And the beat goes on...

Well, January flew by, and I didn't post.  So I will do a double post now to make up for it.  I have been a busy little bee this past week.

There is one month out of the year where no one - not friends nor family - has a birthday.  That month is January.  This gave me time to focus on completing my 2010 scrapbook, complete with attending an All Day Crop (love those!)  However, it seems that 85% of all other birthdays during the year fall between February and May.  Below are the 7 - yes SEVEN - cards I made for the February birthdays.  Oh, and one magnetic Turkey for my Grandpa - he's 79 this year!

I made these cards with Cricut cartridges, both owned and borrowed, and paper, ribbon and other embelishments I already had on hand.  I love Cindy Loo, Preserves and Create A Critter.

Grandpa is a HUGE Jack Daniels fan, so we got him a six pack of the flavored coolers to drink while he is watching the Super Bowl.  The Turkey is a good luck charm - he leaves next week to go to Tennessee to bid on a license to hunt a special breed of turkey in Arizona.  Turkey hunting is his passion and this is the last breed he needs to complete his list.

Merry Christmas!

... and a Happy New Year!

I hope to get to post more in 2011.  We will see how it goes...

May your family be safe and may the coming year be filled with love and joy!

:)

My banana has a bowtie! (or something similar)

BOWTIE!!!! :)

And also my Scrappy Jak pumpkin challenge cards (I won't be around on the 25th - FL woohoo!)

Does anyone know how to flip the pictures??  They aren't supposed to be sideways....

Lots of good things...

Life seems to be rolling right along in this household.  Hubby got a job working for his favorite team ever - THE YANKEES!  I survived my first day as Supervisor to a very quirky and unpredictable group of employees.  And I think the card I posted below is my favorite card ever that I have made.  The second card is the get well soon card we gave to my boss yesterday before she left, which was mostly Susan's doing.  Isn't chickie so cute???  I just put the Create A Critter cartridge on my Christmas list.  It has so many great things in it that I think I have to have my own copy...

PS) My boss' surgery went well and she is home (it was outpatient), recovering nicely.

Sunday Night Downtime

My idea of a perfect Sunday night: a fruity wine cooler, a husband occupied by RedZone, and a whole scrapbook table full of possibilities.

I have been pulling 60 hour weeks for the past three months and I am exhausted.  All my free time has been taken up by housework and spending some well-deserved time with loved ones (that last one is NOT a bad thing).  But a lot of personal things have gone unattended.  I have been proud of myself lately tho - between last weekend and tonight, I have gotten 14 scrapbook pages done and three cards.  The cards I have displayed below.  50% of materials for these cards was provided by you, Susan, so thank you!

I finished my OT work early today and decided I needed to unwind.  My boss's last day is Tuesday, since she will be having surgery.  Guess who gets left in charge?  Moi!  I am excited and nervous at the same time.  But the wine cooler did some good, and I am very happy with my little sweeties below....

Why I first started scrapbooking...

I realize today why I started scrapbooking.  It wasn't because I could be creative, it wasn't because I needed something to do with all those old pictures lying around, it wasn't because I wanted to start a business with a good friend doing something I loved.  Don't get me wrong - scrapbooking has become ALL these things to me and more.  But that's not why I started.

I started because I have a bad memory.  Don't laugh, I'm being serious!  Just let me explain...

I met my husband in 2005.  Up until this point, my life had been pretty run-of-the-mill.  And there was nothing that I really wanted to make an effort to remember.  Yes, I will always remember the milestones - my sweet 16, my first kiss, graduating high school, graduating college, my first full-time job, etc.  But I was very nonchalant about remembering the four years leading up to high school graduation, or my old friends, or family vacations, etc etc.  The everyday stuff wasn't too thrilling for me.  I don't really care to remember the name of my band teacher, or what year we went to Lake George with Grandma, or what my Halloween costume was when I was 12.  I never took pictures of anything, or kept a journal, or held on to ticket stubs...

Then came David.  When you find the person you were meant to be with, your life really does change for the better in every way.  Now I find myself holding on to everything - every reciept from a new restaurant, every movie ticket stub, every piece of evidence of a new adventure with him.  And I take TONS of pictures.  I just printed out 50 on Shutterfly, and that was only the ones I took in the last 3 months.

If I don't do all this, I will forget.  Hubby tells me all the time and I know it's true - I am forgetful.  If I don't write things down or take care of them right away, most of the time they lay forgotten until much later, if ever.  But I don't want to forget.  I don't want to forget any second of this journey with him.

And that is why I started scrapbooking.  Now I have many, many more reasons to KEEP scrapbooking.

I am probably writing this whole mushy post because David is in CT right now, visiting friends, and won't be home til noon tomorrow and I miss him horribly.  Or it could be because I have a whole pile of work I brought home on Friday that I am about to tackle and I will use any excuse to procrastinate.  Either way, there it is.

Why did YOU start scrapbooking?

Somerset NJ Scrapbook Expo Part 2

Check out the nice make & takes I made at the Expo.  One is by Hubby, let's see if you can guess which one!

PS) It's black & blue...