Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Japanese Autumn panel



At long last, I finished my Japanese Autumn panel! Now I have all four seasons finished, and I hung up Autumn yesterday. It's about time, since we're over a month into Autumn already.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Sweet Shoppe Blog



This week's From Our Blog 2 Yours is to choose our favorite layout and post it on our blog. This is really hard - I have a lot of favorites! LOL!! But this is one of them - because I really love the expressions in their faces and I love the kit (from Eve Recinella, of course) and I love the fact that I didn't use a template or scraplift or anything. It's one of my "older" layouts (from last year), but I still love it.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Books

I love to read. I always have a book I'm reading, and if it's a really good book, I have mixed feelings when I finish it. I want to find out how it ends, but I hate for it to end too.

Awhile back, I discovered the Outlander series of books by Diana Gabaldon, and I read every one that has been published so far. I really love them and am anxiously awaiting the next book in the series.

The author has recently published a few books about one of the better minor characters in that series. The first book in this new series is called Lord John and the Private Matter. It didn't get as good of reviews as the Outlander books, so I decided I would rather borrow the book from the library than buy it outright (I had borrowed all of the Outlander books from the library as well). The only catch was that our library didn't have the book. But some good friends of mine, who work with the Friends of the Library, told me that if I requested it, there was a good chance that the library would acquire the book. So I did.

It took a long time, but the library called me yesterday to let me know it was finally available to me. The only catch was, I had just started another book a few days ago. I always finish a book before starting a new one (or decide not to finish it if I don't like it) - the point being that I don't like to read 2 books at the same time (it's confusing enough keeping all of the characters straight in 1 book, let alone 2! LOL!!). Anyway, since the book was finally available and they would just hold it for me for 3 days, I checked it out today. So the other book will just have to wait I guess.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Breast Cancer Awareness Month



I saw this image on Katie the Scrapbook Lady's blog (here), and just couldn't resist adding it to my blog too. Katie got the image from Jenn (here).

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Second New Layout


Blogger is cooperating with me today - here is the second layout that I mentioned yesterday.
Credits: Quick Page by Cindy Schneider using Eve Recinella's Shabby Sundress Aqua Vita kit - available at Sweet Shoppe Designs
Crochet stitching and happiness label from Shabby Sundress the Elements by Eve Recinella of Sweet Shoppe Designs
Date stamp by Meryl Bartho of Digital Scrapbook Place

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Two New Layouts (finally!)

I finally got some layouts done last night! I don't usually use quick pages, but these are just so cute - and so easy to use. Here is the first one (blogger is having problems and won't let me upload the other one now).



Credits: Quick Page by Cindy Schnieder using Eve Recinella’s Shabby Sundress Fruity Fun kit - available at Sweet Shoppe Designs
Fold template by Karah Fredericks of The DigiChick using Fruity Fun papers
Tab from Shabby Sundress the Elements by Eve Recinella of Sweet Shoppe Designs
Staple and green flowers from It’s a Spring Thing by Eve Recinella of Sweet Shoppe Designs
Fonts - DJBTabithaScript by Darcy Baldwin of The DigiChick, Artistamp Medium

What Carnival Ride Are You?

I don't even like carnival rides, but this quiz was fun - and actually fits me reasonable well.




You Are a Log Ride



You prefer to live a fairly calm, relaxed life... with a few surprises thrown in.

You don't tend to get yourself worked up easily. You can roll with what life throws at you.

In relationships, you are steady and solid. You maintain a pretty broad perspective on what's going on.

That's not to say you can't get swept away. You're emotions run as deep as anyone else's.



Your life seems like it has been remarkably easy so far. But that's due to how you manage it.

You never stretch yourself too thinly, and you think out your decisions carefully.

Taking the time to enjoy each day is important to you, and you don't let your emotions rule you.

You stay the course and do what's right... knowing it will all work out in the end.



At your best, you are tolerant and understanding of other people's quirks.

You take "go with the flow" to the extreme. Even if you don't like where you're going.

At your worst, you repress your feelings and end up being a little tightly wound.

You definitely have some explosive emotions that occasionally come to the surface!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Blog Action Day

I have to add my 2 cents worth to Blog Action Day. I was quite happy to hear that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize for his lifetime of work on global warming. I saw his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" awhile back - if you ever had any doubts about global warming, the movie must convince you. We try to do what we can. We recycle what we can - although our community doesn't recycle everything. But after we started recycling, it was amazing how much less garbage we generated. We have been changing over our light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs. These are very simple changes that just about anyone can do.

We built our house to be quite energy efficient - we have south facing windows with a roof overhang to keep out the sun in the summer and get the sun in the winter. It is also well insulated. We changed from drapes to blinds this spring, because in the spring and fall we get the sun on warm days, and the blinds do a better job of blocking the sun and still allowing light in.

We also considered gas mileage very carefully when we bought our new car this summer. We really wanted to buy the Prius, but it wasn't comfortable for me. Hopefully by the time we buy our next new car, there will be a lot more energy efficient choices.

And here is a link to The Action Blog.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Love (version 2)



Yesterday, I worked some more on the layout I posted a couple of days ago (after getting some comments from Emma, my Montage instructor). I enlarged the upper left photo, worked on the blending some more, lightened 2 of the photos and darkened the 3rd to make them more similar to each other. The word art is by Tina Chambers.

Katie the Scrapbook Lady



Katie the Scrapbook Lady has a new website - it's worth a look! Click on the ad above or here.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Still Another Wedding Layout



I finally worked on another wedding layout the last couple of days. I'm really loving the montage style - and I think I'm getting just a bit better at the blending part (although it's still hard for me - the blending between the upper left photo and the larger right photo isn't quite right, but it's close). The word art is by Tina Chambers of Digital Scrapbook Place.