More scrapbook pages...

New scrapbook pages:

My Mother and Wiley...

I made a scrapbook page for pictures of my mom with her newest little dog, Wiley.

Yeah, he's cute, and he knows how to use it, too....

Anyway, what I'm so excited about is that I made everything for the page myself, using PhotoShop Elements 6, nothing from a designer who knows how to do this kind of stuff. Woohoo! Yeah, I know, it's relatively simple and all, but I thought it turned out really nice. Go with me on this, let me have this moment of accomplishment... :o)

Then I thought to myself "Self, you've seen dozens of people make quickpages and share them with others, you've taken advantage of what others have shared, why not give back to the scrapping community?". Soooo...

If you go to http://www.4shared.com/file/66014816/b82cc5e3/Puppies_Leave_Pawprints_QP.html, you will be able to download this page, minus the pictures of my mom and Wiley. Most of the scrapbooking progams will recognize the file - it's a .png format. Just set your page size to 8x8 with 200dpi and pull this into your page, then put your own pictures in behind it and line them up.

Danny -n- Katie

Just finished this, had to share...




Katie is 16, will be 17 in November. Danny loves her parents, which is a good thing. :o)

I think Katie and her family is a good influence on him. Yay, Katie!

Updates, updates...

Yup, it's been awhile.... again. Blame it on the scrapbooking...


Dad goes back to work in the morning. Yay! It's light duty, half days, but it's a start in the right direction. :o) He's still learning how to maneuver around on his leg, and it's needed to be refitted at least once, which is all part of the process. The therapist said that most people don't need it refitted quite so soon, but she also said that most people don't push themselves to become mobile as hard as Dad does, either, so there.


Jack and I made a whirlwind trip to WVa and Ohio last week. My step-step grandfather (sounds confusing, doesn't it? My grandfather remarried after his first wife (dad's mother) passed away, then after *he* passed away, his second wife (step-grandmother) remarried, so now you see how a step-step relative is created) was diagnosed quite awhile ago with cancer, and hospice was called in a couple of weeks ago. He's been part of the family for 20 years or so. We went to WVa to visit with him on Monday. He wasn't in such bad shape that he didn't know who we were, so we had a nice visit. He slept most of the time while I talked with Grandma about crocheting and quilting. I don't quilt, but you should see some of the quilts that she's done. She takes old ladies handkerchiefs and folds them just so, stitches them to a block and embroiders around the edge to make butterflies out of them. Absolutely beautiful!


We didn't stay long, maybe a couple of hours or so, then zipped over to Mom & Dad's in Ohio for dinner on Tuesday.

We spent Thanksgiving with Jack's parents and family. Just about everyone was there at once, making it a very chaotic and happy place to be. Somebody said something about needing a scorecard to keep track of which kid belongs to which parent that sparked and idea in my puny little brain about a Christmas gift for his mother, who is quite possibly one of the most difficult people in the world to come up with a gift for. She has everything she wants already. Anyway, may I present the reverse family tree?





Instead of listing all of Jack's parents' ancestors, I listed all of their descendants, along with current spouses (or is it "spousi"?) I'm having it printed in a 12 x 12 format and will have it framed. I'm pretty sure that she won't get two of these.


I've also put together an 11 page layout of pictures from our wedding, some more layouts of Jenna, and one of the cats. I'm particularly proud of the cats layout since I designed all of it, from the background to the embellishments. The only thing that was designed by somebody else was the dark gray mats that I used behind the pictures. It took me awhile, but I'm pretty thrilled with the results.

On a side note, I'm very glad that we went to see my grandfather this past week. He passed away Saturday. He's been in a lot of pain for a very long time, he believed in God, and he had asked for salvation wayyyy back, so his passing is not a bad thing. He's probably sitting up there with my other grandfathers laughing at me about my newest obsession as I type. :o)

So I went into the office today for the first time in.... well, gee.... I don't remember. It's been that long. I've been perfectly content to work from home. LogMeIn.com is a most wonderful thing! But, when you're training yet another person to take over yet another aspect of the job you used to do, you really do need to be there hands on with the person. My boss has decided the he needs me to concentrate on getting the new inventory control system up and running, so he's handed over doing the monthly financials to his accountant. I needed to bring him up to speed on what I'd been doing, where things were located on the computer, and show him how the software works out. Happy, happy, joy, joy...

I ended up staying all day. I was having an issue with Crystal Reports that I needed to talk to tech support about. Got that issue resolved about 5:00 this evening, but then ran into another one. Grrrrr.... I decided to fight that one another day.

I've learned how to put up board and batten siding in the last week or so. We're putting it on the cabins at the campground. The sides look really good on the ones that we've gotten finished so far, but it makes the roofs look weird - they're still just plain old sheet metal, painted primer gray. I'm hoping by spring that we'll be able to start putting the tin roofs on them. They'll look a LOT better then.

Talked to Dad a couple days ago. He's doing pretty well. He's reached a point in his therapy where his stump needs to heal more, toughen up some, before he can go any farther. It's got him frustrated, but he's been assured that this is normal. His stump is very sore where the bone still wiggles around some. The therapist and prosthesis maker are trying to relieve some if the pressure with adjustments to the leg itself, but they don't want to make any drastic changes, so it's just a tweak here and there. When I talked to him, he was working on a job he'd been contracte to do to make some molds for somebody, so he's getting back into the swing of things one day at a time.

Mom, OTOH, managed to scare the bejeebers out of me when I talked to her. Anytime she starts off a conversation by saying "Now, I didn't tell you at the time because I didn't want to worry you...", I know somebody has been in the hospital or real bad sick. Seems the weekend before Halloween, she got to feeling light-headed and sick. She ended up spending a couple days in bed, then went to the doctor's office. Her blood pressure was 80/45. *WHAM* "Into the hospital with you, Mrs. Young....". Severe dehydration and stress were listed as the main culprits. She's doing much better now, which is good.

I'm really enjoying the digital scrapbooking. I've found a program called ScrapBook Max that works great and cost $40.00. It comes with quite a few templates and things preloaded in it, and you can add your own finds to it. I've come up with a couple more small pages for the grandbaby:

Here she is dressed up for an old fashioned beauty pagent at a local festival.

Gotta' love that grin!

I think I'll work on our wedding next, and then maybe Jessica's wedding. I am having wayyyy to much fun with this!

First attempt at digital scapbooking

I know several people who are into traditional scrapbooking, but I never seem to have the time, or the space, or the energy, or the... whatever else you need to do it. I have a kit to start with, but just can't seem to get motivated to trying it out.

Then a friend of mine mentioned digital scrapbooking on her blog. Then another friend (who reads the same blog), got interested in it. So I decided to check it out. I downloaded a pretty nifty program from http://www.scrapbookflair.com/ to do the deed with (free, I might add), and a bunch of free templates and stuff.

For my first subject, I chose what any decent grandma would - the grandbaby, of course!

These were all taken the night she was born. I set it up to print on an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet so I could print it at home if I wanted to.

This is fun. I could be in lots of trouble here. Ruth, the one who started this, said "I feel as though I've started a cult....", and she just may have... :o)