"We skipped the famously crowded Dunn's River Falls because Charlie said they were crazy busy so we were so happy to get to see waterfalls in the Jamaican jungle (actually rainforest) while we waited to board the ski lift to Mystic Mountain. 3/2013."
Supplies: Heidi Swapp; My Mind's Eye; American Crafts; Bella Blvd.; K&Company; Stazon.
This layout was based on Let's Capture Our Memories Sketch #16. #LCOM16.
Here's a 2nd layout with that same #LCOM14: Let's Capture Our Memories Sketch #14.
Journaling: "Ahh the tiny rooms on the cruise ship - it was seriously lucky that I discovered that 2 rooms for 4 people was somehow $300 cheaper than 4 people in the same room. Go Figure. Mac preferred eating dinner via room service to the sit down dinners with the napkins in laps and the talkative waiters from Bali and Indonesia. I especially loved the 2 am guy who came to clean up after Mac got sick (could use one of those guys at home) and Allison loved the towel animals. March 2013".
Supplies: Basic Grey "Paper Cottage" collection pack + American Crafts Thickers.
We didn't make it to the beach today, my girl isn't feeling well and I'm feeling a little less than my normal full throttle, so I thought a scrapbook page about what we'd normally do on a day like this was the next best thing. I found the sketch on Pinterest and it led me to the Let's Capture Our Memories Blog.
Journaling: "We picked the Carnival Breeze Cruise Ship partly because it had the only ropes course on a cruise ship and it was truly thrilling - we all did it: Charlie once; Allison and I twice; and Mac did it three times! He totally mastered it! Way To Go Mac! Spring Break Cruise 3/2013."
Journaling: "Saturday, March 24, 2013 Naples to Miami to board the Breeze Cruise Ship. We drove from Naples through the Everglades and saw lots of alligators and vultures and then through some sketchy streets in Miami - so we were all thrilled to finally arrive at the Cruise Port - we nixed the in town parking so Charlie parked the truck and the kids and I made sure our 8 bags got onto the boat - it seems like we brought so much stufff! Of course we overpacked, but it was ok! K 3/2013"
I used embellishments from the Paper Cottage line from Basic Grey and a the calendar Bingo embellishment is Jenni Bowlin.
My husband and I love boating so we were shocked and more than a bit disappointed when we discovered that our daughter did not like boating, until this past month when we went on our cruise.
The night before the cruise we went to Naples, Florida and took a sunset cruise after lots of "please, please, please just go on the boat and yes, we'll buy you some flip flops... discussion to get her to agree to go. Midway through the sunset boat ride, she announced that she now liked boating. Hallelujah!
Ever come back from a trip with a gazillion photos? If you are a scrapbooker chances are you answered yes. Well, me too. I got inspired to make a layout using a folder to include more photos on one page after watching Lisa Dickinson's video over at Two Peas.
This page includes 6 photos and the journaling on the front makes it clear that there is a folder: "Do Not Ever Touch The Sharks: Do you think we followed this advice? Take a Peek to find out." and I made an arrow pointing to the tab of the folder, and I added a question mark on the tab just for fun.
I discovered something about my son during our recent cruise: He is a Chess Player! One night during a formal dinner, I took him out the dining room since he had ants in his pants and we found the library where they had board games and we played chess while I talked the calm back into him. During the first game, he'd ask questions like "what does this one do" and "where does everything go" and then by the third game he'd beaten me; and I'm not the kind of mom that just lets the kid win at this sort of thing. I used to play chess with my dad and it took me years before I could even get close to beating him. After the win, I asked him how he did that and he shrugged and said "It's a hobby." "It is???" I couldn't believe it. "Yeah, I've been playing for the past three years" he said. "What?! How did I not know this???" And he just smiled and said that he'd played at summer camp. We ended up playing chess every day of the cruise and on one of the final days we got to play the giant chess set up on the top deck and of course he beat me again!
This design page is based on Shimelle's Scrapbook Page with a Central Focus Sketch.
We all loved the movie about the 1988 Jamaican BobSledding Team and my son loved actually bobsledding in Jamaica - I held on tight while he drove!
I think setting three photos in a row on a 12x 12 page is perhaps the easiest scrapbook layout ever. I did crop two of these photos but it was still easy to fit all three in a horizontal row and embellish around them.
Our cruise left out of Miami so we had a bit of a drive to get there and my daughter was happy to listen to her iphone music; on the journaling I wrote about how I used to listen to 45 records and the list is her current favorite songs.
