A scrap-a-thon

This week I've had the chance to get together two times with friends to scrapbook. I managed to finish 12 layouts and start on a couple more. Every time I get to be creative, it seems I have a favorite. This is my favorite for the week. The photo was taken on Thanksgiving weekend and is so good of all three of them. The 'I love you' in the lower right corner of the photo was an add-on when I had it developed at Scrapbook Pictures. I love how the photos come out when I send them off to SP for developing.

The sketch for the layout came from Pencillines. So many of my layouts are from sketches on that website.

It feels so good to be able to get back to playing with paper and photos and all the goodies I've been hoarding. I'll save the other layouts for another post.

Eleven Years Ago

Eleven years ago today I made one of the top ten best decisions of my life. I married Willie R. McCarley. We had dated for two and a half years. Neither of us wanted to marry again at the time that we met....reluctantly. We had each had long, unhappy previous marriages. And he was 12 years older than I....it didn't bother me, but gave him pause when considering marriage.

The day was clear and cool - a very rare day for Oregon in January. Our immediate family members were gathered for the occasion. We had the ceremony in front of a beautiful rock fireplace in a room at one of the local wineries. Our pastor married us; Willie's son was his best man and my daughter was my maid of honor. The ceremony was simple. Afterwards, we all sat down to a lovely lunch prepared by the owner of the vineyard. We had such fun. There was much laughter and telling of stories.

Later we left for a couple days at the Oregon Coast. When we arrived the sky was clear as crystal and there was a stunning sunset. The whole weekend there was warm with almost no wind - another rarity for that time of year.

I would love to be able to celebrate 11 years of marriage today, but we had only slightly less than 4 years together. I would do it over again in a nano second even knowing that we wouldn't have much time together. Those were some of the happiest years of my life. Thanks for the wonderful memories, Willie.