MiniBullyMom's Musings

Moving the Blog!!!

2009-12-14T00:58:00.000-08:00

Well...after 48 hours of frustration I decided to move my blog over to Wordpress.

Click on the title of this post or just click HERE to check out my new blogging home!

OMG....talk about mmmmm, mmmmm, good!

2009-12-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

A blogger I know who is also a Hockey Mom posted a link on her blog recently that I just can't resist passing on! Girls, if you didn't like hockey before you might now and if you liked it before you'll love the hockey eye candy!!! Pssst....there is a link to more below the photo.

Click HERE and look for the "Hockey Porn" she blogged about on December 9th!

Christmas Around the World Quickpage Freebie

2009-11-25T18:55:00.000-08:00

For the past two years digital scrapbooking designers from all around the world team up and offer freebies. The designer that normally organizes the Christmas Around The World (CATW) Blog Train is not organizing it this year. Instead there is a master blogpage (which can be found by clicking on the link HERE) that has been set up and bloggers are welcome to submit links to their freebies there. I figured I'd create a quickpage to give away from elements that were part of last years CATW kit. I could not find a background paper that I liked so I ended up creating one in order to complete the page.

Check back often during the month of December as I'm planning on having several other free quickpages available for downloading.

Download Link HERE

Great Hockey Shots with the new camera

2009-11-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

When I was in Hawaii I received my new Canon Rebel Xsi camera and couldn't wait for hockey season to start so I could get some great shots of the kids. I haven't sat and read the manual so I really haven't been able to get any good shots from the kids first five games. On Sunday I got lucky up at the Kingsgate Arena where we were playing Sno-King Green. The lighting was awesome and I managed to snag a spot between the red and blue lines where the glass didn't have too many scuffs or scratches. I posted a bunch on my Facebook page but decided to share a couple of the good ones I took of Christina and Alex. I'm hoping to have a chance over the holiday weekend to read up on the settings so that the photos will continue to improve.

Velvet's First Homecoming

2009-11-22T23:01:00.000-08:00

My niece is growing up so fast. Last year was her first formal dance. My sister went all out making sure it was a night to remember. She had her hair and makeup done professionally.

The minute I saw Scrappin Mommy's Autumn Splendor kit I knew it would be the perfect for showcasing this photo. You can pick it up at Divine Digital for only $2.50 right now. Angela did a great job creating this kit, it was her first time participating in Divine Digital's "PROject COLOUR". There is a unique flexibility with the kit which can appeal to those who prefer a bit of elegance yet those who enjoy a country feel to their layouts would find this a great addition to their digital stash.

WOOHOO!! Divine Digital is up and running again after being hacked!!

2009-11-06T12:11:00.000-08:00

After a week of hard work most of the site is up and running again. Royanna and partners have got some great deals going on too! Everyone will need to re-register and those that do before Midnight EST on Saturday will be eligible for a special prize.

Today is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of their Daily Download for November 1-15! Since the site was down and only back "up" today Royanna has activated the free download links for Days 1-6 for today only!!! This is a once in a lifetime chance to get almost half the kit all at once!

Here is a preview and the LINK to the kit

I also finished a second page using Lynne Simmon's Snappy Scrap Template Kit

and Sava Scrap's Autumn Harvest Kit

both of which will be available in DivineDigital's Boutique once its up and running later this weekend.

My sister-in-law shared this photo with me last weekend and I immediately knew it was time to create a scrapbook page just for the two of them.

Journaling
Melissa and David

After so many years they love each other even more than the day they met.
Plymouth, MA 2009

Hackers just peeve me off!!!

2009-11-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

Well...due to hackers Divine Digital's website is down. It was completely destroyed earlier this week and will probably take a couple of weeks for them to get everything restored. Which means that they may end up missing out on all the Digital Scrapbooking Day activities. For the first time I actually thought about how a hacker can literally destroy an online business. For all intents and purposes if it had been a brick and mortar store hackers are the equivalent of a burglar who breaks into a store and vandalizes everything to the point that they can't reopen for business for weeks or months. Hopefully they will catch the hacker and punish them accordingly.

Autumn Harvest Digital Kit

by Sava Scraps

Snappy Scrap Template Set 1

by Lynne Simmons

Tonight while we have been watching scary movies I sat here and worked on this layout. I wasn't sure what direction I wanted to go other than using a template with the layout. Once I got started everything just started falling in place and I knew exactly what photos I wanted to use. We rebuilt the driveway gate two years ago and for some oddball reason I didn't remember to take before and after photos only a few during the rebuild. Mike and Alex gave me a hard time about taking these ones.

DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING DAY is coming!!

2009-10-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.divinedigital.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=743

WOOHOO!!! Only two weeks til DSD 2009....everyone over at DivineDigital is participating and they have some wonderfull chats and challenges planned! I can't wait it's a day of Digital Scrapbooking Freebies and Goodies Galore!

I've been busy scrapping today!

2009-10-16T23:17:00.000-07:00

I downloaded Cindi Ritter's "Spirit of Joy" kit over at Divine Digital. At first I thought this was just another religious themed kit but upon a closer look I realized that it wasn't. It contains a striking combination of flowers, butterflies and flourishes coupled with ten beautiful papers. There are two paper clip/ribbon combinations and a binder clip cluster along with a purple rose, tag and word art cluster. Other than what inspired the designer to create the kit there is nothing remotely religious about it. She has even designed a FREEBIE add-on and the link can be found below!

I ended up with this first layout which I used as part of the
Use It! Challenge over at Hummiesworld.

Then created this second one focused on Christina and her Preschool Teacher at Christina's high school graduation. Robin is a good friend of our family and we told her years ago that she had better plan on attending all of Christina's graduations. High school is done and we are now off to college.

I've decided that I like this kit so much that I'm probably going to do a couple layouts using my photos from Hawaii trip.

So for those of you who are looking for the freebie here you are!!

FREEBIE DOWNLOAD LINK to CINDI's BLOG!!

Twilight Zone

2009-10-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Well....I'm not a "Twilight Zone" (the show/movie) fan but I am a fan of the "Twilight" series of books and the "Twilight Zone" kit designed by Christine Mortimer of DIGI_licious Designs. She also designed the wonderful little "button/typewriter key" looking alpha to coordinate with it.

Christine took inspiration from the colors used on the book covers. She gave it a soft, grungy feel with delicate elements that lend a vintage feel to the kit. I enjoyed playing with the papers and came up with the following layout without much thinking. It's not "DONE" quite yet, there is something it needs but I'm not quite sure what it is. Sometimes I sit on a layout and it' hits me later as to what needs changed. Once I figure it out I'll post the revised version here too.

What grabbed my attention to the kit first was the colors...although I will have to admit being partial to black, red and white anyways.

She did create the most awesome halloween quickpage from her "Bewitched & Spellbound" Kit that she is giving away as a freebie!

CLICK HERE for the BLOG LINK to her FREEBIE

Wow....it's hard to believe that fall is here!

2009-09-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

Life has been real crazy at our house this past weekend for me. I worked out at the Washingtonian's for Wildlife Conservation booth at the Fair on Thursday night, Friday the dogs went to the vet for some long overdue checkups. Hemi has been limping due to a strained muscle and Tina apparently has an ear infection and a urinary tract one. So $150 in prescriptions later they are both on the mend. Although I have discovered that pet medications are definintely cheaper online!!! If I had purchased them online they would have only cost me about $50. But I did save over $600 on their checkups by joining Banfield Animal Hospital's Wellness Plan. We signed up for the Basic plus for Tina since it includes a yearly teeth cleaning. We signed Hemi up for the Basic this year and will swap it over to the Basic Plus next year. Kiwi isn't signed up yet but we will probably sign her up next year. They all needed shots and boosters this year and Kiwi will be due for boosters next year. We had plans to go watch Daniel's (Christina's best friend) football game but we got out of the vet to late. I spent Saturday doing stuff around the house, grocery shopping, relaxing and reading and promptly fell asleep around 11pm.
This morning I decided that some of the yardwork on the street side of the house needed to get done. It has beauty bark and as such every few years we need to replace all of it. About two years ago the waterline broke and they had to tear out part of the retaining wall and a 3 foot trench across the sideyard to the house. We should have redid the beauty bark after that but didn't. Then this summer I decided that we either needed to redo the bark this fall or rip up all the overgrown weeds and plant grass. I figured either way we needed to rip out the weeds so I got started on it. five hours later I had it about a third of the way done with the hardest part of it being knocked out. While doing all of it I decided that we would plant grass instead of beauty bark. This is the best time of the year to plant it because the root system has until next summer to develop. I also realized that if we do beauty bark I'd probably be weeding and that grass was just easier to mow.
Now every night this week (rain or shine) I'm going to have to be out there finishing up the project and getting the grass seed planted before it gets much cooler during the daytime.

A Weekend Getaway and I did some digiscrapping!!

