Late to the party...

 15 August 2009



...but I made it in before midnight for my very talented friend Mary's 30th( oh how I wish!) birthday surprise. I was happy that my name was at the end of the line so I didn't break the chain. ;p
I know that you're a dog person Mary, so I hope you won't mind that I used a pic of my drooling canine for your bday card, hehehe!
Sorry for the rotten pic.. I hadn't taken a photo of this before I left for work this morning, but I promise it looks better irl. :) Hope you had a wonderful day, my dear young thing!

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signs.

 10 August 2009



Sometime last Friday, the diamond in my engagement ring fell out. Needless to say, when I realized it later that evening, I was devastated. I panicked, and called Bob (who was out with friends) sobbing like an idiot. I can't begin to tell you how AWFUL it felt to lose something that has so much meaning to me, even if it's just a little chunk of rock. Yes, I know it's replaceable. In the grand scheme of things, it's really not a big deal, but it hurt all the same. I've combed the house, and so far haven't found it- I kinda have doubts that I ever will. I was all over the place that day, doing errands, cleaning the basement, at my Dad's, on a bike ride through the woods with my kids.. you get the picture. It could have fallen out at any of these places, and I honestly don't remember the last time I actually noticed it was still intact.



Anyway, the point of my little story is this.. That same day, I was in the basement cleaning, and came upon the photo in the layout above. It had somehow fallen out of the plastic box, and God knows how long it had been on the floor, face down and kinda stuck. It's the only copy I have of this photo, and the first thing that came into my mind when I looked at it was that I needed to scrap it ASAP, even in it's sorry state. And then, reminiscing and daydreaming while sitting there, I had the thought that I wasn't yet engaged when it was taken. Weird.


That thought right there, I'm pretty sure, should have been a sign for me to look at my ring at that exact moment. And I didn't.


Next time around, I'm going to try and be aware of those little signs we often ignore, no matter how subtle they are...

eta: If you looked at this post a few hours ago, ( and shame on you for not leaving me a comment! ;p) you probably noticed that I changed my layout a tad- I added that red bracket border, b/c I felt there was something missing. I'm much happier with it now. :)

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A Friday layout

 07 August 2009

Don't hate me, but this week I got to play with the new American Crafts papers. Oh my.

They're AMAZING this time around. I got absolutely giddy when I saw them.

My boss came home from CHA with a big pile, and I begged her to let me take it home to make some store samples. Right now, I'm working on a few Christmas ones, but here's one I made ( about my friend Linda) yesterday with the 'Blue Skies' line, which I'm totally in love with. I mixed this up with some new Thickers and rub-ons from the Christmas line since she didn't have the matching stuff, but I think this goes just fine, don't you? That's the beauty of AC, it pretty much looks good with anything. :)

Have a fabulous weekend, all!



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A Monday challenge..

 03 August 2009

I posted a challenge over on the WCS Flickr discussion board on the weekend to dig into your stash of rub-ons. If you're like me, then you probably have a tonne of unopened ones sitting around and drying up in the package, am I right?
So start rooting through your stuff, and get a quick page scrapped! Post your layouts in the Flickr gallery, or else link me up here. Can't wait to see what you do!
Here's mine... I am happy to report that I used almost an entire package of these adorable Fancy Pants rub-ons on this page, and nothing else. ( and uh..yes, it's the same photo from the layout below.;p I had printed off 2, one with text, and ended up not using it).

Happy Monday!

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Pssst...

 30 July 2009





There's a sweet little Studio Calico give-away today at Write.Click.Scrapbook , where yours truly had a chance to work with one of their kits for the first time ever. I can say that I was more than a little intimidated by this kit, being the very simple scrapper that I am, but I'm happy with the way my pages turned out. And I haven't been to the Studio Calico site yet to see what the DT girls did with this kit (again, the intimidation factor) but I'm sure they've worked it pretty awesomely. So head on over to theWCS site, and leave a comment for a chance to win some funky stuff. It will challenge you, I guarantee it!

