Songs Stuck In My Head ~ Part 1

Thank God it's Friday!
See? This a song that gets stuck in my head literally every. single. Friday of my life on this planet.
Another useless trivia about me is I basically know every song that ever existed.
Not only do I know the title, I know who sang it, what year it came out and if there are any remakes of it.
Now if I could just get paid for all this information that clogs my brain and makes me forget to pack someone's lunch nearly everyday :::sigh:::
Anyway, my love for music is so strong.
Almost every memory I have, I can hear a song playing in the background.
I love making pages with song titles in the title or as the journaling.
Let's take a quick look...shall we?

I just finished this page literally 5 minutes ago, everytime I look at my biggest daughter Ryan now, cancer-free and hair starting to really grow back, I think of the Prince-written, Sinead O'Connor-sung "Nothing Compares 2 U".
I always thought Sinead looked amazing with such short hair and we keep telling Ryan she could seriously pull off not wearing a wig to school.
Like that might happen anytime soon. lol



Another song that I adore is Gavin Rossdale's (Mr. Gwen Stefani) "Love Remains The Same" The moment I heard it, I thought of my husband. We have been together forever and through the difficult times and wonderful times our love has always been constant. And I was thrilled when this page won a prize at CKC Hartford and I won a whole lotta great books from Creating Keepsakes!



Another scrapped song is Elton John's "Your Song" and this photo was taken by Ryan's Aunt Sheila which I though was just beautiful so I paired it up with the most wonderful lyric of all:



And this song is one of my favorites ever.
The Beach Boys, I believe made a masterpiece when they wrote this song.
Makes me cry everytime I hear it, because it's completely how I feel about the 4 human beings in this photo.
"God Only Knows" what I would be without them :*)



I titled this blog entry Part 1 because I have SO many more that I will share on another day.
I hope you all have the best weekend ever!
-Jody

Butterflies Are Free...Or $14.99 For A Martha Stewart Punch

Happy Humpday to you!
I made a new page today with an element I have used a couple times before, the butterfly.
I have been using a lot of 3-D embellishments from K & Company of late, I just think they are so sweet and not cheap like some other brands.
Today's page is made with photos from last summer of my littlest, Erin.
I love these photos and she just reminds me of all that is happy in the world.



For my other older pages, the easiest way to make butterflies is with a punch, I actually have 2 butterfly punches made by Martha Stewart.
Say what you will about Martha's "scrap" supplies, she makes awesome punches.
This was a page I made right before Ryan was diagnosed last May:



Heres even another butterfly page with Erin with a quote I adore, up against our house foundation in the backyard.
I love using this as a backdrop for my impromptu photo shoots with my girls.



And lastly, this was a page with butterflies I made last year for the November Pea Profile. The website, 2 Peas In A Bucket actually sends you products and you make at least a scrap page or a card and post it in their gallery.
It was a lot of fun!



OMG!
I just noticed that all 3 pages had the same butterfly in the top left corner each time.
Can someone say...stuck in a rut?
LOL!

It's All About Megan Day

In honor of me actually scrapping a page of my middlest daughter Megan today, I thought it was appropriate today's blog post is all about her.
She loves to have her picture taken (when she wants to have her picture taken, I should say. lol)
In my opinion, the camera loves her:



During her older sister's illness this past year, I think Megan was kind of lost in life's shuffle and here was a page I made about that, thankfully life is back to normal again:



And this last page is my ode to the "My Space Face" that Megan does, to the point of annoyance, which is plastered all over my phone, my computer and burned into the memory card in my brain:



Have a great weekend everyone! :)

A Picture Is Worth...No Words?