2009-09-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

Well Mike and I are celebrating our 19th anniversary today! We took off camping for the weekend, some people think that's weird but then we went camping on our honeymoon. This is the first year we have actually went away the weekend of our anniversary. In previous years our anniversary either fell on a weekday or we had hockey commitments and for many years we just "went to the fair" together. After going online to make the reservations last weekend we realized all of our favorite places were booked solid and that we could either go to one of the Tacoma Power Parks on Alder Lake or try some place new. We opted for someplace new and made a reservation at Tacoma Power's Taidnapam Park. When we first arrived we weren't quite sure about the site we had but by Saturday morning we fell in love with the park. We were in the "older" loop of the two camping loops. Our site was in total shade all weekend which was nice considering the temps were in the mid 80's all weekend. Technically our site backed up to the lake but there was a trail between our site and the lake. The trail was far enough away and on the other side of a dense stand of shrubs/trees which meant that people on the trail couldn't see into our site or inadvertently wander into it. We walked down to the boat launch in the park yesterday and played alongside it with the dogs. They have already closed this launch for the season because they have already started dropping the resevoir levels.

Digital Kit Credit

Clarissa by BooLand Designs available at Stone Accents Studios

on Monday, September 14th

Since Mike works graveyard and I work days our schedules are pretty much completely opposite. When we go camping he tries to compensate by going to bed around 3am and getting up by noon and I stay up later than normal. No matter how much I try to sleep late in the morning by 8:30am I'm wide awake and the dogs are getting restless. So I take them for long morning walks and spend time digiscrapping until Mike wakes up. I was able to get three pages completed yesterday morning and even turned one of them into a quickpage.

Digital Kit Credit

Clarissa by BooLand Designs available at Stone Accents Studios

on Monday, September 14th

I created the third page from the Suddenly Sunset kit designed by Kim of Kimeric Kreations. I liked it so much that I decided to turn it into a quickpage.

Digital Kit Credits

Suddenly Sunset

available at digitop3.com

Here is the quickpage. I decided to leave the center section blank

so that users can add journaling, a title or a quote.

You can download the quickpage HERE

Waikiki Sunsets and a Free Bamboo Alpha

2009-09-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Credits

Kit -The Places We'll Go by Royanna Fritschmann

Alpha - KR Bamboo by Kat's Fun Fonts

Decided to start scrapping some of my photos from my "work retreat" in Waikiki this past week. We sat and watched the sunset on the beach right outside our hotel twice and played in the surf afterwards. The first evening down there a young student approached us with leis that they were taking donations for to help offset volleyball tournament costs. We were suckers and forked over $10 each even though we could have walked down the beach to Dukes and bought them for $5 each. But it was for a "good cause" we figured even if it was just spending money for the students.

I downloaded the Bamboo shaped font at FontSpace.com Click HERE for the download link.

Wow he cleans up nicely!!

2009-09-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

For a couple of years now Mike has admired the "Charlie Sheen look" on Two and a Half Men. When I went to Palm Springs last year for a work meeting he asked me to find him one of those bowling shirts. Well I about croaked when I found one he liked and it was $180 (Nat Nast) and he immediately informed me that I was not to buy it. So I've went online a couple of times and bid on a couple of nice silk bowling shirts for him but refused to pay more than $30 for one sight unseen. So when the boss took us to Hawaii for a staff retreat (instead of Arizona in October) I decided that I was going to really look for one of those shirts again. I found several at Moonbow Tropics (store in the hotel lobby) but they were all Nat Nast's and started at $145. I really didn't find any that he would like at the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet on Saturday morning. Then I hit paydirt at Macy's at the Pearl Ridge Shopping Center on Saturday afternoon. I was able to get him a 100% Vintage Silk Bowling Shirt in their "Island Style" section for only $30 on sale and after my Macy's Card Discount. I had four different ones in my hand but knew that this was "the one" that he would love the best. Then on Tuesday we decided to take a trip around the island and stopped at the Premium Outlet Mall in Waikele. At the Tommy Bahama Store I scored a pair of $100 Tommy Bahama's casual leather sneaker/loafers from their "Relax" line for 75% off. He came out looking pretty sharp. Although he still thinks he needs to wear socks like Charlie does in the show.

Suddenly Sunset

2009-09-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

Well Kim has designed another wonderful kit and as a result I couldn't resist creating another quickpage for her. I'm going to use the quickpage for a heritage layout. There are a couple ideas for another quickpage I'm mentally tossing around out of this kit. To top it all off the kit is currently ON SALE at DigiTop3 for only $2.99!!! Here is the LINK to the full kit.

Here is the quickpage I was telling you about. It's a great page for those multiple photo layouts yet leaves enough space for a bold title and journaling.

Download HERE

I've been out of touch for the past week...

2009-09-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

...but the Punkin Patch Quickpage is still available below. I was excited to find out this morning that Digital Freebies has posted a link to my quickpage. I've been in Hawaii the past week and been decompressing royally. Since I got here last week I have only checked email three times which is totally abnormal for me I generally check it three times in one day. I knew that there was a reason to quickly check my email this morning. Today we head home and my plan is to create a couple of more quickpages on my 6 hour flight home with a kit called Suddenly Sunset that Kim has designed. Thanks for visiting and come back soon I'll have more quickpages to offer.

No one can ever say Christina is a wimp

2009-08-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

We have done some crazy things while camping but this one probably is up there with some of the craziest things we've done when bored. Christina obviously has immense trust in her boyfriend.

It's hard to believe that fall is almost here!

2009-08-16T20:09:00.001-07:00

It's sneaking up quickly and I just realized that the kids start school in about three weeks! Everyone is wanting to enjoy these final days of summer. Here in the Pacific Northwest we've had a pretty hot, dry summer this year. I joke with family members who live in the Midwest and East Coast that we've swapped weather. They are having a milder summer with temperatures in the 80's instead of the 90's. After a couple of days of mid to high 60's weather we are supposed to hit the mid 80's this coming week. But since its Washington and Labor Day weekend is quickly approaching it means that summer will be coming to an end and we will go back to being the happy, blue-tarp, campers you see on the PEMCO commercials.

I have had a fun week playing with Kim's Punkin Patch kit and I am excited to say that she gave me permission to create a quickpage and share it with everyone. Please take a moment to visit her blog and check out her other designs and you can even download a freebie or two there!!

Click HERE TO DOWNLOAD the quickpage!

It's raining and I have a fall freebie!!

2009-08-13T22:52:00.001-07:00

....it's pouring and the thunder was a rollin'. Yup we got a bit of "Midwestern style" thunder today here in Washington State. Unfortunately I missed it all because I was up in our front office area at work and there are no windows in that section of the office. But from what I hear it was a pretty rollicking storm....Mike was in seventh heaven and said it felt like the storms in Indiana.

I did a couple of layouts this week that used what I call "folksy/country" looking elements. Normally I don't like this particular style but the preview I saw of it just caught my eye and I immediately knew that I had to have it and that I would use it to do a layout about one of our trips to the Pumpkin Farm/Corn Maze a couple years ago. The kit is called Punkin Patch and was designed by Kimeric Kreations.

I saw that there was a free add-on for the kit which included a cute "grapevine" style wreath at Kim's blog so I snagged it and created this layout which features a photo of my baby brother (yes he is sticking his tongue out in the photo)...I'm still playing around with the layout itself since it's "not quite right to me" but everyone else seems to think it's perfect just like it is.

The kit is available at
DigiTop3
ScrapItSassy
Bouqet of Pixels

When I ordered the kit I didn't realize that the chicken wire was part of the preview packaging. So I emailed her and asked if she would consider including the wire or create an add-on. Turns out that she thought that was a great idea so she has a cute FREE ADD-ON you can pick up by zipping over to her blog.
The link for the freebie is HERE

All Stitched Up!!!

2009-08-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

Alpha, Background Paper and Elements designed by Royanna Fritschmann

Border from Vivaldi Seasons by CanDesigns

Saturday evening proved to be rather interesting as you can see from the photo. Miss Camryn has no fear and thinks that anything her brothers can do she can do. The difference is that they are about 5 and 6 years older than she is. Well somehow she fell off the skateboard tabletop and landed right on her chin. Thank goodness for bike helmets or she probably would have landed right on her nose or forehead.
I decided that because Camryn is such a tomboy that I would use papers/elements that one would normally use for a boy's layout. But since I could not find one kit that had everything in it I ended up using about four different kits that were all designed by Royanna Fritschmann. The border cluster I picked up a couple years ago from a Designer Challenge and I have been unable to find it again.

I was poking around Hummiesworld earlier this evening and noticed that Binty had posted a free template. So I went and checked it out and was totally amazed at it's versatility and the fact that she does it in three different sizes - The 5x7 size is perfect for brag books and you can get the template HERE!!!

New look to my blog and a link to a freebie!!

