Family treasures

I have had a really great weekend with my family. On Saturday, we had Taylor and Kylie and did lots of stuff with them - played in the yard and everything in the house, took a walk to Burger King and hopped all the way back, and went to the park.

Today, we had a memorial Mass in honor of my grandfather, who passed away three years ago. So my family all got together to go to church and then brunch. Afterwards, we went back to Grandma's house to sort through boxes and albums and envelopes and stacks of photos. There was so much stuff! I brought my laptop and scanner and got more than 170 scans - some with multiple photos. There were so many amazing photos - my grandparents as children, their wedding, my grandfather in the Army, my mom, aunts and uncles as kids, all of my cousins, some of the older generation of relatives who have been gone a long time. It was like each album or box was filled with treasures as we looked back, heard stories, shared memories. We laughed over lots of funny clothes and funny hairstyles.

In addition to all the scans, I came home with a stack of photos and three albums! There were still a few more we didn't even get too. And I was just too tired to scan any more! I'm going to be editing a lot of these and putting them up in a gallery so that my relatives can order their own copies. And I'm sure these will keep me scrapping for a long time!

I just went through my stash quickly and here are a few of my favorites! Still needs lots of touching up...
This is my great grandma
Me at my Uncle Ken's wedding as a baby. I was always scared of him as a kid! And then there's me, Mike and Randi playing Simon Says - I have crimped hair!
My parents - gotta love those coats!
This is a view of lower Manhattan from Weehawken, NJ, in the 40s!
I loved this album and even the corners and frames so I'm just showing it like this! These are all photos from when my grandmotehr was 15! Thes are her sisters and their husbands.
My grandpa, right, in the Army.
My grandpa played semi-pro baseball - I had no idea!
And my absolute favorite - my grandmother in her wedding dress. She is just stunning!!!

I can't wait to get scrapping!

How I feel today

exhaustivo
adjective
Feeling exhausted because you stayed up too late the night before watching shows recorded to your TiVo or DVR. Commonly accompanied by the self-flagellation, "Why do I do this to myself?"

From EW Pop Watch

Thanks for being my friends even if I'm a grump!

Thank you everyone for your nice comments the last few days. It really does cheer me up to know you all love me even when I'm so down and cranky! I'm hoping the clouds clear soon!

My ankle was throbbing like crazy this morning, so I didn't go to the gym. Still haven't gone this week yet. But I didn't want to make it worse. Gotta try again tomorrow!!!!

Here are some of my recent layouts. This is one I reconstructed after losing my page the other day...
This one has lots of goodies from Doris Castle! I'm so glad she's back at SBG. The alphas are all by Correen Silke, who I see has been designing up a storm lately at Scrapdish. Credits.
Speaking of people who are back at SBG, this page is all Meredith Fenwick! She is seriously one of my all time favorite designers! Credits. These photos were from last Easter. The stamps reminded me of one of the games, which I didn't have photos of. The game involves getting everyone through a net using only one whole per person. So some people have to get picked up. It's crazy!
And here's a page I did for this week's Studio Start challenge about things you don't like. And right now I don't like my allergies!!! They are making me crazy, and that's after getting my monthly shots. I blame global warming! LOL! Anyway, it was really fun working with Maya's boxes and looking for different things in my scrap stash. (And you know a day after I finsished this I saw some cute cleaning doodles over at Lily Pad. D'oh!) I don't really hate any of the things in the boxes - well, maybe dust! Credits.

More reasons this is not my week!

I'm sorry that I'm so whiney! This is just not a fun week for me. Here are some things that happened today...
- I stood up and my ankle gave out on me and it's now very achy. I have had bad ankles since my dancing school days.
- I couldn't figure out what to wear to work and after about 5 changes I was late for work.
- While I was driving to work, I missed one of my exits and came very close to missing a turn, too. I think I was too distracted feeling bad for myself.

Easter recap

Well now that I'm over my computer drama and back from the dentist, I can tell you all about Easter. (Dentist went OK - still a little numb!)

We all piled up in Mike's van again this year - Mike, Vez, the girls, Randi, Mom, Mikey, Rocky and me. We got to Aunt Eileen's farm pretty quickly - two games of Trouble and some playing with silly putty and we were there.

We started out with the big Easter egg hunt. Uncle Bruce hides hundreds of plastic eggs all over the property. And they get into some tricky places. Kylie was really getting the hang of it this year.
I helped Danielle out this year since her mom was busy with her little brother Nick. All of the bigger kids are getting pretty lazy or are too cool to play along, so Danielle and I had a huge stash. We trekked around the whole farm and still found eggs everywhere we went. Usually once you come around to another side of the house, those eggs are gone. Taylor adores Danielle so she was giving her eggs, too.
See what I mean by tricky. These prickly spots. You can get a lot of scratches - and even ticks - out there!

