Friday, December 30, 2011

Thanksgiving

Okay, so I know that I'm posting the Thanksgiving pics AFTER the Merry Christmas post. Just pretend you saw these first...alright? :)

I flew to IL on Thanksgiving Day and had dinner with Jeff and the folks. On Friday we went down to Moweaqua to scatter my father's ashes. These first few are from Moweaqua-



Next up is dinner at Aunt Wanda's with most of the Epps' clan present!



Such a great day! I finally got to meet Stephen's new bride, and Eric and Robyn's littlest one. It's always such a good time when I get to see Aunt Wanda and Uncle Hank too. I have so very many wonderful memories of holiday gatherings when the California clan would roll into town and we would ALL be together at Nana's house for a meal. I'll have to find some of those pictures to scrap now!

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas!

Created for a couple of challenges around the blogosphere, and used as my Christmas card this year. The nativity is the life sized one at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Wheaton IL.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Aaryk turns 39...again!

It's so nice having Aaryk's Mom close by, she's in town to help take care of his Grandma, and they (with Uncle Gregory) took us out to eat for Aaryk's Birthday~
It's always a good time when we get together with any of his clan, and this was no exception!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Is it December already?!?

Wow, time is just flying past, seems like just a couple weeks ago it was 80 degrees outside...oh wait, I live it Phoenix, and it WAS 80 degrees! ;)

Looking back at this year it has really gone by quickly, and I'll have more of a 'retrospective' at the end of the month.

For now though, a little something to get you in the holiday spirit!

This is my brother, Christmas 1972, getting one of his very favorite presents of all time- his pink Underdog!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Daddy Jim 2004

No new pics to scrap, so I'm working my way through some older ones. I'm headed to IL next week to see family and scatter my father's ashes. So I"m looking for pictures of him to scrap right now.

Here's some from 2004-
Miss you Dad.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

My Grandpa

I made a couple of variations of a page for two different challanges-

Over at Stuff to Scrap, I used the provided kit to make this page:
Then I rearranged it a bit and used it for the 'Thankful For My Guy(s)' challenge at Scrapper's Guide here:
When I started putting the page together, I wasn't sure what photo I was going to use, I like how the plaid in his shirt plays against the paper/ribbon strips on the page!

One Beautiful Day in November

We went for a drive to see the fall colors up in Oak Creek Canyon. We took the back way up through Prescott and it was a GORGEOUS day for a drive!



(And Angel only got sick twice!)

Friday, November 11, 2011

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Sad Day in Our House

How about that...a non scrapping post.

Aaryk was in a motorcycle accident two weeks ago today and we got word yesterday that our insurance was going to total the bike. The good news is that it just barely covers what he still owes on it, but the bad news is that he will be without a motorcycle again for a while now.  :(

The BEST news though, is that he wasn't seriously injured when the other guy turned left in front of him, and that we have two cars so that getting to and from work is not an issue.

God does look after us!

One more for Halloween!

When I got around to unloading the pics from our drive yesterday I found the ones I had taken on Halloween of our Jack-O-Lanterns. We had bought the pumpkins in plenty of time but just didn't get around to the carving until after work on the 31st.

I think these came out very well!

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Happy International Digital Scrapbooking Day!

All across the web today people are gathering for digital scrapping challenges, chats, and FREEBIES!
Even I'm getting in on a bit of that. Here's a link to the three QPs I made last month over at The Studio for various things:
Elegant QP (from T-or-T challenge)
Spooky Memories QP
Farmer's Market QP

And here's the pages I made for my October pics:







Our annual trip to the State Fair was fun, as usual, and we were joined by Aaryk's folks, his Grandma, and his uncle Gregory. His folks stayed for the Demolition Derby and that was a riot!

I'm trying to master the art of sing a SINGLE photo on a scrap page, and the Dog Days layout is one of my favorite so far! The one photo give the idea of the warm day, the two dogs playing, and I really didn't need anything else.

