Family Healing and Remembrances

(Doug and his mom, Mother's Day 2013)

Hello everyone.  As you read this Doug and I are in Chattanooga with his family.  Doug's mother very unexpectedly passed away earlier this week.  It came as such a shock to all of us.  Aside from mobility issues, his mother was not ill.

Please keep Doug, his sister and two brothers, and the entire extended family in your thoughts and prayers. This is going to be a painful time for all involved, but I am hopeful that together it might my be a healing time too.  

Ice and Snowmageddon

Hello Friends!  Welcome to Icemageddon!  After a weekend in the 60 degree temperatures, Mother Nature has once again teamed up with Mr. Freeze (think Batman villain) and they are implementing their diabolical plan on the Southeast. Things were so bad here that the Weather channel's Jim Cantore was in town, informing us that we are located in the epicenter of this storm.  Thanks Jim, I think we figured that out with a glance at the  map!

When you look at these photos you should be aware that it has NOT snowed yet. We are supposed to get snow starting tonight... anytime now, actually.  The white in these photos is ice.  Everything is iced over here in Aiken.   The first three photos are from my front yard.  I am currently avoiding the back yard.  Doug told me that part of the woods came down on our azaleas.  I should have asked about my blueberry bushes, but to be honest, I am not sure that I want to know.

I ventured no further than half way down our driveway and across into our front yard.  Doug went and knocked ice off of the DirecTv dish and he went out back with the Duncan.  Not me, man.  I am cozy and warm and staying inside.

Meanwhile, facebook is full of photos of our frosted town.  The traffic circle on Lauren's Street is generally a very busy place.  Not so today, though there are some tire tracks in the ice.

Lauren's Street, the main shopping area down town, was closed today.  In fact, everything was closed today.  Aiken is officially iced over.

I hate to see this, in the photo above some of the very old magnolia trees have lost large limbs.  I have had limbs falling in my back yard as well.  When they break it sounds like an explosion.  The limbs just cannot support the weight of 1.5 inches of ice.  By the way, it was not really snowing.... Google added the snow to the photo for me.  I thought it was pretty so I kept it!

And for you golf fans (MFJ - Jayne) this is for you:  This is a photo from the Augusta Nationals today.  It is only seven weeks until the Master's tournament. The grounds keepers are going to be busy removing fallen and broken trees and limbs, as well as clearing the debris.   But in seven weeks this same scene will be resplendent with a green carpet of grass and fabulous blooming azaleas!

Not wasting my day too much, I have been working on Valentine's for Bethany's students.  I should have plenty of time to finish them as there is not school today or tomorrow for local students and teachers.  Hopefully we will be back to normal by Friday.  I am just thankful that unlike 10 years ago during the ice storm, we have not lost power.

Happy New Year & New Opportunities

Wow, it is already Jan 5th and I am FINALLY doing my first post of 2014.  If you follow my blog, you know that life has been busy and eventful for us.  We are waist deep in wedding planning, an experience that Bethany and I are both enjoying.  She has such lovely vision and ideas about what she wants!

The photo above is one of several that I took to use on Bethany and John;s Save the Date postcards.  This is the photo that I chose to use.

Holiday Happiness Continues

Hello friends!  I thought I would be posting a New Year's project for the New Year Linky Party at Bitten by the Bug 2.  But after lots of company, a tummy thing, and even more company, I did not get my New Year project completed.  I did, however, have a wonderful surprise visit from my older son last night!!! 

The big news at our home this Christmas season, is John and Bethany became engaged!  He took her to Asheville, NC to the Biltmore Estate on Friday, December 27th and proposed.  We knew this was coming, but I could not help but admire what a wonderfully romantic setting John chose for his proposal.  As you might guess, my life has transitioned into wedding planning as they plan to marry this summer!

Since I have no project to share with you, I thought I would share a few Christmas morning photos (in which half of us are still in our PJs - including me!).  Above - Doug models his Dr. Who hat and scarf.  Below - John is thrilled that Crissie restocked his classroom supplies!

Ian LOVED his new bass and did not want to put it down to open his other gifts.  I told him that he acted the same way over the Little Tykes car when he was two. Every other gift was opened from inside the car we named "The Flintstone-mobile".

Bethany likes sloths.... Aaron and I each got her the same sloth for Christmas.  She was thrilled with her twin sloths!

Santa, that awesome fellow, brought me cutting mats and a great die and stamp set.  I was very happy!!

