Got my groove back.

Finally, I've got my scrapbooking groove back. I'm not sure what my problem was but I was not getting inspired enough to start on my Punta Cana album. I've been busy planning a baby shower for my new niece and that might have been using up all my creativity and energy. I've never had a party @ my house before and I want it to be good. On the other hand it is a family shower, I really don't have to impress them. There is only so much you can do weeks ahead of time and I've pretty much done it, so after a nice visit with Dan, Jess and Alexis this weekend I sat down and started my trip album.
I used two sketches to get me going this week.
The first is by Sketchy Thursday,

I flipped the sketch, picked the purple of my bathing suit and the blue of the water as my colours. I used the resort arm band to ground things. I'm really happy with this LO. It also tells the story about how happy I am that I reconnected with Jenn and was able to go on this trip and meet Crystal and Matt. Both of whom I hope will be good friends someday.

The next sketch I used was from Pencil lines

Again I flipped it and used the blue from the water in the pool. I think this album will have a lot of blue in it!

I also want to share my favorite picture from the weekends visit with Lexi. Here is my brother Tim, hanging out at Grandma's, so proud to be an Uncle.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll get a few more pages down today before I head to Alexis' house on Sunday for a week. Can't wait for cuddles!

Prayer Jar

I have always been a worrier -I think I might have been born that way- but I'm also an optimist. I'm good @ looking on the sunny side of things...in truth if I didn't I would panic. There are times however when I'm really good @ dwelling on things that in the long run really really doesn't matter that much or that I have no control over, like that conversation or lack thereof with that guy. I send my thoughts into the world over and over and over and  it takes a long time to let them go and let GOD take care of them. As I think I mentioned before, I decided that this year I needed to pray with intent more often, not only sharing my worries but also giving thanks. I'm really good @ sharing my worries but bad @ letting them go. Pretty sure GOD must think I'm on repeat sometimes. :) I read somewhere that if you write stuff down it's easier to let them go. Cool idea but then what do you do with what you have written? I saw this idea in Scrapbooking your faith by Courtney Walsh - a prayer jar. The idea is to put all your prayers - the good, the bad and the ugly - the moment you think of them into the jar. Then the jar is a visual reminder to let GOD take care of them.
So today I made one.

So pretty and so easy. This is particularly important now that I have a brand new niece to pray for. Alexis was born on March 1st, weighing 9lbs and she was 21 inches long. I went to see her yesterday and instantly fell in love. I really wish my brother and sister-in-law lived closer. Unfortunately, she had to be under the lights so this is the only picture I have of her so far. But I assure you there will be many more to come. 

Top Ten Punta Cana

Hello all! It's Tuesday so I thought I would play Ten on Tuesday with Kim over @ It's a Crafty Life and use my top ten Punta Cana pics. I've collected many pics from this trip but these are just the ones that I toke that I really liked or loved the story behind them.

But first some background. The groom Darryl and I went to elementary school together until grade 9. We didn't exactly run in the same crowd but got along well enough. He was more popular than me, but then again everyone was. And aside from a period in time when his best friend Ferg called me toad b/c I had freckles (actually he called me toad b/c he liked me, Darryl later told me and he later confirmed), he was always nice to me. Anyway I moved after grade 9 and met Jenn in high school. We didn't really become friends until college when we went to nursing school together for awhile. She was lots of fun to be with. When she left school we kinda lost touch and then when school was over I moved back to the town I grew up in to work. About two or three years ago, I ran into Jenn @ the grocery store. She had followed a boy here and was working as a vet tec in the area. It was nice to see her but I'm terrible at follow thru and didn't give her my number or anything. Then about 6 months later I was @ the Boot having lunch after church with my grandma and a few other ladies when I saw her with Darryl. I wasn't 100% sure it was her, partly b/c she was with Darryl, so I didn't go over to say hello. Determined not to let another potental friend slip away, I looked her up on Facebook and sent her a message..."Hey I think I saw you...blah, blah." She wrote back confirming that I did and that her boyfriend had told her we went to school together. She thought that was amazing! A few weeks later she invited me to Ferg's Buck and Doe and we've been friends ever since. In fact until last summer they lived right down the street from me, they moved b/c Darryl is in the military. I think it's pretty cool that I got to go to their wedding. Here are my top ten pictures from my trip.

This is Jenn, I love this picture of her b/c she toke it herself. I didn't even know that she had until a few days later.

