Scrapping: October & November pages

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We had the usual crazy crowd over here and had lots of food, even though I did convince people not to make so much this year.  And I'll get to have another Thanksgiving of sorts tomorrow at the crop - which is always one of my favorites of the year, because Michelle the organizer serves up a pretty great feast!

So as I'm getting ready for the crop, I still have pages from last month's crop that I haven't shared. Here's what I've been up to...

 I've been working on lots of Disney pages - and I feel like I haven't even made a dent! Why do I wait so long to get things done!!! I really like this one - this was a cute show and I just love the songs from the Little Mermaid. Credits: Meghan Mullens' Part of Your World from Sweet Shoppe; Nettio's Circtangular Templates from Sweet Shoppe; Michelle Godin's Teeny Tiny Alphas from Lily Pad

Derek's favorite character looks a lot like his dad! Credits: Britt-ish Designs' Beyond Infinity 

Fire works at Epcot.  Credits: Britt-ish Designs' Baby, You're A Firework

On a magic carpet ride... Credits: Britt-ish Designs' Arabian Nights 

Mickey is delish... Credits: Amy Wolff's Gumball Machine papers from Lily Pad, Jenn Barrette's Wild Child elements from Lily Pad; Shawna Clingerman's That Thing You Do elements from Lily Pad

Trying on hats. Credits: Sahlin Studio's Enjoy the Moment from Lily Pad; Unbirthday by Emily Merritt, Valorie Wibbens and Jacque Larsen from the Lily Pad; Gina Miller's My Life banner from Lily Pad

Kylie had a whole week of birthday. Credits: Sahlin Studio and Valorie Wibbens' Make a Wish from Lily Pad;  Janet Phillips' Scrap Your Heart Out Template from Sweet Shoppe

Mike trying to feed Vez a mushroom. She's allergic! Credits: Sahlin Studio's Fairest One Of All; Janet Phillips' Scrap Your Heart Out templates from Sweet Shoppe; Pink Reptile's alpha

Pool at our hotel... Credits: Britt-ish Designs' Where Magic Begins; Tracy Martin's Messy Script Alpha from One Story Down

Dinner at Prime Time cafe... Credits: Sahlin Studio and Jennifer Barrette's Kitschy Kitchen from the Lily Pad; Inspired by a page by Mandie Pierce

This was my room. Lots of cute details, but not so comfy. Credits: Lauren Grier's Lalala from TLP, Brit-tish Design's Mick's Girl, Janet Phillips template

Kylie & Space Mountain... Credits: Taci Reed's Magical Tomorrow from Sweet Shoppe; Amy Martin's Tiny Dots Alpha from Lily Pad; Kaye Winieki' Templates 37 from Lily Pad

Locked up. Credits: Traci Reed's Magical Adventure and Magical Frontier from Sweet Shoppe

Turtle Talk - another one I love. Credits:  Britt-ish Designs' Fish are friends

More scenes from our resort... Credits: Janet Phillips' Scrap Your Heart Out templates from Sweet Shoppe; Lauren Grier & Penny Springman's Never Give Up from Sweet Shoppe; Britt-ish Design's Where the Magic Begins; Kim Jensen's Stringbats from Lily Pad

We got some snow. Boo! Credits: Tracy Martin's Christmas Memories Krafts and Alphas from One Story Down; Sissy Sparrows' Glitter and Glue Stackers and Smexy Snowflakes from One Story Down; Flutter Expressions' Vellum Flakes from One Story Down

Some scrap therapy about feeling down.... Credits: Amy Wolff's All Time Low from The Lily Pad.

A cute little pumpkin. Credits: Emily Merritt, One Little Bird and Paislee Press' Corn Maze from The Lily Pad

I had a very expensive trip to Target, where I got these cute slippers. I scrapped them for a post I did on the One Story Down blog on all the Daily December, Project 365, Project Life hype that starts up this time of year: Project Don't Join.  Credits:Lauren Reid's Riverside and Big Ol' Ric Rac from One Story Down; Peeps & Milo's Whoa Rudolph Templates from One Story Down; Tracy Martin's Christmas Memories Alphas from One Story Down; The Edits' Star Of Wonder from One Story Down; Design By Tina's Owls for Xmas from One Story Down; Sissy Sparrows Glitter and Glue Stackers from One Story Down;JM Design's It's Christmas tags from One Story Down; Button from Kim Jenen's Fantabulous Fall from Lily Pad