2009-08-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

I decided that the "stock" Blogger template was boring earlier today. But I knew that I wasn't tech saavy enough to customize it myself. So I got to poking around the internet and found out that I could change it using a template not supplied by Blogger. I did a Google search and found Amanda, a blogger who designs templates and provides instructions on how to install, use and customize them further. So I downloaded her "Gourmet Menu" from the "Blogger Buster". She has links to great templates and provides simple instructions which make it easy to upgrade and customize your blogs! Now I think I'm going to go see if I can find one for the Smith Family Blog I'm considering starting.

I ran across the most awesome freebie tonight from GallimaufryUK.
She has designed the most awesome coastal series of kits.
We go camping at the ocean a couple of times a year so it's perfect for some of my photos.
Get the details on the freebie HERE!!

The lazy days of summer...

2009-08-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

...are in full swing everywhere else but here. Every year I tell myself that life will slow down when hockey season winds down but it never seems to do that. I think it's because we put off doing a bunch of stuff until the "off-season". Toss in a family reunion, garage roofing, upgrading some wiring, reseed or rebark half the lawn on top of all the normal stuff we do during the summertime. It just gets overwhelming and then we do a bit of this and a bit of that. The scary part is that none of it gets totally done. But I can say that about 10 other "little projects" that aren't part of the big projects do end up getting done.
One of the major "little projects" I recently completed was unzipping, organizing 7 gigs of digital scrapbooking stuff. I still have 3 gigs left, although I did clean out over 15 gigs of freebies that I never bothered to unzip/use in anyway. I've about decided that I'm only going to download what I'll use and that I can't download something else until I use what I downloaded last. Not sure how long I'll last with that mindset but I fully admit that digiscrapping is an addiction. I knew that I was taking a chance five years ago when I started paper scrapping and now I'm three years into digiscrapping. But I have well over 200 pages completed (although I've only printed about 50) and have started a Family Scrapbook for one branch of my family.
Now hockey season is starting up and I've decided that the constant "scheduling" we do during those 8 months help me stay on task and as a result I get more done. Go figure I guess I need the structure not free time.
Although I do admit that I get more scrapping done when we go camping during the wintertime. I think it's because generally it's just my husband and I camping without anyone else and we just relax and don't have the internet to distract us.
Now about those big projects....I think I need to make sure we complete at least one of them before the end of the year. I need to make a New Years Resolution in the middle of August to complete the garage roof this year - since we've talked about getting it done for the past two years - and now that I've made a resolution I need to get to work on it.....well after I finish organizing/tagging two more digital kits and worked on the mental planning on the next layout I'm going to complete using some photos we took at the Corn Maze about 5 years ago.

Home Again

2009-07-22T19:42:00.001-07:00

Well....I have been busy for the past two weeks getting ready for the family reunion in Lodi, CA which was held this past weekend. It was a blast and I was able to scan well over 200 photos plus items of my Great, Great Grandparents which were in a scrapbook brought by one of my cousins. I was able to complete 11 of 75 pages of the scrapbook I've been working on digitally. Now that everyone has seen what the pages will actually look like they are all excited about it. I went ahead and had it placed in the family reuion auction with the promise that the finished pages would be mailed to the buyer to be inserted into the book. My cousin Clara placed the winning bid which was $300!! I about fell over when it was announced.

Finished another page today...

2009-07-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

This is probably going to be one of the hardest pages for me to complete because I don't have many photos of my Aunt Callie. I haven't been able to track down any photos of her with her husbands. I only have photos of her second husband with other family members and she didn't have kids to pass photos on to. Her third husband moved to Hungary after she died and he passed away last year so I don't know if he gave the photos to my uncle who lived next door to him or what. I'm hoping to get all the kids in the larger photo identified this weekend during our family reunion and that it will inspire people to get more photos to me so I can complete a page for each member of the family.

Digital Kit - Berry Ice by Sweet Digi Scraps
Alpha Tags - Feeling Lucky by Royanna Fritschmann
Frames - John Boy by Carena's Designs
Font - Vivaldi

Callie was born in Oklahoma on November 16, 1925 and passed away in the early1990’s. Like most Smith's she had curly, red hair. She married three times, first to “Tubby" Shipton, then Tommy Reed and her last husband was Imre’ Vincze who worked as a Carpenter and he built their home in Longbranch, WA. Imre’ was missing part of a finger and would tell people that he had it chopped off when he escaped from Hungary. After Callie’s death Imre’ spend most of each year living in Hungary. Callie was a woman of strong convictions and was very passionate in defending them. She enjoyed any opportunity to spend time with her nieces and nephews.

Oh...here is where you can find the various parts of this layout:
Feeling Lucky Alpha Tags
John Boy Frame
Berry Ice Kit

Yard work

2009-07-11T10:52:00.001-07:00

Well we have done a ton of work in the backyard this summer. We decided to hold Christina's graduation party at home. The first photo is of the garage where a huge Pampass Grass plant used to be. Mike hated it from about the second year we had it. I loved it but realized after 10 years that it had performed it's original function and was tired of it's leaves getting mowed over. So we decided to rip it out. That turned out to be a major project in itself. It took a chain saw, electric hedger, axe, pick axe and shovel to get it out of there. The plant reached all the way over to the tiki torch on the right and about a foot past the tiki torch on the left. You can actually see a patch of dirt between the torches where the plant actually covered/laid over the lawn. We ended up planting four short pyramidalis trees along the old fence to hide the neighbor's garage. I finally gathered together my three beach logs and tied them into a piling (this was a project I wanted to get done last year) and hung the buoys we found at the beach also to create my beach scene. I have glass floats resting on a "stump" of wood we found another time in the flower bed that is the just out of the photo on the right hand side.

The toilet "arrangement" is the newest thing I did to drive my hubby crazy. We ripped it out of the bathroom this past winter because it was leaking. You just can't toss them in the garbage here but they will take them at the dump. Well it was the original toilet to the house and the only reason we took it out was because we couldn't retrofit the "guts" of it inside the tank. So I decided to plant it. I placed it in a hidden corner of the yard and filled it with "Impatients" of all things. Every guy who sees it just shakes their head but the women think it was a neat idea. One of my friends even fessed up that she was thinking about doing the same thing with one they had. Two weeks later we went to her house and lo and behold she had done it. Our husbands think we are both weird.

This is the last section of the backyard that we need to finish up. We have been storing campfire wood under the tarp and after we finish reroofing/painting the garage Mike will probably build a covered storage bin for it. We have debated making an arbor or gazebo to cover this deck but resisted so far since we have a covered patio attached to the little garage closer to the house -yes we have two garages in our backyard. I'm leaning towards an arbor of some sort because that would allow sun through but I'm just not quite convinced I really want to do that. We need to pressure wash, stain and fix the lattice work that runs along the sidewalk. The only reason we really don't sit out on that patio is that everyone across the street can see that deck because they are on a hill and it faces their front yards. The other patio provides lots of shade and has electrical outlets. I'm actually sitting at the bar on the covered patio as I blog. The next priority is getting this big garage roof shored up, reroofed and replace all the wiring in it. We are hoping to shore it up in September and immediately get it roofed before the "rainy season" hits in full force. Luckily we can roof half at a time and be okay. We bought the shingles off Craigslist and have then stacked in the small garage, the plywood and 2x4's are in the big one and now I'm hunting down tar paper and deals on flashing. Next summer we should be able to repaint the big garage to match the house, put a peaked roof on the little garage, rewire it and complete turning it into an oversized shed.

Now to get back to digiscrapping. My daughter is a huge Tim Burton fan and when I saw this new kit created by "Digital Reality" it reminded me of the photos I've seen of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in the new Alice in Wonderland movie Tim Burton is filming. You can check out the entire kit at Divine Digital. There is an absolutely awesome string of paper lanterns in the kit.

I'm sooooo bad

2009-06-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

...about updating my blog!

You would think that life would slow down during the summer and the hockey offseason. I don't know how I juggle it all during hockey season. I've about decided that it's because I get lazy during the off season and as such don't get as much accomplished.

We spend last weekend at the ocean and visited Westport for Pirate Days. We did a little geocaching, beachcombing and kite flying. I took some new photos of Washaway Beach . We took a family photo at Grayland Beach on a giant stump that washed up onto the shore and had fun just hanging out with our friends. It turned out to be a great weekend weather wise and this coming holiday weekend is supposed to be another great weekend. Weather should be in the high 70's/low 80's which will be perfect for camping and enjoying fireworks.

Since my last posting we have acquired a 5 month old, female German Shepard. We named her Hemi and she is cute as can be. I had my doubts about a "big" dog but she has actually done very well adapting. No fights between the dogs/cats and no "accidents" in the house. Which is pretty impressive considering she was a "farm dog" the first 5 months of her life. The upside 0f her becoming part of our family is that I no longer have backyard "poop patrol". After 17 years of being the main member of that patrol (the guys mulch it with the mower instead of picking it up) I was tired of doing it. So they agreed and we picked her up two days later. I will admit that she must of known that I was the one she had to butter up to when we went to see her the first time. She pretty much ignored everyone else except me that afternoon.

