Janet's Smiles

Hope you enjoyed yesterday’s ABBA show.  Today we have Boston which is a group I’ve wanted to see for a while and I was surprised to see they were at the Mountain Winery. Being part of the “Loyalty Club” is so helpful to get advanced tickets in good seats.

I can’t remember the name of this set of papers but isn’t it gorgeous? I was happy that they went with the pictures so well.

For the title I decided to use these plain white “thickers” (called that because they are not flat but rather about 2 or 3 mm thick).  They are actually sticky on both sides so I used some glitter to color them.

We were with our friends Paul and Amy for this show but we weren’t able to have seats together.  I did get their attention and a wave.  Pretty good zoom on my camera, huh?  I outlined the title with black pen to make it stand out more.

Since I put a background mat on the photos on the first page, I decided to write the names of the band members on the mats I used for the second page.  I must confess that I am pretty bad about that most of the time.  I know the bands and a few of the artists but I don’t know every person in every group and I don’t always put their names in the scrapbooking. 

Pretty simple page here, but they all look so intense that I thought the “In the Moment” was appropriate and the little camera sticker fit.

I like to catch the finger movements on the guitar players.  Sometimes they go so fast, all there is is a blur.  The 3-D guitar actually has strings.

The equipment to the side of the stage looked really interesting with all the lights on the panels.

This time I have a video to share.  Boston sings the song “Amanda” which is our daughter’s name so I recorded that for her.

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We’re off to the races, folks.  Today marks the beginning of the Great A to Z Challenge for 2020.  I hope you are as excited as I am.  There are over 450 bloggers who are signed up to write this month.  I have a notebook ready because I am sure there are going to be a ton of interesting things I’ll want to keep track of.

As I mentioned in my Theme Reveal, I am going to get some concert scrapbooking done.  We’ve been to over 100 shows and I am very behind with my albums so using the challenge will help me catch up a bit.  Since the virus restrictions and our finances are probably going to keep us away from concerts this year it will also be fun to relive the experiences.  Here we go!

The Mama Mia movies brought the music of ABBA to everyone’s attention and when I saw that “ABBA, The Concert” was going to be at the Mountain Winery I knew my husband wouldn’t be interested so I asked the girls if they wanted to see it with me.  I was happy that they both said yes.

When scrapbooking, the first thing I need to get is paper to match the pictures.  We’ve already determined that I am a paper addict so I have a lot of choices.  I really loved this collection called Twilight Jewels from Paper Wishes, one of my favorite companies to buy from.

There were some moon shapes and mystical looking elements on the papers and I remembered I had some Dazzle stickers that matched.

Once I have the papers picked out I put the pictures in some kind of order.  Sometimes I go by how the concert progressed and sometimes I just go by the colors and what seems to go together.  I always start with a title page or two that show the “who, what, where and when” details.  I don’t make anything permanent yet.  I want to make sure everything fits together.   

I found some alphabet “thickers” that really matched the color scheme for the title.  I used the parking receipt for the name of the venue.  Notice I moved it from the right page to the left.   

For the second page I added the view from our seats and the date.  Don’t we look like we’re having fun?   Yes, we had drinks in the parking lot before we went in and drinks after we got in, it was Girls night after all. 

Notice the moon sticker on this page that matches the one on the first page.

I knew I was going to have a lot of pictures to try and fit on some of the pages so I used the Wildflower template from Creative Memories.  It is fun to make a puzzle out of the pictures.  

This is what it looks like when the template is removed.

I think it matches pretty well with the paper on the next page.  I used the same template but changed the shapes a bit.

There was one of the original ABBA musicians touring with the group.

The silver “arrow” that points to the second set list matches the one pointing to the first, above.

I colored in the Dazzle sticker to match the colors on the page.

The last page shows the empty venue.  I think it is pretty cool looking.  The girls are walking ahead of me and I know they are wondering if I’m okay to drive home after having those drinks you saw in the beginning. – LOL – I was.

Here is how the spreads look as they are in the album.  I am really happy with the way it turned out.

Hope you enjoyed the first of the concerts.  I will say that I am a Creative Memories consultant so the link I have provided is to my site, in case you are interested.  I will have other links to products I used throughout the series, not all of which I am affiliated with but they are definitely products I like.  Also, if you like my style and you have pictures you would like made into an album, I am available for that!  Come back tomorrow and see who the “B” concert is about.   

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Happy Song Lyric Sunday folks.  Jim’s prompt is Touch/Feel.  Thought of this one during our time of social distancing:

I wrote about seeing Genesis for the A to Z in 2017.  It was a great show and I saw that they were going to tour again in Europe but that had to be cancelled of course.  Who knows when we’ll be able to go to concerts anymore and Phil Collins wasn’t in the best of health as it was.  Even more reason I am so happy I took so many pictures of the ones we did attend.  Stay safe out there people.

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Linda is so good about giving us things to do to occupy our time and helping us keep connected.  At the beginning of the month she hosts the Escapist Coloring Club and I know we’ve all had some time this month for coloring, right?  Here are my entries for the month.

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We lost Kenny Rogers this week.  He was 81 and had had some health issues for a while so it wasn’t truly a surprise, but it is still sad.  He made some beautiful music.

Another artist who made some beautiful music was John Denver.  Tragically he passed away in 1997 when the plane he was flying crashed just down the highway from us near Monterey Bay.  Here is Poems, Prayers and Promises.

“How long it’s been since yesterday and what about tomorrow?”  Here’s to the promise that we will have some more evenings to sit around the fire with friends.  Stay healthy. 

From Jim’s prompt of promise/vow/oath. 