Penny and Penny Jr. Credits: Tracy Martin's Unicorn Cakes and Messy Script Alpha from One Story Down

This is a page about silly things my sis and I talk about. It got picked on one of the GSO blogs. Credits: Emily Merritt and Valorie Wibbens' Pumpkin Juice from Lily Pad

Some things I'm thankful for... Credits: Snips and Snails' Fall and Play a Game alpha from One Story Down

On Halloween at work...  Credits:  Emily Merritt's Sweater Weather templates from the Lily Pad; Emily Merritt & Valorie Wibbens' Force is With You from The Lily Pad

My pumpkin carving this year ... Credits: Kim Jensen's Button Strings, Fantabulous Fall elements, Pick A Pumpkin and Pumpkin Kraft papers from the Lily Pad

Some old but fun pics I've had on my list for a long time from Thanksgiving a few years ago. Credits: Kim Jensen's Dotrageous 2 papers and Bloomin' Twisted flowers from the Lily Pad ;Valorie Wibbens' Sprinkles Vol 9 from Lily Pad and Pollyanna alpha (Facebook freebie)

And, I was really excited to go to the Renegade Craft Fair holiday market in Brooklyn last weekend! It was awesome. Credits: Kim Jensen's ChristmasIt! from the Lily Pad; Amy Wolff's Merry Little Paper Pack and Petal Pops 4 from the Lily Pad; Michelle Godin's Snarky Snippets - Christmas from the Lily Pad; Pink Reptile's Star Struck from the Lily Pad; Valorie Wibbens' Pocket Stuffers No 2 from the Lily Pad; Karah Fredricks' Ridonculous 2 alpha from the Lily Pad; Amy Martin's Nov 2012 sketch challenge template from the Lily Pad

Thankful

I am thankful ...

for my family, especially my Mom and my sister

for my little pug

for my amazing friends

for scrapbooking

for amazing technology that keeps us all connected and keeps us from ever being bored

for secrets

for my cool job

for John Green's books

for Disney's takeover of Star Wars

for a home that warm and buzzing with electricity

for the people who have helped and volunteered and gave money, supplies, etc., to those who have lost so much this year

for the awesome state of New Jersey

Post-Sandy Scrap Therapy

I really don't know what I'd do without scrapping. Being able to create and express how I feel has really saved me from some dark times. And the friends I've met through this hobby mean the world to me. In the days after the storm, I was so down - one of my friends was worried that I quit all my teams and give up - but I knew I'd get back on track. 

It's not so much that things are bad here for me - but it's just that disturbance in the force that really messes with my head. I feel so sad and depressed sometimes. I've been worried about finding gas and about my co-workers who still didn't have power as of last week. I keep hearing stories about people I know who've lost so much. Two of my former teachers had four homes in Moonachie and down the shore - and they were all destroyed! It's insane to think about. 

But I made myself sit down and work on some Disney pages. I can't believe it's been a year since we went on our trip and that I'm still so behind on scrapping about it! I am such a procrastinator. But having a project and a deadline looming always helps me. And that got the mojo flowing again.

It also helped to document the storm and my feelings. I'll share those other pages later, but for now I wanted to show you some stuff I created about the storm.

These are photos I took during and after the storm between my house and on my way to my sister's. You can see it's not that bad - just a big mess.

Credits: Michelle Godin's Winter Canvas, Sketchy Scribbles, Snarky Snippets Winter, Teeny Tiny Alpha and Sloppy Stencil Alpha from the Lily Pad; Amy Wolff's Messy Marvin 3, Gumball Machine Papers from the Lily Pad; Kim Jensen's Perforated Alpha from the Lily Pad

And here's a more art journaly type page about all the stuff that's been bothering me. It took me a few days to get this all out but it really did help me to feel better.