I consulted with her on her favorite songs:
Also I used the American Crafts letters where you can add your own glitter and I must say I was so happy with the result - it was fun and easy.
I have set up a bunch of embellishment bins and I've been having lots of fun finding random treasures for clusters of embellishments on my scrapbook pages.
We went on a family cruise on Carnival's new ship the Breeze over Spring Break. There were ups and downs but overall we had a fantastic time. One of our minor disappointments was that we ended up going to Key West instead of Turks & Caicos, on top of that, my son didn't even get off the boat in Key West and my daughter saw this excursion as a chance to get flip flops rather than seeing the sights.
My husband had booked us on a catamaran snorkeling trip but cancelled it because it was just too cold and blustery. So he and I were a little less than thrilled to go to Key West - which is a lovely place - but just wasn't on our itinerary, we did try to make the best of it and we did go to the aquarium which was fun.
Journaling: "Mac didn't even want to get off the boat and we were all a bit disappointed that it wasn't Turks & Caicos - but Allison used Key West as her chance to score some new flip flops. " "Making the best of our last minute detour to Key West - Spring Break 2013."
Have you noticed that rainbows are quite trendy right now? Just peek at Pinterest and you'll find rainbow cakes, rainbow themed parties, and even rainbow hair and nails. The rainbow trend is easily adapted to scrapbook pages and closet space:
I used 6x6 paper packs from American Crafts' latest lines from Maggie Holmes, Amy Tan and Dear Lizzy and stitched them to the page (a few weeks before my sewing machine broke - I am seriously missing it). P.S. Just told my daughter to get her closet back into shape!
Get It Scrapped Post: Trendy Rainbow Color Treatments on Scrapbook Pages
Dear Weird Al and Anyone Who Wonders Why I love Weird Al So Completely:
I've always been a fan of Weird Al but I never knew that I loved him, but after seeing him last night, I know for sure that I do. I love him heart and soul.
I was telling my husband and daughter about the concert this morning while I rocked the side ponytail and my brand new "Weird Al" T-shirt and my daughter said "why are you crying" and Daddy answered "when she really loves something she cries about it." Its true.
It is hard to give a short explanation of why I love Weird Al so much, so here is a long winded list of reasons why I love Weird Al right to my core:
Yes, indeed, that is me and Mac and Weird Al last night after his show at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.
1. Its A Small World: When I was 10 years old, my Dad brought my sister and I to Disney World. My parents divorced when I was 5 and my Mom moved us back to Massachusetts and my Dad stayed in Maine so I didn't get to see him but once or twice a year. This was the first big fun trip I'd ever taken. I took one camera with one roll of film. I still have the little scrapbook I made of the trip. Guess What? The entire album is photos of the fake animals on the Jungle Cruise! I'm serious. I loved that ride so much - I rode it more than once and in retrospect I don't think it was actually the fake animals that I loved, I think it was the cruise guides who told silly jokes and connected with me - they were just so much more personal than any of the other Disney employees - and they were more expressive than my father ever was and I was so desperate for time with him and that warm fuzzy feeling of love that he was never quite able to give given his nerdy (my sister thinks my late father had Aspbergers or something like it but we'll never know) personality. On the ride back to the airport on that trip I noticed that there were houses in Florida and I asked my Dad "Are those houses? Do people actually live in Florida? Why don't we live in Florida?" I decided then and there that as soon as I could, I would move to Florida as soon as I could. Truth is, I sort of forgot about all that when I was a teenager but I did get a scholarship to Eckerd College when I was 16 and when I found out it was in St. Petersburg, Florida, I decided to take a cue from the universe and go. I've been here for 25 years now and its where I met my husband and I'm raising my children. Looking back over my life, that Jungle Cruise really planted a seed for me and it actually changed the course of my life. I do believe that. So when Weird Al started singing about The Jungle Cruise Ride and dressed in a Disney uniform, I was delighted (since I hadn't ever heard it or known that he had such a song) and I couldn't stop crying - the happy tears are flowing right now just thinking about it. Someone else loves that ride as much as I do - and while he was singing about how fledgingly or failing comics get that as a job, I could tell he also loved it, and it just sort of got me. Instant complete love.
This ride changed the course of my life (for real); and here is my daughter in a full circle moment when the guy let her actually drive the boat - beyond awesome!
