Elise Blaha :: enJOY it.

where will you be in the next five years?

Yesterday, I bought a fantastic book. Called FIVE. It is not so much a book to read as a book to look at and enjoy. The typesetting alone excites me.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the next five years. And who I want to be then. If five years ago you had asked me who I wanted to be now, I would said something like "Single. In a high powered corporate job. Not living in Maryland."

But I am pleased with where the last five years have taken me. And the choices that I have made. And I am in love with the idea that we get to pick the future. The next five years. I am excited to become someone new.

oh dear monday.

Monday.

Even though my days off are Friday and Saturday, Monday still always seems like the start of the week. Why is that, I wonder?

The weekend was good. Good, good. We ate good meals with good friends. And we saw Batman which I loved. I even enjoyed the parts that I watched with my hands covering my face.

Right now I am giving up on cleaning the mess that is the house before work and instead baking onion rings. Healthy onion rings to be exact. I will let you know how they turn out.

I have a post office drop off that I have to make and then it is off to work and home from work for the next four days until another weekend comes again.

Update : The onion rings are good. (I highly reccomend adding season salt and some other spices to the Fiber One crumbs.)

kauai : in memory.

So remember about a million years ago when I went to Kauai? And I had big plans to create a album while I was there? I wanted to share some pictures of the album:

The covers were Kolo photo box dividers that I punched holes in and joined with book rings.

I used tags to separate the days : stamped the date on the front and wrote what we did that day on the back.

The "guts" of the book are all sorts of things: business cards, tickets, restaurant coasters, postcards, napkins and of course, polaroids. It was great to have a polaroid camera on the trip because I could just snap a photo and stick it in.

Which is excellent. As I have yet to get a single digital photo (or my rolls of film) printed yet.

artsy.

A couple of different ideas came together to form this art journal kit. It is a 5x7 pack of papers. One letterpressed, one stamped, four created from copied polaroids and two other favorites. Handmade in the best way. I also added other pieces that I love to include in my own mini books. The best part is the stamped plastic packaging. It is meant to be used in the book. There are nine available along with some new letterpressed prints.

+ + +

Other news: It is about a million degrees in Maryland. I just watched my DVRed episode of "The Secret Life of an American Teenager" ...and I loved it. Project Runway better hurry up and get exciting. Paul did better than outstanding on his medical boards. We are celebrating with sushi and The Joker tonight

this is my 900th post.

Good is:

• wine
• ketchup and mustard on homemade fries
• getting home in less than an hour
• listening to Paul talk animatedly about his job
• listening to Paul talk about how he saw a documentary about the world ending on 12.21.12
• (don't worry, I think the documentary was lying)
• coming up with new letterpress ideas
• (there will be a store update on Friday)
• brainstorming in general about future paper projects
• kisses
• the fact that THIS is my 900th post
• (I had no idea that I would ever have 900 things to post about)
• (i am still not sure that I DID have 900 things to post about)

Here is to the next 900. Thanks for being here.

score one for the man.

So I had big plans to beat the system today.

Everyday that I drive into work, I see a gas station on Wisconsin Avenue that has gas for cheap. Like $4.12 cheap. A steal. And everyday that I drive into work, I do not stop. Either I am late, or I am in the wrong lane or I already got gas at another place because I thought the cheap place had dissapeared.

But today, I was bound and determined to pull over and get gas. And I was actually planning on going so far as to FILL UP THE TANK ALL THE WAY. Something I have never done since Mom and Dad stopped paying for my gas.

So I pull over. And am amazed to find that there is not a line. Or at least a crush of people and a news team filming the scene of what must be the lowest gas prices on the east coast.

I get out and notice that there is no machine to stick your credit card in. Slightly confused, I read the sign "NO CASH. CREDIT CARD ONLY. Please pay after you fill up."

Excellent.

I select the gas grade, insert the pump and wait. The dollars get up to about $15 and I read the sign again. This time it says "ONLY CASH. NO CREDIT CARD. Please pay after you fill up."

WHAT?!?!

I turn off the pump and approach the man in the glass box.

"Hi." I say. "I am an idiot. I didn't read the sign before starting to fill up and unfortunately I do not have cash." (I figured admitting to not reading a sign was much better than admitting to incorrectly reading a quite obvious sign.)

"Oh, it's no problem" he says. "There is a Chase Bank right across the street."

I figured now was not the time to tell him that I am a Bank of America girl and I abhore using other ATMs and getting charged fees. Instead, marched across the street and got charged $3 to take out $40. Then I marched back across the street to finish filling up my car. Unfortunately I could no longer completely fill it because I had not taken out enough cash.

As I got back into my car and pulled on to the street, I pondered the two morals that my adventure had revealed. The first being that I hate high gas prices. The second being that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

q + a.

