Grade 12

I was so happy to get this picture. Believe it or not, it is a school picture. I enjoyed the rich colors but for some reason, when I took the picture of it, the richness turned bland. I found these old foam stamps and used some white paint. Found some flowers that match and some random cut up bling to embellish the corner.

Cherish

See, I took the favorite picture, blew it up and made it pretty with bling. Too bad we don't know who took the picture because I would like a clearer one. But, this helps us to preserve the memory.

Smile

Holy Cross had a Winter Formal for the Grade 12s which they have done for a few years. Faith got a beautiful red dress for it. She was so excited. Mike (unlike him) bought new dress pants, shirt and matching tie. He showered, shaved and did his hair . . . and then . . . he danced and danced and danced. Faith was so happy. These pictures were sent to her by e-mail. She doesn't even know who took the pictures. But, the left top one is her (and my) favorite. Got to use some of the newer Basic Grey for this layout.

You Rock My World

While we had those few warm days in January, we went tobagganing at Diefenbaker Hill. Faith wanted to go with Mike and his family, so Lucas and I tagged along. Mike isn't much for tobaganning, but he went a few times with Faith. Again, glad I got a few pictures of it. They are so cute together.

Happy 18th Birthday

This is Faith's 18th Birthday party. We went to Saigon Restaurant and then had birthday cake at the condo. I used some patterned paper which was pretty busy so I cut some of it away to make it less busy. For a present I made her a card holder and put in gift cards and lottery tickets. She loved it because she could get things as she needed them and what she needed.

Yum & Christmas Joy

This is one of my favorite pages from Christmas. Probably because I saw the look on Jade's face when she tried Auntie Brenda's Chocolate Mocha Christmas Log she brought for dessert. Jade doesn't eat much but this dessert had her agreeing to a second helping later on in the evening. Everytime she thinks of it, she says, "YUM!"

I found my brass templates while I was moving so I decided to try them with the new core cardstock. I will let you know that when sanding this stuff, the color lightens quite a bit. Otherwise, I got the look I was wanting. Faith is holding up one of her gifts from Gramma that each of the girls got: The recipe, cookie sheet and all of the ingredients for Rolo Cookies -- their all time favorite. The paper worked well, the star is stickles and the balls are brads.

Sky and the Guys

Well, I found Sky's school picture on the bottom of her locker. I think it looks great. She sure is growing up. I looked everywhere for the right tones to put together this page. I think this line looked the best. These pictures are from Mom's birthday party this summer. Unfortunately I didn't get a single picture of my dad for the page. As you can see by most of the pages I did over the past little while, I have been using a ton of old product. Hey, if it works . . .

Play Fight

Lucas has always had this in him. He likes to make knives and guns out of paper and then play fight. While I was wrapping Christmas presents, he grabbed the empty tubes from the wrapping paper and began a sword fight with me. We played until the tubes were destroyed. Then he ran and got some cardstock and we made guns, knives, swords and grenades. He even made a laptop to send messages. He played "commando" on my bed, making bunkers and war noises for hours. It sure is nice to see him playing like a kid -- even if it is kinda vicious.

Wii Christmas & Christmas Traditions

I took lots of pictures of the kids playing Wii. They all had their favorite games and played with one another for hours.

There has always been a family tradition to play some cribbage on Christmas Eve. However, because there was only Ken and Brenda and Me and My Kids home for Christmas at Gram and Gramps house, there were only a few for cribbage. Ken attempted a game with Gramps and Spud Man. I think it makes Dad feel good.

I had one day alone over the Christmas Holidays. I chose to sit in front of the television, watch two movies I had been wanting to watch and scrapbook. I only had a few old things at home to use on the pages plus my adhesives and scissors. So, I did what I could. I even had an old lettering template I hadn't used in forever that I used on every page. I didn't want to waste time getting up and going to the computer, so I didn't journal.

Guitar Hero III - Legends of Rock

Lucas spent much of his Christmas holidays playing Guitar Hero on the Wii. I really don't know how he does it. His fingers fly across the buttons. Guess he needs a real electric guitar. As you can see, I am still using up old product.

Merry Christmas

This is my wish to you and your loved ones, that you have a peaceful and wonderful Christmas season. I know I haven't been around lately . . . I have been extremely busy. You would know this to be the truth if you know me because I have no new pages up at JSI. I hope everyone also has a fantastic new year and that there are pleasant things for all of us in 2009.