The kids are getting ready to gear up for hockey season. We traditionally take the month of May off and then in June they start Skills&Drills and add some Drop-in sessions in July so that by August they are ready and in shape. This year they both decided to take May and June off from hockey. They are excited because for the first time in four years they are looking forward to having the same coach as last year.

Where has the time flown.....

2009-05-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

I just realized that it's been almost a month since I last blogged. My friend Kim has been making comments here and there about how she was looking for a message letting her know that I had blogged but I didn't realize how long it's actually been. Needless to say it's been a whirlwind of a month and May just seemed to be a real short month. So I'll give a quick recap of what's happened around the Burress House this month.
I decided to do some followup emailing for my family reunion scrapbook project the first week of the month. I had sent out a second batch of group sheets for family members to correct/update so their scrapbook page could be as current as possible. Some photos started coming back in and I've noticed that either I get no answer at all or a quick answer, photos and updated info.
Then my mom, brother, sister and niece made a quick trip down to Banks, Oregon to visit my aunt who had been diagnosed with Tissue Cancer. She had been experiencing flu-like symptoms for several months and having an extremely hard time just moving around. Six weeks ago she found out it was cancer, had three to six months to live at the most and treatment might give her a month or so more but no guarantee of it and she would probably be sicker as a result.
So we spent a day with her and I was lucky enough to see two cousins that I had not seen in over 15 years. We stopped at the Factory Outlet Stores in Centralia on our way down and did about an hours worth of power shopping at Bath & Body Works, Nike Clearance Store and the Vanity Fair/Lee Outlet. I bought work pants for Mike, my sister bought tennis shoes for friends down in CA, Rachael and Michael bought some aromatherapy "Pillow Spray" that smelt like lavender that's supposed to help you relax and go to sleep.
Then we spent a day getting Christina's graduation annuncements done. (I still have 50 left to make tonight). We have decided to have a party/open house/luau on the Friday after graduation. The dollar store proved to be a treasure trove of luau decorations and even had "Graduation Party" stuff with a Hawaiian theme. Christina's Cap & Gown arrived mid-month so it's becoming "real" to us that she is almost a "full fledged adult" and could actually get married/move out if she was so inclined....but I doubt that will happen because she recently informed me that she plans on living at home until she is 41.....I think NOT!!!! Now we have begun "Graduation Gift" negotiations.
I think part of the reason that the month has "flown by" is because Memorial Day weekend was earlier than normal. We went to Millersylvania for three days of camping with the Kelly's. Sam and I took the kids geocaching. Turns out the boys had dabbled in Geocaching while at Camp Goodtimes. We set out to find two caches (one of which was a two parter) found the first half of one then found out from some fellow geocachers we ran into on the trail that the second half was missing. Found "The Big Tree" cache, dropped off a Travel Bug at "It's Miller Time" and we planted a new cache. I still need to go upload the coordinates for the "KB Toy Box" at www.geocaching.com and update my log book to reflect dropping off the Travel Bug.
Last week I got news that my Aunt's cancer was more involved than originally diagnosed and that three months was on the "extremely optimistic side". While camping over Memorial Day weekend my mom had to call me and let me know that my Aunt passed away.
So this week turned into another busy week. I went back to work on Tuesday then left for Oregon with my niece and son on Tuesday night. Attended her memorial service on Wednesday then took an extra day to visit with cousins and my uncle who had flown in from Utah. It was a nice visit and all agreed that we needed to make an effort to get together and reconnect more often under happier circumstances. I took the opportunity to update everyone's family info in my genealogy program and was even able to have some family members identified in old family photos.

Cool Guy Scrapping Contest and a Freebie link

2009-04-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Hummie has decided to kick of National Scrapbooking Day (May 2nd) with a Cool Guy Scrapping Contest where you scrap about the men in your life/family. The contest will run over the next seven weeks with the winner being announced on Fathers Day. Her guys (she is the only female in the family) are going to be the judges.

Leave it to Hummie to dangle a contest in front of me that I just can't resist. She is kicking it off on Saturday and you can get all the info on it HERE at Hummiesworld.

She was thinking ahead and has even created a thread for "guy kits" so we have sources! Deb (Scrappin Cop) has a great kit you can get for free on her blog. I've posted a couple images from the kit so you can see them.

So...if you have a guy in your life who is into tools (what guy isn't) or who is a construction worker this may be the kit for you. Now I'm going to have to figure out if I can somehow coordinate doing a couple layouts for this contest and complete my other scrapping project in time.

Cool Freebie Kit!!!!

2009-04-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

Mathilde stopped by my blog last night so I naturally went to her blog to go leave some love and check it out. Even with my non-French speaking skills I was able to figure out that she had the most beautiful free kit available!!! Go check it out at her blog!! Its a huge collab kit from Soval, Joey, Penny57, Scoubidoo and Cjournet13. If you follow the link to this kit there is also an opportunity for 4 more free kits designed by Joey!!

Joy's Family Page

2009-04-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

I completed the first page of my Smith Family Scrapbook project. This is the first "album" I will have completed that has a recurring theme. I have done pages here and there for my family but never have I tackled a project of this magnitude. I am going to be creating one page for each family that covers five to six generations of our family. This is giving me an opportunity to update our family history and share it with the entire family. Lucky for me our family has consistently held family reunions bi-annually for the past 26 years so we have a contact list that is pretty extensive and current. The finished book will be auctioned off during our family reunion this summer. Every year there is one "Big Item" and this will be that item this year. Money from our auction gives the reunion committee for the next reunion some seed money to make deposits for venues and other administrative costs like printing and stamps. Each family will get a copy of their page before the reunion.

Page Credits: Quickpage from Naturally Expressive by Cheryl
http://cyfisher.blogspot.com
Small Red Frame
Creekside Cottage Designs Freebie from the Holly Jolly Blog Train
http://creeksidecottagedesigns.blogspot.com

Spring has sprung here in Washington

2009-04-21T23:08:00.000-07:00

We have had absolutely beautiful weather the past four days low 70's and sunny!!!
I've started working on a Scrapbook for the Smith Family Reunion this summer. After creating family group sheets so I could update everyone's info I realized that the project was going to be bigger than expected and actually had to create a spreadsheet. This way I can track who I sent group sheets to, who's updated and returned them, if I've uploaded their info in the program, have I received photos, started the page, completed the page and if I have printed it. Once the entire book is completed (by June) it will be auctioned off at our Family Reunion. We hold a silent and verbal auction right before the Saturday night family business meeting. The money raised at the auction goes to the Reunion Fund which helps cover reunion costs and create seed money for the next one.

Final tournament and a freebie from Royanna!!!

2009-04-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Hockey season is finally winding down in our house this weekend. We are hosting this weekend's tournament (Daffodil Invitational) and we finished the first two of our four games yesterday. We lost 0-2 to the Eugene Jr. Generals last night. Eugene scored both of their goals in the last 5 minutes of the game. The kids came out excited about how close the score was and talking about what a great game it was. There was actually no complaining about the refs or the other teams sportsmanship. Which is amazing for Midget (8-12 grade) players considering that they are competing against teams that are house level, midget "All-Star" teams whereas we are just a house team made up of Bantams and Midgets who lovesplaying hockey. The kids are already looking forward to next season because for the first time in four years they have a coach who is committed to staying, they will only lose one player to "aging out" and our three Bantams who "played up" are going to be Midget aged next year. The kids are already setting up what nights each month they all want to "drop-in" on as a team over the summer.

Freebie from Royanna and an Easter Egg Hunt at Divine Digital

I woke up this morning to an email from announcing Divine Digital's First Annual Easter Egg Hunt. Zipped over to check it out and will probably spend the rest of the week hanging out there finding "Easter Eggs". I firmly believe that no one is too old for an Egg Hunt "Cyber Style". While checking out the forums at Divine I noticed that Royanna announced that she has a free Easter Kit that she is sharing on her blog.
Here is the link to her blog!!

Here is the info on the Divine Digital Egg Hunt!!!

Have a great weekend and have fun hunting for easter eggs!

Did some scrapping and we have one tournament down, one to go!!!

