Maya Road and Me

family

  so noah and jonathan came with deb and i to go see our grandma in hong kong a couple of weeks ago. david and david came along too. it is never easy dragging 2 kiddos through a dozen time zones and on a plane for 14 hours straight. a typical trip from texas to asia including layovers takes up to 27 hours. but we have learned our lesson and we try to stop in california to see deb and her family before we head off to asia. it is a nice break to our trip and the kids get to spend time together.

sometimes the thoughts of 14 hours on a plane with a 2 year old is overwhelming but so is the thought that we don't know how much longer my grandma will be around to see her great grand children. she has 5 of them now but all of them are scattered all over the world.  she is tired and her days consist of a lot of eating and sleeping.

it is amazing though how she lit up when she saw her great grand babies though. sometimes it was hard with 2 kids at the table and my grandma too - all 3 of them would resist eating saying "i am full" and we would have to beg, bribe and cajole each of them to eat. all 3 would push food away. all 3 would sometimes say i am done before they started. it has been a while since i have seen my grandma smile. there are times she remembers who we are and times she doesn't but she doesn't seem to forget her great grand babies.

here is a photo of my grandma and noah. noah is going up to her to call her "tai-paw nay ho" which means "great grandma, i hope you are well". i love that she is smiling at noah.

 

and this photo too:

 

we noticed that my grandma smiled more, ate more and slept a lot less when the boys were around. even though they were running around at 100 mph and loud and crazy, she seemed to love that they were there. and as hard as it was to take them, it was worth it. we don't know how many more years we will have with her. to see her smile when the great grandbabies are around is worth it enough.

i just got these photos downloaded but i will make an album of this trip soon so noah can remember.

but in the meantime, i want to share with you some simple steps on how you can create this album here:

what you will need:

maya road round tab window album (i only used 4 pages)

4 photos printed on transparencies (each of my photos was 5" x 7") printed in black and white

acrylic paint of your choice

jonathan chipboard letters

bird chipboard, number chipboard and flower chipboard (choose some from your stash if you desire)

patterned papers

journaling tags

black pen

sander

various embellishments

scissors

ruler stamp

punches (i used a scallop edge for the patterned paper pages)

 

check this link for the rest of the album with info.

instructions:

step 1: paint the pages of the chipboard album with 1 -2 layers of acrylic paint depending on the look you want. allow to dry for 30 mins. our chipboard is fairly absorbent so it will dry pretty quickly.

step 2. sand the edges of the album. i tore some edges of the album for a different vintage look to expose the chipboard layers.

step 3. choose the lettering and chipboard accents you want and paint as desired.

step 4. next, decide on how you want to lay your photos so they show in the window of the album. the beauty of the photos on transparencies is that you can flip them if you need to get the right image in the window. i choose photos that had high contrast since i printed them in black and white. i wanted to be able to see the journaling behind the photos. since the album is about 6" , i trimmed off the extra inch from the 5" x 7" photo and rotated as needed to get the photo to fit. figure this out for all the pages.

step 5. pick out your papers for the journaling. i kept mine fairly neutral since the album was so bright in color.

step 6. doodle lines on the chipboard pages of your album as i did and add the letters, embellishments.

step 7. assemble your album, journal and enjoy!

have a great rest of the weekend!

getting ready

so i ran the half marathon in september (here i am getting ready by putting on some sunscreen). i haven't trained very much since then. a run or soccer game 2-4 times a week but nothing really substantial.

i can already feel me itching to do a run again. perhaps not so far but a 10k or 15K would be nice in the next 2 months or so.

with the limited time i have, there are times i have to get creative with my workouts. if i have any biceps and triceps it is due to noah pullups or noah throws in the air. he is a good solid 26 lbs or so and after say 15 throws in the air, i can feel my arms burning. getting creative is what it is all about! noah loves it and he will count with me on the throws. i think we both get a good workout with this.

speaking of creative, have you checked out our latest consumer newsletter? if you haven't you missed the first part of a challenge i issued to our designers - make a holiday/Christmas tag or ornament and you can only use 5 products! trust me, it is harder than it looks, each ornament is so beautiful we are actually going to do a part 2 so that each piece gets it due and is showcased!

i hope that everyone is having a great Friday.

