{Inter}National Scrapbooking Day!

Stock up at Scrapbook Graphics for NSD! And if you're not sure how to stay sane with all the sales on NSD, read this article I wrote! :)

Friendship

The friends I've met through scrapping mean the world to me. I've been making some plans for this summer to hang out with some pals. So I had a lot of fun writing the story for the latest edition of the Daily Scrapper, which focuses on friendship.

Be sure to check out the interview with Maya and the free collab by the Scrapbook Graphics designers! Part 1 is available through April 30 and then the second part will be up.

Need some new tunes...

I was pretty upset when 92.3 changed formats yet again and dumped KRock for some crappy pop stuff. Because we don't have enough of those stations in the New York area already. Melissa G turned me on to 101.9 and it's now my new favorite station. Plays classic rock, new stuff and stuff I love that I usually don't hear on the radio - like Gomez and Ryan Adams. Having some new stuff to listen to had me in the mood to download some stuff from iTunes today. I just saw Adventureland this weekend (Sweet movie! Kristin Stewart needs to stop it with the hair.) And I need that cool 80s music soundtrack.

So while I'm waiting for my new tunes to download I thought I'd catch up on my pages here.
Here's one I did for this week's Studio Start about places you'd like to travel. Credits
Kim Gabriel, aka the Raven, left a comment on my Penny's house page (see my last layout post) and asked if Penny was coming to see her. So that inspired this page! Credits
This is my Auntie Annie - did this for a Berna Datema play day. Credits
Shabby Miss Jenn is a guest at SBG this month. This kit is really lovely. This is my grandma on Easter. Credits
I was in a funk on Friday - a Bella kind of mood - so I scrapped a bit to snap myself out of it with Flergs' Into the Twilight kit. Credits
And I was bored on Saturday so I decided to get crafty! This is my first hybrid layout! I printed out the photo, ticket, journaling and word cloud, cut them out and stuck them on the paper along with the little flowers! I like how it turned out - even if my cutting still isn't that good! Credits

The colors for a Studio Start challenge matched T's dress perfectly! Credits

Easter madness

I've been busy cleaning my yard this morning. What a mess. I guess I didn't think about how fun that would be with a dog. Blech! I also got my scrapping stuff (well the stuff that's downstairs at least) all organized in my new crop bag. Next, I've gotta give Penny a bath, and since I'm procrastinating I thought I'd blog about Easter.

We all squeezed into my brother's van for the ride down to my aunt's house. Kylie is getting to be so funny. She kept turning around and joking with us. She threatened knuckle sandwiches (or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) and she kept telling Mikey she was going to kiss him.
We got to Aunt Eileen's early, so we sat around the table while Kylie made up games for us to play - like giving out pretend video games.

As the crowd trickled in it was time for lots of good food (my spinach pie and cheesy cresent roll appetizer got gobbled up quickly), the big egg hunt, the egg count (which was very messy since some of the eggs were not cooked fully and broke), the jelly bean guessing contest, obstacle course, visiting the horses, and all the usual stuff we do for fun. It was a little cold out, but still a beautiful day!

This year we had a new funtivity ... a hat contest and parade. There were some pretty cool hats. The parade consisted of us walking around in a circle trying to keep the wind from blowing our hats off. The people who didn't make hats made up prizes for us. I won most fun. Other prizes were funniest, most Easter, most springlike, most whimsical, ugliest, most desperate, prettiest, cutest, etc.

Here are some photos!

This is my hat... I'm sure you can tell by the scrapbook-y ribbons and flowers!
Mom did this one last minute for Randi. She got the ugliest hat. LOL!
Me wearing my pink cowgirl hat.

Tia, Erin and Eileen were very festive!

Grandma was very Easter-y!
Mike is an egg head.
Kylie didn't want to wear hers. And I just realized I don't have a picture of Taylor.
That is a toilet bowl!
Here are some of my other favorite photos....

The boys...
Before the hunt
The girls looking for eggs before the hunt. Me & Randi

Rocky loving the woods.
Rocky relaxing. (In case you are wondering, Penny didn't come with us. She went to visit my mom's friend Teri for the day.)
Melissa trying to get through the net.

In the news...

I have some newsworthy (at least I think so) stuff to share! First, I hope you'll check out the Daily Scrapper. I'm their new writer and I wrote my first story for the cover on spring for the latest issue.

Then, I was picked at the Customer of the Month in AC Bailey's newsletter!


And we made it through our first week of the new redesign at work. I have some pages to share, but first here's a look at what the paper used to look like...
You can probably see that this page below is narrower - which was the motivation behind the redesign. We were redesigning for a 44-inch web, which meant losing space, but at the same time we wanted to keep things readable. Here are some sample pages from the first day.

Redesigns and Scrapping

Our redesign launch went OK on Friday. I should have some images to post after I'm back at work today. Our front page at the Newseum has been the same since Thursday. D'oh! It was kind of hectic. I was assigned to the front page. And even though we've been working on the designs for so long, I haven't had to build a page from scratch with all the new features. We also had a big news story - the tragic massacre up in Binghamton, NY. And everyone else knew even less about the new styles than I did so they had lots of questions for me. But we got it all done on time and it looked pretty good. No one called all weekend, so I'm guessing things ran smoothly.

Saturday was another fun all day crop with my cropping buddies. Patti stopped by with her twins - so cute! And I won two prizes - woohoo! Of course I got lots of pages done too!

Yesterday, I went to Michaels and got myself a big crop bag. I have a big hybrid project I want to work on and I need to bring my stuff to the crop. I also picked up some crafty stuff for a hat contest we're having on Easter and a birthday present for Taylor.

Rocky's here this week while his mom is probably on a beach in the Domincan Republic for Spring Break. The dogs are being good this morning, but we're all cooped up because of the rain.
I'm bummed the weekend is over. I'm so exhausted - not sure if it's from the scrapping and shopping or post-redesign fatigue.

Here are some pages from last week and some that I got done at the crop...

Here's another Penny scene. I think this kit by one of the new SBG designers Coralie is too cute.

Finally got my Feb. 366 page done. I like this month because it was short! (Credits)
Randi and I went to the Rock annex in NYC while I was on furlough and it was kind of a disappointment. Not as cool as the Hall in Cleveland and way overpriced. They don't let you take photos inside either! Credits

Holly has some great new stuff over at 2Peas. I had fun mixing it up for this page. I am nuts about birds lately. Credits

I also had to grab Baers Garten's Spring Song collection before the crop because it was just too cute. Credits
This one was for a We Can Build It challenge. Our daffodils started blooming last week. Credits

I've had these photos of the girls for a while now and finally found a kit that I liked for them. Credits
Traci Sims' is taking a break from designing so we had a goodbye playday. This is my great-grandmother - who I think would have liked all the buttons and goodies in Traci's designs. Credits

I was really happy with my photo editing... here's the before image! I think it's hard to see - but there are all kinds of cracks and specks.


I did this page about Penny's Favorite Things for our play day welcoming four new French designers to the studio. Credits

An old photos of me and my brother using the Impressions of Renewal kit at SBG.

This was for a Lorie Davison Play Day. I'm still in love with Flying Dreams. Had to make a page with it for Kylie since I already did one for Taylor. Credits.

And these photos are from a few Easter's ago. I did this for an Em-Ka Play Day. Credits