After the egg hunt, we went back inside where Danielle gave Randi and Taylor makeovers.

Then it was time to eat - so much good good! A big ham (which I didn't eat), green chicken parmesan (left over from St. Pat's Day), mac & cheese, green bean casserole, scalloped potatoes, cheesy broccoli, asparagus, and more. So much food on top of all the appetizers we had been munching on before the egg hunt! Good thing we get lots of exercise at the farm.

Next up was the games. Aunt Eileen comes up with the craziest activities every year.

The kids had to walk across this string with a tube between their legs - which upset Nick because he wanted to play train!
The little kids were first up for sack races. Then bigger kids, and at least Aunt Eileen is a good sport, because she and Grandma had a race. We made them do a do-over because the little kids got in the way of photos! LOL!
The little kids had to run across the yard putting the right color clothes pins in the basket - and I learned that Kylie knows her colors. She had "ello."
And then we made the too-cool teens come outside to do the hula hoop chain.
After some more playing, it was time to count the eggs for prizes.
Here was our stash. You get points based on categories - who has the most baseballs or green eggs or sparkly eggs, etc. And then the kids get little prizes based on how many points they get. My aunt really goes all out!

Then it was time for dessert. Aunt Eileen's bunny cookies are my favorite!

Our trip home was another adventure. Kylie got sick just as we got onto the turnpike and Randi, Mikey and I were stuck in the back smelling it all and freezing!!! It was a loooooong ride home!

The computer ate my photos!

Ok, now I'm really going crazy! I just got home from work and was going to re-building the page I had started and lost. Well, looks like I can't! Here's why...

The photos are all gone! With the exception of a few shots, all my egg coloring shots are corrupt or something. I have no idea what's wrong with them. I can't open them with any program. And when I look at the properties, the file is 0 bites. This is including the picture I posted yesterday. I guess I should be happy that I have a few left.

I think I'm going to bed. I'm hoping tomorrow is a lot better!!!!

**Update
- I also had to redownload a few zips that didn't seem to work.
- I had cleared the photos off of my memory stick to make room for Easter photos so I don't have them there. From now on, I'm storing everything in temporary back up on an EHD!
- I also am going to have to reinstall Photoshop and and Lightroom. I just spent ages looking everywhere for my Photoshop CDs when they were right on my desk. D'oh!!!!!!

I am so grumpy!

Soon after my last post here Sunday morning, my computer froze up and started running checkdisk. There was a blue screen running for about a half hour that seemed to be going through every file on my computer (think of all the alphas!).
Here's what it looked like. When it finally came back up, I quickly backed up a few things, but I didn't have much time since we had to get going.
I wanted to upload my photos and scrap last night but I found a few problems: Norton antivirus kept shutting down, ACDSee would launch, and Photoshop lost of all of my actions. I don't know if any of these were related to the earlier problem.
The most pressing seemed to be the antivirus thing. So I went to their site after trying some trouble shooting to chat with a rep. The problem got fixed, but it too THREE HOURS!!!! Ridiculous! The person, who had logged in to my machine, must have been working on multiple jobs or something because he seemed to disappear while nothing was happening. I had to keep sending messages - Hello? Are you there? I'm falling asleep on my computer! I did get through a good hunk of my book, but I didn't get to bed until about 3 a.m.
Today, I spent the morning finding my actions and figuring out how to get ACDSee working again. But then I discovered the layout I was working on Sunday morning was gone! UGH! I have no idea what happened to it.

So you can see why I'm feeling grumpy today. And I just got some more good news. I thought my dentist appointment was for Thursday, but it's not, it's for tomorrow. And then I have a training meeting at work. Lots of fun all around!

Happy Easter!

I am up so early! I was in bed before midnight, which is rare for me, and I usually only sleep about 6 hours. So that means up super early today. That's not necessarily a good thing since it's going to be a long day! We'll be heading up to Mike's house and cramming into the van so that we can head down to my aunt's farm for Easter. As you may have seen from the last few pages I've posted, Easter is a big, crazy day in my family!

Yesterday, we spent the day with Taylor. She is really growing up lately. She'll be 5 next month. She can have 5 different conversations in under two minutes - takes after me! LOL!

Her mom dropped her off after dancing school and we took her to see Horton Hears a Who. She was so funny in reacting to the movie, yelling at the bad guys at one point and threating to get them back kung fu style!

After that, we took her shopping to pick out some clothes for her birthday and then we took her back to our house to color eggs. She wanted to rush right through that so she could get back to playing and watching 101 Dalmations. She really like to be able to play with her princess stuff without Kylie around. Her little sister likes to come in and knock things over!