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Linda’s Stream of Consciousness today is “Welcome.”  Who knew when I started blogging this month that March Madness would be so apropos?

Since we all seem to be forced to be at home for a while, what about taking an online course?  Can’t say you have no time (or you can but we know you’d be fibbing).  I am an affiliate with CreativeLive and they have a lot of different classes to try, some even for free.  It is not all about creating either, some have to do with finances and even health and wellness.

CreativeLive.com

Click the link to see what there is that you might like.  I’ve taken a few of the classes and they have been helpful for me. 

You’re welcome 🙂

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In bloglandia it is almost time for the great A to Z Challenge of 2020.  For those of you unfamiliar with that, a group (sometimes very large group) get together and use the month of April to highlight the letters of the alphabet.  It seemed to me that last year was a bit smaller than past years, even though it was the 10 year anniversary.  I still had fun and am planning to join in again this year, my 5th.

In 2016 my theme was music.  Here’s the link to that recap post where all the letters are listed.  In 2017 I did a music theme again but this time I incorporated my concert scrapbook album and showcased all the bands we had actually seen.  In 2018 I got away from the music and did an A to Z tour of a Michaels Arts and Crafts store where I happened to be working at the time.  Last year I used crafting again and the theme was all the different kinds of cards and mini-albums I make.   

I’ve decided that for this year’s challenge I’m going back to the theme I used in 2017 and work on my concert album.  I figured out I can do another whole A to Z without duplicating any of the bands I used the last time!  Do you realize that means we’ve been to at least 52 different concerts?  Actually I know we’ve been to over 100 because I counted them.  If we include comedians and plays like Rock of Ages and Jersey Boys it is about 116!  There are some bands like Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar and Fleetwood Mac that we’ve seen three or four times each.  As in 2017 I may take the liberty of using a song title instead of the group name but you know there are a couple tricky letters we have to deal with. 

As far as the scrapbooking part, I definitely have enough supplies to use.

Binder full of embellishments.

Stamps and stickers, papers.

And more papers and tidbits.

Punches

My Slice machine

I have a specific Music and Dance design cartridge that should come in handy.

Also, some templates to help me add a lot of pictures in fun ways.

The first page looks like this:

These are albums in progress if you will.  When we see a concert, I take the ticket stubs and any other bits of information like a review of the show or the set list and put them in a plastic sleeve as a place holder.  All of these are filled with those sleeves.  Some have completed pages from the 2017 A to Z and I am really looking forward to filling some more this year.

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“Always focus on the front windshield and not the rearview mirror.”  Colin Powell.

Easy to say but sometimes hard to do, hindsight being 20/20 and all.  I’ve been reflecting a bit about how I lived my life for the last 65 years.  A birthday can make you do that.  The bad news is, I can see some mistakes. 

The good news is, I can see some mistakes.  I can’t take them away but I can try to be more aware of things I do now and try to stop them before they happen, or acknowledge them and ask for patience.

And I can focus on the windshield and not the rearview mirror.  This is what I saw out the windshield last night.  Isn’t the sky gorgeous?       

#OLW brought to you by the lovely Linda.   Come play along. 

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Jim has given us North/South/East/West for our musical prompts today. 

I’m going with Sade, “Smooth Operator.”  We saw her once and while the show itself was terrific, we were disappointed in the fact that because she started so late we couldn’t stay to see the encore or we would miss our train home. 

And the video:

I also want to take a moment to share the latest Sketchbook I made which is now in the Brooklyn Art Library.  It has traveled 2800 miles as it went on a cross country road trip!  It has 280 online views.  I was not sharing it because when they first scanned it, they left out a couple of the pages.  It is now complete.  It is called “Let the Adventure Begin” and the theme is City Streets.  I think it covers the North, South, East and West prompt.

https://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/23203

Have a wonderful Sunday!

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Well, Linda has given us the prompt of “Figure” and told us to use it any way we like and have fun.  There are lots of figures in my world these days.  Tuesday will be my birthday and the figure I’ll see is 65!  That’s right.  Medicare eligible!  In fact, I used Medicare for the first time yesterday when I had some blood tests done.  My last set of blood tests were done in September and since then I was able to stop taking my diabetes medicine completely.  I have also lost another 20 pounds and the figures reflect that.  My Hemoglobin A1C, which is the test for diabetes, is the same at 5.8 – in 2015 it was 8.1.  Normal is less than 5.6.  A year ago it was 7.3.

The figures I was wondering about were the cholesterol and triglyceride numbers because when eating keto-centered meals you are allowed to have fats and since Weight Watchers and Hungry Girl are all about low fat foods I was concerned that those figures would be higher.  Interestingly, this is what I saw:

This tells me that my cholesterols (good and bad) were normal when I started “Keto” and around September when I had lost almost 40 pounds, the levels were still normal but higher.  At that time I decided to try and modify the plan to limit the fat intake, my weight reduction speed has been slower but my blood levels have gotten better.  I’m okay with that. 

Speaking of figures, mine has changed a bit since last March:

March 2019 to March 2020

 Looks like I cleaned the mirror since last year too – LOL.

March 2019 to March 2020

I still have some hips and arms to deal with, but I have another 20 pounds to lose so I figure while I’m doing that I’ll do some strengthening exercises.  My son is letting me borrow some 5 pound weights that I’m using at night for the arms and I’m doing some leg lifts too.  Maybe I’ll get some ankle weights for when I walk Benny.  Do you figure that will help? 

This post was not exactly “stream of consciousness” because I did some research and planning but at least I used the prompt, right?  Have a most wonderful weekend all.  Gearing up for the A to Z – sign ups are happening – I’m #22 on the list which was over 100 the last time I checked.  Come play along this year!

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