Catch up post...

This last week was busy as we were getting ready to go to the
Family Weekend at my son's college. Lots of e-mails and phone
calls trying to figure out things that he wanted/needed us to bring
for him. In the end even with a big box of stuff and a last minute
call for a pair of black jeans hanging in his closet, he still forgot to
tell us to bring a couple of other things he needed. Oh well that
will be for the next time.
We did have a really nice time visiting with him and spending
family time together, something his younger brother needed.

As you can see we obviously did a lot and needed to rest up after
our hard work of visiting with him, eating good food and being out
in the heat of Arizona.

My younger son has started learning to drive so my husband
decided it would be good for him to drive us down to Tucson,
on the freeway at 75mph!! I was a little nervous to say the
least but he did an excellent job considering it was his first time
on the freeway and has only had his learners permit about
6 weeks. He actually asked if he could drive back even though
he thought driving on the freeway was incredibly boring.

And here is the young man himself. This week he went in front of
the Eagle Scout Board of Review for the final review on his
Eagle Scout project and ultimately being awarded the rank of
Eagle Scout. We are so proud of him and now I need to get
working on an album to be ready when we have his Eagle Court
of Honor. That will be my next project.

What I did this weekend...

I got to take a really fun class with Dina Wakley this Saturday. I
made the trek up to Glendale, AZ to the Creative Quest with my
friends Lisa and Anjie where Dina was teaching this class. The
cover was made from canvas which we decorated graffiti style
and Dina had very kindly sewn covers for us already.

We had fun with paint and stamps and got to use Dina's new line of
stamps, they are really fun and so I had to buy a couple of them :)

We did do all of our pages in class but some of us decided to do the
assembly of it back home. It was a really grungy fun binding, just
sewing straight which even I could manage. So my book is done
apart from what I am going to put in it, thinking maybe some fun
quotes, any other suggestions???

Still journaling...

Yes I am still art journaling and I am so happy to say that I am
keeping up with my Layout A Day class. This is a page I worked
on just recently, again trying to do the Teesha Moore style, this
is really hard for me as I am not good at lettering so I cheated
with this page :) I have been wanting to try this style for
a long time and this is the 3rd page I have done in this journal.
I have been spending most of my time doing my LOAD class and
am really pleased that I am using up some older photos. Also I
have decided that some of my photos are just not scrap-worthy,
it is so freeing to just toss them out!

This is a very abstract page I did at the end of last year that I
really, really like and I do not know why, I just do. I am hoping
to really get back on track with my art journaling once my class
is over, although I am really enjoying the fact that I am making

layouts to go in my albums :)

Get a LOAD of this...

So here is what I have been doing the last few days, actually making scrapbook layouts!
I signed up to take "The Mother LOAD" class on Big Picture Classes.
The class started at the beginning of July with basic training which
was to get us ready for our marathon of doing a LayOut A Day for
the month of September. I started out as a scrapbooker 15 years
ago but have slowly lost interest in it over the last year or so to do
other things. I have taken so many pictures that are waiting here
for me to do something with so I thought this may help me get
back into scrapbooking. I was very naughty and really did not
do any of the basic training but I have to say so far I have been
able to do my layout every day, so pleased that I am keeping up
so far. Today's prompt was to use a self-portrait that we had
taken recently, I had the idea to find a couple of others and voila!
my hair through the years page was done!

This layout was yesterday's prompt, so funny that this was just 3
years ago and my youngest son looks so grown up now. He said
he did not like these photo's that he looked terrible. I think he said
that because he looks so young in them.

This is actually the first prompt we got which was to document our
goals/aspirations. My goal was to have a child, took me a while but
I was blessed to have 2 healthy boys and this is something that I
really have not documented in a scrapbook yet, now was the time. 

Now I really hope I can keep this up for the rest of the month!

I'm Back....

lol! Well I really, really wanted to find an easier way to blog more 

regularly but I am having issues with Tumblr and they have not
been very helpful. In the past I have looked at the other 2 main
blog sites but despite the painful issues sometimes, Blogger is the easiest.

So what has been going on with me? well we had a visit from our
son this weekend, 2 weeks away at college and he wanted to come
and visit us :) It was a good visit but hard to say goodbye again.

I have been trying to find time to work in my art journals, have
started a few pages but they are in progress. I finally managed
to do a page influenced by the style of Teesha Moore. I love
her style and have tried many times but have never liked what
I did and ended up covering over them. Finally I did a page that
I actually like and think isn't that bad! So now I feel that perhaps

I can do more of this style I am working on a couple more pages

similar to this. So what are you working on this week??

Trying something new...

I have found it difficult over the last few months to do regular
updates on my blog, I know that happens to lots of people,
life gets busy. I have decided to try out a new blog on
Tumblr as it seems to be the kind of thing that you can do much
quicker and shorter postings on. This blog will remain open for
the foreseeable future but I will try to do more regular posts
on my Tumblr blog. You can click the link above or go here.

Life changes...

I feel like I have been in the Twilight Zone the last 10 days or so. It
has been a whirlwind of trying to get everything together for the
day Alex left for college, something we have all been dreading. We
seemed to be getting things done and Alex had a little free time to
make plans with friends before leaving. That was until last
Thursday, Alex cut off part of his finger using a mandoline to
slice an apple (be warned, those things are very sharp and
dangerous). He did not want me to take him to the Emergency
Room as he said there was nothing they could do,  his finger would
not stop bleeding, just pouring and pouring. I tried something
called Liquid Bandage, he screamed when I put it on, it was so
incredibly painful. It did not stop and I kept putting more on as I
did not know how to get the blood to stop. I told him again we
needed to go, he said no as it would cost too much money to go
there!! After 35 mins of non stop bleeding I put him in the car and
drove as fast as I could to the Urgent Care. They took one look
at the masses of blood soaked paper towels covering his hand and
took him straight in. Seems that this was an injury they had seen
many times, nothing left to stitch or glue together so they just had
to dress it and bandage it. No pain medicine or antibiotics were
prescribed, and we know it will be a long healing process.

Alex is a very positive person and we still had to get everything
packed and ready for our drive to the University of Arizona on
Sunday. We got everything packed and headed out early Sunday
morning. After spending most of the day there we got his dorm
room all set up and ready. We tried to do as much as we could
for him as we did not know how much he could tolerate with his
finger, after all it is really an open wound under his bandage.

Here he is waving goodbye from his room as we left him there. I
managed to keep it together until we got back to our car, and then shed a few tears.

We are all feeling a little lost around here without Alex, my
younger son is really missing him, they are very close.
I tried to get some of my feelings down on an art journal page
and I think it helped a little.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Hoping that there are no
more major drama's in my life for a while...