Wanted to answer a few questions left in the comments or via email:

+ I use a cheap Polaroid camera that I bought at Target. It does nothing exciting except spit out pictures. I did not even realize there were multiple types of Polaroid cameras until seeing the amazing work of artists on flickr. My camera takes 600 film and the only secret to it is that it does much, much better in bright sunlight.

+ The words in the layout above (and on the yellow circle layout from yesterday's post) were made from De-flecto rub-ons. They are sold at office supply stores and come in huge sheets. The are my favorite text items to work with because I can stick them anywhere and they are small enough to get a lot onto a page. (To make the background for the above page, I photocopied polaroids of the sky onto a piece of paper multiple times.)

+ I do not have a letterpress. I rent press time at an art studio called Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, Maryland. I really stumbled on to the place through a lady I met while at work. I would do some research online if you are interested in finding a letterpress place in your area. I provided links to some great letterpress websites in a feature I did for Heart Handmade.

+ I currently have no place that I display my layouts or scrapbook pages - mostly because I have not been making any layouts or scrapbook pages. I designed for Cupcake Scrapshop for many months, and had a great time playing with the kits, but that was the extent of my layout making. For the most part, these days, I just put together mini books and those all get displayed here on the blog. Recently - I have started uploading art journal pages on to flickr. I would love to get back into regular posting in a gallery again. I just have to do some work to actually put up.

+ The geese have disapeared from our lives. We returned from Hawaii and they were gone. Paul and I were quite upset for awhile and I still find myself looking for them whenever I leave the house. Hopefully they realized that there are such things as lakes and decided to move on to something better.

+ I am very interested in any and all letterpress projects. Wedding and otherwise. I have no portfolio other than what you see in my etsy. I am quite sure that the first big project I take on will be the paper pieces for my own wedding. But let's be clear - I want to get married for 1000 reasons besides letterpressed goods. :)

Have a fantastic Saturday.

i'm bringing dry eyes back.

Rough last couple of days. Missing Paul + setbacks at work + humid weather = not much sleep and too many tears.

Ugh.

But last night was good. Paul + I decided that it is important for us to start eating dinner at the table and talking for that half hour instead of watching TV. It is a small step that I think is going to make a big difference. Taking advantage of the little time that we have together between my odd schedule and him spending nights at the hospital.

I feel quite like a grown-up.

Today and tomorrow are going to be a little retreat for me. I have a to-do list of good things: art journaling, clothes shopping, greeting card shopping & polaroid shooting.

::::::::::::::::::::::

And I am providing goods for a giveaway on the fabulous Black Eiffel blog. Head over there if you would like to win a set of custom stationery. And if you would like to skip the whole giveway option - order yourself some! I promise it will be fantastic. $25 for 10 custom letterpressed cards. An excellent deal, my friends.

snap out of it.

Marta was right, nothing beats the blahs like watching The Bachelorette. I stayed up late, late, late after work to watch all three hours of reality television. Which, when you fast-forward through all the commercials/flashbacks ends up taking about 14 minutes. But OH MAN am I so glad she picked who she picked. The other guy always bugged me. Much too eager. Or excited. Or something. Either way - this season seemed to be the most real yet. I loved it.
 

Yesterday, while at work I decided to start an art journal. Something a little more abstract than usual...and hopefully something a little more complicated. I have a ton of great supplies sitting around and so rarely get them out and use them. This week, my goal is to make a page a day - a challenging (for me) page a day. Above are the first pages that I started last night. Stamps + transparencies + cut up pieces of mail. (And the cardboard cut like a cloud is completely Kara inspired)

Annnnd also yesterday, my "look book" from Wiksten came. I love the clothing pieces that Jenny creates - I just cannot quite afford them. So with these little cards, I got a piece of them. And the photographs are completely inspired + inspiring.

Three things - only three things - snapped me out of my blahs. Very good.

sploosh.

Hmm. I seem to have caught a bit of the blahs.

It is Monday.

I have very little to say. Other than I started a new 28 day workout plan. And today is day 3. I already know I will make it at least four days because tomorrow is a "rest day." At least I know I can get through a rest day.

Paul started his rotations at the hospital. His first one is surgery. Everything seems a little bit up in the air right now as he is figuring out his schedule. Which so far we know includes two nights of on-call per week. Me, being me, thought "on-call" meant stay at home and they call you if they need you. But "on-call" really means be at the hospital and sleep in the "on-call" room. The Grey's Anatomy watcher inside of me is kicking me for not knowing that already.

The cats are gone. They were fun while they lasted but I now know that I am not on the market for a cat, dog, or kid in the near future.

So yeah. Blahaahahahahah.

