Savannah Scrapbooking

Cooler temps mean...

...Family time around the fire pit!! YAYYY!!

I definitely missed our fire nights around here this Summer, so when Big Dave suggested we light a big one last night I was in.

As you can see, the flipper de floppers make for a wonderful toe warming opportunity. 

Yep, the man got that fire blazing...

with his signature recipe of fat lighter (just some ol' dried out wood as far as I can tell, but he says it's gold... he makes us smell it too) some regular logs, and our personal favorite, lots and lots of 'twigglies.'  I told him that I thought he was the only grown man in the world to call little sticks 'twigglies' to which he replied, "I think it makes me more lovable."   Isn't he precious? Okay... maybe just weird.  hee hee

We stuffed ourselves with marshmallows,

 
which I'm still trying to work on photographing.  I really wanna do a s'mores page because I have cute s'mores stuff but I can't get a good picture.  I guess we'll have to keep trying. ;) At least it's a yummy challenge. 

And speaking of yummy, how do you like to eat your roasted marshmallows?  There's always a debate around the fire pit about which way's best.  Do you prefer them black and burned? Slightly browned? White and non roasted?

I'll tell you my way is to brown my marshmallow until it's almost black, doing my best not to let it catch fire,  then I pull off that part and eat it, put it back in the fire and do it again.  I continue the process (which is quite precise and scientific I assure you) at least three to four times per marshmallow until it's just a wee tiny blob of squishy goodness. 

Dang, I was really gettin' into it wasn't I? 

So what's your story? Inquiring minds want to know!

Scrapping, the alternative to Turkey Day...

See this place?  This is where I will be Thanksgiving weekend.  Is it a vacation house for a family reunion? Um, no. It's a super secret, super special retreat for my three besties and myself to SCRAP!!!

Uh huh... you heard me.  We are ditching our fams on Thanksgiving afternoon and heading into the wilderness for three days of glorious cropping.  YAYAYAYAYYY!!!  I just booked the place today, and couldn't stand not telling anyone.  I'm just SO freakin' excited about it!!! 

Here's the inside...

Plenty o' room for our tables and scrap crap. Sheer perfection, except for the fourteen stairs we have to haul our stuff up... I think my bff better get to downsizing ASAP. 

CAN'T WAIT, CAN'T WAIT, CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!
 

Humor RX

A crazy day at school equals some twisted humor on the blog...

 
Starting to feel better already.

Did I mention that one of these...

...came whizzing past my head today?

Quick... need more twisted humor...

 Okay, I'm done.

Tomorrow's a furlough day for Chatham County, so I get a day to rest, relax and shop for a tranquilizer gun. 

Wish me luck.

;) 

Hip Hip Hooray!

I survived my third (and most grueling) Internship observation today.  Holy cow, I was SO nervous about this one!  Not only was my lead teacher (Ms. Rockstar) out of town, but our Special Ed teacher was out too.  I did my best to give the kids a pep talk about being WONDERFUL while my supervisor was there, AND I bribed them (quite shamelessly may I add) with a couple dozen Krispy Kremes... hee hee. A girl's gotta do what she's gotta do ya know?

So besides the fact that one of my kids was totally off his meds, we had two substitutes, and two kids got written up for cussing (one of the subs) my supervisor gave me a GREAT write up! He said I handled the situation as well as anyone could in that situation and he was proud of me for my patience, assertiveness, and professionalism.  YAY!!!

Dang I was nervous. 

And now?

Well, now I'm coming down off of my adrenaline high and feeling a little woozy to be honest. 

It's funny because my kiddo is trying out for middle school basketball (not getting our hopes up as she happens to have inherited her mother's coordination and agility) and when she got in the car after tryouts tonight she said, " Man, that was hard Mom, but I'm soooo glad I'm doing it!"  She was so excited to tell me that she kept up with the bigger girls in the sprints and suicides, and it "made me feel proud that I was pushing myself."

And you know what?

I feel the same way.  This internship is like a full semester of suicides... and the observations are sprint time.  I hate it, wish it were over, but am SO proud of myself for doing it.

Looks like the kiddo and I have more than our athleticism in common. 

;)

Trick or TREAT!!!

 Ah, the day after Halloween... one of my favorite days of the year. Why? Because I get to go back through all the photos I took the night before and relive the fun. 

We had a stellar time this year... in fact I'm going on record to say that this was the best trick or treat we've ever had.  I got the bright idea to decorate Big Dave's truck, so we were stylin' as we cruised the streets of Coffee Bluff Plantation...

 Thanks to Big Dave's little generator thingy, we could hooked up lights too...

The kids looked SUPER cute...

K was a 'goth fairy' ... Miss Priss was a Ladybug... C was a bumblebee, and boy E was some sorta scary dude with glowing eyes. (He told me the name, but I can't remember.)

Cuteness...

and the grown ups...

 
 My throne...

and a couple of stragglers we found along the way...

hee hee hey Rose and Teddy!

Yup, Coffee Bluff was the place to be last night... Lisa's mom even had her horse and carriage walking the streets giving people rides.  Our kiddos got a ride, but I was too busy stuffing my face full of coleslaw and buffalo chicken dip inside to get a photo. (bad mommy.. GOOD food)

It was tremendous... can't wait 'til next year!!!  

Happy Bloggy Birthday!!

Oh my GOSH...  I almost let my blog's birthday flutter by without a celebration! This month (October) marks THREE years of blogging here on Typepad. Yup, I've been blabbering away for a really long time hee hee.

   
As you can see, I'm up to almost 950 posts, and over 170,000 page views... that's crazy!  It's kinda like sharing a personal journal with my 150 closest friends everyday. Who knew three years ago I'd still be rambling on.

I've had visitors from all over the world...

