Irene Inspiration

Since I was cooped up all weekend, I thought I'd work on some crafty stuff...


This is a print I got at the Renegade Craft Fair. I finally found a frame that sort of fit, but it was a few inches too long. I was looking for some funky papers at the craft store use as a matte, but instead I found these Prima leaves which I liked so much better. I love how it turned out!


I did a little bit of scrapping too. Saturday would have been my crop day, but I didn't want to drive so far and get stuck coming home in the storm. I love my random number system! This page was 4 separate items on my list! Credits: Traci Reed's 1 Up and Darcy Baldwin's Scrap with Laura templates, all from Sweet Shoppe.


I don't know if I love this page - but at least it's done. I've been wanting to scrap my karaoke obsession for awhile and took the journaling right off my blog post from a few weeks ago! Credits: Miss Mint's I Rock kit

And, since I got sick of looking at my computer (I was following twitter and Facebook all weekend for storm updates, along with watching Netflix) I started this little guy!

Hurricane plans

We are hunkered down here at Casa Cabana, which means Mom, Penny and I are sitting around watching TV. I'm baking some cookies. I've got some craft projects to work on, books to read, Netflix movies to watch. I'll be good as long as we don't lose power.

My sister and I went out to the movies before and it was crazy seeing so many boarded up and taped windows. There was hardly any traffic, but we weren't the only nuts at the movies. It wasn't even raining so we figured we'd get out of the house while we still had time.

Mom brought it all the stuff we had outside so my plants and sunflowers are hanging out on the kitchen table.




I'm hoping Irene isn't as big as all the hype.

At the zoo...

I hung out with some monkeys at the zoo today... And here are some of my favorite photos...

This monkey was posing for me.

A red panda...

A butterfly in the butterfly garden... I really want a better lens!

A tapir...

Hello turtle!

This guy walked right up to pose, too...

And the zoo had these cool Lego sculptures all over!

Glory Days

I saw two of my good friends play with a band called Senior Moment yesterday. They played about 30 songs at a little poolside block party. Lots of classic rock covers. I thought they were pretty good, especially since my friend Dean's only been practicing with the band for a few weeks. I recorded two of their Springsteen covers. That's Dean singing lead and Jaime on bass.

Here's Glory Days...


And one of my favorite songs, Rosalita...


The weather was nice yesterday - after a week of nothing but clouds and rain. And I got to ride down the turnpike in a convertible listening to some good music. A good start to my week off!

The only bad thing was my point and shoot fell into a puddle and was covered in water. I have it drying in some rice... I really hope it recovers!

More random numbers

I'm still on a roll with my random number scrapping!

These are some drawings the nieces made me for my birthday. Credits: Irene Alexeeva's Tim Tam Tum and Forrest Polka paper, Lili's Capture alpha (recolored) and Waiting for Spring word art
Credits: Amy Wolff's Ziggy

Credits: Pixel Gypsy's Techno Girl


I saw a page like this ages ago and have been wanting to scraplift it. Of course, I don't have the old bookmark anymore. Credits: Amy Martin's Ribbon Princess's 1& 2, Amy Wolff's Recovery paper and Flergs' Dusk til Dawn white paper.

Credits: Valorie Wibbens' Farmers Market, template by Yin

Maybe I'm Amazed

On July 16, I got to see Paul McCartney at Yankee Stadium! You may have heard the story about the last time I saw Paul - I checked myself out of the hospital against doctor's orders to go to the concert. And I don't think it was just because of my health, but this show, almost 10 years later, was so much better!

The fun started the Subway. (We took the subway after hearing my friend Krista got stuck in traffic for hours at the show the previous night. After wedging ourselves onto the train, past some very rude people, Randi and I found ourselves near a woman wearing a big "I love Paul" button. She told us she was the president of his fan club in 1964! The train was packed with Beatles fans trying to hold on - including a very tall redhead from Capetown who bumped into us a few times. Not that we minded. The fan club president kept asking him to marry her. She was a hoot.

We spent some time checking out the new Yankee Stadium. We're not exactly baseball fans, but the stadium was pretty cool. All kinds of food and bars - my kind of place. Our seats were waaaaaaaaaaay up in the rafters, so we took our time getting up there.


Then the show finally got started. Paul played lots of Beatles songs and his solo work. He was silly and goofy as usual. He made some funny cracks about the closed captioning and about Derek Jeter having more hits than him, and his drummer did a funny dancing bit.
I got a little teary during a string of songs – Maybe I’m Amazed, I Will, Blackbird and Here Today. which he dedicated to John.


Paul's playing was pretty amazing. He played several different guitars, bass, piano, mandolin and ukulele. For a guy who's almost 70, he sounded great, especially considering the range of his songs - from the softer songs like Yesterday to Helter Skelter.


Fireworks and explosions went off during Live and Let Die, and then the show got even more awesome when Billy Joel showed up and sang I Saw Her Standing There with Paul. Randi and I screamed like Muppets!


Paul played two encores and it didn't seem like he was exhausted a bit. We started our way down from the rafters during Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End and watched from the lower levels so we could beat the crowd to the subway. The ride home wasn't as crowded, but still felt like it took ages - but at least I had lots of good songs in my head.

Credits: Baers Garten's Little Christmas Alpha, Shawna Clingerman's Intensit-he, Amanda Rockwell's Fresh label, Blythe Evans's Funky Mama notebook paper, Gina Miller's I Wanna Rock Guitar

Cure for the Mondays

Monday was a rainy, nasty day. I had to be up early for a day shift. But I was in the best of moods and here's why....

Waiting...

I started out with this little pot...

And when it got too crowded, I moved them to some bigger ones...

And now I'm waiting for my sunflowers to open up!

88 more days...

