Ding Dong Jerk Returns

Wow I had a horrible sleep last night. I feel asleep first on the couch where I woke up all stiff and yucky. Then moved to the bedroom where I woke up at 2:30 because Ryan had left Steve outside for several hours. He had just come back in and was all happy and excited. So then, at 3:45 the doorbell rings, again. Ryan and Adam both said they didn't hear it. I wanted to call the police, and would have if one more person heard it, but I didn't want to be the crazy person. So anyhow, Steve went outside and barked a bunch. He didn't want to go out because I think he was afraid he'd be locked out there again. But he was my little defender. Adam checked out the front street (Steve actually ran downstairs and woke him up). He said there was a car hovering in the middle of the street a bit of the way down. On hindsight, I probably should have called the police, it looks like we now have a harasser. But I was tired and not thinking straight. Now I have to go to school, give a presentation and wander through the woods. Lucky me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey Dinner today at Junie's house. This was only the second turkey I have ever made, and I must confess I didn't make very much of this one. I could definitely have been called "assistant chef". Dinner was extremely excellent. I haven't experienced too many small Thanksgiving dinners, but this was nice. Just June, Brian, me and Adam. I really wish Ryan was here, but I understand. We'll need to do a small something in a few days when he comes home.

We somehow didn't get any shots of people, just the food. Those sneaky sneakers didn't remind me to take photos of other things. These are my top 3 food photos though. Again, a little unhappy with the indoor quality of my camera (I really need to learn to use that damn thing), but they're still pretty nice.

Scrapbook and Cards Sketch....

Scrapbook and Cards Today is a free magazine, and June pointed out this sketch in it for us to try. So we each did our own version of the layout. Mine is below. I had these photos of me and I liked them, but didn't know what to do with it. It's kind of sort of a me page I guess. I think they are important to do every one and a while. I take a lot of the photos, I'm trying to be in front of the camera a bit more. I finally used up that Making Memories artisan shaped paper. I think I have one more sheet still, but I had tried to use it so many times. Just happy it eventually worked. I like how this turned out, I wish my journaling was a bit more inspirational to go with the quote, but oh well.This photo is hilarious to me. We tried to take a self portrait with the zoom in just a bit too much. This photo is the background on my computer. I just think it's cute. I used Kelli Pannaci's new line and took inspiration from a sheet of the paper. The describing words she had didn't quite work for us, so I'll use the backside of that paper on another layout. I created my own words with some awesome new letters from Basic Grey. The black words are describing Ryan and the brown for me.

Layouts, layouts, layouts!

I've been trying to post for like 3 days now. Something, anything. Blogger refused to let me. So I'm hoping this will go through successfully in the end here. Over the weekend June and I scrapbooked together. All weekend. It was great. I got a lot of stuff done, new and old, and really impressed with pretty much all of it. Sorry for the bad photos, but check out the layouts I finished!Ryan was so proud of this shot he took with his legs and the cabin in the back there. So I hope he likes what I did on the page. This one was actually one of the hardest to do. I had trouble putting stuff in the waves that didn't belong there. I don't know why I needed to be so realistic, and really, flowers and flourishes don't exactly exist in waves either, but oh well.

This one was made with my Studio Calico kit as well. There's a bunch of extras mixed in too. The paper was all from the kit, except the brown sheet. The bright yellow Thickers came from the kit too. I thought they were pretty outrageous, and something I'd never have purchased on my own, but they look great here. I'm still really happy with this kit club thing.

This is th eonly layout I don't really like. I think it's because of how bright it is and that's just not my style. I did use up some super old paper (2005! yay!) so it was a success that way.

Hehe Jenny. I LOVE the big photo on this page. I took it just fooling around, but think it's so neat. I'm not normally so good at blurring out backgrounds. I love the paper line I used here too. Mr. Campy. How wonderful.

I seemed to do a ton of one-pagers this weekend. They are actually my favorite pages too. I don't know if Crystal even knew that Ryan took this photo of me and Hailey. I think it's very cute. I am pretty sure I was grabbing her and telling her if she didn't pay attention and listen to me she was going to fall over the slope and land in the water below. She thought that was funny for some reason. Thanks Jane for the Sass paper, I finally used it!

Crystal took these photos for Ryan and me. I turned them Sepia for no apparent reason, but I like how it turned out. Very soft.

Wow, look at me! So little. What's funnier, is look at my cousins. Styles have changed, that's for sure. Jen gave me the Prima flourish felt piece, and I challenged myself to use it on my very first page of the weekend. I think it fit pretty nicely.

This page is kind of dark, but it was challenging to do with the dark, aging photo. This is one of my last pages to finish for Adam's baby book I started a year ago.

This is a favorite page as well. Basic Grey is so amazing. Thanks June for the chipboard pieces.

Studio Calico is AMAZING

My Studio Calico kit came the other day. I LOVE IT! There's a few pieces I wouldn't necessarily have picked out myself, and may need to push myself to use, but overall I'm really happy with it. Lots of unique pieces. I created this layout within like 10 minutes of opening the box. I'm quite happy with it. The photo is going to go on that big newsprint spot - it's the photo below. I've loved this picture of Grandma Rosie and wanted to do something with it for a long time. I hope that this layout does it justice. I think she looks so beautiful in her fancy coat and gloves. There's still so many more pieces of this kit I need to use up! Gotta find some time!!

Where's the balance?

Wow. My life is all weird lately. There has just been so many changes: house, job, school, new roommate, new pet....... it's crazy. It's hard adjusting to all the new things. My schedule is all different, I get up earlier, I go to bed later, I have new responsibilities, new friends... so i'm going to try to sort it all out. hopefully I'll find balance soon. I'm going to try to post some layouts in the next few days. until then I just need to readjust.

Kit Club

I've been thinking about doing this for a long time. I figured that since I'm doing what I'm doing today I won't be spending much time around a scrapbook store anymore so I thought I'd reward myself with a monthly surprise through the mail. Studio Calico looked like the best bet. ( http://www.studiocalico.com/ ) The kit is $30 USD, and with conversion, shipping and handling all that it was just under $50 a month, but I added up everything in there and that's pretty much what it would cost. It's not all necessarily my style, but I'm kind of excited about that. The stuff is pretty, and beautiful things were made with it, so I'm happy to push myself out of my box, not to mention receive products I wouldn't see here or wouldn't pick up.

Anyhow, that's all I wanted to share :)