Credits: Michelle Godin's Blustery Day from the Daily Digi; Sloppy Stencil Alpha, Keep Calm and Spatter On, Snarky Snippets Winter from the Lily Pad; Snips and Snails Designs Play a Game Alpha from One Story Down

Fun With Newspapers: the Storm and Election Night

I have a lot to catch up on and write about - you may have heard about this giant storm that ravaged New Jersey. Yeah, that. We lost power for a few days, have had to wait on long lines for gas and have had to deal with some other craziness, but we are lucky that things weren't worse for us. So many others have lost everything and my heart is just broken. I hope you'll help support the Red Cross or other groups helping the victims of this storm. And please keep sending your good vibes and thoughts to those of us here!

So I want to share what it's been like working at the Studio these last two weeks. The storm hit on a day when I was scheduled to be off. I'm kind of glad I was home - because I probably would have been stuck in Neptune for a few days.

My co-workers really amaze me. Many of them rode out the storm at the office - getting out our newspapers. Some of the papers were taken over by the other design studios. Most of the papers we produce from Maryland from Vermont fell into the storm's span. 

The Studio had lots of air mattresses and food for people who were stuck at work. Some were there for days. There are showers in the building and the cafeteria provided meals for everyone. Most of my co-workers, especially those who live at the Shore, lost power at home and have had to deal with damage. Some had to bring their kids and dogs in for a few days. Some of them still don't have power, but they've been showing up everyday and I really don't know how they're keeping it together.  I would get to work and people were just waking up. It was so weird. In spite of it all, they did some amazing work! 

So on Tuesday after the storm, I couldn't get to work because the Turnpike was closed. So I drove over to my sister's place - she never lost power - and I was able to work remotely. The crazy thing is it took me almost an hour to get to Randi's - and she lives only a mile away! There were trees down, traffic lights out, awnings and scaffolding in the streets. People were out trying to clean up. There was one bend in Boulevard East just past the Galaxy that looked really crazy - a traffic light was on the ground (I never realized how big those are!), a tree was up by the roots with all of the sidewalk around it and a wall around one of the high rises was in crumbles. Everything was such a mess.

Here's what I was working on ...

Rochester's had a big report on police offers getting out of parking tickets. (Best excuse: He couldn't see to well!) I had to do a lot of clean up on the tickets, but I really like how it turned out. 

On Wednesday, I made it down to the office in probably record time because there were so few cars on the road. But I wasn't sure how I was going to make it back on Thursday because of the gas panic. The editor up at The Journal News had offered to let some of us work up there and I took her up on it. Not only was it a shorter drive, but I was able to find gas and only had to wait a half hour. And it was really great to the new office and all of my old co-workers. It was exactly a year and one day since I started my job at the Studio - so I told some people who were wondering what I was doing there that I had been on a really long vacation. 

It was also just nice to work with some of them in person again and do some planning for the Sunday cover. I worked on TJN a few times in the last week and man that's a hard shift! We had a lot of live pages on Saturday night, an early deadline and lots of zoning, which I didn't remember exactly how to do in our computer system. Don't know what I would have done without my friend Alyce, who really helped me out! 

On Saturday, I almost cried because my job had a big tanker sitting outside and they provided gas for employees. It's insane how something so minor can mean the world of difference. New Jersey instituted odd/even days for gas so I would have had to spend my day off on Sunday trying to fill up. It really put my mind at ease. 

So on top of all of this storm and everything people were dealing with, Tuesday was election day. Here's a Rochester page I did leading up to all of it...

I spent Monday laying out pages for three newspapers in advance. The papers gave us a line up with story lengths and plan for photos and it was my job to make it all fit so that hopefully, on Election Night, reporters can just write to fill out the spaces. And for the most part it worked. But there are always crazy things that happen!

We had several cover options ready to go (in theory) depending on whether Obama or Romney won or whether the races were too close to call by deadline. I was working on The Journal News and right around deadline, the networks started calling the race for Obama and we had some scrambling to do.  Even when you're ready, you never are and the computer system never works the way you want it to. 

Here's the cover I worked on...

Obama didn't come out to speak until way after most of our deadlines, so most papers featured older photos like this one. Many of us still hung out around the office to hear him. I think I got home around 3 a.m.

This week at work reminded me a lot of how it felt to work after Sept. 11. Everyone really came together and did an incredible job. I hate that it takes tragedy to bring us together, but I'm really proud to have been a part what we did. 

Here's a look at all of our covers from Election Night...