Some Real Cat Pages

Here are the pages I did last weekend - one is Tarzan and the other is Fitzie. Now I need to get some cute photos of Riley and make a page for him. It took me awhile to make these pages, I think the switch from 8.5x11 pages to 12x12 pages is throwing me off.

"Daddy's Boy" is Tarzan and Tim. Tim found Tarzan in the pump house when we lived in Locust. Tarzan likes me, and will curl up next to me. But the minute Tim comes around I get abandoned. Tarzan is his Daddy's boy. For the base of this page, I used Always Artichoke and a scrap of unknown pattern paper. For accents, I used some Magic Mesh and brought out my stack of eyelets. The title is stamped on chipboard and a tag with Rough Edges alphabet.

"So Very Cute" is Fitzie sitting in different baskets. The first photo is when she was on;y a year old and the last photo is her last week. She loves curling up in a basket. For this page I used a Taken with Teal base and some great pattern papers. I also used some Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery and Only Orange papers to coordinate with the paper. I used the So Very stamp set for the title and a MM flourish set for the curly stamps. I accented the page with brads, ribbon and a Prima flower.

That's a Funny Looking Cat

This weekend I scrapbooked a few animal pages. One of Fitzie in baskets, one of Tarzan, and the possum page. It seems like I don't get to make many pink pages, so the possum got a pink page. I also pulled out my long unused eyelets this weekend. The possum page got pretty little flower eyelets. I sure hope this possum was a girl :) I did the journaling on the computer because it was a long story. The only stamping is the title - I don't have any possum stamps.

Tim was away most of the weekend. He, and a group of guys, did the Burn 24-Hour race. This was Tim's first 24-hour race. He usually does 12-hour races solo. I think he enjoyed being on a team for this one. After lots of strategy, they placed 10th. They could have placed higher, but there was a prize for "strategic 10th place" and they wanted the prize - a case of Burn energy drink to share and a tube of chamois butter for each of them.

For Memorial Day, we went over to some of Tim's bike friends. They all went out and did a quick and easy ride, while I stayed at the house and guarded the beer. We grilled brats and had a very enjoyable afternoon. Tim's bike friends are good people.

Books have arrived

Today's mail brought the three book I'll be reading and judging. The first one is The Cowboy's Return by Linda Warren, the second is Simple Gifts by Shelley Galloway, and the third one is The Nurse's Longed-For Family by Fiona Lowe. And, they are all autographed! Tim will be gone all weekend doing the 24-hour Burn race in N. Wilkesboro, so I'll have all weekend to just read my new books.

Aspen Gold Reader's Choice Awards

I'm really excited - I'm going to be a judge for the Aspen Gold Reader's Choice Award sponsored by the Heart of Denver Romance Writers. In my application to be a judge, I had to select several romance sub-genres that I would be interested in judging. I choose: single title, historical, or series category. Next week I should receive my package of books and then I'll know what category I'll be judging in. I should receive no more than 5 titles that I'll have to read, so I should be able to handle reading 5 romance books :)

I'll keep you posted on how this goes and what I have to read.

Father and Son Together

I just had to share this adorable page I put together this morning. Well, that's not quite true. I put the pictures on this morning. I actually made the pages several months ago. A group of my online friends from SCS got together and made scrapbook pages for each other. These are the pages I made for everyone else - only they got 12x12 and I made mine 81/2x11. We have one package of pictures of Tim and Dylan when Dylan was a baby. Tim scanned a couple of these for me the other night (don't want to use originals on my pages).

The background paper is certainly celery and I also used some so saffron and brocade blue. The pattern paper is Sarah by SU. The stamp set is Polka Dots & Paisley, which my wonderful friend Judi let me borrow. For accents I used a Prima flower, some ribbon around the chipboard "t" and did some paper piercing along the bottom of the pages.

The perfect page for these sweet pictures of Tim and Dylan almost 16 years ago.

To affect the quality of the day...

We had a great weekend, lovely weather and time spent together. Yesterday Tim and I went for a hike in the Uwharrie Forest. Saw a tree neither of us recognized so took a picture and brought home a leaf. Identified it as a Chestnut Oak. There sure a lots of Oak varieties.

This afternoon we went in to Charlotte for our friend Patricia's graduation with a Masters Degree. Patricia takes care of our cats when we take long trips. She's also our foster kitty, Simon's mom. We then drove out to the Whitewater Center so Tim could show it to me. It's one of the places he races at. Came home and grilled some lamb chops for dinner, and now we're just relaxing.

I had to sit down and make a card for Patricia this morning. I chose The Art of Life stamp set because of the great verse - To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts by Henry David Thoreau. I used two shades of pink and a brown. A little ribbon, a clip and some eyelets finished it off.

All that I am or hope to be, I owe my mother.

That's the quote I used for my latest scrapbook page. It's my Mother's Day present to my Mom - hope you like it Mom. The picture was taken in April 2006 when my parents were down for a visit. I took Mom to one of my favorite events - the Friends of the Pfieffer University Library Author Luncheon. The speaker was Ann B. Ross, author of the Miss Julia books.

