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.

Grammy Love

I got to spend four days with Sara, Greg and Eli over Thanksgiving. Eli and I got to spend quite a bit of time together and even had about 3 hours alone one day when Greg and Sara went shopping.

Sara and I shopped for a Christmas dress and found a very understated one on sale at Hannah Andersen's. Of course, Grammy had to get the red and white tights with the red ruffles on the bum and the red patent leather shoes to match. Then we trekked over to Pioneer Square for a photo with Santa. Eli wasn't afraid of him, but was too intent on all the lights and people to smile. It was a sweet photo anyway. Santa said Eli told him she wanted a Harvard Law degree and a Mazaratti. Sara thought that was perfect.

Eli is mobile - either rolls over and over or pushes herself backwards to get where she wants to go. It's just a matter of time before she's crawling. Her two bottom teeth are just sharp enough to hurt if she bits down when sucking on your hand or fingers. She's enjoying peas, squash and rice cereal - not too sure about avocado. She's such a happy, contented baby. Goes with the flow most of the time. She'll be 7 months old on the 7th - how can that be possible?
I'm so grateful to be close enough to see her at least once a month.

Chicago

I spent most of last week in Chicago for a convention. The city, like most cities, is a study in contrasts - wealth and poverty, skyscrapers and parks, traffic and solitude, white, black and everyone in between. I love the energy of a large city, but really crave the peace of my small town that I call home.

The next to the last evening I was there, I took a walk in the park across from my hotel over to the edge of Lake Michigan. It was cool, but not the bracing cold I had expected, and there was a slight wind. The trees were bare and the grass had turned that dirty shade of greenish-brown. Just yards from one of the busiest streets in downtown Chicago there were birds and squirrels. The further I walked into the part, the more faint the traffic became. It was lovely. The photo above was the entrance to a bridge that spanned the rail system that connects parts of Chicago. I love the old lightposts and globes. I could almost imagine this spot a hundred years ago with children playing and adults strolling arm in arm.

Today I'm home again where I walk along much quieter streets, where I know my neighbors and they know me, where people do not rush along the sidewalks on their way to important meetings. I'm glad I had the chance to experience Chicago, but I am even more grateful to be home.

I'm on a Roll

Even tho I'm home with a cold, I still have enough energy to scrapbook. That's a good thing since I have a million photos and almost as many supplies. This layout was done from a sketch on Pencillines.
If you've never checked them out, you should - they post a new sketch every Sunday and have several designers create a page from it. The photos were taken on Eli's 4 month birthday in a lovely park in Portland. The patterned papers were from this month's Cocoa Daisy kit. Really like how it came out.
I have another layout almost finished using last month's Cocoa Daisy kit. I'm definitely on a roll!

Using the Cocoa Daisy kits

During the summer I did very little scrapbook-ing as I spent so much time in the garden. I'm suddenly overrun with supplies from my monthly kits. Yikes! So I've been on a scrapbooking binge. At the rate I'm using papers it could be next year sometime before I've caught up with them.

This layout has photos that Sara took of Eli on her 4 month birthday. She has quite the variety of expressions. At first, I thought I would put descriptive words in the pp blocks, but decided the photos are too cute to draw attention away from them. So, here you are you doll baby in all your happiness.

This One's for Eric

I realized when I was looking through my recent scrapbook layouts that I didn't have any with my son in them. Now, that is partially because I have so few recent photos of him. However, I do have quite a few of his years growing up. So, I have remedied it. This is of his family dinner celebration when he graduated from high school - only 23+ years ago. Hmmm....maybe I better do a few more.