I like this picture b/c of the story behind it. Out front of the hotel there was a pond with flamingos in it. One more while hanging out with Dave and Matt, I said I wanted to take a picture of the flamingos. Dave said "Yeah, I'd like a picture of the penguins too." Penguins?? Well that slip of the tongue carried on for the rest of the trip. Soon our whole group knew about it. And Dave never heard the end of it. :)

Yes the water is actually that blue.

This is the view of the ocean from the wedding site.

I don't claim to be a photographer. When I get it right, it's often by accident. I love this picture of Lisa, the groom's sister-in-law
and matron of honour. I think she looks so beautiful.

Like the movie 27 dresses, the moment when the groom sees the bride is the best moment of all.

The wedding party was uneven so Ferg and Biscuit were each others dates.

 Jenn's Aunt Nancy and I distracted Darryl's nephew with sand castles while pictures were being taken. Love the green of that hat.

 The happy couple, out to dinner a few nights later.

Micheal isn't dead he's alive and living in Punta Cana!! Actually this was the MJ from their Micheal Jackson show. Freaky isn't it? You should have seen him dance!

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by. Ciao amigos!

Home Sweet Home

Hi!!! I'm home from my vacation in Punta Cana. The weather was wonderful. I met some awesome new friends and Darryl and Jenny's wedding was perfect! There will be more photos and some stories to follow I promise, once my computer decides to be co-operative.
Ciao for now.

Nana's influence

Good Afternoon!! Keshet over @ Ella is talking to various scrapbookers about how their scrapbook styles influence their home decorating. Today was week two, in I think a series of five. So it got me to thinking about it myself, I don't think that my scrapbooking style has influenced my decorating but there are items that I have decorated with that inspire how I hope to scrap one day. Currently I scrap in a very clean, straight line way. I wish I could take more risks, I want my pages, when appropriate to be more whimsical.

This is why; my Nana is an amazing crafter...one could say she is an artist. It doesn't matter what it is, she ROCKS it. A few years ago the local symphony (of which she volunteers for) played a concert, my Nana was in charge of the floral arrangement. Needing a theme, my Nana and I looked over the playlist, the last piece had to do with fairy tales or Cinderella ( I wish I could remember what it was). I said it would be really cool if she could use that as a theme and she did. She made two arrangements, for one she used a old beautiful shoe ( it was sparkly) and the flowers over flowed out of it and the other had flowers spilling out of an old garden boot. Amazing.

So back to home decor, my Nana made me these.

They currently hang in my bathroom. There are actually 6, my sister Patti has the other 3. She painted them on leftover bathroom tile. I remember that tile, even though her bathroom has gone thru a few transformations since she made them when I was a little girl. Can't you feel the whimsy? I have no idea where she got the idea from but it wouldn't surprise me if she saw something a tiny bit similar in a magazine and ran with it, making them completely her own (something I'm still trying to learn). She does this all the time, she once saw homemade knitted Christmas stockings in a magazine and thought "What a great idea" and that year we all got stockings for Christmas, with Christmas trees and snowmen on them, all of them different. She had no pattern, it was all out of her head. When it comes to crafts and art she has no problems taking risks. My sister Patti, is like that too.

Keshet's article got me thinking about these tiles and how I wish I would take more risks. So, when I come back from Punta Cana with my vacation photos, I'm going to take more risks when I scrap them. I'll keep you posted on how I do.

Laugh out loud and vulnerability - what I learned from Boy Meets World and Shawn Hunter.

This week I re-visited my adolescence( something everyone should do now and then) and watched the 3rd Session of  Boy Meets World. I know, I know it's a big jump from The Vampire Diaries to Boy Meets World but I survived the transition. I watched the whole season in one week, and laugh, did I ever laugh! Like right in my belly laugh. I can't even really remember the last time I did that. Maybe when I was reading PS I Love You last year (way way way way better than the movie, sad sure but laugh out loud hilarious, and I did, in a crowded Dr's office). But the truth is I take life way too seriously sometimes, I needed to be reminded to laugh. To remember the care free times of my life. Boy Meets World was defiantly a care free time in my life. Every Friday night my whole family would sit and watch it, Mom, Dad, Patti and Danny, even the twins when they weren't babies anymore. Family night, I miss that. Something I hope I can continue when I meet the right guy and have a family of my own.