I hate boring, blah posts. Very sorry about that.

photo excursion.

I got into Georgetown early this morning and decided to wander in search of red + white + blue. I really must act like a tourist more. I get better photos when I do not care who is watching. And when I keep my camera in my hand instead of my bag.

the fourth, of course.

Here is to a quick eight hour work day, peanut butter bars, good eats, good drinks, fireworks and crafty endeavors. Here is to freedom and pride and hopefully peace.

Have a great weekend.

heavy on the photos.

 

Last night we hosted a fondue dinner party. Because nothing brings a table together like melted cheese. And nothing makes everyone laugh like ABC's Wipeout.

Also yesterday, I posted a challenge at The Sketch Book, a New Zealand based scrapbooking community. My challenge was to create a mini album using just photos and a few words. I picked some photos from Kauai and paired them with the Hawaiian beer caps I collected while on the trip. 

Today I ventured to letterpress land to make some more prints and postcards.

I ran a second round of my favorite print and a few other pieces. All have been uploaded to my etsy shop ... and if you are interested, there are a few more mixed paper books in there right now too.

Have a great Wednesday.

july one.

My to-do list is about 14 miles long today. It is so long that I cannot see the start and the end at the same time and just have to start plucking away somewhere in the middle.

Look for a new challenge and exciting giveaway here within the next couple hours and a minibook challenge will appear here as soon as I can get my hands on some photos.

Today and tomorrow I am off work and I am so excited to get through some stuff. But first things first...I have to watch my DVRed Bachelorette from last night. AND WOULD YOU BELIEVE I JUST SAW A SPOILER GRABBING THAT LINK?!?!?!?

saturday.

Cheers to Saturday.

Yesterday was busy. We ran errands and traded in Nalgenes for BPA free Nalgenes. We shopped and I bought over $400 worth of clothes and shoes for $164. I love Martin+Osa. And I adore good sales. We enjoyed fine dining and entertainment (mushroom chicken + South Park). And of course the cats were around. Playing with ribbon and stealing my paper.

Today we went shopping for Tuesday's dinner party and then went to Crafty Bastards in Silver Spring. I love craft fairs. Especially good ones with letterpress and hilarious cards. I decided I am going to try to get a booth at their fall fair. My mind is starting to spin with plans.

Currently, I am trying to figure out the best way to clean up the piles that have grown around the house the past couple days. And then I am going to go on an internet hunt for a button maker and chipboard supplier. And then I have a plan involving some flat bottle caps. And after THAT, I am going to grab my favorite man and brave the humidity to meet up with some California friends who have ventured to the East Coast for the weekend.

Life is good. Cheers to that.

a tale of two kitties.

So we are cat sitting.

Two little teenage felines.

Paul has always owned cats but this is a first for me. I feel a bit like the paparazzi chasing them around the house. It is so exciting to have something mobile to photograph although I think my plates and foodstuffs are slightly jealous.

When I am not trying to take pictures of them I am shouting out their behavior to Paul. Turns out Paul really does not care that they are jumping in the bathtub. Apparently, that is what cats do.

Regardless, these dudes are here for a week and a half. I expect to have them fully trained in Gluestick 101 by then.

that time of year again.

I am watching the US women's gymnastic Olympic trials. And I am already starting to cry and stand up and clap out loud. I cannot watch gymnastics with out remembering 1996 when the Magnificent Seven reigned supreme. I wanted to be Kerri Strug. Or at least put her in my pocket.

Oh, hooray for Olympic season.

winner!

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

12	

Timestamp: 2008-06-21 11:23:40 UTC

I have no idea what UTC time is, but it is 7:25 AM here on the East Coast. Congrats to Jen! A box o' stuff just needs your address. Please email me at elise.blaha@gmail.com.

You all have exciting weekends ahead. I have work today and then oh yes, work tomorrow. I am making up for vacation and trying to remember that the vacation was worth it.

Cheers to Saturday - make it good.

summer cleaning.

I am embarking on a mission to clean out my craft area and it looks like I have a big box of NEW paper and letter stickers and rubons and ribbons and stamps and everything to give away. Leave a comment with your plans for the weekend and I will randomly pick a name tomorrow morning. Happy Friday!

1+1+1.

One year, one month and one day ago I wrote a letter to myself from my future self. The person that I thought I would be today. The person I hoped to be today. This project was inspired by Kal, and I believe it came from The Art of Possibility.

Today I opened my letter. I could not remember what I wrote. Turns out I was generic. With nearly everything. But today when my present self read what my future self wrote I felt peace. Radiating from who I was on May 18, 2007 and from who I am today.

I will do this letter project again. But I may frame the letter and keep it out so I can remember where I am headed. Where I want to be in 1+1+1