Not to leave Duncan out, he too received two gifts.  He is so sweet and so happy when he opens a new toy!

Aaron and Crissie were funny.  He got a KitchenAid, and she got a tent!  Role reversal much?

And here they all are: Ian, Bethany, John, Crissie, and Aaron.... and Duncan the wonder dog, Edgar the pug and Magnus the puggle.  What a crew!

Please DO go by the BBTB2 blog and join the New Year's Linky Party.  I think it is going to be fun!!

Merry Christmas!!

Pretty Woman on a Pretty Layout

Hello everyone.  I hope you feel like another layout featuring my lovely daughter, Bethany.  There is a story behind these two pages.  Bethany came home one afternoon after teaching all day and I thought she looked fabulous - especially for a woman who had just spent 8 hours with 20 second graders!  I decided to snap a couple of photos of her.  But of course, Duncan the wonder dog felt like he needed to be in the photos with her.  After some good petting, he gave her such a loving look, then he and Bethany both looked at me and smiled!  The photos were so cute that I had to scrap them!

I actually made most of these two pages last summer at Scrap Convention in a  layout class.  And even though cutting the individual pieces, stamping the individual cuts, adding ink, glitter, etc is time consuming, I always think the end result is so worth while!

My matting color choice may seem unusual, but it actually matches the subtle blue in the background print paper.  Also it matches Bethany's skirt.

I used a lot of glue and fine glitter on this layout.  The flower centers are glitter covered glue.  Also i used fine tip on the glue and outlined the word LOVE and applied glitter to the word.

Family Time and Girlfriend Time....

Hello everyone.  I know it is Monday and that normally means it is time for my weekly Bitten By The Bug 2 post.  However this week I did not get my project finished.  It was all designed, but not cut when I left for a weekend at Lake Murray at my friend Sally's lake house.  And while I accomplished a lot this weekend, I did not get my BBTB2 project finished!  Sad, I know!  I did have a lovely time at the lake and I want to thank Sally and Beth for hosting us again.

I will be sharing some of the projects that I made this weekend later in the week.  I still need to photograph the projects and tonight I am just too tired to do that.  I actually fell asleep sitting up on the sofa checking my email.  My sweet hubby sent me off to bed for a nap, while he made dinner for us!  What a good, good man.

Remember last Monday when I told you that Ian had come home for the weekend?  I so enjoyed his visit that I set up a 20 minute photo shoot with Ian, Bethany & John, Doug & I in the back yard.  I need new photos of Ian and Bethany for our annual calendars I made each fall.  I decided that John will be added to the family calendar beginning in January so I needed photos of him as well.

I thought for a 20 minute photo shoot that we did okay.  I love the photos of Ian and many of those of Bethany & John together.  And of course these two cut solo photos of Bethany - above and John - below.

I managed to get two good photographs of Ian and Bethany together.  In this photo I think they look a great deal alike.

And as we were wrapping up, Bethany snapped a couple of photos of Doug and I together.  I especially liked the photo below.

Please do go over to the Bitten By the Bug 2 blog and check out the Design Team's cats and dogs projects, and to congratulate our new Design Team members!!

Defense Prompt Leads to Fun Layout

Hello everyone.  Today's layout is, of course, one of my LOAD 513 layouts.  The daily LOAD prompt (again they are all from the board  game Clue, or deal with mysteries) was a motive for a crime.  Last Saturday the motive was self-defense.  

I was at a loss for what to do with the self-defense prompt, but I saw several great ideas in the LOAD project gallery.  One of my favorites - someone took a photo of her facial care products and called that her self-defense against aging.  I wasn't as creative.  

I went digging through my photo stash and found this funny photo that Aaron photo-shopped of himself.  I am guess this was based on an X-man movie character. 

During his college years, and shortly there after, Aaron took a series of photos where he is impersonating different characters... JFK, James Bond, a Battlestar Galactica bridge officer, etc.  I took three of those photos and added three of my favorite "Aaron" photos - Aaron teaching, Aaron and Crissie, and Aaron, Bethany, and Ian with Chip and Dale at Disney, and created a this fun, cartoon-ish layout.

I like that even though I used a digital program to scrap this layout, I could still personalize the voice balloons.   I enjoyed coming up with the caption, "Take that, Captain Slime Pants!"

This is a close up of the Aaron photos as well as the hings I added between two of the photographs.

Thanks for stopping by today and checking out my cartoon layout - Defender of the Plant Earth!  This is not my normal style of scrapping, but it was fun to create.