Still In Disney!

Hey, a girl can dream, right? I'm actually giggling like a little kid right now!! Its 7:25am on Wednesday morning and I just finished a layout! What's the big deal? Well because and unnamed person (John), does not know how to be quiet in the mornings, I woke up at 5:15am in a foul mood. I am not a morning person to begin with and take away 1 1/2 hours of good sleep time and I'm even more grumpy. After a few choice words I got out of bed and stormed into the kitchen. I did a load of laundry, ran the dishwasher and made coffee. Oh you have no idea how badly I wanted to make TWO cups, rather than a full pot but I made the full pot! Anyway, after all that was done I got on the computer and started reading my emails. I was feeling sorry for myself because I have so many layout ideas in my head and my notebook and I knew tonight I could not scrap as I will be at Crew with Susie until 9ish. So what's a girl to do? Drop everything and go scrap NOW!! Hee Hee!!!! As soon as John left for work, I hightailed it into my scraproom armed with the latest sketch from Creative Scrappers. I still had Disney stuff on my desk from last night so I just grabbed what was at hand and made another Disney layout! That's 3 now!!!! I just may get this trip scrapped after all! Its only been 4 years!!! Papers are Sandylion, EK Success and Creative Imaginations. Felt by Queen & Co. Mickey Sticker by EK Success. Ribbon from my stash.  I cut the wavy border at the bottom using OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD Fiskars Decorative Scissors!  I have not touched these things in YEARS!!  I then had to do it twice to make the red mat underneath it because I didn't realize I was putting black on black!  DOH!  By using the scissors, this qualifies the layout for the Practical Scrappers challenge!  I didn't even do that on purpose....I just couldn't figure out any other way to get teh scalloped edge in a wave pattern to go along with the sketch and I jsut didn't have time to play with the Cricut!!  I may have to dust off some of my other decorative scissors now!

So now I am running late and I have to stop and get bagels for a co-worker's birthday! Hope you get some scrappy time today! Its a great way to start a day if you ask me!!

No More Monkeys

Before I go on about this layout, I want to remind anyone who reads this to back up their photos on the computer NOW! I had a major scare this afternoon!! I have two USB ports on the side of my laptop. I use them both regularly, especially when I am using my Cricut and SCAL software. I use one for the Cricut, the other to download pics off my camera. Well this morning I plugged my camera into the first slot and nothing happened. I didn't think much of it and moved it to the other port. Later I noticed that part of the USB port had sunken into the computer. No biggie...I will show John when he gets home and he will either fix it or I am down one USB. Late in the afternoon as I was preparing to upload my Rock Star layout I accidentally plugged into the bad USB. My computer made a sizzle sound....NOT A GOOD SOUND...turned off and would not power back on. My heart sank. I've only had this laptop since Christmas and there was no way I was expecting anything to go wrong. I mean I had my old Gateway laptop for 6 years before it died! Anywhooo, I texted John and told him my laptop died. He knew right away he was coming home to a lunatic! When he got home he suggested I use my daughters computer to check Best Buy, HH Gregg and Staples to see what kind of sales they have, knowing that I was NOT going to be able to function without a computer. While I was doing that, he got tweezers, played around with the Port, couldn't get it out and then decided to take the battery out for a while. About 20 minutes later he popped the battery back in and she fired right back up just like nothing had happened! HOLY HAIL that was close!! I immediately grabbed my external hard drive (yes, I have one and there was NO reason for me to not have my files backed up) and did a COMPLETE backup that took over 2 hours! So please....learn from my foolishness....back up your files NOW...or at the very least sometime this weekend! (PS - John covered the broken USB with electrical tape so I can't "accidentally" fry it again!)

Now on to the layout!! Since I was not able to print any photos while my laptop was backing up, I grabbed one of the old photo albums and decided to do a few layouts of older photos. I came across these two pictures of my now 20 year old son, Johnny, jumping and sitting on my bed! The date on the back is July 1991!! I knew immediately what paper to use....the Creative Imaginations Studio Basics 101 Monkey paper....now where is it!??  After about 1/2 hour of sorting, digging and getting aggravated again I found it! I had no plans for this paper when I got it....I just liked the monkeys! While I was looking for that I found an entire package of Basic Grey Lime Rickey that I had never even opened! I used the letters that were in there for the title. The orange chipboard letters are WeRMemory Keepers and the arrow is American Crafts. The flower is Doodlebug with some Fancy Pants Rough & Tough pins and green ric rac. I used the Friday sketch (and the flowers work for the weekly challenge too) at Practical Scrappers and when I was mid-way through it dawned on me that this layout contained all of the colors requird for the weekly challenge at Frosted Design! SCORE!! Thanks for looking and remember...BACK UP NOW, BACK UP OFTEN!  Oh and another PS - everything really is straight on this layout but being nighttime, I had to take the photo with the layout on my desk, me standing on a chair with wheels and balancing one leg on my desk!  Can you see where this could go?  I never learn!  LOL!!  So that's why the picture is a bit crooked!

Manufacturer Challenges

Between yesterday and today I completed two layouts.  The first one is for the Creative Imaginations June Sketch Layout Contest.  I used Creative Imaginations papers from the Christine Adolph Oceana line, felt border by Queen & Co. and felt fishies from Michael's.  Brads and photo turns are from my stash.  The photos are more from our trip to Antigua.  We took a catamaran excursion where John did a lot of snorkeling while I enjoyed the free-flowing Rum punch on the boat!  After snorkeling, we pulled up to a lovely beach where we had a lovely BBQ lunch and a performance by an incredible Limbo Dancer.  It was a GREAT day!

This layout was a tough one for me.  Its the first layout I have done that had a photo of Michael on it since he passed away.  As happy as I am right now....I have a wonderful man in my life now, my kids are terrific, sometimes I think I will never get through the grieving process.  Its been several years already but every once in a while I am dragged right back to that horrible day when I was faced with something that nobody should ever have to do....I had to tell my children that their father was gone.  Michael and I were separated at the time of his death but he was still my best friend.  He had a terrible time with alchoholism and I just couldn't live like that anymore.  I miss him so much. He was a wonderful father and it hurts me so much to see my kids growing up and knowing how much he is missing.  As I put in my journaling, I can only hope that Heaven really is a better place because its really hard to live here without him in our lives.

I did this layout for the My Minds Eye Challenge.  The theme is "Remember" and there is a sketch to follow and the layout must contain 80% MME products.  I used the OOH, LA LA line.  The journaling card is from the So Sophie line but I cut off the trim that did not match!  This layout has a lot of meaning to me. The three butterflies that are flying out of the broken heart symbolize my three kids.  They will always remember their Dad but they are spreading their wings and soaring despite the lousy hand they have been dealt at such a young age.

This was very emotional for me today, especially considering Father's Day is this Sunday.  So I think that I will take a break from scrapping, get some housework done and then pick the kids up from school and do a little shopping!  I am sure I will be back tonight as I HOPE to get some scrappy time later on!