Jen Caputo

And how was your weekend?

Mine was quite busy!  Friday was Anjanette's bachlorette party.  We had a limo come pick us up from Motorola and take us downtown.  Which although only about 25 miles, took 2.5 hours.  All thanks to Thursday's smack down by Mother Nature (it left 80/94 under so much water that they had to close it down going Eastbound completely).

We had dinner at Cafe Iberico's and then went to this irish pub type place and finally wound up at Ghiradelli's for desert before the limo picked us up again.  Here we are with the band at the pub.  They were fun!

Saturday was the Chicago Beer Society Picnic!  It's one of our favorite beer events.  There is all kinds of awesome beer of course as well as a rib cookoff, chili cookoff, salsa cookoff, and dessert cookoff.  Adam's salsa took 3rd place!  Yay!!

I didn't take that many pics but if you wanna see more, click here.

Sunday, Adam I went to the Bucktown Arts Fest and then pretty much just did nothing. I think I watched like 4 movies on F/X....  wow.. .lazy much?

Well, I'm gonna leave you with some eye candy. We saw this woman's photography at the Art Fest and I totally fell in love with the way she captures these wonderfully humorous life images/candid portraits.

Denise Keim Photography

Enjoy!

Yay Rainy Birthday Camping!!!!

Who loves camping in the rain?  We do!!!!!

Yeah... for about 8 hours.. that's our limit.  24 solid hours of rain?  Way past the fun threshold.  But you know we made the most of it anyway right? 

Lots of cards, scrabble, hillbilly horseshoes, and well.... beer help to make rainy camping trips not totally awful.  But sleeping in a few inches of rainwater, way not cool!!!

Did I mention we forgot to pack our tent?  Just the actual tent part, we remembered the poles and the rain slicker thingy... sigh... Luckily Laura borrowed her sisters 5 person tent so we shacked up with her.  Thanks Laura!

 So my pictures are total hud.  The light was so awful because it was overcast and we were in a forest and under a tent so even at ISO 800, I was shooting at 1/20th of a second...  so I wound up using a lot of flash which made it look like it was pitch black outside even in the early afternoon.  Anyway, here's a few that turned out ok.

Adam and Kristin

This series of Dave and Elena totally cracks me up. 

as does this one of Quinn and Kristin trying to escape this contraption Brent tied them up in.

Speaking of Brent, I'm quite fond of this pic of him.

and while we are looking at Brent, here's his fiance, Anjanette (her bachlorette party is this weekend!!!)

and that's about all that turned out any good... 

Thanks to everyone who stopped by my sale this weekend! Wow! Totally makes up for the sore throat I'm about to come down with for spending a weekend in the cold rain! 

Hoping you all had a much drier Saturday than I did!!

BIG SALE!!!!!!!!!!!

That's right.. it's my birthday weekend, and I got a promotion, so I'm all happy and stuff :)  Help me celebrate by taking 40% off everything in Studio Jen  until Sunday at midnight EST!

Yup, just enter coupon code jens27bday to take 40% off your entire order through the weekend!!!!  Yay birthdays!!!!!  I won't be around this weekend as we are going camping up near Madison again so... don't have any problems because I won't be answering emails... heheh

And if you happen to be shopping this weekend, you may just wanna hop on the Funky Train!!!

A little bit clearer preview here:

Yeah... this thing is just too awesome for words.  I can't get over how much awesome stuff is in it.

Pick it up right here:

http://scrapbookgraphics.com/xcart/product.php?productid=19010&cat=0&page=1

Don't forget to use coupon code allaboard to save over $5!!!

Mixed Emotions

So I'm all torn up right now.. but happy too... see I got both good news and bad news today and I don't know which to let guide my mood....

I guess I will tell you the news in the opposite order in which I heard them such that maybe the good news will spare your heartache of the bad news?  Sigh...

My favorite show.....

with the best characters ever......

was cancelled.... :(  (Robin are you out there mourning too?)

I just don't get it....  how did America not fall in love with John?  Why did I have to just watch the last episode ever?  I don't know Butchie intead....

sigh......

but the good news will cheer us up a little bit....  I got a promotion today!!!!  And Friday is my birthday!!!!  Do you know what that means for you?  A sale!! And since I got a promotion in the same week as my birthday I guess it better be a pretty awesome sale!  But not today... 'cause I don't feel like getting a coupon ready yet... tomorrow though!!

Alright, I thought I'd post a few more pics from the Great Taste 'cause I know how much you guys like my beer fest shots :P

The marching band rocked!!!!

These guys put raspberries and kiwi in the randallizer- so refreshing.

The Old Hat fellas

Shorts is one of my new favorites

The point of this shot was to get the inspiration for the logo in the pic but it didn't quite work out....  The capital is there in the background across the lake, I swear....

Ok Last one... no... we don't know this guy at all....  but he sure did like when I squirted him with my water bottle!  Nice meeting you buddy!

Back from Madison - and I have new shapes!

Madison recap in a moment, quickly I wanted to show you guys these new shapes I got done!

 

http://scrapbookgraphics.com/xcart/product.php?productid=18994&cat=0&page=1

They are 12x12" Mattes to add a little fun to your pages, I used one of 'em right here for this layout  I did for the Lilypad Blog Challenge.

Credits here.

And while I'm posting layouts, this is the one I did for Digi Dare #48.  I dared everyone to scrap some night-time photos of their hometown!  You should totally play along! I looooove night-time pics and I wanna see yours!

Credits here.

Ok, now for my Madison recap!!

First thing we did after we checked into our hotel was head over to Maduro where they had 19 Bell's Beers on tap!!!

Between the 4 of us, we only made it through 8 of them before we had to go.

