Beers, football, crafts and good -byes

Last weekend, I thought I'd take a lot of photos and do a recap since I keep reading about "A Year of Weekends." Of course, I didn't get around to blogging all week - I blame the snow! So here's what I did...

Here I am in the snow... We had some more starting Thursday night. It was clear by the time I went to work Friday.

I spent most of Saturday putting together a memorial booklet for Aunt Clara. She was my grandmother's aunt and she passed away at age 98. She was the oldest resident of Weehawken and got to get the grand marshal in the town's anniversary parade. I didn't really know her, but Grandma spent a lot of time helping her these last few years.
Sadly, putting together this booklet was a disaster. I kept finding errors - the worst of which I found after printing 50 pages! It was causing me too much stress so I handed it off to my mom, who finished up the printing.

Well after that, I needed a break, so Randi and I and some friends to check out a new local brewery, New Jersey Beer Company. They let us try the different brews and then we had a few more. Randi's not even a beer fan, but she like their pale ale. I pretty much liked them all, especially the stout.


The brewery was pretty much an old factory with a little bar and some seats. It looked like a musty basement rec room. But I knew everyone in the place because a bunch of my Rover pals were there, too. I was bummed that they didn't have any growlers left to take home.

After that, we went to a New-Orleans inspired restaurant in Hoboken called Oddfellows.

We had some really good hangar steak brushcetta and crab cakes for appetizers. I had chicken ettouffee, which was pretty great, and Randi had the fried chicken, which was even better. She and Brian were very bickery so I took a picture of her pretending to stab him.


I stayed home Saturday night, watched some Doctor Who on Netflix and worked on decorating a frame. I used some rub ons from Little Yellow Bicycle to dress up a frame I keep on my desk at work.
On Sunday, we went to the wake for Aunt Clara and tried to figure out how we were related to people there who we've never seen before. Then I spent the rest of the day at Randi's watching football, catching up on my Entertainment Weekly magazines and eating lots of good food. We had ribs, Kobe beef, spinach dip, buffalo wings, french onion soup. It was all so good. I think I like football a lot more when I hang around with foodies!

Here was the first game. Green Bay (go Amy!) and the Bears.

Seriously, this was the best soup ever. Three kinds of cheese on there. Yum!

We were really bummed that Jets lost and won't be going to the Super Bowl. But it was nice to see the Empire State Building in Jets colors.

And of course, one of my favorite things about going to my sister's is seeing my buddy Rocky. He hasn't been over much lately and I miss him!

Sunday night with my camera

Sunday was just crazy! The Jets won beat the Patriots! My friend Monica was celebrating her birthday. My friend Jaime's band was playing. And then there was open mic. So we had a pretty awesome time at the Rover. And since it was the day before a holiday, the place was packed. I brought along my new camera and my friend Karran lent me his flash, since he was shooting some video. I just love, love, love my camera! Here are some of my faves...







Happy birthday to Monica!


Karran on the left held the camera and Jaime on the right hit the button! LOL!

January Crop

I spent yesterday with some of my favorite ladies at our monthly crop in Rockaway. The crops are held in a church hall and we each get our own 8 foot table. I don't need all that space as digiscrapper, but I do sometimes bring some hybrid work or crafty stuff to work on. Or my friend Tina just takes the rest of it over! The crop has a good crew of regulars so it's nice to see everyone and what they're working on every month. And there are always vendors (selling scrapping goodies or sometimes other things like purses or jewelery), lots of food, a masseuse, and a project class. Mostly, we laugh our asses off.

I used to get a lot more done, but my scrapping mojo isn't what it used to be. I don't feel as inspired or motivated, but I did get some pages done. I also spent some of my time organizing kits, scanning photos and going through some old newspaper clips, so I guess that took up a good chunk of my time. If you're in New Jersey and are feeling crafty, come scrap with us!

Here are the pages I finished yesterday.

Some photos of my nephew on his first Christmas. He was about 8 months old at Christmas and crawling all over the place. He got a lot of noisy vtech toys that he couldn't wait to play with! :) And I'm so happy that I got some good pics from Christmas with my new camera!
Credits: Kim Jensen's Page Plate 1 from Scrapdish and the Lily Pad/CatScraps Wish List collab.

We saw some cool gingerbread movie scenes from NYC at the Le Parker Meredien Hotel. My favorite was the Ghostbuster scene! Credits: Amy Wolff's Sweet Christmas from Lily Pad, Kate Hadfield and Holly Designs' Movie Night and PixelWorks' Joy of Gingerbread Alpha

Here are my crazy friends on New Year's Eve. I didn't make it to the celebration until 12:45 am but I had time to catch up! We had so much fun! Credits: Janet Phillips 2 Many Photos template 51 and Valorie Wibbens and Sahlin Studio's New Year's Eve kit from Lily Pad.


And here's Penny looking not so happy because I got her another dress. I think it's cute! My sister thinks it's creepy. And my niece Taylor said, "I want one!" I used Pixel Works' Funky Girl papers and elements from the Lily Pad Jan. BOYC and the Lily Pad's January template challenge template. And I can't say enough about WendyZine's Pet Eye action from Scrapbook Graphics.

Week 2

01.09 It's not easy being green

01.10 RU Rah Rah

01.11 Here's what my eyes look like after being dilated. You can see my camera reflected in them. Freaky!!!!

01.12 More freakin snow. I think it's cool how it looks like confetti!

01.13 Me & my owl hat
01.14 Penny Jr. is much more cooperative in photo shoots

December crafty stuff

So I finally got my new camera and I've been taking a ton of photos - but I haven't scrapped at all! Other than my Christmas card, I haven't used any of these new pictures for scrapping! I did just a handful of pages last month - and most of them were for gifts. But I did work on a few projects and crafty things!

I love easy crafts. I raided the craft store for some fun projects.


This year I made candy canes and a few other ornaments for gifts.


And I decorated this little box while we were snowed in during the blizzard. Next year, I'll fill it with flowers or candy canes.



Here are some pages I did get around to last month...

The girls came over to help with the tree! I used a kit by Amy Wolff. Credits

My mom and her girls. Credits

Randi and the kiddos. Credits

One of T's portraits. Credits


And Kylie's. Credits

I ordered pages from Persnicketty Prints and I love how they turned out! I got them just in time too!

And I have to show off my favorite Christmas gift. Since I'm always the one who makes gifts, it was nice to get something like this. I asked my mom no to buy me anything so she made me this shadow box and I just love it. It's probably one of my favorite presents ever.

Happy 2011!

A belated Happy New Year! I've been doing a little too much celebrating, too much working and not enough blogging or crafting lately. We've had a lot of snow so we've been trapped inside. But luckily for me, that's given me time to catch up on one of my newest obsessions Dr. Who on BBCA. (I dvr'd a two-day marathon!). I still need to do a Christmas re-cap (I use those when I finally get around to scrapping the holidays.) I was so happy with my photos this year thanks to my new camera.

I decided to try a Project 365 again this year so I can really put the new camera to work. I'm calling it Project 2011 so I don't have to take a photo every day. Maybe some days I'll I have more! Here's what I've shot so far...