Moving Week Has Arrived

I decided after much stress, packing, cleaning, painting, moving . . . did I mention stress, that I would sit for one or two minutes and blog. I am to be in my new condo on Monday, so this past week has been a packing week. Last week was a painting and steam cleaning week. The week before that was a puttying and sanding week. So , no I haven't been in Vegas or Disneyland or on a hot beach relaxing. I am soooooooo tired and not done yet. I , weird as it sounds, hope I don't get called into work tomorrow, so I can get some moving done. As terrible as it sounds, I can't give up a day of teaching if they call me in. It eats me up and I can always use the money. Most schools have parent-teacher interviews tomorrow, so I think I'll have my day off. I did take some pictures of some pages, I just haven't had the time to post them. So, I hope next week brings some updates. I hope you are all well. Talk with you soon.

Jade - Co-op Kids' Club Newsletter

I'm kind of glad Jade doesn't look at this blog often. I told her she would be glad I did this page one day when she is older. We picked up a movie this past week and then ran over to the Co-op to get some munchies, when I spotted this Newsletter. I picked it up and pointed it out to her. Of course, her eyes rolled into the back of her head. The clerk was wondering about it so I pointed to Jade in the flyer and then at Jade beside me. She smiled and told the next clerk. They thought it was as neat as did I. Jade kind of giggled too. I thought I should get it onto a page before the flyers weren't around anymore. I popped up a bunch of things on this page: the computer screen, the crayons, Jade and the title. It really looks neat in person. Since there was so much to put on the page because of the flyers, it was almost done by the time I glued everything down. I just wanted to highlight her.

Dream Machine

Sorry the colors went so "whack" on this post. I have always loved this line of Basic Grey so I brought it out of the stash. I used some amazing Prima felt (cut it a bit to make it fit), some Prima chipboard letters and some ribbon. Enjoying the page, enjoying the car. Just wish I could keep it clean in this mess we call Saskatchewan snow/sleet/flurries/slush/melt/mud mess.

No More Tough Guy Stuff Please

I decided to change the entire mood of this page. It began as a "Tough Guy" page. Then I decided that I didn't want to highlight the crazy things Matt had done; but rather state the point that the crazy things he did/does almost cost him his life. Watching my teenagers and thinking back to when I was a teenager and looking at Matt, I realize that teenagers think drastically different than adults. They think they are invincible and outwardly state that "they don't care" about the consequences. Well, after almost losing him to a single rollover accident on the highway (where the driver of his vehicle was killed) I feel it more responsible to scrapbook this page this way showing that I'd rather have him slow down, take care and stay alive. It's not worth losing our friends and family . . . So, I popped up some stars, added some orange brads on the large star, added to the title using rub-ons, added an orange circle using the coluzzle, a Creative Cafe arrow and journalled about Matt's accident on a hidden tag. Now I feel it's done.

When I Look At You . . .

This has always been a special picture to me. Somehow the page came together quite easily the other day. I found these sayings on on old sheet of patterned paper and the rest came together quite easily. I wasn't sure about the rub on but after the butterfly was applied and stickled, the stickles easily became a part of the rest of the page. I wanted to make sure that Lucas was not lost on the page.

Hot Rod Sucker

This was a fun page to do. I wanted to use the bicycle paper which had the blue on the back. I folded the bike paper back so you could see the blue. I used some mesh and then some ink around everything. I found one of Lucas's old play car wheels in with my buttons. I inked it and "drove it" across the page several times. I also made the title in the same way. I used rub-ons for part of the title. The next day I made a "sucker" out of a sucker stick and the sucker part out of glossy accents and Tim Holtz Lettuce ink. I made it on plastic and let it dry for hours. I cut it out of the plastic and glued it to the page.

Hi Lil' Guy

Man, doing this page was a challenge. Everytime someone came up to the counter at work, they looked at me with big eyes and asked whose baby it was. No, it's not Jade and Nathan's. The baby is Ty, my friend Rhea's baby. This was the first time he visited our house and everyone got to hold him. Jade was used to holding babies because of her twin baby sisters. Nathan on the other hand, had never held such a little baby before. Check out the old, old pink paper, my grandma's buttons and old ribbon. Cool huh?

Tough Guy

These papers looked so good together that I just had to do the page. I found a picture of my nephew Matt that looked perfect on it. I used some old foam stamps to do the title. I don't think I'm done with this page yet, but it was snowing outside and the store was closed and I had to drive across the city to get Jade so I just said it was done for the day. Any suggestions?