Taylor also got to play on my laptop with the digital art studio. She hadn't played for a while, but she remembered how the program worked, and she's got pretty good command of the tablet. I cooked tacos for dinner and she told me they were her favorite! And then she went home with Randi for a sleepover. I wonder how that went!

See what I mean about the rush! She had eggs in every cup!


Mom's not even awake yet this morning. I think I may try to scrap a little before I have to get dressed. Hope you all have a wonderful Easter!!!!

I need to move!

I'm so depressed and a little freaked over the news from my town lately. Check out the latest headlines...

Cops still seek sex man in West New York sex assaults

Police hunt eatery owner's killers

I know my town isn't the safest place, but it just seems like it's getting worse all the time. A few years ago, my landlord was killed by some punks who started a fight in his restaurant. And just last week a friend of mine was attacked and stabbed in the next town over.

It just makes me worry because I can't always park close to my house at night. Luckily, there was a police car in my neighborhood last night. I hope they are there tonight, too.

I think I know why....

I think I figured out why I'm feeling so "creative" lately! It's because I don't want to go to the gym! LOL! So find something else you don't want to do and then that becomes the thing you put off instead of scrapping!

Sneezing and scrapping

I had a bad case of allergies at work last night and I feel crummy this morning. Gotta love the onset of spring!

Here are some more new pages! :) So not only have I been scrapping a lot, I've been journaling a lot, too. Sometimes it's so hard to come up with stuff to write LOL!
Finally got around to scrapping these photos of Lucia and the story of how I met her! Credits.

I love the photo of T and my mom from last Easter. It reminds me of an illustration at the end of The House at Pooh Corner where Pooh and Christopher Robin are walking away. Credits

And here's a photo from Ag Field Day last year of one of my favorite places at Douglass College. Credits. I got to play with Wendyzine's Cut and Cluster Actions and I gotta say they are pretty fun! (Check out Image 3 in the store preview!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I love St. Patrick's Day and celebrating all things Irish. My mom's family is mostly Irish - and very proud of it, so it's always been a big day for us! We had everyone over last night for dinner - corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and chicken for me and Vez since we don't like corned beef LOL!
I went to the Rover's St. Pat's party on Saturday night where there were Irish dancers, bagpipes, lots of Irish music (including U2 and Van Morrison), jello shots and lots of people. I forgot to take pictures! Not a good idea to take the camera out when there's a lot of beer everywhere anyway. I know my purse got soaked a few times. And we did a little party hopping afterwards and I got to show off my Guitar Hero skills a bit!

And somehow with all that celebrating, I still did some scrapping this weekend! I have one I can't show off yet, but here's one I did for the scraplift challenge at SBG that sort of celebrates our Irish heritage!
Grandma usually reads us a story on Christmas, and this year's choice was "An Irish Night Before Christamas." I used Jenn Trippetti's Poppycock and other goodies on this one. Credits.

Here's another Studio Crew page using goodies from Baers Garten Designs. Credits.

I have been really digging into my photo stash latey, which I'm very happy about! I always take so many photos and never get around to them. I'm just getting around to some shots from last Easter. Here are some pages I've done in the last few weeks that I haven't posted here yet...

I scraplifted my good friend Tracy Blankship for a challenge on the Eclectic Team. Credits.

Here's one documenting the long, boring trip to my aunt's house for Easter, which we'll be making again next weekend. I always think part of the reason it feels so long is that we're so anxious to get there for some fun. Credits.

Here's one of my aunts and uncles' horses. Credits.
Me and my buddy. Credits.
And my silly niece and cousin. I had taken some of these and then found the others on my camera after letting my cousin play with it. Credits.

Some cool news!

So if you saw the Studio Matters blog today, you may have seen some news that I've been dying to share! I'm the newest member of the Studio Crew at Scrapbook Graphics! I'm already having fun with the team and working on some pages. Here's my first one for this week's Studio Start Challenge...

Credits

7 random things

Just saw this on Andie's blog. Play along if you want to!

1. I am too lazy to put away my clean laundry. It usually sits in the basket while dirty clothes cover the floor.
2. I've got the song "She's A Woman" stuck in my head since hearing it on American Idol.
3. I don't like perfume. It makes me sneeze.
4. I think I do a funny impression of Yoda.
5. I'm going having Weight Watchers Stuffed Turkey Breast for dinner.
6. I prefer to shop for groceries at 2 a.m.
7. I can't wait to get home to watch Lost tonight.

Dentists

Sigh! I just got back from the dentist and I'm so depressed. Usually, my visits go great. The hygentist yells at me for not flossing enough but that's the worst of it.