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Hello...

 20 July 2009

So, yeah... it's been more than a month since I posted anything here. A huge thank you to everyone who emailed me, concerned about my health and well being, since I seemed to pretty much drop off the face of the earth these past weeks! I had family visiting in June and July, ( a rare occurence, since they all lve in far off places) and was kept very busy entertaining, cooking, chauffeuring, and sight-seeing. It was great fun, if not exhausting, so once my brother and his kids left last week, we hotfooted it up north that same day for a week of much needed R&R. I did absolutely nothing but snooze, eat, drink, read, and repeated that formula pretty much every day- no internet, no tv. Absolutely 100% unplugged, and I survived. The kids and hubs fished, fished and fished, and caught nothing to speak of. ;p Our weather was not so great, with lots of rain and cold- so cold that we had to turn on the heat a few nights, in MID -JULY folks. It got warmer towards the middle of the week, so I did manage to do a bit of dock sitting and just look out at the beautiful lake. I wish everyone could experience that kind of medicine when they're as burnt out as I was.


This will be a photo heavy post, because I've taken a million and one photos in the past month, so here goes...


'Ovechkin' and 'Brodeur' fishing. It was all about the fishing. The big one eluded them though.



canoeing on the lake while Mom hovered on the dock, stressed that they'd tip over. They didn't.

Paddleboating on a semi-sunny day.


My attempt at a sunless 'sunset' shot. The clouds never quite went away all week.




Two of my 3 obsessed fisherman.



I have many more Lake photos that I won't bore you with. Or maybe I will, once I get them uploaded and sorted through. ;)


I love this shot I took of Bobby playing baseball one night a few weeks back. I took it through the chainlink fence with my 85 mm lens, and miraculously, you can't see the fence at all. This lens is such a beauty. I kiss it often.




This is my brother's daughter, who I haven't seen since she was a wee baby. To say I was obsessed with taking her photo would be a bit of an understatement.. She's such a beauty, and all I could think about were the girly layouts I could do... :p








And my adorable nephew... he's 3, and all boy- could eat this kid up with a spoon!




Last but not least, a shot of my fashion concious pre-teen... he's getting huge. Feet are bigger than mine now, size 10's. Geez.



Here's a few layouts I did recently, which you may or may not have seen on the WCS site. The first was done for the July colour theme, and the 2nd was a sketch/ad inspiration from my dear friend & scrapper extraordinaire Linda.





Have I redeemed myself? Here's hoping I can make it back here before another month passes... ;p



Thanks for reading!

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back to the land of the living

 13 June 2009

Well, I've survived what has quite possibly been the busiest month of my entire life, and the most sleep deprived as well.

Since I last posted here, I have packed, moved, and then unpacked my Dad into his new apartment, managed by some miracle to get the Grade 6 yearbook finished VERY under the gun, all the while trying to maintain our crazy busy lives. And all this being done mostly without my dh around, who was away on numerous long business trips all month, the start of baseball season for both kids, and my regular job. I've had to come up with some pretty creative and last minute ideas about how to pick the kids up from daycare after work @ 5:30, get them home to feed them, and out the door by 6:05 to two different parks at the same time without the better half here to help. Haha! There were some days I thought I would be certifiable if the chaos kept up any longer.

I haven't had a second to think about scrapbooking, or taking photos, or gardening, or doing anything for myself this past month. I'm so happy that it's all over. Now I can get back to my own life. It was a draining project, much bigger and challenging than I originally thought it would be. I'm happy to have done it, because I would never go back on my word, but there were many times that I was this close to wanting to ditch the entire thing. And so,I'm marking my words here: I will never take on a project like that ever again!



Here's a card I made for one of my AC projects for last month. I really think I was subconciously making this for myself at the time. ;)





I'll be back soon, once my house looks less like a hurricane came through it...

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