What's in a name?

How did you get your name?

My mother swears she named me after the Mona Lisa.  I did not believe her because Lisa was such a popular name in the 1960's.  There were always other Lisa's in my class at school.  In one of my high school classes, 5 of us were named Lisa.  The Mona Lisa had been around for centuries.  Why would it suddenly be a popular name?

Mother says that she was doing dishes one night and Daddy had the news on.  She heard on the news that the Mona Lisa would be coming to NY for a showing. She decided then if she ever had a daughter, she would name her Lisa.  The Mona Lisa did come to NY for a showing a couple of years before I made my showing.   I just didn't know that for several years. The reason I doubted her is that there was a popular soap opera character on As The World Turns named Lisa. She was played by NC native, Eileen Fulton.  I thought she must have named me after that Lisa or because it was so popular.

I'm sorry I doubted her.  She and my father did get to see the Mona Lisa in Paris in the late 1970's. She probably didn't expect that to happen when she was washing her dishes in her kitchen in NC in 1962.

My page about this starts with a present day photo.  Here's the process video for the page.


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Using Photos as Embellishments

We try to find things that the three of us can do together.  Gardens and shopping are favorite outings.  This one was in Hendersonville, NC.  The gardens outside of town specialize in dahlias.  Mother grew some dahlias herself last summer until the voles got ahold of them so she particularly enjoyed seeing the ones there.  They also gave her tips to avoid having her dahlias munched on by garden invaders.  She is supposed to plant her dahlias in black nursery pots that have holes in the bottom and put the entire thing in the ground.  The roots will grow out through the holes but the voles can't get to the main part of the plant that way.

For this layout, I used a circle punch to punch photos of flowers into embellishments.  I often take photos of the flowers and plants in gardens we visit. This is a way to incorporate them on the page without taking up too much space.

Here is the process video:


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Fall Knitting Projects

During the fall, I compelted 3 knitting projects.  My favorite is the zip front sweater made from Malabrigo Rios in color Liquidamber.

I'm also getting a lot of wear out of my red/pink scarf made with one of my favorite yarns La Jolla by Baah.  This is the third project I've made with this yummy yarn.  This time the color was a monthly special from September 2018.   The pattern is the Best Friend scarf from the knitting buzz and I used an edging I found on Ravelry.

My last project of the year was the Moab Shawl using Hedgehog yarn in Beach Bunny.  I also threw in some black fingerling, a little of the La Jolla September and some orange I had in my stash.  It is striking but I'm still not sure I like it.  For both of the scarfs, I added beads thanks to this Craftsy class:  Knitting with Beads  

I share many more details as well as challenges I had with these projects in this video:



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New Year, New Layout, New Video

Happy New Year!  It's time to do my favorite scrapbook page of the year.  For this layout I use a selfie, lots of journaling that needs a little creative hiding and a paper collection chosen simply because it is pretty.

For this layout, I've used some old Basic Grey with lots of the stickers.  I also added a few 6x6 paper scraps.  The video shares the folding technique to get a lot of journaling about my accomplishments from 2019 and my plans for the new year on one page.  Also in the video are links with a little 'i' in the corner to some of my past pages with hidden journaling.

Video:


My resolution this year has to do with one of my least favorite things in the world - housework.  Ugh!  But I have to admit that I really like it when the house is clean - well, cleaner - so I want to get more done each week.  I find resolutions work best when it is something specific you do for a little bit each day.

Have you made a resolution for 2019?