2009-03-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

I did manage to do a little scrapping this last week in between work, hockey practice and working on genealogy. Played around with a photo of my niece that I snapped of her the night we had our family photos taken. I used a great ATC kit designed by Tangie Baxter and SherrieJD called Curious Adventures. If you look close you will see that I had a little fun with the butterfly's. I was invited to join SherrieJD's Creative Team a couple weeks ago. She does some real great ATC kits. I haven't explored the whole "Altered Art" style since I quit rubber stamping a couple years ago but I really like her designs. So I haven taken her up on her offer, joined her team and am going to start exploring some altered imaging techniques digitally. Her designs are available at ScrapOrchard.
Well...hockey season is almost over!! We played at a tournament in Bremerton...we didn't win but the kids had a blast anyways. People think it's weird that when it comes to hockey you can lose a game yet still call it a good game. Our coaches have consistently approached each game as a learning experience. Three out of the last five seasons we lost more games than we have won. When the kids were younger their coaches made a point of finding three positives from every game and that is what they would focus on afterwards. Now that the kids are in high school they find those positives on their own and still focus on them instead of beating themselves up over it. Our second game on Saturday was the best hockey the kids played all weekend. All the games from this tournament were streamed live on the internet. Anyone could listen to the audio play-by-play live for free or for $5 you could also watch the game online. The company doing the broadcast offered a CD of the game for $10 w/o the play-by-play or for $25 you could get a DVD with all the play-by-play. We are going to pick up a copy of the game to send to Mikes family in Indiana.
I managed to get a halfway decent photo of the kids in yesterdays game. It is so hard shooting action shots through the "glass" at the rink. Alex is on the right while Christina is the short one watching from the bench. Jeff who does the timeclock at our Jr. A games happened to be one of the linesmen during this game. The guy in the red helmet is one of our star players this year. He is actually an exchange student from Hong Kong. We really enjoyed having him play with our team and the kids will miss him next year. He is heading to Minnesota for the next three years where he will be in hockey heaven.
A bunch of players on one of the teams (not the most respectful nor well loved teams locally) caused some chaos at their hotel on Saturday horsing around in the elevator (boys will be boys I suppose) jumping up and down. Somehow they managed to trigger some earthquake sensor doing that which caused the elevator to lock up while they were in it. Their coach had to call the hotel manager, who in turn had to call 911 to get the fire dept to come reset the elevator sensor to get it moving again. We put in a request to have "Love in the Elevator" played during their game but alas it was denied by the management as they felt it was in poor taste which in retrospect it would have been.

Only three weeks left of hockey for us!!

2009-03-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Actually we have four practices and two tournaments left before we leave the regular season behind. This weekend we are "off" then we travel 45 miles to Bremerton for a tournament. The first weekend of April is our "Daffodil Tournament" which we host and for the first time in years it's the same weekend as the Daffodil Grand Floral Parade and the Spring Fair out at the fairgrounds.
I haven't mentioned to our kids that they may miss riding the tow truck in the parade this year. Our best friend (our kids "uncle") has worked for a local towing company for over 30 years. The company enters one of their trucks in the parade every year. Occasionally he drives the combination tow truck/bus Incident Response Vehicle in the parade and we have ridden along with them tossing daffodils out to kids along the parade route. During years that we are watching from the sidelines he pretends to "run us down" where we are sitting. His family is with him in the truck and we all think it's funny because who ever happens to be sitting next to us (we pick a certain spot to watch the parade from) thinks the truck is outta control and runs from it while we sit there and enjoy the "show". Their kids all love waving at their Aunt Laura and Uncle Mike and hollering at us from the truck.
Well..it's another genealogy weekend for me. I'm still taking advantage of my free month long membership at ancestry.com and downloading images left and right. I found the passport application collection the other night and some of the applications actually have photos attached to them. As a result I have a good photo of a couple relatives that I didnt' have before. Today I'm attacking the Canadian/US Border Crossing records. There is a huge chunk of Garbett's and Garbutt's that lived in Michigan that went back and forth between the two countries. I gather information on all of the Garbett's and Garbutt's that I come across because there arent' alot of us but somewhere along the line we are all tied together.

Ohhh,Ohhh, Ohhh...I ran across another St.Paddys Blog Train!!

2009-03-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

While visiting a couple of the blogs for the St. Patrick's Day Twisted Convoy I ran across a link to another one. This one is the Lucky Blog Train and there are over 70 stops on it. This blog train has both tagger and full-sized kits. The full sized kits are worth wading through the tagger ones. I finally learned what the difference is between the two kits so I figured I'd warn you ahead of time. I think my EHD is going to go into overdrive with this one. I'll be busy half the evening and probably half of tomorrow evening now. Hope you enjoy it because I know I am enjoying what I have seen of it so far and I've been to a dozen train stops!

St. Patricks Day Twisted Convoy

2009-03-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

May your day be touched by a bit o'Irish luck,
brightened by a song in your heart,
and warmed by the smiles of people you love!

Today the St.Patrick's Day Convoy heads out with the help of 22 other leprechauns! I took a quick peek this morning to see what freebies that the designers were offering. I immediately though of how lucky anyone who takes advantage of this convoy will be.

Wishing you a rainbow
For sunlight after showers -
Miles and miles of Irish smiles
For golden happy hours -
Shamrocks at your doorway
For luck and laughter too -
And a host of friends that never ends,
Each day your whole life through!

One of the designers has incorporated glasses of Guinness Stout into a background paper.
So head out and gather some free "digi-gold" today!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!

Irish blessings are great inspiration for scrapbook pages check out the blessings here at

Island Ireland
which is a great internet guide to art, culture and environment. Both of the Irish Blessings I quoted today were found here!

A busy weekend with a Sunday morning suprise!

2009-03-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

Well I have been camped out on the laptop all weekend taking advantage of my free 30 day Ancestry.com membership. I had to upgrade my FamilyTreeMaker (FTM) program last week when I found out that FTM Version 10 wasn't Vista compatible. Hmm...go figure a program that is almost 10 years old not being compatible. Soooo...off to amazon.com I went and in the end I decided that the $39 it cost me to get the latest version (basic one) was a small price to pay considering I've only spent a total of $15 when I first bought the program almost 10 years ago and the very first FTM program I had was one that my dad bought 15 years ago but never used. The upside of the $39 is the 30 days I have to download as much census information I can. I have made good use of it and got my money's worth out of it.
In years past ancestry.com has offered free memberships for 2 weeks and I've taken the opportunity and at one point I even had a paid membership for about 6 months. So I'm familiar with what they offer. This time around I've focused on getting every bit of US Census Data I can on the Garbett's (any Garbett whether they are related to me or not) to augment the data I already have. I'm also going to go start downloading info on my Renfrow and McDaniel's this next week and hopefully be able to start working on tearing down a couple of roadblocks I've had for years.
I've been able to download census images and ships passenger lists. I am excited about incorporating a couple of them into scrapbook pages. I have an idea that I'm going to play around with where I "magnify" the actual family names on the image as part of the layout itself. I may have come across the work of a fellow researcher whom if I can get the "tie-in" to my tree established to theirs has some wonderful photos. Not that I don't have alot of photos already nor access to them .... I suppose when you are a scrapbooker you could never have enough photos!!!
Oh and on to the suprise!! We woke up this morning to a couple inches of snow...I know for most people this isn't suprising but for Western Washington in March it is suprising. Here is a photo of my backyard (yes it's a little neglected at the moment) looking out of my kitchen sink window.
So I decided that I'd better turn on the tv to see the weather forecast and I'm glad I did because apparently it's supposed to get pretty windy this afternoon. Although I'm glad we don't live near the Hood Canal (not that I wouldn't love living there) because they are supposed to get about 5 inches of it this afternoon. There is a chance of lowland snow tonight again which really shouldn't affect work tomorrow morning since we don't have patients all week-the boss is in Florida. No hockey practice until Tuesday night so that won't be affected at all either-not that it ever does because hockey doesnt' stop for snow in this neck of the woods or any neck now that I think about it.

I visited a real cool blog this morning it was very refreshing because the blog owner is documenting her journey to get a grip on her family's debt. She has decided to blog about it (Life in the Debt Lane) and I love her style, her candor and why she is doing it. This past month I started talking to my DH about the very same thing and how we need to create a plan to eliminate it. We don't have a problem with how much we have to pay and we are both lucky in the sense that our jobs are pretty safe from the recession. But I'm just tired of not having a savings or emergency fund. I have a 401k and I freely admit that the only reason it gets contributed to regularly is because it comes out of my check before I even get it. Twice in our life we have paid it all off and closed accounts but three years later I find we have went right back to our old habits. We will charge this or that not really realizing that we are paying out the nose for it in the end. Two weeks ago I took the first step of pulling my credit cards out of their spots in my wallet so that they weren't easily accessible. I haven't used them since even though they technically are still in my purse (seperate section). I am now going to take the next step and go stash then in our safe so that all temptation is removed. I went and removed them from my paypal account so I can't "cheat" that way and since the only card number I have memorized is my debit card it means that I'll be taking right from the checking account if I use it. Although I don't know if I'm ready for going "cash" only for all my purchases. I am determined for us to not "charge" any bit of our summer garage roofing project. Of course it means that we will do less camping this summer but that is okay because we have our whole life to enjoy camping.

Three more layouts from the Think Pink Charity Collab Kit

2009-03-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

I completed another three layouts from this kit. I decided to post a different preview image of it today. This one focuses on the ribbon and trim that is included with the kit. The paper preview gives you a better idea of the diversity of papers in it.