As any pre-teen can tell you, some of our very first crushes come from TV. I can remember my very first one, Jerry O' Connell My Secret Identity, I was maybe six years old at the time. Anyway Boy Meets World was not lacking in crushes. Both my sister and her best friend Alie -our next door neighbour - loved Shawn Hunter aka Rider Strong. If pressed I would maybe tell you I was on Team Cory but in truth I had a soft spot for Shawn Hunter. Even at 14 I wanted to bring him home, feed him a nice meal (French onion soup b/c that's all I knew how to make) and save the poor boy. It's still true. I love checking in with actors I haven't seen in awhile, so yesterday I googled Rider Strong.

And I found this blog http://strongbrothersmagicshow.blogspot.com/ written by himself and his brother Shiloh.  I read the would thing. Do not let his Shawn Hunter good looks fool you, this guy is smart, talented and funny. Again laugh out loud funny! I was captivated by both Rider and Shiloh's blog posts. They were real, genuine (same as real right?) and vulnerable. And while vulnerability makes me sad sometimes when I see it in old men, particularly sick ones (it makes me feel sad b/c they use to be these strong young men and now their not), it shows great strength in two "cool" young men. It takes guts to show that. It occurs to me that vulnerability was lacking in my past relationships, neither guy was able to be vulnerable with me and b/c I had been so burned by the first guy b/c I was maybe too vulnerable, I couldn't be vulnerable with the second - he wouldn't have been able to handle it anyway but this is not the point of this blog post. I wish I could be more vulnerable sometimes, particularly surrounding my faith. I'm very shy about it and I shouldn't be. It's a huge part of who I am and where I'm headed.

Back to the Strong brothers, I think you should check out their blog. I promise you will laugh and you might even learn something too. I bet you'll go back b/c I know I will.

Ten on Tuesdays

I decided to play along with Kim over @ It's a crafty life and share my ten on Tuesday. The object of the game is to share ten things - anything, as long as there are ten things.
So I decided to share ten random thoughts about my week so far.

1. I am all caught up on my scrapbooking (which is why I'm playing Ten on Tuesday). I wont have anything to scrap until I go away in 17 days. What ever will I do?

2. Last night the phone rang; "It's Alex Adair calling." My five year old cousin. He asks me to donate money for James' half birthday. Then James gets on the phone and gives me the details. James is shy and Alex is not, which is why Alex called and James didn't, even though James and I had a conversation about his half birthday @ Christmas. You see James is a great kid, very aware of other people and he likes to do good but then he gets embarrassed about it, when he gets praised. I can relate to that. Anyway to the point...a few years ago for his actual birthday, he really wanted a DS and some games and my aunt and uncle told him that they would get it for him, if he asked the kids coming to his party to donate to the local Animal Shelter, instead of getting gifts. He collected money and pet food and was even in the paper. Anyway this summer his grandma died from esophageal cancer. It was quickish.....from diagnosis to heaven but it was a long summer for my aunt and her family, my uncle and the boys. So in order to help James cope better, gain some control and in the interest that James likes to help other people they are having a small half birthday party for him, no gifts just donations to The Canadian Digestive Health Foundation http://www.cdhf.ca/main.php . This is an amazing web site and a great cause. I can guarantee that everyone knows someone who has a digestive disorder be it constipation, Cohen's, cancer, whatever. If you think you don't know anyone, it just b/c they haven't told you. So when Alex asked me for money, this was an easy yes.

3. I'm still reading Roots. Is it bad that I'm having a hard time getting through it? But I'm determined to finish it, all 900 pages.

4. My brother got me the 3rd season of Boy Meets World for Christmas, kinda as a joke. So funny! I'm enjoying watching it again.

5. My future sister -in- law has been put on bed rest. Five weeks to go until Jumanji is due. I'm a nurse, so I know that if she were to be born now, she would be okay. But it would really be better if she can wait a couple more weeks. I can't wait to meet you Jumanji but I want to be able to hug and kiss you when you get here, so you need to get a little bit bigger.

6. I'm getting really excited about my trip. And nervous, even though I've done it a bunch of times the airport part always makes me nervous and security. Even though I have nothing to hide, security freaks me out.

7. I have the best Dad, he is going to re-cock my bathtub and shower while I'm away. He's also going to feed my fish and bring in the mail.

8. My CPR class that I missed in December b/c of the weather, is rescheduled for Friday.

9. This weekend my church celebrates 100 years of the building. I love this building, it always feels like home.

10. Sometimes finding ten things to share is very difficult.

Thanks for visiting!