Oh, and the paper for the State Fair pics I made from scratch!  I'd taken a photo of the cracked concrete floor under the grandstands:
Turned it to a black and white image, and then overlayed a colored layer on top of it. It took some playing with blending modes and such, but I'm really happy with the result!

Learning new things with PSE every day!



Now, I'm off to spend iDSD on a drive up north to see the fall colors, and have something to scrap about!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

More Halloween goodies!

I finished my last two Halloween challenges over at The Studio today:

This is from the Frankenstein Scraplift Challenge:
And finally, my final entry in the Halloween Progressive Scrap:
I love that I was able to showcase something fun about both Brian and Aaryk this weekend!

Now, off to work on the State Fair pics!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Over at The Studio (see the link on the sidebar!), they are having several terrific challenges this weekend!

Here's what I've done so far-
Created a Halloween avatar:
Created a QP based on a list of Halloween 'treats':

Here's the post that tells about the rules for this one- Trick or Treat anyone?
and here's a link to the QP download if you are interested- Trick or Treat QP

And then there was the Pumpkin carving event. How do you carve a pixelated pumpkin you ask? Well, digitally of course! :) We were given a pumpkin template and told to decorate it how we wanted and to use it in a page.  Here's mine:
This is the QP that I submitted, you can grab it here- Spooky Memories
I also used a 'Tip of the Week' from Digital Scrapper to create the SPOOKY letters for this page. I had so much fun putting it together!

I had to dig up some old Halloween photos to put in this page, so here's the finished page-
There are a couple of other challenges I'm still working on, but I'll post them when I get done!

Canadian Thanksgiving!

Kate and Brian tried to surprise Share by planning a special dinner for her on October 10 (Canadian Thanksgiving Day). I helped out with a few side dish items, and they had a great time. I made this LO as part of the Progressive Scrap for October over at The Studio.
The Quick Page version of it is here- October Progressive Scrap It's one of the few 12"x12" pages I've done, and i thought it came out pretty well!

I'll be posting other QPs soon, ones that I did for the Halloween events at The Studio.

I am the mother of a 25 year old...eek! :)

I forgot to post Brian's birthday LOs here, shame on me! :)

We took Brian and Share to Dave & Busters for their Eat and Play package deal. Danny & Kate and Lisa joined us, and we had a good time. Unfortunately, my camera battery died and so I had to rely on the camera in my phone. Not great pics, but passable and certainly enough to help me remember the day!

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Hey look!  I found another Catholic Scrapbooker!

Catholic Scrapbooking

Posting the link here so I remember to check back often!

Charleston SC 2008

These are from the trip that Aaryk and I took to the beautiful city of Charleston, SC in 2008 before he got out of the Army.









 I'm especially pleased with the way these two came out. I played with all kinds of blending modes and had a good time learning what I can do with them.



What a great weekend that was!

More Challenges

Here's my entries in the Grandparents and Grandkids Challenge-



and the Happy Place Challenge!
For my 'Happy Place' I chose Church. I used the 5 Catholic Churches I have attended over the years-
(from the top on the right)
St. Timothy  Mesa AZ
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel  Essex MD
Main Post Chapel  Ft. Bragg NC
St. Michael  Wheaton IL
and the Tabernacle is from my current parish, St. Thomas Aquinas  Avondale AZ

Oh, and I made the green ribbon thingy from scratch!

The trip to Globe

On Labor Day Weekend, we went for a drive and took the dogs. Angel did much better (only got sick 3 times!), and we had a great day. We drove TO Globe AZ, not just THROUGH it. What a delightful small mining town!
 These pics were too funny not to scrap!


 Devil's Canyon is just so gorgeous, I take more pictures every time we pass through!
 This old Church was just beautiful, inside and out!

 Such great architecture in this town. The old Jail, the Courthouse, and a frilly old bank!

 And of course, Globe has a 'Globe Theater'!

I'd never been up to Roosevelt Lake, so when we were through in Globe we went home the long way and walked around at the lake a bit.


Angel loved getting down into the water...Percy took some coaxing!
Another adventure for the books!