The next couple of nights are going to be pretty busy so I'm not sure I'll have time to work on anymore until this weekend. I have a board meeting tomorrow night (I'm the Secretary for our youth hockey association). I'll be finishing up the minutes on Thursday night so Friday will be here before I know it. Our association is hosting the State Squirt Festival this weekend so I'll probably pop in at the rink to see how that is going. The kids don't have games this weekend but we do have two more tournaments to play in.

This layout has a completely different feel from all the others that I've created from the kit and I've only played with about a third of the kit.
Our office attends one Orthodontic Meeting each year. He pretty much lets us pick between the AAO (American Association of Orthodontics) or the PCSO (Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists). We have picked the PCSO meeting the past two years. In 2007 it was in Monterey, CA and we had fun shopping in Cannery Row and took a daytrip up to San Francisco. Up there we rode the cable cars, visited Alcatraz and shopped in Chinatown. This is the first photo I have taken the time to scrap from the trip.

This last year we went to Palm Springs and the three of us (Jodi, Lee and myself) zipped over to Disneyland and California Adventure for the day. This year the meeting is in Phoenix and we really haven't planned our "side trip" per se. My only request is that we take in a Coyotes game...provided they are playing at home that weekend we are in town.

I had fun playing with the flowers and string element with this layout. I actually created the border by using the element twice on each side. It turned out to be the perfect "paper" for showcasing my niece in her kimono. She participated in a Japanese Immersion program from Kindergarten thru 7th grade. She is one smart cookie and the program challenged her in a great way. I honestly believe that if she had been in a "traditional" school she would have been bored to death.

This last one is a photo of Velvet again but was probably taken when she was in 2nd or 3rd grade.

As I said before...it's absolutely amazing how many ways this kit can be used. It's definitely worth every dollar that you donate for it.

Teenagers and their "disposable incomes".

2009-03-08T17:58:00.001-07:00

Well my youngest got his first job and first paycheck. He was so excited to come home and show it to us. He has more disposable income than anyone in the family. We have talked about putting half of it into his savings each payday. We are hoping that the job will be incentive enough for him to get his act together with his grades. So I supposed in a round about way it could be considered getting paid to get good grades.
It should be interesting to see what he does with his money over the next couple months. He wants to buy new speakers for the truck that I drive because when he gets his license it will be his truck. He already put a new stereo in it with his christmas money.
He resisted the temptation to buy a subwoofer at Best Buy last night. Instead he stuck with purchasing the video game for his xBox that he went there for originally. I'm sure that part of the reason that he didn't get to cave to the temptation was that I told him that I wasnt' going to wait around for him to look around the car stereo dept. The big question is...did he take his money with him to school today and if so....did he spend any and on what.

Think Pink - A charity collab kit I've fallen in love with!!!

2009-03-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Omigosh, this kit is absolutely wonderful. When I first saw it I thought hmm..it's got purples in there...I could use it for some Relay for Life photos I've accumulated over the last four years. So I went ahead and got it. Most people shy away from charity kits because they aren't sure if their "donation" is really going there but they have created a way to donate directly to the charity then forward a copy of your "email reciept" and then you get a coupon code to get the kit for free. But if you prefer to just purchase the kit directly through the store the donation will get made and you can get the kit immediately. So far I've done five layouts using it and not a single one is a Relay for Life one!

For the first layout I used a series of photos taken of my aunt back in the 50's and 60's. I interconnected a circle frame to create the "cluster" then added the buttons to complete the whole circular feel.
Rachael of Creations by Rachael contributed all the elements/papers to the kit that I've used in these first three layouts. The second one is a photo of my Great Aunt Ruth, her daughter, grand daughter and great grand daughter.

The third in this series has a completely different feel which shows how versatile the kit actually is.

For the fourth layout I decided to play with the contribution from "Late Night Scraps". I had fun with some photos of my newest niece. This was the first grandchild that my brother has been able to see of his three grandchildren. The other two live here on the westcoast while he is on the eastcoast. Because it was a low resolution photo and a bit blurry I decided to play with the effects that are stock with PSE7. I used a dry brush effect and extracted the rest of the hospital room that was in the background. I also played with the "cookie cutter" tool for the first time and created butterflies and tufts of grass.

For the final layout last night stuck with the brown/pink and new niece theme I created this last layout. Since I was trying to stick with using only items contributed to the kit by Late Night Scraps I used the brown paper with the Live, Laugh, Love border as a mat paper and frame and used her hospital card as an element.

Well, I completed a total of six layouts in less than 24 hours. That is probably a record for me! I've got a couple more in mind for this layout that I'll be working on this week.

The challenge and art of clustering

2009-03-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

Okay...clusters of photos are easy for me. Yet there is a clustering technique that I'm finding very challenging even after several tries. I really admire those layouts that have a cluster of flowers, leaves, ephemra, ribbon and such but I'm having a hard time with mastering it. I'm pretty sure it's a style that you can't just take a class called "The Principles of Clustering Elements" at your favorite digiscrapping site. But it seems to be one of those techniques that just come with practice or study of layouts where someone used it and it caught your eye. I've posted simple credits but due to the volume of designers and items used I'm not including actual links. I've attempted it a couple of times. Once was basically a premade cluster from that I added a couple of elements to.

Credits: End of Summer Kit by Melissa Daniel and Neverland Scraps
Photo Frame: Iced Mocha Divine Digital Feb 2008 Collab Kit
Bracket Mats & Grey Mat: DivineDigital Birthday Kit
Burgundy Mat: I Just Love Her Kit by Royanna Fritschman from DivineDigital.com
Alpha: Antique Alpha by LBCreations from JustForTheScrapOfIt.com
Font: Pea Olson from KevinAndAmanda.com

My second attempt was an ADSR 4 Challenge where we had to scraplift a layout that inspired us. I found a layout that had clustering and didn't copy it per se but used it as a guideline. So even though I created the cluster by myself I used another layout as a guide. Here is the link to the original layout . Here is my version:

Digital Kit:Feeling Lucky designed by Royanna Fritschmann
Word Art:Express Yourself designed by Ronna Penner
Star Swirls:Some Gave All designed by Heather Manning
Circle Stitching:O So Thankful designed by Anita Steriou
Stitched Flower Border:Road Less Traveled designed by Theresa Hernandez

On Sunday I created one where I used a background paper that had a "cluster" as part of it already. I "enlarged" the cluster and "expanded upon it" so to speak. Although I used a ton of elements in making it I really don't consider it an original quite yet because the background paper was my inspiration and guide.

Background Paper, Flower Clusters, Frame:designed by Eirene_07 for the Digital Scrapbook Day 08 Treasure Hunt
Matting Papers: Boys Rule designed by Melissa Daniels
Envelope, Yellow Ribbon Curl and Angel Stamp: Imagination Collab Kit from Digitals
items designed by Tallula Moon, Kathryn Estry, Beth Rimmer
Gold Charm: The Vintage Gypsy designed by Stacey Crossley
Blue Clock Brad: Angel by Royanna Fritschmann
Notebook Paper: Simplement Maryse designed by Maryse Vincent
Heart Charm:designed by Bel Vidotti Scraps for the Twisted Convoy Valentine Convoy
Raindrops: designed by Booland Scraps for the Christmas Around The World 2008 Kit
Victorian Bookmark: from TwistedPapers.com

So the next step in my journey to master "clustered layouts" will be doing one completely from scratch. But I think I'll continue "practicing" like I have been. After all.....practice makes perfect!

Valentines Convoy

2009-02-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

I know that Valentine's Day has come and gone already. But I just can't resist talking about Twisted Convoy's Valentines Convoy. I spend an afternoon downloading some great stuff from the designers that participated. The links are all good until March 14th so if you have a few minutes you may want to pop in and see if anything catches your eye before it's gone.

Apparently there were some complaints about the size of a few kits (there were a couple that could be classified as "mini kits"). As such they are clarifying what is a "full-sized kit" before the St.Patrick's Convoy heads out on March 17th.

He Loves Me.....

2009-02-18T23:31:00.000-08:00

I got a combined Valentines/Birthday present today!!! A new Dell Studio 1537 laptop with all the bells and whistles I could ever want. The best part is that it's RED!!!! I'm having fun playing with it and tweaking it just so tonight. I haven't even had a chance to check out all the features on it. It was a killer deal through the Dell Outlet because someone custom ordered it then cancelled the order after the laptop was made. So we got a $1200 laptop for half price! The extended battery alone is worth $200, not to mention that it has a webcam and fingerprint reader. I can have it scan my finger instead of remembering passwords to the various sites I visit daily. Although I have decided to not utilize that feature for bill paying and financial stuff...it's cool but I just dont' trust any program that saves passwords on the computer.

About the only "bummer" out of the deal is that PSE5 and PS7 aren't Vista compatible so I now have three nice big PS text books that are no good. I'm thinking it's time to bite the bullet and upgrade to PSE7 now or figure out ACDSee's Photo Editor program. I also have to re-install Office 2009 since I use Excel and Word and they only include Works - I prefer Word over Works because I don't have to save everything twice - by default it saves everything as a "works" file so I also have to save wordprocessing documents as a "word file" if I want most people to be able to open the document later.