Thankful

just a quick note, have been busy with noah (who is under the weather), getting ready for Thanksgiving and lots of creating.

i will be back next week to show you how i made this album. i was inspired by the guest garden girl at 2 peas this month when i saw hers here.   this album was very easy to make and you can finish it in 1 evening (probably 3 hours including drying time!)

have a great Thankgiving!

a momentous day

  we are so happy here in our family, noah actually used his potty! i never thought the day would arrive. LOL. in the past week, he has expressed interest as far as saying "my potty" and would look at his little training toilet and that was it. i can't believe how quickly time is passing.

if you don't get a copy of our consumer newsletter be sure to check out the latest issue here. we had so many beautiful entries in our maya road home for the holidays contest. it took us a good amount of time to narrow it down to the 5 we picked. serious eye candy and innovation. deb and i were looking at some of them thinking " how cool, i wonder how they did that?!?!" and we are happy to be donating $350 to habitat for humanity for the entries we received.

anyhow, i have already seen what our next consumer newsletter will look like and it will kick BUTT. our design team has put together some WICKED AWESOME holiday ideas for you - our twist is this though - they had to use 5 or less maya road products. and i am sure they can tell you first hand, it was tougher than it looks! LOL!

the newsletter is so full of ideas, we are probably going to split it into two. so you don't want to miss it. sign up on the front page of our website  if you haven't already!

i am going to chill and work on some CHA-W projects now but i leave you with this album i did. this signature maya road scallop layer book was one of our best sellers at CHA-S. it takes to paint, maya mist like a dream(hint: sand the edges for a cool look!). here are some of the album i did. note that the pages are misted - not painted. you can see how wonderful the coverage is!

 

 

quick post

this is just a quick post - check out the design team blog for a giveaway this week.

and secondly for those who have asked, check out deb's blog to see if she is having a boy or girl!

cool days

  can you believe it is almost the end of november already? i love love love the cooler weather we are having here. it makes me want to make a big pot of green chile stew or chicken noodle soup for dinner. fall is probably my favorite season. it is nice and cool and the leaves are changing colors and you can bring out the flannel PJs to wear!

thanks for all the wonderful ideas you all have sent me for Holiday traditions to start with noah! i think what we will do is plan on doing 1-2 per week of the big ones and then just decorate and chill throughout the rest of the season. 

i wanted to share a quick and easy idea for some cards you can keep on hand. here is one i made last night below - i used a stamp that purple onion made. i have known michelle from PO for a while and a lot of her stamps are very cute!

i just added some patterned paper, crepe paper and maya road rubons and velvet ribbon. easy peasy. this is something you can create in 15 minutes and keep in your handy dandy card drawer for when you need a quick card to use! enjoy!

can't wait for december

can i just say that i am looking forward to december? we are going to be doing some decorating for Christmas this year and it is so cool that noah now wants to help with things like making cookies for the neighbors and such! i am looking forward to doing some projects with him. do you have any recommendations for Christmas projects with a 2 year old?

another thing i am excited about is that i am going to participate in ali edwards' december daily album. i had the pleasure of meeting ali a couple of years ago at a convention we were both teaching at.

so a couple of days ago, i started my album which will be filled with memories from dec 1 - 25th. but i was thinking about it tonight, i might make it go through the new year! i was thrilled because i got to use up about 14 sheets of patterned paper in one swoop. and i got to use stickers and embellishments which i had purchased in 2005 and had been hoarding!

anyhow, here are some initial shots of the work in progress:

this is the cover that i created using our new acrylic album which matches with our window tab album - i only used a couple of pages of the chipboard and the acrylic album so there is more you can do with it later!

here is a peek at the inside.