I haven't had a cavity since before I had braces. So now the filling needs to be redone.
And on top of that, I may need root canals on my front teeth and crowns on my 6 front teeth. I have had really bad stomach problems for years and all the acid reflux, etc., has taken it's toll on my teeth. So the enamel has gotten very weak and my front teeth have become terribly sensitive.

I'm so freaked out. I don't like having any medical stuff done. But I'm also so worried about how much all of this is going to cost me and how painful it's going to be. I feel like every time I start digging out of the hole financially, something sets me back.

So has anyone had root canals or crowns? Tell me how bad it was or wasn't!!!!!

I still can't believe

... how awesome the Juanes concert was! It was really one of the best shows I've seen - even though my Spanish is not that good! LOL! I've been listening to him for such a long time, thanks to my sister, so I recognized most of his songs. He reminded me a little of Bono - he did a mine awareness thing, took Colombian flags from the audience, sang to a girl in the audience. He and his band really rocked out and he's not too hard to look at either. :) Some of my friends were just crazy - thought they'd throw themselves at the stage. We also found Betty and Fernando sitting down on the floor - not an easy thing from the 200s level in Madison Square Garden. And Juanes closed with a classic salsa song, Rebellion, which had the crowd going crazy.

I've spent the rest of the weekend mostly recovering from Thursday night. I had gone out with Betty for margaritas and then met up with some friends at karaoke. Mom was gone for a Moose thing so I had the house to myself. I caught up on some Netflix - Junebug - good movie and great performance by Amy Adams - and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - which I thought was long and boring, even though Casey Afleck was pretty good.

Yesterday, we went to visit my crazy nieces. I was so tired that I went to bed early - but then I woke up again around 1! I hate when that happens. I couldn't fall back asleep so I tried catching up on some of the shows on Tivo and got really into reading The Golden Compass. But I ended up reading so much that I slept in today and am getting nothing done!!!! I've gotta get ready and head out to the allergist before work. Sigh! I need to get a better routine down so that I wake up and go the gym. I have so much to get done that I am starting to feel panicky. I think I need an assistant/maid to help me out!

Do computers feel?

I had been putting off taking my older computer in for a long time. I was so afraid that I lost everything on it. But my gym isn't too far from Best Buy so I took it in to Geek Squad and now there's a big hole under my desk along with lots of dust bunnies.

I always get so nervous going there! It's like going to the doctor. I was explaining to the Geek Squad guy how I have several computers that I use for different things, and it's pretty sad when the Geek Squad guy things you're a nerd!!! I feel like I left my kid off at the hospital. Sigh! I wonder if my computers miss each other.

Good news is that it's probably just a power failure. Phew!

Well, I'm off from work today! I'm going to see Juanes later tonight at Madison Square Garden with Randi and some friends. Before that we're going to the city for dinner. Should be lots of fun!!!

Seriously!

I just saw the craziest thing! I was driving home - it's about 3 am - and I saw a guy hitch hiking wearing nothing but a newspaper! Looks like he got caught in the act and crawled out a window or something!

Did ya miss me?

My internet connection has been down since Sunday night! Not fun at all. I spent a good half hour trouble shooting with someone from Verizon Online. And after all the gymnastics of testing the modem, plugs, etc., she told me it was a regional problem!
Well, I called back today and talked to someone who was much more helpful and I'm all set up!
I have so much I want to catch up on I don't even know where to start!

So sad news first. After three years, I'm no longer an admin at RAKScraps. The site has new owners/admins who I hope will do a great job and keep things rakin'. I know they're already planning some fun things. It has been hard having to deal with this, but I think it will be a good change for me. RAKScraps has always been my morning coffee - the first thing I check when I get up. And I've made so many amazing friends. But I won't be going too far. I'll be around the digi sites and on Facebook!

Well, since I've had no internet and no admin stuff to deal with this week, I've done some other things! I joined a gym! It's been so long and I really need to get back on track. I am so lazy and spend so much time on the computer. I hit the treadmill yesterday for my first workout and it felt really great.

I didn't go today because I had another appointment...

My hair is nice and short again - the way I like it! I had "get a haircut" on my to do list since last year! I'm glad I can finally cross that off! (Man, I look yellow in this picture! LOL!)

Not much else exciting lately. I've seen a few movies - Be Kind Rewind (sorta funny - I loved Jack Black's take on the movies) and Semi Pro (hilarious), I rewatched Heroes season 1 on DVD, and my Netflix queue is moving through pretty quickly. I liked Jane Austen Book Club and Martian Child, which reminded me of how I felt as a kid. And I finally finished re-reading Sense and Sensibility and have moved on to The Golden Compass. I made a new rule that I have to read at least 2 new books before I re-read an old one, since I've been doing so much of that lately.

Well, I still have about 80 something emails to get through and I need some lunch. So I will catch up more later!