Christmas in Sept.

SO I am getting a head start!! I made a set of Christmas cards, and thanks to some infor on the MB at Sugar N' Spice scrapbook, there is a GREAT blog with a tutorial on making 9 cards from 3 sheets of cardstock and 2 patterned papers. It is is one of the best tutorials I have seen! Here is the link:

http://funkyphreshpapierkreations.blogspot.com/2007/07/quick-cards_08.html

So here are the cards that I made...and if you are family or friends, you can expect on this xmas!! :)

World Alzheimer’s Day..

After reading this blog by Cammie and the reason behind the cause, it made me think of my Grandpa who also had Alzheimers. The last couple years were really bad. I remember one holiday (maybe Thanksgiving) when he just stopped eating and just looked around the table. I knew he didn't know where he was. He asked my brother Brian who he was...

Anyway, I understnad this disease and it is very difficult to deal with.

So here is my card that I made and that I am going to send to the caregivers at the home for all the hard work that they do.

I am glad that I have a creative outlet like scrapbooking to help preserve all my memories, because you never know if you will always have them...

What a weekend!!!!

Ok, so I scrapped this ENTIRE weekend, thanks to the online crop at A Walk Down Memory Lane. I made so many projects! Here are some of the LO's I did:

These first two were for the Harvest of Memories Crop. One was to do an Autumn LO, and you had to use some of the fonts that were supplied. Here is mine from our Thanksgiving Dinner last year:


This one was from the Old is New again challenge, and we had to use paper that was at least a year old. I used this OLD DCWV paper that was from about 4 or 5 years ago. It was one of the first paper packs I ever bought!
But I added some newer items like the flower from MM, the ribbon from BG, and the glitter accents and journaling spot from LYB Delightful. Oh, and the letters are very old SEI stickers, too! But I just LOVE the way this came out!



This LO wasn't for a challenge, but I finished it on Friday:



OK, then one more project1 I did this for the "altered items" challenge at the crop, but now that I think about it, I guess it isn't really an "altered item". They are four, 12x12 frames with the autumn cut outs on them. I plan on grouping them on a wall and changing them with the seasons, or maybe just putting some of my regular LO's in there.

Harvest of Memories Crop at AWDML...

So this weeked is the Harvest of Memories Crop at A Walk Down Memory Lane. Some of the challenges included making some mini albums, which I did!! These were such FUN albums to make. The accordian albums were a great way to use 2-sided paper. I used Cosmo Cricket and Crate papers for these:

Happiness Album






OH Boy! album







I also did the 6x6 folded album which I think I am going to use to make some gifts for Christmas! I have an old DCWV 6 x 6 paper pack which will work GREAT for this!
I am going to give this as a gift, but I can't say to whom in case they are reading this! :)

Orange and Brown Album






I am working on a few more and I will share later!

More from the SNS kit..

I used more stuff from the SNS kit and continued to be inspired by Kimmy's use of product packaging! I used the package from some EK Success Ribbons. I covered the chipboard with the wood knot paper. I then took the clear owl and glued it to a piece of cardstock to make it stand out more. I adhered it with foam dots. I downloaded a font from www.fontspace.com called "Separates" and cut it out of orange Bazzil cardstock on with my Cricut. I cleaned up the sticker off the clear plastic using Un-Du and painted the edges a dark brown. I glued the plastic cover on the chipboard. I then used some floral wire covered with a raffia type covering and hot glued the wire to the back to use as a hanger. Finally, I tied on some of the twill ribbon too!

Rough Draft sketch..

I used the sketch from the Rough Draft blog to do this LO. I am submitting it for their DT call. I also used my SNS kit for all the papers and embellies!

Now for some scrappy stuff!!!

I have been working FOREVER on a mini album from our trip to New Orleans. It is almost finished, and I WANT to finish it tomorrow!

I used more of the SNS Sept. Kit and made this cute little Owl Box using the Maya Road box, and other items from the kit. I am not sure WHOO I am going to give it to, yet...




I also used an idea from a member of the SNS Design Team, Kimmy, that she had about using the packaging from the scrappin products you get. So I took the packaging from a Cosmo Cricket black chipboard album, took the clear plastic off and saved the back. I covered the chipboard with paper, and put on a black tree that I had cut using the Quick Cutz dies at my LSS, the Lonestar Scrapbooking Company. Then I glued the ghost to the inside of teh clear packaging. I threaded a ribbon inside to make a bow, and brought it out the back to be able to hang it on a wall. Finally, I added some more ribbon, and the "Boo". The patterned papers are from MME, and the glitter papers are Doodlebug.

We made it...

Well, we made it through, but we are not completely out of the woods yet!

The storm was like nothing I have ever experienced before! I was very prepared, though, for the worst to happen! Since this was my first hurricane, I wanted to make sure that we were prepared for the storm and for possible tornadoes afterwards. I put together a box of food, a can opened, flashlights, blankets, and axe and crowbar, and lots of containers of water and had them ready to go under the stairs in our big closet. We also filled all the tubs, and had things ready for the pets, too.