This is my first real attempt at making a 12x12 scrapbook page. I really enjoyed the larger, square format, and I will definitely be making more pages this size. Last week, SBTC65 challenge, on splitcoast, was to make a page about Mom. I started the page by CASEing a layout on the Autumn Leaves Look blog. The turquoise and pattern paper are from My Minds Eye, and the chipboard monogram is Lil Davis. I used the CC114 colors of rose red, apricot appeal, tempting turquoise and green galore. The stamp sets I used were Big Pieces and Little pieces. There's also a dab of ribbon - can't do a page without ribbon, and some metal edge tags.

Mother's Day Cards

I wanted to share the Mother's Day cards I made this year. I couldn't share before because my Mom reads my blog - hi Mom. I'll admit I CASED from someone on splitcoststampers.com. Since the card is very plain, I had Tim bring me home some nice, heavy white card stock. I stamped a small square with sage shadow and the retired paisley print background stamp. The leaves are white embossed on vellum. Inside I stamped Happy Mother's Day in sage shadow. I thought it was a simple, but elegant card.

Happy Mother's Day

Tim made us a nice breakfast today. And this afternoon he is meeting some bike people to look over local trail opportunities. I'm going to try and do some scrapping. This morning I made q quick little card. I need to send a thank you RAK to a great stamping friend. I found the sketch on Beate's blog, and that is what I used as my starting point. I had some sei pattern paper out on the table from a previous project, so I grabbed a scrap of that. The I chose one of the darling Bella images that my great stamping friend sent me. I used SU certainly celery solid cardstock, a prima flower, and a colored brad. The pattern paper came with some matching embellishments, so I grabbed a tab to use as an accent. I colored the image with my SU watercolor crayons and a blender pen. Hope you enjoy this card. And if you are a mother - Happy Mother's Day.

What year do you belong to?

I found this neat quiz on my friend Sally's blog. Had to try it for myself.

You Belong in 1987

Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day.

What Year Do You Belong In?

Another Layout from our Trip to the Beach

"Fly" is photos of the day we spent at the Wright Brother Memorial in Kitty Hawk. I was glad it was February, because the place has no trees ans must be miserable in the hot, humid summer with hundreds of other people. But, we had a beautiful day. We even had a picnic lunch on the grounds. I've tried to use the same colors and stamps for all of the three layouts I've made of our trip. I think I still want to make one more layout of some general photos of the trip.

I've Been Tagged

Several of my Splitcoast Stampers friends (Donna and Darcy) have tagged me. I'm supposed to share 7 things about myself.

1. I've lived in lots of states: Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.
2. I met my wonderful husband in a bar in Kentucky, and we've been married 13 years.
3. I am the step-mother to a wonderful 15-year old boy, Dylan, who lives in Kentucky.
4. I have two younger brothers who married wonderful women, and finally gave me the sisters I've always been wanting.
5. As a young child, every time I would visit the library, I would save my bookmarks so that someday when I was a librarian I could give them to my patrons.
6. I hate doing housework.
7. My undergraduate degree is in Biology and my Masters degree is in Library Science.

Now, I think I'm supposed to tag 7 more people to play this little blog game. But everyone I know that has a blog has been tagged, so the fun will have to stop here. I hope you enjoyed learning these 7 things about me.

A Busy Weekend

It's been a fun and busy weekend. Saturday was National Scrapbook Day. My friend Judi and I used the library meeting room and spent the day scrapping. The weather was chilly and rainy, so it was a great day to be inside scrapping. I didn't get much done, but I enjoyed myself. I did finish up a layout that I had started last week for the SCS virtual scrapbook night. I also did a layout of Ben's birthday this past February. We always go bowling, and have fun. This year I found some fabulous Basic Grey paper that had bowling pins in it. I have enough paper leftover for the next bowling birthday party. The big excitement Saturday night was the fireworks for the closing of the Albemarle 150th birthday celebrations. We stood out on our sidewalk in the rain and watched a great fireworks show.

Today is a gorgeous breezy day. It's too wet for Tim to go riding. This morning we took our new car to Lowe's and got it dirty when we filled it with plants and stuff for a garden. We planted 3 varieties of tomato and 3 different kinds of peppers and a watermelon and a cucumber. I also got a few herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme and oregano. After we got everything planted, Tim vacuumed out the car - so it's clean again.

Tim did get the bike rack on the new car Friday night. We had to buy a new bike holder that goes on the rack that came with the car. Unfortunately, the car is too tall for me to put a bike on (because I'm sure it's not because I'm too short). We bought the bike rack at a new local sporting goods store. They only had one in stock, so we'll have to go back for another one later.

A Librarian in Need of a Bookmark

Tuesdays are my late day at work. So, this morning, I had some time, and I did a little scrapping and a little reading. I started The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg for my library book club this month. I was packing up my stuff to go to work when I realized that I didn't have a bookmark - the horrors! I was walking by my craft table (aka the dinning room table) and I just grabbed a scrap of pretty paper. I immediately realized how silly that was. I had a table full of paper and supplies, so I made my self this pretty bookmark. I really need to make myself more bookmarks. It was a joy to see everytime I opened my book today. It was a quick reading book - I finished it this evening.