... and I'm going to Disney World!!! I really can't wait. I'm going with my brother, my sister in law and all the kids and I think I'm more excited than any of them!

I've been to Disney World three times. This photo with Goofy is from a trip around 1982-83? I remember taking the monorail from where ever it was we were having breakfast and I remember my brother pulling on a character's tail, I think it was Pluto, but I also think he had words with Donald! You can just see my sister cowering next to my mom.

I wish I still had those ears! They had my name stitched on the back. :)

Look what happens when I don't try!

So I've been struggling with my scrapbooking and creativity for a few months now. I never finished enough pages for the book I give my family every year for Christmas. I'd get a few pages done when Kim Jensen or Amy Wolff came out with new stuff since I'm still on their CTs.

To make things worse, my computer is slow. The program I use to organize my kits keeps crashing. My external hard drive keeps shutting off. All that makes digi scrapping nearly impossible. I was thinking about giving it all up!

While I was suffering from scrapper's block, I decided to scale back on things. I've been unsubscribing from newsletters and unliking designers pages. Don't need the temptation. The amount of money I've spent on scrapping stuff - digi and paper - has to be insane.

And while I was at the last crop, I got things going by scrapping for myself. I didn't worry about making a book for anyone else. I decided to scrap some of my own adventures. That's when the mojo started coming back. I stayed a lot longer than I expected and then finished a few more pages during the week.

I keep a long list on an Excel spread sheet with ideas for pages. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the list, which has more than 100 ideas, I called up a random number picker and made a game of it. It's been pretty fun to revisit some of the older photos that I haven't gotten around to yet. I made a nice little dent in it!

So here are the pages I've gotten done since the crop. I'm not going for trendy or the latest kits anymore. I don't even think I'm going to post to galleries anymore. I just want to tell my stories.


T's dance recital theme this year was "Lights, Camera, Dance." All the songs were from movies and she was surprised when I told her that her ballet dance was set to one of my favorite songs from when I was young, "Somewhere Out There." Credits: Holly Designs and Kate Hadfield's Movie Night.


This is my adorable friend Laila. She is one of the newer members of our karaoke crew. We threw her a little karaoke bachelorette party the night before her wedding. Credits: Laura Banasiak's Gurrrls Night and Water Color alphas.


Here's the Hans Christian Anderson statue from Central Park. I lost the credits on this one, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly stuff by Shawna Clingerman.

And here's the Alice statue. I have been collecting Alice kits for ages and finally put them to good use! Credits: Valorie Wibbens and Jacque Larsen's Unbirthday, Karah Fredrick's Open Book word strips, Cafe J Free 2B word strips, MandaBean and Dani Mogstad's Unbirthday, Tangie Baxter's Wonderland

Kim Jensen has some new school things out and I scrapped this page from my 8th grade yearbook. The yearbook was my first editing gig. It was so lame - dot matrix printed pages and pencil drawn doodles - but I still like looking at the pages. Credits: Kim Jensen's Three R's Alphas, School Zone papers and Elements and Date It Beads from Scrapdish.

I took these pictures of Randi and Rocky in their "matching" jackets back when she still had long hair and have had them on my list for ages. Credits: Gina Miller's Frosted Flakes

My puppy gets into the weirdest spots to hide or just get comfy. Credits: Kaye Winieki's Come Find Me and Green Jelly alphas.

This page is based on my Christmas card, which I didn't send to anyone! Credits: Lauren Grier and Shawna Clingerman's I Believe, Gina Cabrera's Idea Notebook Dec. 2010, Gina Miller's Merry Jingle

This is my friend's very mean dog! She was actually calm this day and let me take photos. She's usually barking and trying to bite me. Credits: A hodge podge of stuffs by Lauren Grier, Dani Mogstad and Krystal Hartley.

One of my friend's birthday parties. These have been sitting on the list for awhile, too. Credits: Cocktail Hour by Christina Renee and Amy Hutchinson.

Penny really loves people and she was so cure with my friends Jaime and Heather. Credits: Krystal Hartley's Puppy Love, Janet Phillips template, Christina Renee alphas

I also made this page for Heather for her birthday. Credits: Valorie Wibbens stuffs and some Tracey Monette stitching.

And here's one I scrapped using Amy Wolff's Krafty Prints from the Aug. BOYC at Lily Pad and papers from her assorted other kits. Word label by Penny Springman.

Renegage Craft Fair

Back in June I had such a great time browsing and shopping at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn. I did a lot of walking - checked out everything once or twice before deciding what to get. And I really liked talking to the people who created the items at the booths, too. I came home with some earrings, a necklace and a few prints that I just love! I took lots of photos too of all the funky and cute stuff I saw!

How cute are these little guys? The woman who made these said her husband drew the critters and she made the dolls. Her husband's art was pretty cool, too. Check out the Wonder Woman and Alice in Wonderland prints.


Since I'm hooked on Words with Friends, I had to get an R tile!

These capes were so cute. I wish they came in my size!

Haha! I don't have a gall bladder anymore! These were from I Heart Guts.

This stuff cracked me up. Thought about getting my brother a big cigarette.

Jersey!

I was wondering if this was a Doctor Who shout out!

I had to have a cute little pug print.

Cool little cameras.

The Breakfast Club

I really wanted the octopus, but didn't get think I had the guts to wear it. So I got the flowery one instead. So then I saw a friend of mine a few weeks ago and she was this same octopus necklace that she got at a different craft show.

These bags were made from place mats. I got one with a cute little hedgehog.

Here's a cute dog I met at the fair.

Some of the stuff I saw was crazy. See the ciggies above or these Mexican wrestler salt and pepper shakers.

My aunt and uncle have dead animals all over their house - I like these better!


And I just loved these cute little animals and pillows. Makes me want to learn how to knit.