 
...and I've made lots of bloggy friends.  I tell ya, I highly recommend the cyber friend relationship... low maintenance, positive comments, and it's free! Yep cyber-buds ROCK!

So to all my cyber-buds out there, I'd like to give you a big ol' cyber smoocheroo and say THANK YOU for hanging out with me.  It makes me feel speshal... and loved... and like maybe, just maybe I'm no longer the social outcast, freaky, weird chick I was in middle school. ;)

Mwah!

Friends in high places...

Ya know, I've said it before and I'll say it again... the friends I've made in the scrapbooking industry have definitely been the best reward for putting up with the trials and tribulations of retail for over five years. If it weren't for the magically delicious ladies who graced my doorway, internet, and telephone lines, I'd consider the whole shebang a big fat waste. 

That being said, I've still got some pals who give me warm fuzzies and one of them is Debbie from Paperhouse Productions.  I've never met her in person, but we've been cyber buddies for years.  When she saw my photos of Big Dave's deer (he got an 8 point a couple weeks ago) she messaged me on Facebook to let me know that Paperhouse has cool new hunting stuff, and offered to hook me up with some freebies. 

Well boys and girls, my sistah did more than hook me up with hunting stuff, I've got everything I could ever ask for that is school, pirate, Oz, and Civil War themed!  Check out this stashola...

(And let's not forget the chickens.)

THANK YOU DEBBIE!!!!!!!!

I can't wait to use it!

Show and tell... Part three (I think)

Are you sick to death of show and tell? I hope not, because I've got a few more layouts to post today.  Ready? Okay!

(I hope I'm not repeating myself... it would be WAY to organized to actually make a list to work from wouldn't it?)

This challenge was to scrap in a style that we usually don't do... for me this would be a minimalist approach, but I ended up liking it alot. 

Kristine went for it too... neither of us are used to scrapping this way so it was kinda hard.

 
Then we've got this one... The challenge was to scraplift a layout. So the first layout here is the one I lifted from a chick at 2peasinabucket.com...

and here's my version of it...

 
LOVE the little tree die cut that came off of my Cricut Home Essentials cartridge. ;)

Kristine scraplifted one too, but I can't find the original...

 
 Hmmmm... I think that's almost it. If I find some more I'll post 'em later on in the week. However at the moment I've gotta go so Miss Priss can use my printer to print photos of our four thousand cats and dogs for her 'Life Coping' class.  Yes, you heard me... SCPS has a class called Life Coping.  It's so cute because it's basically designed to prepare our little tweens for the upcoming years in their lives.  Tomorrow, apparently they're going to do some bonding excercise where they share photos of special stuff.  She brought home a workbook for the class yesterday and it's called, "The Surprising Years" hee hee... that totally cracks me up. ;) Yup, I bet we'll be in for our share of surprises.

Alright, I'm outta here...
  

 

More showsie tellsie...

Hello my precious darlings, it's Tuesday night and I'm already feelin' like it needs to be Friday.  This weekend's crop left me pooped out, but not too pooped to post some more layouts. 

First up,

this one's a whopper, but it satisfied the ten point challenge of including 14 or more photos on a layout.  I've been holding onto the pics for two years, and finally got 'em on paper. I think at least four of the couples that were at this party in 2006 are now divorced... eek!

Here's Kristine's multi photo...

 
 Pretty huh?  Her camera takes SUCH good photos... it even makes that creepy little slug dude look cute.

Then we have this one...

 Deiha posted a bunch of photos for us to use as inspiration for a layout, so I saw some scary pumpkin faces on one of the pics and used it as a jumping off spot for this layout. Kinda weird, but I love the stickers and title.

Um, what else...

Oh, here's one...

This one was a another ten point challenge where we had to use the words Love and Life in a title.  It was a lightning challenge, so I had to whip it together kinda quick... I'm happy with how it turned out... love this big pink flower (thanks Pam for the Bobunny paper!)

And one more...

We had to use a quote that went something like "Don't wish things were better, wish YOU were better" for inspiration.  I love this!

Here's Kristine's ... SO pretty!

There are MANY more layouts by other scrappers who participated in the crop over in the gallery  at www.scrapbookstudiopooler.com just go to the website and click on the link to forum/gallery.  It's chocked full o' inspiration.

I'll post more showsie tellsie later on... for now I'm gonna go plop on the couch with my loverboy...

;)
 

Scrapping Madness!

Holy crazed scrapbooking weekend Batman! We just spent two and a half days cropping like a bunch of maniacs as we participated in the online crop at Scrapbook Studio's forum. I've gotta say a big ol' THANK YOU to Deiha for hosting the crop because her challenges really pushed us to get 'er done.  Sid only played Friday night, but Kristine and I holed up in the penthouse all day Saturday until midnight and then again Sunday all day... Kristine left my house at almost midnight last night. 

I held the lead for most of the weekend, but as usual my bff LUCKED up and WON it all (I think.)  We're still waiting for the official crowning of the Queen of the Crop, but I'm pretty sure she's got it.  Lucky for her I'm a gracious loser or I'd ban her from the penthouse for good. (I also happen to really like her company so that helps I guess.)

Here's evidence of the madness... my score card:

So, I guess I'll show  you some more of the layouts... in fact I think I can throw some of Kristine's on here too.

Let's see...

This challenge was to use nontraditional items from around the house on your layout...

and here's Kristine's...

Now this one was using flowers and felt on a layout...

and Kristine's...

 This next challenge was called Mono e Mono... We had to create monochromatic layouts (use different shades of one color.)

And here's Kristine's...

And one more...

This one was a challenge to use an old photo and a newer photo...

and Kristines... (whoever had the longest time span between pics got extra points... I'd say she nailed it.)

 Oky doky... I'll show more later in the week. :)