Author Archives: AmySolovay

Fall Garden Journal Pages for September and October, 2023

September Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like Happy Planner, Arc or Tul

September Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like Happy Planner, Arc or Tul

Happy Fall, Crafty Friends!


Did you plant a fall garden for 2023? If so, which plants did you include, and how has your harvest been so far? Here’s hoping you’ve enjoyed success and are harvesting a lovely variety of flowers, fruits, vegetables, and / or herbs, depending on what you decided to grow.


October Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like Happy Planner, Arc or Tul

October Garden Journal Pages for Discbound Planners Like Happy Planner, Arc or Tul

Have you been tracking your successes (and also your failures) in a garden journal? If you haven’t already begun keeping a garden journal, now is the ideal time to create one while all the details are still fresh in your mind. By the time you get around to planting new crops next year, you’re likely to have forgotten bunches of the finer details about what you planted, where you planted it and how well it all grew — or didn’t grow. Perhaps you’ll forget which bugs, birds and other critters made appearances in your garden to help or hinder your efforts, as the case may be. These details are worth remembering so you can build on successes and improve on shortcomings next time around.


Sadly, I wasn’t able to plant a garden this year. 🙁 But when I am actively gardening, I routinely make garden journal pages to keep a record of what I’ve done well (so I can repeat those successes) and about what went wrong (so I can try a different approach the next season). I also like to keep a record of what I planted where, so that I can be sure to rotate crops effectively the next year. My garden journal also incorporates to-do lists that keep me on track on what needs to be done in the future.


If garden journaling is of interest to you, I invite you to check out more of my garden journal pages and read more about my process for making them.


If you maintain a garden journal, I’d love to know more about what you write in it, how you approach the task of putting it together and how it has helped you achieve your gardening goals. What do your garden journal pages look like? The floor is open for comments, so please feel free to ask questions or share insights in the comments area below.


Thanks so much for visiting! I truly appreciate your presence here.


Posted By: Amy Solovay

Fall Craft Ideas

Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice Mini Fall-Themed Scrapbook Album

Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice Mini Fall-Themed Scrapbook Album

Happy fall, y’all!


It’s officially fall…You know what that means. Sweater weather is here! That’s fantastic news for those of us who enjoy crocheting and knitting. It’s also a wonderful time of year for scrapbookers to get out our cameras and take some pics of the family at the pumpkin patch or in the forest as the autumn leaves transition from green to golden, orange, red and brown. Cardmakers enjoy making fall-themed DIY greeting cards to send to friends and family.


Pictured above is a fall scrapbook mini album I made using photos from last autumn.


The thing I love most about this project is how affordable it is. I have been spending a small fortune buying Simple Stories Sn@p! binders and 6″x”8″ page protectors to fill them with. Honestly, I love the look of the scrapbooking albums I make using those binders much more than I love the little hand-bound mini albums I’ve been making. What I don’t love is the total cost for the binders, the pages, and all the supplies to fill them with. Don’t get me wrong, I think they are totally worth the money for what you get (and I’ve bought bunches of them!) But binding your own albums is an easy way to save money, so if you’re a crafter with other financial priorities besides just making the prettiest possible craft projects, I think this is an idea you’re likely to love.


Once you’ve made a small upfront investment in buying the craft supplies needed for binding your own mini albums, then it’s just the cost of photos, cardstock, paper, and whatever embellishments you choose to use for your projects. This will allow you more cash left over for things like retirement savings and buying school supplies for your kiddos — which is totally win-win! This affordability is the reason I’ve been making so many hand-bound mini albums lately. I’ll be sharing more of them soon…


If you’d be interested in learning more about how to bind your own mini scrapbook albums similar to this one, you can find a step-by-step tutorial and a supply list HERE. I hope you’ll give it a try! It’s really easy to do, and once you know how to do it, you can use these ideas to make super affordable but truly amazing gifts for all your friends and family members. Not to mention, you can make bunches of these for yourself to use as junk journals, bullet journals, scrapbooks, notebooks, or whatever.


If that’s not the type of craft project you’re interested in working on right now, maybe you’d rather take a look at some other fall craft ideas. I posted a page at my craft website dedicated to fall crafts; the page features a roundup of many fall-themed projects in a variety of craft techniques including crochet, paper crafts and other crafts. If you like to make lovely craft projects, and you aren’t sure what you want to start working on next, that page is a fantastic spot to find ideas. I hope you’ll find it useful.


Happy crafting!


XOXOXOXO,



Amy

My Blog Vanished!

This blog has been online since 2005. It used to have hundreds of posts, but now it doesn’t.

The short version of the story: We had to migrate this site from a different web host because the site was hosted on an ancient server from circa 2005 that didn’t have c-panel, and it was using an outdated version of PHP. The migration went smoothly…or so I thought…

…until I actually tried to update the back end, and everything broke. Oops!

I could put everything back exactly the way it was. I have backups of everything.

But I thought it over and realized I don’t want to put everything back. My writing, photography, and skill set have all dramatically improved since I started this blog in 2005. Anyone who found those old posts wasn’t finding the best work I’m currently capable of. So I have been meaning to completely overhaul this entire site anyway, because I really want to give my readers the best I have to offer.

So here we are. The overhaul is now in progress. Please forgive my broken links, missing photos, and missing pages, and thank you so much for your interest in my writing / travels / crochet patterns / textile designs / artwork, as the case may be.

I will put the most interesting and useful content back up ASAP. In the meanwhile, if you’re looking for any of my art or craft tutorials, please check out KnittingCrochetCrafts.com, where most of that stuff is currently available already (and the best of the rest will be moved there soon.)


Please drop me a comment and let me know if there are any pages or posts from my old site that you were using; I’ll expedite their return if I’m aware that somebody out there is missing them.

XOXO
Amy