Gamenight crowd

You always hear me talk about my gamenight friends. These are long time friends. So long time, in fact, that they've transcended the friend barrier and have become family. I thought it would be nice for you to see what this bunch of dear friends looks like.

I host gamenight about once a month. These pictures were taken at our last night a couple of weeks ago.

This is my friend Doug. I lovingly call him Dougalee and we've been friends since I was 12. He is the reason I got through 7th grade algebra, thanks to his tutoring. The big goofy guy next to him in the blue is my husband, Jim.

These are the girls, Karen and Vicky, a/k/a Vicoula, as I call her. She's Greek, hence the Vicoula. I've known Karen since kindergarten. Vicky and I go back to high school. We all went to college together.

This is John. He is a schoolmate of my husband. He's a great guy but also a nudge, (pronounced noodge). He loves to tease me about my son growing up and leaving me. John's a great guy and a dear friend to us even if I do want to hurt him sometimes when he teases me about my son going off to the University of Hawaii.

Oh, I just realized that you can see my scrap corner behind him. It's a bit messy but can you see the huge paper stack? Those are mostly DCWV stacks.
Here's one of Tommy, Vicoula's husband. He and Jim are like 2 peas in a pod and we make the joke that they share the same brain cell.

Last but certainly not least, we have Joe. Joe was a friend of Vicky but he's now part of our intimate family.

So now you know what my crowd looks like and I'm grateful for each and every one of them.

Mud Sledding

Over the weekend we went to visit our friends, Leo and Andi, at their house in Westchester. Leo and Jim took Logan and Caterina sledding while Andi and I stayed back at the house to enjoy some "girl time" without kids and husbands. I assumed that they were going snow sledding and we'd brought the kids' snow clothing with us for just that reason. However, in their haste to conquer that hill the kids started sledding prior to donning their snow gear and being as it was 54 degrees on Saturday, snow sledding turned into mud sledding.

Here you can see my kid airborn as he rides the mud. I'm told he barely missed a tree in front of him.

This is Caterina on one of her downhill slides.

This is the result of her downhill slide.

Andi was most kind and threw their muddy clothes into her washing machine. Thanks, Andi.

There is a dam nearby where they went sledding. Here are the kids in front of it.

In this picture you can see a bit of a rainbow created by the falling water.

And here's one of Leo and the kids.

After the kids were de-mudified, Leo and Andi took all of us out to eat at a great Chinese Buffet place. We had an excellent meal complete with peel 'n eat shrimp and freshly steamed crab legs. Yum! Thank you, Leo and Andi.

After our bellies were full and we'd read our fortune cookies we went to Michael's and Walmart. I needed vellum adhesive for one of Logan's school projects and being that Walmart was right next door to Mike's, well, I just HAD to hit that too. We don't have a Wally World close to us so I wasn't passing up that opportunity. I almost bought the From My Kitchen Cricut cart at Walmart but I was a good girl and put it back. Aren't you proud of me? We then hit Best Buy which was in the same shopping center where I bought some photo paper that I was running very low on.

After our little shopping spree, we went back to the house and enjoyed some down time until it was time to leave. What a nice day it was and we very much appreciate Leo and Andi's wonderful hospitality.

Elaine's cj

Here are my pages for Elaine's 4 Things That Would Appear On My Welcome Sign circle journal. This took a little thought. Two of the things came easy but I had to think some on the other two. Eventually, the light clicked on and it was just a matter of spinning through my clip-it-up to find the right embellies. What was funny was I'd made that tag months and months ago and it was an absolute perfect match for this layout.

West Side Story

With my circle journal claim of my playing Maria in West Side Story, I thought I'd post some pics to prove that.

Here I am in my 1st scene of the play with Anita in the bridal shop as I beg her to lower the neck line of the dress I'm to wear to the dance that night.
Enter Bernardo and Chino.
Meeting of the lovers at the dance. That's Leslie Seecomar - what a cutie he was. He's a dr. now. You can just make out the dancers in the background.

And of course, the famous balcony scene. All the sets were made by our school. It wasn't easy getting up the ladder behind the set and having to climb thru the window but I managed to do it w/o tripping each time.

