Merry Christmas

To everyone a very Merry Christmas! Blessings to you all and hope for a wonderful New Year.

A Heart of Hurt

It has been a horrible week to say the least. I along with the nation mourn the death of the children (and adults) of Sandy Hook elementary. I have grandchildren of that age and it angers me that someone can have so little regard for the most precious among us and seek to do them harm. I am angered to the point of eating my emotions and then not being able to stomach anything because I have ulcer like symptoms. I don't know the answer but do know that we can't only talk about gun control without touching on mental health and other topics of culture and our acceptance of violence. Then to top it all off, Monday we received that family friends had been found dead, the result of murder/suicide. The husband killed his wife and a precious 13 year  old boy, the best friend of my granddaughter. When told of this horrific news, most people that knew them were not surprised with the manner of death, he had been depressed for years. What does this say about us, what if anything can we do if anything? It is for this reason that I haven't been able to blog much but I will go on in tribute to my grandchildren and post their beautiful faces on here. 

It was Aidens 8th birthday on the 13th and we celebrated at Chuckee Cheese on Saturday. The kids had a blast and it was fun for all of us. 

The birthday boy having a great time!!!

I have been an absentee blogger

This month is flying by and I have been remiss in posting anything at all. I need to correct this and post more regularly. We have 2 birthdays this month. Amelia was  8 on the 6th  and today is Aidens 8th birthday! We are going to celebrate this Saturday at ChuckeCheese. I feel sorry for the servers there, they must be deaf by now. I have the shopping done and I need to wrap before Miss Mia spends the night this Saturday. I don't want her peeking. I have been going over pictures from Christmases past and making a Christmas album so that they can be in one place. I am a little slow at the process but that is okay, I have a feeling that this will carry over into the New Year.  I am setting here looking out on the yard and can't believe that we have no snow again this year. What is up with the weather patterns? I don't want a blizzard but a light dusting every now and then would be okay. We need the moisture so bad and face a drought again. Have a great week!

Journal Your Christmas

I have just begun the Journal Your Christmas project at Shimelle.com. I love the format she uses and will adapt it to fit what I want to record. This should be fun and I love taking classes there and chatting with the global scrapping community. Here is the beginning of the album I will be creating.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner.....and a big ugly correction!

I was checking comments on here today and noticed I had a couple on yesterdays post. Imagine my surprise to find out that I was a winner from creativelysavvy.blogspot.com and I won a collection of my choice from Echo Park. I love that company and only have had the opportunity to scrap with Everyday Eclectic and the 6x6 pad of For the Record. I chose the full size collection of For the Record 2, Documented. I love the colors and the patterns of the paper. They are one of my new loves now that Scenic Route is no longer.

I also rose to the challenge to add to or redo a layout that just wasn't complete, or working for me, or in my case just plain butt ugly. This was a layout I did in class at my LSS several years back. I am a class junkie and signed up and paid for this class before seeing the layout. I couldn't stray from the layout (instructor was not having it) because of the precise placement of the eyelets. The hammering that went on in that store was enough to drive one to drink. This was before the tool from We Are Memory Keepers, the Crop-A-Dile. The amount of fiber on this layout would have knit a sweater for someone I am sure and I never liked it. I was from the "school" of once completed the layout went in the album never to be touched again. That is until  my Remix class. Shimelle gives us permission to tear it apart if need be, or to just add a small touch or two to an otherwise lovely layout. Mine was UGLY!!! So tear it up I did. Here are pictures of both versions.

I did this layout with scraps and the background paper is from Pink Paislees Portfolio and the cream and grey dot is from Heidi Swapp. I love how this turned out and we could finally see the Prom pictures that got lost in all that fiber and metal washers. I stuck with colors that gave a nod to the school colors of black and gold. The kids in the pictures represent exactly half of the graduating class of '01. Ridgeway is a small school north of here near the Iowa border. I am happy with the layout!

Fat and Sassy!

I am stuffed from the 2 Thanksgiving dinners we have had since Thursday. We cooked one here for our family of 3 because I like having leftovers. Then we had our family Thanksgiving at Jennifer and Jamies house. As usual, it was amazing and I am very Thankful to my daughter for doing all the work for this (with Jamie doing the grocery run). It was lovely to have my brother, Duane, and his wife Michelle and the kids, Dallas, Bret, and Anna Rose along with my mom Juanita to round out the group. I always say the more the merrier and so we had Susie, Jaret, Aiden and Logan; Samantha, Richard, Amelia, Johnnie and his girlfriend Brittany. Oh and not to forget we had Brets girlfriend Savannah. It was a noisy household sharing love, good company and great food!

It is Digi-Sunday again and I wanted to get a few of the layouts posted. I have some from my Remix class to post and I am looking forward to taking Journal Your Christmas on Shimelle.com.

This page is about the Christmas there were two Barbie Cars in my Living Room from Santa, one for Amelia and one for Hope. It was a crazy Christmas with Santa doing a great job as always.

I love this one of the kids and thought this would make a wonderful page. I like doing digital but I still have the first love of paper and glue.

These pictures are of my visits to Santa and my reactions to what was under the tree. I love these photos and the memories they bring back. I was lucky to live during a time of amazing animated window displays, Santa wonderlands, Christmas trains to ride through a magical place to see the fairy princess at Klines and the beautiful lighted crowns that hung above the streets of downtown Kansas City.

Missing in Action

Well it has been almost a week since posting and I have no excuse except life happened. I was busy scrapping for my Remix class and couldn't take pictures. My camera went hunting with my husband and son. I still don't understand how you can hunt and take a picture at the same time but it didn't happen. Apparently the deer heard through the grapevine that they were coming and they took off to parts unknown. The only action they saw was cramping in their bodies everytime they moved in their sleeping bags on the GROUND. Now my hubby is no spring chicken so what thought process did he go through thinking that he would remotely get away with sleeping on the cold ground. Needless with the winds blowing between 40 - 50 miles an hour they gave up and came home early. So now I have the camera back and I can commence taking pictures of my layouts again. Here are the two I did this past weekend. The "love this girl" layout is a scraplift of Lisa Dickinson. Love her layout!

Have a great day!