A rare weekend with no hockey!

2009-02-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

Go figure, it's a holiday weekend during hockey season and we have no games!!! But it will all be back to normal next weekend. Actually we decided to forgo going to a tournament this weekend because we have two next month plus playoffs. The kids have playoffs the first two weekends of March and the juniors have first round playoffs starting next week. Our association is hosting the State Squirt Festival the third week of March, we have a tournament in Bremerton the fourth weekend and host the Midget Daffodil Tournament the first weekend of April. Which means that our camping trip this weekend was the last one until Mid-April when we go to the International Crab Races in Westport.

This was also the last week of the ADSR for Brandie and I. The final challenge of ADSR4 was hosted by We Are Storytellers.com where we were challenged to create a layout with at least half the page being made up of journaling about why being a storyteller is important to us. We had to collaborate and were limited to two small photos in the lower left corner, at least five elements, no more than two papers and had to incorporate a piece of word art supplied by the challenge host.
Brandie sent Laura a photo of her and why she thinks storytelling is important. Laura took her own feelings about storytelling and combined it all into one story. We decided to keep it simple so that the journaling could be the focus of the layout as requested.
Journaling:
For the past six weeks Brandi and Laura worked together as a team to preserve twelve stories
as part of the Amazing DigiScrapping Race. They have now completed all twelve challenges and may or may not win the Grand Prize. Winning the Grand Prize is not the most important aspect of the race, it’s the satisfaction of knowing we have preserved almost a dozen individual stories for the enjoyment of future generations. These are priceless stories that we all have within us ready to be told.
Both Brandie and Laura as individuals have a passion for preserving information, photos and stories of their ancestors for future generations. When Brandie comes across a story about one of her ancestors she tries to create a scrapbook page so that future generations may know what that person was like. This is very important to her because she doesn’t know what her father’s family is like and her mother’s family is from Germany. When Laura comes across family photos and family stories she adds it to her genealogy program and posts the intormation on various family websites so that other family members can enjoy it too. Eventually Laura gets the information preserved as a scrapbook page. We both feel that when you have a story about an ancestor it becomes a way to know that person a little better, even though you have probably never actually met the person in real life.
The simple stories we record about our day-to-day life now, are the stories that future
generations will cherish for years to come.

Kit Credits:
Treasured by Liella Designs for the Trash to Treasure Freebie Hunt

Word Art provided by We Are Storytellers.com

It's Snowing, It's Snowing, It's Snowing....

2009-02-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that it won't stick or amount to much by the time it stops but I love it when it snows. Today it's coming down in big, huge, fluffy flakes or at least it is at this moment. It's been coming down piddly all morning (so small and light you had to squint to see it) but right before lunchtime....whammo....big flakes.
Of course the kids are all in school today and I'm sure the teachers are hating it because the kids are all antsy to go outside, distracted by the snow and wondering if it is going to still be snowing when school gets out. Since we are a hockey family snow really doesn't stop us.....it's kind of like any other winter sport.....if you can't drive in the snow you shouldn't play a winter sport.
Well....lunchtime is almost over and I have to go back to work although since we are doing consults all afternoon the snow will probably play havoc with our schedule and everyone will freak out and cancel their consults if it continues to snow.

Slow Computer and Home Improvement Saturday

2009-02-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

It was "Home Improvement" day at the Burress house yesterday. We divided our time between reformatting my laptop and working on a couple "home improvement" projects. We spent most of yesterday ripping out the toilet and putting in a new one. The old one turned out to be the original toilet from when they built the house. The supply line was "copper" and we had to add a flange to anchor the new toilet to the floor with...the old one had four bolts coming out of the floor that held it in place. We also put a electronic, keyless deadbolt on the front door so we don't have to worry about the kids losing their stormdoor key anymore. We can't unlock our front door from the outside because it's the original (1946) hardware and they can't make a key for it without taking the whole thing apart and taking it to the locksmith. Luckily we have a good solid storm door that locks. It's wasn't infallible but was basically one more step a burglar would have to go through then get past the alarm system. Now Mike can quit worrying about us when he is at work and we both will rest easier when the kids are home alone.

In between runs to the hardware store and working on the toilet and deadbolt we reformatted my laptop. I spent the morning transferring files to the EHD and figuring out what programs I was going to need to reinstall and which I really didnt' need. After we got it reformatted I remembered that I needed to find my PSE 5 disk so I could reinstall it. This didn't stress me out at first because Mike figured it had to be around here somewhere, well after we got thinking about it we realized it was missing.

Normally it wouldn't be an issue because I'd just go buy another copy off ebay (I don't need to have the newest version and would be happy with PSE 5 again) We looked on ebay and he suggested getting PSE7 but I got looking at the requirements and it would use up all my RAM which I wasn't willing to give up and don't want to go buy more RAM at the moment. But this morning my hubby came through, he found the copy of Photoshop 7 for me. I have been using Photoshop Elements 5 so I figured it was close enough and I could manage to get my layout done. He got a copy of it way back I was just getting the digital bug. Back then instead of going on a digiscrap kit downloading spree I went on a bookshopping spree. We had three different Photoshop 7 books laying around. Back then I ended up using Elements instead of the Photoshop 7 program because Hummiesworld had great tutorials for PSE and I couldn't find any that were geared towards using Photoshop for scrapbooking.

Long story short...it's 4:41pm and after 3 1/2 hours of working in PS7 I completed challenge #11 for ADSR 4....YAHOO!!! I've posted it below. Thank goodness it was a fairly easy one...we were limited to one photo and the journaling was limited to one question and you couldn't answer the question with the journaling. No other journaling or words other than the question. I decided to use a photo of my great-uncle Ed and his garden. After finishing the layout I've come to the conclusion that Photoshop 7.0 is a little different than PSE 6 but I can work around the quirks and will probably like it better in the end. Since I have the books for it I will probably be able to do way more (if I was so inclined) than I ever could have done with PSE.

Now that I have challenge #11 done and #12 won't come out for a day or so(and both aren't due until Sunday) I get to tackle some serious tagging in ACDSee. When we reformatted I completely spaced of backing up the database. This is the second time I've accidentally deleted the tags. The last time I did it was last summer and it wasn't that hard of a project because I cleared out alot of freebies that I didn't use. So it's going to be another "clean out and tag weekend for me. Doesn't that sound like soooo much fun. It also means I can reorganize the categories in ACDSee. This time around I've decided to sort papers by color only not colors and patterns.

You know what....I just realized that we didnt' take any photos of the guys working yesterday!! What kind of scrapbooker am I?

Facebook

2009-02-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

About a month ago I went ahead and created a Facebook page. It has been fun connecting with people I went to school with. I've even connected with some friends from elementary school. Two nights ago when checking out the photo album on one of my alma mater's I noticed that people that were the same age as me were posting alot of photos. So I started uploading some of the ones that I scanned last month. Somehow I've managed to only get some of my brother's school stuff scanned and none of mine yet. So it was fun uploading old photos of him. He will be suprised if and when he gets his own facebook page.
Ever since I joined facebook I rarely check my myspace page. Facebook is so much nicer and I like the uniformity of it. Some may hate the fact that they can't "reformat" it to match their tastes but you can still have lots of fun with the various applications that they have.

ADSR Challenge #7

2009-01-28T01:07:00.000-08:00

Well Sunshine Studios challenge for us should have been easy since all I had to do was use everything in the mini-kit they supplied. We could also recolor and/or use items from other kits if we wanted to but we still had to use each item in the kit at least once. So...I figured "No Brainer"...then my creative juices got flowing and I decided to experiment with drastically recoloring something for the very first time. I turned a dark purple mulberry paper into a turquoise mulberry paper. Of course this was after I "feathered" the edges to make the background paper look like torn mulberry paper. All said it took 4 hours to create the page!!!

I ended up documenting a day at Summit Lake this past summer where the kids were being goofy as all get out. In one of the photos the three of them are actually wearing lifejackets like diapers. There are teenagers for you! Of course they had to "pose" in their "diapers".

Winter Twisted Convoy!!!!

2009-01-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

Hey.....if you were a fan of the Holly Jolly Blog Train or the Christmas Around the World Kit you may have noticed that several participants also created items for a Christmas Convoy. You may be happy to know that the creators of the Christmas Convoy have decided create a series of blog trains/convoys that happen year round. On Friday they kicked off the Winter Convoy with 32 designers participating. The colors are a way to start transistioning to those warmer spring colors yet still give you winter options. The New Years Convoy yielded me some great items. Go check out the first driver here.

The Valentines Convoy hits the road Feb. 14th is shaping up to be a great one. I love how a glitter is included in all the convoys. Here is the color swatch that the designers are working from for Valentines.