The wind started whirling at around noon on Friday. It really started to pick up at around 7 pm. I took some video about every three hours, and I am going to try to put it together in a little clip. The storm was at it's peak between 12 and 4 am, so I didn't get video then. I went to bed around midnight and the power went out around 3, i think. The wind was like nothing you've ever heard. The house alarm started to go off at around 5 am becuase of low battery. It was eerily quiet and we realized that the eye was passing over us. Keith's friend Dan called us at 5:15 (6:15 NY time) to see how we were doing. It was the last cell phone connection we could make for at least 24 hours because the lines were busy or down. It was still raining pretty hard when we woke up. The yard was pretty much flooded, and we had a surprise in our backyard!!!!





Things finally started to calm down around 3 pm on Sat., so we went out for a drive in the neighboorhood to see how bad it was. There were trees down everywhere and so much debris. But the other odd thing is that there were SOOO many people out and about, riding bikes, walking their dogs, and just driving around! I have a video that I am making off all the damage that we saw.

So we went without power for FOUR days and it seemed like an eternity!!! All of the food in our fridge and freezer we had to eat or cook! This included our wedding cake topper that we were saving for our anniversary on Oct. 13. It had made the trip down from NY to TX, but couldn't survive IKE. We ate it at our neighbors house and shared it with some friends. My neighbor took some pics of use eating the cake, so you can expect a LO on that sometime in the future.

It was nice to get to bond with the neighbors and some other friends who came over, but I was anxious for the power to come on. Deb and Mike lent us their generator on Monday after their power came on. We used to it watch TV, but we didn't have cable, so it wasn't great. But at least we had the fridge!

It is Thursday, now, and we still haven't been able to go to the grocery store and get some real food...many of them are closed still, and so are many of the gas stations. I have heard that some areas around me are not supposed to get their power back until after this coming Monday! This had been a long process for many in this area, and I can't even imagine how those people who lost everything are feeling!

Well, that is it for IKE! I will post some scrappy stuff, soon!

yIKEs

OK, so here we are awaiting Hurricane IKE. It is going to be scary, and I am second guessing if we should have stayed...but we did, and we are prepared. We are going to start to see some real bad winds in a couple hours, around 6 pm. I am going to take some video periodially and then make a little vid clip of the whole event. This is a slow moving storm.

But since I had the day off, I have been scrapbooking!

I made two LO's today using my new SNS kit. You can see the kit HERE


Woo Hoo!


Take Flight

PUBLISHED..

OMG I almost forgot....two exciting things happened to me this week. On Tuesday, I was searching on some of the sites that I frequent, and I saw that my LO was selected from the gallery of "A Walk Down Memory Lane" and featured on the blog: You can see it on the August 25th post.

Then, on Thursday, I got an email from Scrapbook News and Review that my LO's of Chloe were selected for publication on their Pets section! It will be in Issue #6, and I am SOOOOOO excited. You can see some of my Chloe LO's in a post I made in March '08.

I went to Lonestar...

which is my local LSS on Friday night. I spent more time shopping then I did working...that is why I hate to go there! Well, I don't really hate it...it is a love/hate thing, really...

I worked on a LO of Keith and then I started a mini album on our New Orleans trip back in April...it is going to take me a while to finish it. I am so excited b/c this Sat. is the 12 hour crop at my house, which means I don't have to lug everything around! I am going to try to finish that album and do some other things. I hope that I get my SNS kit by then!!

I am so miffed...my scanner is not working right at all, and I had some other LO's to scan. I think I prefer scanning better than taking pics, although with PSE 6, you can make anything look good.

Well, I finished a LO about my new classroom as shown in the photos in a previous post. I used PencilLines sketch (I think it is #98?) and it was also for a challenge on SNS, for which I was the only one who submitted, and Summer sent me a RAK. Thanks Summer!

So here is my LO about school: Room 223. The strange thing is that at my old school i was 232...weird.

Pencil Lines 100th sketch!

Here was my take of the 100th sketch on Pencil Lines 100th sketch! I loved the circles in this LO and I wanted to do it right away!

Forgot about these!

I did some LO's last weekend and I forgot that I did them!! OMG I must be stressed from work to forget that I even did these! I put them up on a shelf to let them dry, and I found them again this am. For some reason, I have been doing a lot of 2 pg LO's..i guess it is just b/c all the photos I have and I am trying to get them all in.

Keith said that it should be "artS & crafts". He may be right (for once :) ) The girls (our neices)were so cute when we went to the park to do the crafts. I got so into it, though! I was going all out trying to make them these paper crowns, and they were like "Just gimme it!"....ah, must've been the scrapper in me trying to make it perfect!







This was from a while ago..this is/was our yearly golf tourney at the end of the school year at Chittenango. It was captin and crew, and the four of us: Lisa, Jason, Kevin, and myself, were always a team...I will really miss everyone!