 

will post more pages soon!

all my boxes are packed and ready to go

so all of our shoe boxes are packed and were dropped off today at a local drop off point. we ended up with 26 boxes in all. after we had packed the first 20, it seemed like our basket was still overflowing with stuff so we kept packing til we were out! it has been a wonderful experience for us to share with noah. noah even helped to label each box. i would tell him whether the box was for a "b" (boy) or a "g" (girl) and he would look through the boy and girl labels to find the "b" or "g".  he also helped me mark the age for each box and then helped me to tape it to the top of each box.

and i wanted to share with you this tag i made of noah's visit with his great grandma last year - a very simple tag using some ink, stamp and rubons.

it is hard to believe that time is passing so quickly!

i was just looking at some photos today and check out the difference 2 years can make. here is a photo of noah and jonathan from 2 years ago. noah is trying to figure out how far he can reach.

here are the boys again from a couple of weeks ago. noah and jonathan LOVE to be with each other now. they play, laugh, scream, yelling, talk, run, jump and fight together. it is so cute. they got to spend some time together a couple of weeks ago and you can tell they miss each other already. i will ask noah if he misses jonathan and he says "of course".

hope everyone is having a great monday!

my advent calendar

also i have been posting some bits and pieces of my advent calendar this week.  i wanted to share with you tonight some hightlights from it.

to start, i was inspired by katie's advent calendar. she has a way with shabby i can't do - LOL - but i can still be inspired by her stuff! here is a link to her calendar.

for mine, i left the cookie sheet the same it was born with - metal. i used papers from luxe, pink paislee and MME.  katie had developed a template to print out for the 25 days, i found that some of my embellishments were too big for the square she had designed but because it was done in word, it was very easy to use the ruler edges to modify the template into rectangles.

i love that you can mix papers from different companies and still have a unified look! pretty much everything else on the advent calendar is maya road except for a couple of stickers i pulled from some other places where i had leftovers.

you will see for some of my "days", i used some leftover journey tins that our embellishments come in. i thought this would be cool so that i could leave a little note about that day and fill it in for that day like you see below. you can also see that i attached some paper leaves to the maya road flowers as accents.

 

now someone had a question about some glitter! for that i do have some suggestions. what i have found that i love glitterwise are the martha stewart glitters and the pink paislee glitters. i didn't do a lot of glittering on this one since i knew that my son would wanting to help out. i did end up glittering this bird:

i used double stick tape along with some pink paislee glitter here for this bird's effect. if you want the glitter to not come off, you can use crystal lacquer, then apply the glitter and then apply crystal lacquer again. i have done that in the past but this time, i opted for a simpler method! there is still a tiny bit of glitter that comes off but it doesn't bother me.

but aslo for this project, i found a better solution if you don't want to wait on the glitter. have you seen glittered foam sheets that are adhesive? i found a pack a couple of weeks ago at a local craft store. the glitter is already glued onto the foam sheet and is the same color as the foam sheet. the foam sheet also has adhesive on the back so all you have to do is cut it in the shape of your chipboard and apply it! i used that for a number of the pieces on this project like #13 and #9:

and well that is about it! oh yeah, i had mentioned the bow - i tied it up top where i put the hanger. check out the post i had here about how to make this.

here are a couple more photos:

and i think that i will store all these pieces in one of our maya road coffee break tins for safe keeping!

i am excited to be able to use this soon!

and i wanted to share this photo of noah during a birthday party today we went to.

noah is getting the hang of ball "dunking" - LOL. yeah the hoop is at his height but he loves throwing the ball.

quick post

lots going on today. i am about to head out to get pick noah up from school. he is so funny, every time he goes to the classroom now he runs in an says "HOLA!". david and i are headed out for date night tonight and i still have clean our house so 2 quick things i want to share.

here is a quick peek at my advent calendar (more this weekend including an answer to the question about glitter!)

 

also, if you want a maya road fix, if you purchase through our website, use this code: NOVSALE  on checkout for 10% off all maya road stuff! we won't be promoting this sale til next week in our newsletter but i thought i would let you blog readers in on it first.

remember, all customer orders placed on our website are fulfilled by a network of LSS and online stores!

have a great friday! off to clean then to get my baby boy!