That's Zack, Me, Adam L, and Adam M

After that we went to this French Restaurant (Cocoliquot) where New Holland was hosting a dinner.  We ate all of the cutest animals in the world (Jan, I hope you aren't reading this).  Those french people don't eat ugly animals do they?  Our dinner consisted of Rabbit, Duck, and Lamb among other things.   New Holland is making spirits now as well, here we are toasting them.  This was definitely not a cheap dinner...

On the way back to the hotel I was captivated by the Capital all lit up.  Here's Adam, looking like he owns the place.

 

Then we had to get to bed so we could wake up early enough to get breakfast, head to the Farmer's Market for some cheese and sausage, and then get to the Great Taste!

Cheers!!!

How 'bout this guy?

Zack, Adam, and Adam

and finally, me and Adam

It was hot.... but other than that, totally awesome of course!

If I owe you an email, I'll try to get to it soon but don't hesitate to send it again as it may have inadvertently gotten deleted along with some of the 1200 spam messages I had to deal with when I got home.  Is anyone else getting the most vile things in the world in their inbox lately?  I honestly can't even look at my email anymore so lots of stuff is getting deleted by accident along with the nastiness... it's just so gross.  UGH. Spammers....

How would you like to own this brand new sketch collection?

Well if you want them, you can have them!!! Free!!!  With your purchase of this month's Digital Artist Magazine!

Check out some layouts made with these templates:

And hey, if you speak Portuguese go check this out!

Ok, I gotta hit the hey. We are leaving to go up to Madison, WI in the morning for the Great Taste of the Midwest!  Big thanks to everyone who checked in the other day and put Adam in his place :P 

Ohh... Don't forget to check out the Digi-Dare this week!  It's my dare and I can't wait to come home and see all of your layouts!!!  (If it isn't up yet, it's because I couldn't remember my blog password so you'll have to wait for Kate to wake up on the other side of the pond)

Lollapalooza Day 3 (and a confession)

I have a confession to make.  I did not take all of these pictures.  You see... I'm just too short...  I set up the camera, and hand it over to Adam, who has 8 inches on me... and he happily shoots away and captures the artists where I just mostly capture the people's hair in front of me....  Don't get me wrong, I took a few.  But Adam took more.  There, I confessed it :P

Sooo... good news is, Lolla day 3 was by far better then Day 1 and 2 combined.  So much great stuff on Sunday!

We had to get there pretty early to see Rodrigo y Gabriela, guitar virtuosos.

 

Then Amy Winehouse was on.  But the sound was pretty crummy so we left to go see ....

Los Campesinos! They were a lot of fun, never heard them before but definitely enjoyed 'em!

Then we got some Italian Ice... heheh 

Apostle of Hustle was next.  I would have liked them a lot more if they could have spared me the politics for a few minutes.

And then, we camped out in front of the stage for Yo La Tengo so we didn't really see anyone for an hour... unfortunately, Iggy Pop was playing at the next stage over and as much as we would have liked to not have heard him.... we were forced to... ugh.

Here's Ira from Yo La Tengo.  Awesome rockstar face, Ira!!  (I actually took this one, we camped out so we were close enough that I didn't have anyone's hair in front of me)

Ohhh... I forgot. Beatle Bob was there to introduce them.  We love Beatle Bob.

As soon as they were done, we high-tailed it over to the other side of the park to catch My Morning Jacket performing with the  Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra.  It was definitely my highlight of the night (and the festival!!), this performance was amazing!!!

well yeah... we were late.. so we were pretty far back.

A few more shots from the night.

TV on the Radio

Cafe Tacuba

Pearl Jam

the end....

Ok, so are you all glad I am done posting my concert pics? 'Cause Adam keeps making fun of me because nobody has commented on any of my Lollapalooza blog posts... :P Come on, some of you like to rock, right?

Lollapalooza Day 2

So an overall review of Lollapalooza so far: Eh....

The lineup is extremely weak compared to last year, and we haven't been blown away by a single performance... pretty sad :(  I hope Perry and crew get their act together and book a better lineup next year, I hear ticket sales were really slow this year because of the super lame lineup. 

This is who we saw Saturday

Pete Yorn

 

A girl blowing bubbles :)

Aqueduct

Lady Gaga......  (Adam's favorite of the day of course .. heheh)

Cold War Kids

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Regina Spektor

and with that, it's off for day 3, today's lineup looked like the best of the three so fingers are crossed  that it'll be great... and that the weather holds up!

Lollapalooza Day 1

I wanted to do a little Day 1 recap but Adam is saying we need to leave right now so you just get pics!

M.I.A.

Silversun Pickups

Blonde Redhead

 

The Black Keys

Femi Kuti and The Positive Force

Daft Punk!

Off for Day 2!!!

Ok, got 'em up!

I don't know what is going off with my Internet connection tonight but it just took me about 2 hours to get these darn things in the store... so please go buy them :P

You can find them right here.

And of course, some sample layouts!

I actually finally finished my last Hawaii page with this collection, now I'm gonna go get a Shutterfly book printed, I can't wait!!!!

Template: Jen Caputo - Sketch Collection #19; Itty Bitty Alpha - Lauren Grier; Everything Else - Shawna Clingerman's Oh the Water kit from the SSD Quarterly Assortment

Did you see that the gorgeous new Songbird Avenue kit is up?  You can buy it here for only $8!  All proceeds benefit the Make a Wish Foundation!!!

Here's the layout I made with it, everything here is in the kit - even the template!!!

Oh one last thing - did you see that Trish Jones is now a Studio Girl?!?!?!  WOoohooo!!!  I hear she's having a sale.