molly irwin

spring things + inspirations

Birds are chirping outside my window.

Soft green growth is inching out of the willow, and the maple is sprouting curly bits of rusty reds.

I've been having fun with my camera again this month over at habit, and photo-documenting pieces of life in my town, knowing this will be my last spring where the cherry and pears blossom so early. The forsythia and magnolia come to life here at least a month before their counterparts up near Lake Erie where I'm headed.

I've been assessing my family's warm weather wardrobes and coming up short. We'll all need a few things, and I'm inspired to sew a shirt or tunic for myself. I haven't ventured into apparel very much yet, so wish me luck.

As I consider my current approach to documenting life, this notion keeps creeping back that what I make is not layouts, but albums. If I think of things in terms of layouts, it can become limiting; stiffling even. Peaking into everyone's project life pages is reminding me that just getting it organized and assembled and into the physical (rather than pixelated) world is what it's all about. For me anyway. And there is literally not enough time in the day for all the stuff I have in the memory-keeping works. Little stacks of things in various stages are all around me. I love it!

In that vein I've sent a summer book, from '09, off to the printer. There had been a couple of [mental] hold-ups in my completion of that project and I never got around to making it a real, tangible book. I can't wait to get it back, then cut and assemble. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

I'll leave you with a couple of links providing me endless inspiration:

• Things magazine
• Philip Ficks photography
• second and edgemont
• la buena vida/nicole franzen
• Blair's March screensaver (It's just so darn happy!)

Happy weekending all! And a Happy St. Patrick's day to you.

 

 

hey there cookie

 

Oatmeal white chocolate chip

I'm so impressionable. 

Someone mentioned white chocolate oatmeal cookies on twitter the other day and I knew I had all the ingredients on hand and had to make them. I'm not even a big white chocolate fan myself, but my girls are and I'm not eating them now anyway. It's all for them.

And now it's for you too. Help yourself.

This recipe is adapted from a traditional oatmeal raisin cookie recipe my mom gave me years ago. Just follow the usual cookie mixing process with the following ingredients:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup light brown suger

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup flour

3 cups quick oats

1/2 cup flax seeds (optional)

1 cup white chocolate chips

Drop rounded tablespoons of dough on parchament lined baking sheet. bake in 350 preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until browned and crispy.

Allow plenty of room for the cookies to spread out. I only got six per sheet, but my baking sheets are smallish; 12" x 18".

These were declared a certain 10-year old's new favorite.

 

thank you flickr

Inspired by poster art by Brian Oakes Design, for the movie EAMES, the Architect and the Painter, I immediately went about making a layout.  The series of square images reminded me of a Flickr mosaic.  Flickr remains my biggest source of online inspiration for all the reasons I mentioned above, and more, and I wanted to have something about it in my album.

I used bighugelabs.com to make a mosaic of some of my photos, and a self portrait as the main image, and turned everything on the diagonal. I decided to print on linen cardstock for a little texture. I use Neenah classic linen cover, solar white.

I'm feeling an urgency right now to make things. All kinds of things, but mainly to do with my photos.  When I rotate my chair away from the screen there's a semicircle of small piles around me with all kinds of projects in the works.  It's fun again. 

 

perspective on a snowy day

One of the best things I did when I started thinking about scrapbooking and memory keeping was to open a word document on my computer and start making notes.

I took notes on what happened in our lives, and what I thought about it. I wrote little things the kids said. I took photos that corresponded with those thoughts, and then .... often nothing would come of them. Nothing would get put together, and I began to question my interest in the whole matter.

The photos and words in this layout are from five years ago, but I only just put it all together this weekend.  

This is a brand new layout I made in virually no time, by referencing what I wrote that snowy Febuary of 2007. The difference in what it might have been and what it actually became has entirely to do with the perspective of those notes. Without reading that old document these memories would have been lost, and these photos would simply be random snowy day images without a point of view.

The twill ribbon and 'winter joy' bit are free downloads designed by Ali Edwards, available on her site. The snowflake punch is from Paper Source.

There are gaps in my writing. Big gaps. But I'm resuming the practice of typing a few words here and there when something strikes me.

I showed this layout to the kids today. They didn't remember any of it.  Glad I wrote something down.