The school hired a photographer to take pics but he didn't take many of my scenes so this is all I have. Hope you enjoyed looking.

Skiing

Jim took Logan and his 2 friends, Eddie and Caterina, skiing today while I went to work. They had a great time and it was perfect weather for it. Our friend, Leo, who also is our chiropractor, met them there and he was a great help to Eddie on his first day ever of skiing. Eddie took a lesson and then headed up the mountain with the other kids and Leo.

Here is a picture of Thunder Ridge where they went. It's about an hour north of us in Westchester, NY.
Logan, Leo and Caterina.
This is Eddie. He looks pretty good for his first time, doesn't he?

Paula's sign-in book

I was baffled how to make a book so I decided to take another look at my cricut cartridges. Lo and behold, there it was on the "My Community" cart. Who knew?!?!

Paula's cj

These are the pages for Paula's cj. This was a fun 2-pager for me. I was immersed in my blues and everything just flowed.

Here is the sign-in for Kathi's cj. Don't you just love Cricut cartridges? "Going Places" has the cutest little suitcases on it complete with handle cutouts and everything.

Kathi's layouts

I was on a roll after making my own cj pages and didn't want to stop so I went ahead and did the los for Kathi's cj. Lisa, I hope you'll notice your own work on these los. I used some of the adorable embellies you made and I think they add just the right touch. Being that it's after 1 a.m. here, I'll do the suitcase later.

My CJ layouts

Well, here are my los...finally. Took me long enough, right? I'm so not happy with them but I'm trying to keep it "unusual" and let me tell you, that's been causing me some difficulty to say the least. Two things that were unusual for me on these los were the use of brown and my own handwriting. I don't usually use either when I scrap so without any more delay....

Winter Wonderland

We got hit with a blizzard yesterday. It was a monster of a storm and it blew in 17" of snow with 55 mph winds. Weather forecasters knew it was going to be big so our mayor even closed schools the day before. Did you hear the cheer from a million school children? I can't remember when that's happened. My job also closed prior thereto which was a wonderful gift not to have to leave the house. It would have been even more wonderful if they'd given us another snow day. It was treacherous driving today. Secondary roads were horrendous and it was a white-knuckle commute for sure. I managed to avoid what would have been a serious 4-car pile up. But even with all the dangers of such a large snowfall here in this bustling metropolis, I couldn't help but notice the beauty of it too. Here are a few pics of what it looked like outside my house this morning and one of the tree last night as it was coming down. Poor tree was bent to the point of breaking with the weight of all that snow.

It's officially Monday at the time of this post. I wish I knew where 2 whole days off go. I didn't get to scrap until a while ago but I did manage to at least get my sign-in pages done for the circle journal swap. They are simple on purpose but they will look way better once they are adorned with the individual sing-in items from the participants in the swap. Hence, the naked appearance of the pages but I did choose busy paper. Again, not my usual style but I'm keeping with the unusual theme of this album.

Christmas Mini Album

Alrighty, I know this isn't my cj pages that I'm supposed to be posting but just to keep the blog updated, I'm going to post some pics of a Christmas mini album I did after my first kitty mini album which you can see in an earlier post here on my blog.

I really like doing minis. There is a real sense of accomplishment upon completion and they are small enough to leave out for guests to see as opposed to a 12x12 album. I went to Michael's to buy some more blank chipboard minis but they don't carry them. However, they do now carry packages of 12x12 sheets of plain chipboard so I grabbed 2 of the 3 that were on the shelf. I figure I can now make my own mini albums since Jim bought me the Cricut deep cut blade and housing for Christmas.

Logan has to make a book as his entry into an annual compulsory book writing/making contest. He has to write a story and include hand drawn illustrations. He wrote the cutest story last year about some cats and his drawings were wonderful. My kid can draw; a skill his momma doesn't have. His entry last year made with construction paper got to the finals but he didn't win. Still not bad, though, making it to the finals, right? This year, I figure we can use my Cricut deep cut blade and cut the chipboard to create the pages for the book. He'll just have to decide on the size he wants it. I'm excited to pull out the Cricut and play with cutting the chipboard. If you hear squeals of delight, that'll be me!

So here are the pics of my Christmas mini. Notice how my baby...eh...spoiled brat...has grown over the years.