One could end up with a wonderful selection of freebies for every season/holiday under the sun by following the Twisted Convoys all year long.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

2009-01-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

I have lots to get done today before heading out to the hockey game. It's the last home game of the regular season for our Junior A Tomahawks and I am running the clock. Its a nice change from goal judging and after running the clock about a dozen times over the past four years I have finally hit the point that I'm no longer nervous doing it. The scorekeeper and I get along great so we always have fun working together.
Before I head out to the game I really should get at least one of our two attics organized. Half of the one that has all the holiday decorations and the kids old clothes is done so I'll probably finish that one first. But what's left to go through is all the clothing that I was saving. Those special outfits and such from when they were little kids. Christina has way more saved than Alex does. I don't know if it was because I had sewn so many "party" dresses for her or what. But I did save almost every outfit that I've sewn for either one of them that wasn't stained, torn or ruined. The old joke was that Christina had so many dresses she only wore the same one twice a year. At that time I was working for Hancock Fabrics and as an employee we could make display garments then keep them for free. Well I was the only one that had toddlers at the time which meant that every couple of weeks one of the four "kids" displays was changed and I generally had sewn the clothing. I have several dresses that I made for myself and a couple of shirts I made for my husband. Then there are all the "craft" items we would do for the holidays.

So the half of the attic that is left to go through is pretty jam packed. I'm thinking I'm just going to make sure that the clothing containers are still sealed and go through all the Halloween Costumes we have up there. The kids got into them once or twice in the last couple of years and I know that they are laying all over the place. I'm thinking about just taking photos of the costumes then donating them to Goodwill.

Another Lazy Friday......

2009-01-23T12:42:00.000-08:00

NOT!!! Actually it's been a relaxing morning. I needed it after yesterday and all the stuff I have planned on getting done this weekend. I spent the late morning uploading Microsoft Works to her laptop, setting up an email account for my stepdad and setting up her laptop for him to have his own account and easy access to everything. Now I'm off to go help my friend Christine take her son to a dr appointment, then have a hockey game to work tonight. Won't get back home until after 11pm now.

A Weekend Away

2009-01-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

Several times a year we escape to the ocean. Our favorite place to go is to the "South Beach"which is what they call the coast between Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay. One of the most famous sections of beach there is called "Washaway Beach". Every year a huge sections fall prey to the ocean forces. A couple of weeks ago a huge storm aka a "Pineapple Express" came through at the same time that there were some of the highest tides of the season. We were blown away with some of the changes to the area. "Evening Magazine" filmed a segment about the beach in 2004 which you can see here. One of the biggest changes we noticed this month was not at Washaway but just before it. The southern most "Beach Access Road" was closed because the end of the road was washed out and it was a good 6 foot drop from the old road to the beach itself. The northern most access road (by Twin Harbors State Park) to the beach was closed last year. This now leaves 3 of the 5 permanent access roads open which should make things rather interesting come Razor Clam season.
The weather couldn't have been better considering it is the middle of January. NO RAIN at all this trip. We spent most of Saturday in Westport, Westhaven State Park and hanging out on the South Jetty watching the surfers. It was sunny and mild (high 40's on Friday and Saturday) but when it's clear skies that means it gets cold at night. It frosted both nights but Sunday was actually warm and in the high 50's. Thank goodness we have a warm and toasty camper to sleep in. After 12 years of tent camping we most definitely appreciate the fact that there are no more midnight runs to the nearest bathroom in the rain.
Alex had fun this weekend because Mike let him practice driving out on the beach. This now means that we can pretty much count on the fact that on June 18th he will be dragging us to the DMV for his permit so he can legally drive (as long as we are with him) to his hearts content.

Can you believe I had to redo it again....

2009-01-12T22:21:00.000-08:00

I finally got a chance to sit down at the computer last night and was totally flabbergasted. It turns out that we were only supposed to use 3 photos and 8 elements (including the frame) well....I used 8 photos and 10 elements (including the frame). Luckily they gave me an extra 24 hours since I hadn't realized that there was a "no more/no less" requirement on this challenge. So I ended up redoing the entire layout with three different photos of Alex. I used Brandie's journaling and title but had to change the alpha. I like both layouts but feel that the first one is more representative of cabin fever.

Challenge #3 and #4 are already posted, so I need to crack the whip and would like to finish them both before we head out to the ocean on Friday morning.

Cabin Fever Corrected..

2009-01-10T17:05:00.001-08:00

When I was creating the link for my previous post I realized that I totally forgot that there was an element requirement as part of the challenge. So I quickly went back to my original and added some elements and papers to it. I had the opportunity to practice using the marquee tool in Photoshop in order to make the purple and burgundy papers look like they were behing the photos.

Now it looks almost like one of those "what's missing" puzzles with these photos being right next to each other.

Cabin Fever

2009-01-10T15:22:00.001-08:00

The second challenge for the Amazing Digiscrapping Race is being hosted by Elemental Scraps where we arrived to find an intersection. Which means that Brandie and I have to work together to create one layout.

The challenge was to do a layout about Cabin Fever. At first I thought about having a photo of a house with the kids looking out the windows or photos of people "thinking" about things they wished they were doing. What I ended up with turned out to be totally different though. I got looking through my photos I decided to use some of the crazy looking photos the kids have taken over the last couple of years when they were "home alone" and bored.

I used to get mad when they would start playing with the camera or camcorder. I would pick up my camera days later and find photos they took in the act doing stuff that they would never do if we were around. In some cases it ended up getting them in trouble. But for the most part I don't complain when they "borrow" my digital camera anymore. Some pretty funny and priceless photos have surfaced as a result of their "Cabin Fever". We have ended up with some pretty good photos of them hanging out with their friends that we wouldn't get otherwise.

It will be fun to see what Brandie comes up with, her part of the challenge will be the journaling and title. Although I just realized that I missed a bunch of stuff that needs to be added to the layout .....AKKKK!!!

In the immortal words of Snoopy....

2009-01-07T00:21:00.000-08:00

".....it was a dark, stormy night". Actually it is a dark, stormy night tonight. The wind is blowing, the rain is coming down in buckets, there are flood watches on all the major rivers and the requisite "urban flooding" warning. Talk about some freaky weather patterns here in the PNW lately. The Weather Service says that rain from now until Thursday with a brief lull in the high winds tomorrow afternoon.

I'm "jones-ing" to go to the ocean!!! Winter storms are the best time for beachcombing and watching the waves crash over the jetty. Although it means we can't beachcomb on the jetty where you can normally find floats that have gotten wedged between the rocks. About three years ago we hit paydirt there as you can see from the photo above. That crab cage was Alex's big find. All told we have probably found a dozen floats over the last few years. The dogs love running up and down the beach and I can walk for miles rain or shine there. Someday I'll find one of those "rare" Japanese Glass Floats. They are harder and harder to find nowdays because so many of the boats use plastic floats nowdays.

Well...I can survive for another 10 days and then reap the rewards that a week of windy/rainy weather will deposit on the beach. Although, no trip to the South Beach/Westport area is complete until you zip down to Washaway Beach and see how many more houses/trailers have been claimed by natures forces.

Here I go...

2009-01-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

...watch out everyone I have taken the step of creating a blog for myself. I'm not sure what I'll write about quite yet. The focus will change depending on my mood. Heck I may find myself blogging constantly or rarely. I don't know if I'll blog about my family, my hobbies (camping, digiscrapping, genealogy, hockey), my collections (I do have a few things I collect) or myself. We will just see what happens. It probably won't be fancy to start out with but I will probably experiment with it more and more as time goes by.

I do have to give credit to my friend Melissa Daniels for introducing me to the world of blogging. She and I partnered up three years ago for "The Amazing Digiscrapping Race 2". One of the requirements that year was having a blog to post our layouts in as we completed the challenges. Thank goodness I had an experienced digiscrapper, blogger and blinkie creator for a partner. She stepped in and created a blog for our team. She told me I could do whatever I wanted and she would contribute to it too. She designed it and set up all the links. (I recentkly deleted the blog because nothing had been added to it for over two years) I was brand new to digiscrapping then and she was very patient with my endless questions. Looking back I don't know how she did it without tearing her hair out because I now realize what a busy person she is. But she has a heart of gold and loves sharing her passion for digiscrapping through her digital designs and by answering any questions she is asked.

So what have I been up to the past 24 hours? Well...besides being a complete couch potato I did complete a layout for the first challenge of the ADSR4. We were challenged by Hummie to tear up a photo at least three times and journal in the layout. Well the minute I read it I knew exactly what photo I was going to tear up...it's a classic...I tore up a photo of an old boyfriend. I was recently scanning a bunch of old photos and ran across ones from high school and my "single" days. I debated scanning a couple of them thinking those are from my past and do I really need to keep them. I then realized that my criteria for scanning was "would I use it in a scrapbook layout if I was that age now". So if I thought it was worth "scrapping about" it was worth scanning. Little did I know I would be using that photo in a layout so soon!!!