Santa Love.

 This was a design team assignment a few weeks ago for Practical Scrappers.  I did this based on a provided sketch.  The “job” was to use ink on our project, so I rubbed my ink pad onto the patterned paper to cover up some of it underneath my SANTA title so you could see it better. 

This is one of my most favorite photos from my daughter’s childhood, mainly because “Santa” is my dad.  That was the last time he dressed up as Santa and now she’s too old for that, so I am SO grateful for this photo.

Here’s a closer view of the title:

Operation Write Home blog hop!

Good morning!  Today I’m participating in a blog hop for Operation Write Home.  I think they’re a wonderful organization and I have participated with them before.  They collect cards from cardmakers all over the country and box them up and send them to the troops overseas so that the soldiers will have great handmade cards to send home to their loved ones for birthdays, holidays, etc.  I think it’s a fabulous way to help help the soldiers keep in touch and making cards is something I love to do, so I am glad to contribute and help them out!

I appreciate them even more now that this young man is in the military (my nephew)

and soon he will be one of those many troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. 

If you’re one of my regular readers and are interested in checking out the other blogs that are showing their projects, you can start at the beginning here. 

 Here are some cards I made and am sending to the troops.  I left them blank inside so that the soldiers can use all the inside space to write a letter to the person too. 

 (the patterned paper on this one is actually recycled from a catalog)

If you would like to help out with making cards, go here for the information you need.  There are special rules, like using NO glitter because it puts the soldier in danger (it can be seen with night goggles).  This is a hard rule for me, because I like to glitter everything!  They also accept cards FOR the soldiers to say thanks for all they do, which I think is a wonderful thing!  These people work HARD to help our troops.  Go check out the mailroom video on their home page here.  Or if you’re not a person who makes cards, you can also donate a couple bucks to help them pay for shipping overseas.  There’s a Paypal donation button on that page also.

The next stop in the blog hop is Brianne.  I’ve checked out her blog and cracked up at her mini cupcake story.  Oh, and I LOVE her blog header!  Click here to go see Brianne.

GROW.

This was a design team project.  Now that this page has been shown on the Practical Scrappers site, I can show you here in case you missed it.  Our assignment was to use a white pen or marker, and this one was really hard for me.  Partly because I only own one white pen and I absolutely hate it and partly because my first thought was to draw with it on black paper and I am NO artist, people.  But it’s done and that’s that and as Ali Edwards would say IT IS OKAY.  (i love ali and have learned a lot from her)

This is where some scrapbookers get bogged down in perfection, I think.  No, it’s not perfect.  No, I am not 100% happy with it.  It’s not a great photo.  Yes, it bugs me.  But I am going to put it in my scrapbook with all the other pages… and a year from now I won’t even remember how much it’s driving me crazy today!  And you know what?  My daughter is not going to care that I’m not an artiste. 

She IS going to care that there is a page in the scrapbook that documents how much fun she had helping her aunt water her flowers, and that’s going to remind her what a GREAT aunt she has that spends time with her and listens to her and plays with her and lets her help do stuff.  And THAT is why I scrapbook.

Hello again.

Here’s another “hello and we love you” card for another (adult) granddaughter.  I had a photo to send her, and wanted to make her a nice card to go along with it.  This one is also a mixture of old and new stuff.  The pretty flower in the middle there is a Tinkering Ink rub on from their first release that I’ve had 2 years.  And that funky hippie what I call “flower child ribbon” was sent to me from my friend Jill around 3-4 years ago. 

I love the colors, how bright and cheerful it is.  I think it says spring, don’t you?

Hello.

Just wanted to show you a new card I made for a (adult) granddaughter just to say “hello and we love you.”  This card is such a mixture of old and new stuff it’s crazy.  The bird rub-on is from Tinkering Ink’s first release and I think I’ve had it for 2 years.  My friend Jill probably gave me that camouflage ribbon 3-4 years ago.  I’ve never had an idea for it, but my granddaughter is a hunter so it’s perfect for her card!  That cream colored trim is from Frog Feathers on Etsy.  I love her shop!

I also threw a bit of recycling in here too.  The cream colored paper is actually cardboardish-type material that was in packaging for Imaginise rub-ons.  And I’m not sure why that ribbon seems so bright blue in the photo; it’s really not.  It’s darker and really such a subtle camo that you almost don’t even notice, so I guess that means it’s camouflage camo!

My newest design team project.

Here’s a peek at what my project is this week for Practical Scrappers.  This time we had to make something with chipboard.   

Today is the day my project will be shown, so come check out the full view here.

Show your flower photos

On the Sunday Shutterbugs blog.  Edie and I have already posted ours over there.  And let me tell you, it sounds easy to just find a pretty flower and take a photo of it….. but it’s WINTER where I live and where Edie lives it’s like my summer all year long, so it ain’t as easy as it sounds.  After driving to an aunt who has a flower garden but nothing blooming and visiting a cemetery looking for something that maybe had been planted previously and was blooming early (I didn’t want to take photos of gravesite flowers!) and having no luck, I finally went to the grocery store and found a potted white daisy.  And then 100 photos later I narrowed it down to 20 and then narrowed it down again to ONE.  It’s rough making these decisions!  ha ha 

Here’s a few that DIDN’T make the final cut. 

