at GM back in the heyday. I remember him as he appears here.

I love that my grandpa had him change hats for the shoot, and that they spent time together like this.

This next one... That little baby in a great grandmother's arms is me. It's my maternal line, posed in my favorite spot in my grandparents' house, right under the inset shelves where they kept old photos, records, and thick books about England and automobiles. A classic 4 generations portrait.

I love that buildings were being erected downtown right as I was coming into the world. The photo in the top left corner is my grandpa's office at the bank. I don't remember ever going there, but I know it's his office because there is a picture of my Uncle Mark on top of the cabinet. I wonder if the buildings under construction in 1978 are being used these days.

And this last one. Well, on the bottom left is my first house on Ascot Dr., before the subdivision filled in. There are similar photos of my grandparent's house surrounded by dirt. Both my mother and I were raised in subdivisions on lands once farmed by men like my great grandfather.

The rest of the photos in the last series just amuse me.

Maybe my grandpa was taking photos of a Boy Scouts encampment for the Flint Journal? I really don't know. But I enjoy trying to imagine kids these days spending an afternoon walking a tightrope, swinging 20 feet off the ground, or scaling a barn door-type contraption only to fall onto a folded cot mattress. It's basically a Cowboys and Indians-style boot camp.

Have times really changed that much in 31 years?

There have to be more of these proof sheets stored somewhere. They are beyond fascinating to me. Uncle Mark?

wanderCRAFT photojournal reveal and giveaway!

Update: Congrats and thanks to the lovely traveler and storyteller Madeline of Barn-Raising for giving my photojournal a try. I'll also be sending some goodies to Susan of ...and chaos ensued because it's her birthday today! Happy birthday and here's to a wonderful trip in your future! Oh, and my next giveaway won't have any strings attached! ;)

Didn't I say something about a giveaway awhile back?




I'm making photojournals for my soon to be revealed Etsy shop. Opening day will be Nov. 1st, right after Halloween and just in time for stocking stuffers and Hanukkah gifts!


I've been scrapbooking for a long time, and I particularly love mini-albums of weekend trips or weeklong vacations. But, I'll confess, I have a hard time finishing them. So I thought long and hard about how I would design the perfect easy-to-complete photojournal for myself and others.


I'll have a few different versions of photojournals in the shop, but this map photojournal is a favorite for documenting travel. Heck, it could even document places you hope to travel to in your life! That would be really fun!


Inside this photojournal are 36 pages that measure 8"X5.5". It's a good size for featuring big 5x7 photos or for combining various sizes, like two vertical 3"x5" photos or a horizontal 4"x6" with room for a patterned paper accent. With a little cropping, the possibilities are endless.


Stapling or gluing mementos from your trip, such as receipts, ticket stubs, or bits of menus would be fun too!


Every other page is white acid free cardstock for adding photos. The facing pages are grid paper for journaling. The albums are just long enough room to fit in the highlights and important details, but not so long that you loose steam documenting your trip.


If you are interested in documenting your travels or wanderlust in this cute photojournal, and are willing to share a few pages on your blog on Nov. 1st - wanderCRAFT's opening day - leave a comment letting me know what adventure you'd love to document. It could be a trip you took 10 years ago, one you took last month, or one you're taking next week. I'll draw a random winner Friday night at 8pm EST and get it into the mail for you Saturday morning. I'm willing to ship this internationally too. It'd be fun to have my first photojournal take a trip around the globe!


Also, the photojournal will come with a few travel-related bonuses to help you with your documenting. Fun stuff!


Oh, and don't feel shy about sharing this giveaway with friends! So excited to share these!