2. I love Nerds and I am a Nerd: I was a cheerleader in highschool and ran with the popular crowd so a lot of people overlooked the fact that I was actually a nerd at heart and I loved nerds. Junior year of highschool, I dumped my foot ball player frat boy boyfriend of about 4 years, for a nerdy guy who I thought was funny. The funny combined with the smart is what got me. I love that. My friends didn't understand it, some of them still don't - ie. stupid questions at the high school reunion. But while its been 25 years now since highschool, and I still admire both of the high school boyfriends and still know them on facebook and at reunions etc. It was that decision that really made me know that funny is an important quality to me - it is more important that appearance. That same combination of funny and smart showed up again for me when I was in law school. My torts and insurance professor was both smart and funny - he was a Harvard grad who taught law with a pony tail and used SNL skits and Star Trek references to teach about torts. Torts are personal wrongs and delicious sweet treats and I booked his class and went on to become a torts lawyer.
3. White and Nerdy: Since my kids were little, I've played "old" music on CDs in the car so that they are fully familiar with Elton John, Paul Simon and Queen. A few years ago, I was talking about creativity with my son who was then about 7 or 8 and I showed him Weird Al's "Another One Rides The Bus" on You Tube before school since he was familiar with Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." That song was probably the first I'd known of Weird Al too and I was about 7 or 8 when I first heard it (ok it was actually 1981 so I was 11 but I vividly remember listening to it and discussing it at length with my elementary school friend Valerie and we even spent hours trying to make up another version - huh, I could have sworn that would have been 1977 or 1978). Anyway, I remember loving Weird Al from the very beginning of his popular fame on the radio (sidenote: I also loved the song Eugene which came out about the same time and we are now friends with the "Plain White Wrapper" who sang that one and his wife and son are our son's Godparents.). ... So I loved Weird Al as a kid and my son for the last 4 or 5 years has loved Weird Al too - he is now 11 years old (my son - Weird Al is actually 53 which also blew my mind since that's 2 years younger than my husband! plus Weird Al has a daughter the same age as mine - 9!) Anyway, White and Nerdy is by far my son's favorite song of all time and the lyrics are actually quite biographical for him (he plays chess, loves Renaissance Fairs, and spends a lot of time on the computer) and me too, and my Dad with the Star Trek references, plus I have loved Donnie Osmond forever and he's in the video (I had the Donnie Osmond Barbie Doll and recently got another one complete with the purple socks for my daughter and she plays with him all the time). Anyway, the song "White and Nerdy" is so much more than a parody for us, it is an anthem. Its an instant feel good.
4. My son has ADHD and over the past couple of years he's become more introverted when he's around other kids. I'm not sure where this comes from because I am an extrovert and I thought he was too - and then I gave him the Myers Briggs test for kids and sure enough, he is actually an introvert. Who knew! Other kids like him and gravitate to him naturally. He is on the verge of going to middle school and there are lots of feelings of social uncertainty. He desperately wants to be a comedian and I'm not all that funny I don't think (although some people tell me I am). I took an improv class a few summers ago (and applied it to scrapbooking - type "improv scrapbooking" into my blog search thingee on the right and you'll see the relevant posts). I want to get my son into some kind of improv camp or something so he can develop his comedy skills. Anyway, funny people are like super heroes to my son and meeting Weird Al was better than meeting Superman. It was just awesome, Weird Al is an awesome human. When we got to talk to him I he said "oh you were the most excited person in the audience!" and I probably was - not that I was hollering the whole time or anything but I think I smiled and cried the entire time. I burst out with "We love you Weird Al!" and gave him a hug and he hugged me back - like a real hug - not one of those polite tap tap kind of hugs. And he hugged my son and talked to us, like an actual conversation. It was amazing. Weird Al is my hero.
Plus there are lots of other reasons I could go on about but I've got this pet duck (did you know Weird Al has a song about a pet duck! too funny) that wants my attention and a new friend just called my son about a playdate so I'm going to get that all coordinated. We had the best time ever at the Weird Al Concert! Thank you Weird Al!
We love you Weird Al!
Katie and Mac.
P.S. As the wife of an avid drummer hobbyist who practices in the house, I really appreciated the SHORT Drum Solos in Weird Al's concert!
I made this layout for Get IT Scrapped's post "Ideas for Recording the Weather on your Scrapbook Pages." For more weather related scrapbook pages from Debbie Hodge, Christy Strickler, Adriana Puckett, Audrey Tan, Leah Farquharson, Barb Brookbank, Terry Billman, Sue Althouse, and Marie-Pierre Capistran, go check out Get It Scrapped.
Supplies: Dear Lizzy, Yes Please by Amy Tan, and Maggie Holmes, all 6x6 paper pads by American Crafts.
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