Okay, so go on over here to see what did make the cut and of course see Edie’s as always fabulous photo.

We Are Family.

So we had this big surprise birthday party for my grandpa’s 80th birthday last year and I had one of the photos of the whole family enlarged into an 11×14 and framed it for a Christmas gift.  I had it all ready to wrap and it was bugging me a little, like it just needed a “little something” ya know?  So I added some chipboard letters, a button, and tied a ribbon around it and came up with this:

Exciting news!

Okay, seriously right now I am so excited I can hardly stand it!

I have a project that is going to be published in this:

So exciting I cannot STAND it!  I love Scrapbook Trends magazine anyway because it’s always FULL of the most beautiful layouts and projects, and I always love their special issues (like this one), but of course now I love it even more!  ha ha 

I made something for the kitchen that you’ll see in the pages of this issue.  Woo hoo!  If you like Scrapbook Trends too and want this issue, they have it available to preorder on their website here. 

Boot camp graduation.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that I hadn’t shown any photos or written any adventures on here about when I traveled to Georgia in December for my nephew’s boot camp graduation.  I thought she was crazy, but after looking back through the blog I realized she was right! 

There really weren’t too many adventures, unless you can call absolutely horrible bumper to bumper traffic an adventure, which for me it was because I am NOT used to that where I live. 

I drove 6 hours from where I live to Nashville, Tennessee and stayed overnight then drove another 6 hours the next morning in the final lap of the trip to Columbus, Georgia where Fort Benning is located.  I spent the night in Columbus very close to the base and headed over the next morning for graduation.  Graduation was pretty neat.  The speaker talked a lot about the history of the infantry, and some chosen soldiers put on a “show” of sorts.  Here are some photos of that:

There were flags displayed for every state.

The show or demonstration started by them throwing out some canisters that smoked in different colors.

Then the “strikers” drove in loaded up with soldiers and they ran out and got into formation.

It was a little scary, because they were walking toward US, the audience! 

And then out of the woods appeared the graduates.

There were MANY.  This is a small portion.  I couldn’t get them all in the photos!

My nephew didn’t want to hang around too long after graduation, as you can imagine, but he did let me make a few stops to take photos and we made a visit to the National Infantry Museum on base. 

I think this is fairly new, and it’s beautiful.  We didn’t go through the whole thing because he was just wanting to hit the road, but I saw some really cool stuff. 

There was this beautiful walkway that I saw as soon as I pulled into the parking lot and knew I wanted to get a photo of it.  I’m not sure what the flags represent, perhaps one for every state?  I didn’t count them.  As I was trying to find a place to stand where I could get them all in the frame, I thought it appropriate that the 2 soldiers chose that moment to walk down the path and I like the photo even better because of that.

The walkway is lined with bricks engraved with the names of soldiers.

Inside the building, this is the entrance to one of the most amazing museum displays I have ever seen. 

Behind that wall you enter the exhibit.  There were scenes depicted from 8 different battles from all the different wars we have fought.  There were glass display cases full of different uniforms and gear from the different wars.  The statues used in the scenes were so lifelike it was crazy.  Like this guy:

Sometimes there would be a video playing of the actual war from that scene.  Like this one.  That’s an actual full-size helicopter with the doors open so you could see all the way through, but in the opening of the door in the back there was a “movie screen” for lack of a better word with old Vietnam footage playing on it. 

Lots of history here.  I would have liked to have had more time to go through the exhibit slowly, but that nephew of mine was in a hurry to leave.  ha ha

Then there was the lovely Birmingham, Alabama 5:00 p.m. traffic.  Oh. My. Lord.  If you look closely at the photo below, you’ll see how the line of cars kind of curves to the right and then goes up that big ol’ hill and then curves to the right again.  Yeah, bumper to bumper the whole way.  And yes, I took that photo from the car IN that traffic because I was SITTING STILL.  And let me just tell you…..for some individuals such as myself who live with stupid anxiety disorder, sitting in a car and not being able to move for long periods of time (hell, even short periods of time)….. is NOT GOOD.  But I was okay and made it through, even though that same stretch from Nashville to Georgia that only took 6 hours this time it was 8 hours on the way back from Georgia to Nashville.  Lesson learned.  Time your trip before or after rush hour traffic. 

I also learned that due to my neck troubles (disk spurs in my spine) 6 or 8 hours is TOO LONG of a drive all at once, and I will not be able to do that ever again. 

Of course, after we arrived back at my house we took time for a photo shoot.  I don’t know when I will see this young man again, and he’s going to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan in August or September, so I wanted to document it.  Here he is in his “dress greens.”  Is this “kid” handsome or what? 

This one is my personal favorite:

Please go check out all the photos I took of him in his dress greens on my photography site here.  I couldn’t be more proud of this kid.