I made this very simple page today:



I sometimes struggle with putting journaling on some of my pages.
There are those rare moments when I feel it's redundant to say...
"Erin, you loved licking that lollypop so much today!"
I think sometimes more can be told with just a title and a photo.
Here are some others I have made (and I have to eventually post all my pages this way because I am an idiot and cannot get the stupid slideshow feature to work for me. lol)

I just loved this photo of Erin:



Another color-manipulated page of Erin:



And probably my favorite one of all...Megan blowing bubbles:



So my friends, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words...and sometimes possibly, no words at all :)

Grateful

Let me preface today's post by saying...I do not condone the fact that my oldest daughter Ryan has had a boyfriend since she was 13 yrs old.
That being said, they just celebrated 2 yrs together.
You see, when my daughter was diagnosed with cancer last May, we wanted only the best care for her and that meant we would have to travel into New York City, about 1 and a 1/2 hours away from where we live.
This also meant that Ryan was too far away for her girlfriends to see her on a regular basis.
There were times when they would visit her at home and there were times I would drive a couple of them into the city to see her for the day.
She would cry to me that she thought her friends would forget her...it broke my heart.
But there was one mainstay throughout her illness...her boyfriend Bobby.
After their first year together, I made this page about them:



I don't know many 15 yr old boys that would hang around while their girlfriend loses her hair and spends most of the day vomiting into a bedpan.
But he is no ordinary boy...he would empty and clean that bedpan if I wasn't right there.
I am so thankful he stayed with her through this awful year.
If nothing else, he has set the bar very high for the next boy she falls in love with.
And for that I am so very grateful.
Here are the "Lovebirds"

A Simple Gal-entine

Here's a little story on this fine Valentine's Day...
Once upon a time, I stumbled upon a book called "Clean & Simple Scrapbooking" by Cathy Zielske



After devouring every single page, the clouds parted and the angels sang and I discovered my passion in life.
I then picked up an issue of Simple Scrapbooks magazine and I was hooked.
I posted in their online gallery for about a year, and finally got up the nerve to submit a layout about 5 months ago.
My dream in life was to someday be published in the magazine.
About 2 months later I received an email from an editor of the magazine asking me to contribute a layout for an article.
If that wasn't exciting enough, I then received another email with an invitation to become a Simple Gal for 2009 along with an unbelievably talented group of women.
About 3 weeks later, around the time the official announcement was to be made, the Simple Gals group got another email stating that because of the bad economy, Simple Scrapbooks magazine was ceasing publication after the May/June issue, so our services would no longer be needed.
Jennafer Martin could not have been nicer in her letter to us.
Once the shock wore off, all I could think of was all the people who worked so hard to bring us this wonderful magazine, will no longer have jobs and that put my little pity party in perspective.
So in retrospect, for approximately 23 days I was a Simple Gal...in my heart and in my soul.
And I will be in the final issue of my favorite. magazine. ever. :*)
And thanks to Emilie Ahern another shoulda/coulda/woulda Simple Gal for this badge I will now post proudly:



So in honor of the biggest commercialized holiday...um...I mean sweetest, thoughtful holiday...I give you my kitchen this morning.
I decorated a slew of foam conversation hearts years ago and hang them in the kitchen every V-Day morning.


I (very simply) altered an apothecary jar to house chocolate kisses.



And this was the 1st year I made my littlest's valentine to give to her friends at school, posed her and stuck a wrapped chocolate heart on the photo.



Again, simply done.
Do you detect a theme here? ;)
I hope you all have a simply wonderful Valentine's Day, surrounded by people who love you!

It's Almost Here!

It's that time of year...can't you just smell the love in the air?
And if you are a scrapper, this is the time of year when you profess your love on paper to your valentine.
When I was growing up my Mom, who is a an artist, would make my Dad, my sister and me homemade valentines.
More than anything, I would always look forward to seeing what she created each year.
This year, I made a very simple Valentine for my husband, Andy.
This will be our 31st Valentine's Day together (we started dating in 1977, holy crap, we are old!)
We have crammed a lot of life and a lot of love into these years and there is no one else in the world I would have wanted to cram it with ;)



If nothing else, he will be grateful I didn't make him pose cheesily like last year.



C'mon, show someone you love just how much you love them by making them something, they will love it more than anything you could ever buy...

Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

I will start this post by saying what I have read over and over and over again on blogs too many times...
BACK UP YOUR PHOTOS!
I was editing over 800 photos I shot for my littlest's drama production and my computer kept telling me that I had no disc space left.
I started deleting photos that I thought were not important ones.
Well, this morning I went to back up my last 4 months of photos (my months have usually 100-200 pics in each month) and the month of October '08 was gone.
Completely deleted, folder and all.
I am completely devastated.
That was the month full of great halloween photos, annual pumpkin picking photos and of family photos in & around our home in N.Y. where if you're not familiar with the leaves changing in fall in the northeast, you are missing something so beautiful, it can't be described.
I called my husband this morning and through the sobs asked him not to laugh at me.
Thank God he loves me and knows just how much my photos mean to me.
With what we have been through with our daughter, in the grand scheme of things, these are just photos.
But I chronicled her journey through my photos.
I went through my scrap photo pile and found 10 photos that I had printed out months ago by chance.



And I did make a few scrap pages from October as well, here they are, forever to be etched in my brain as my "lost" month.







So don't read this blog and walk away without backing up your photos.
You can thank me later...

Unposed

I came across this photo while editing the 5,000 photos that are causing me to have no disk space left on my computer.
I hate deleting any of my photos, but I have finally started to get rid of photos that do not have an immediate family member in it.
While it kills me to do this, my computer is thanking me by actually running better.
This photo is of my littlest, Erin at her school Christmas party of 2007.
It was a candid moment which most scrappers/amateur photographers will agree with me, doesn't happen very often.
The class was sitting on the rug while their teacher read them a story and Erin put her arm around her best friend in class, Isabella.
Just a sweet moment captured in time forever, without Mommy orchestrating it.
Sometimes the best photos are the unposed.
And sometimes they make for pretty cute pages :)

The Middlest

Meet Megan, daughter #2.
She definitely fits the Jan-Brady-Middle-Child-Syndrome.
I guess all the blame can be placed squarely upon the head of my oldest daughter, Ryan.
Ryan has been a pure joy, since the moment she burst outta my uterus (C-section!)
As an infant, toddler, little girl, tween, and now teen, Ryan has given me rarely any problems.
The same sadly cannot be said about Megan.
Since the moment she was born, she has had a chip on her shoulder.
I documented that in one of my earliest scrap pages here, "Attitude":



It amazes me to this day how my first 2 children came from the same parents, from the same womb, and still are so different...in looks, in personality, complete and total opposites.
While Megan can be a tad whiny and her favorite phrase at the moment is "I don't know", she also has the most wonderful sense of humor and still loves to snuggle at the ripe old age of 11.
I may not like her every minute, but I love her every second. :)

It's no secret...I married my husband because of his genes.
He quite possibly was the cutest little boy I have ever seen (in photos, because I met him when he was 16)
Every single one of his siblings are good-looking, all dimples and teeth, kind of like the Osmonds.
I just assumed our children would look just like him, all
Osmond-y, with dimples and teeth.
Our oldest and our youngest definitely look like his side of the family, but Megan got hold of a lot of my genes.
Megan has dark skin and brown eyes and her 2 sisters have porcelain skin and blue eyes.
Andy loves to joke all the time that Megan looks like me, but there was just enough of him sprinkled in to make her perfect. lol
Hence today's page, "Just Enough":

We Originally Wanted To Name Her..."Oops"!

Here's one for the books.
My husband Andy and I have 3 girls.
We knew after the first 2 girls that we were "DONE".
We redid the nursery into a home gym and Andy went so far as scheduling a vasectomy to make sure we were "DONE".
Well, the night he was supposed to go to the doctor, he had to cancel to stay and work late.
You know the punch line, right?
Yes, I got pregnant the next month.
I have to be honest, I wept like a baby after taking 4 pregnancy tests.
I. did. not. want. another. baby. like. daughter. #2.
(That will be explained in an upcoming post)
Long story short, Erin was born and she has brought me and our entire family more happiness than I could have ever hoped for.
She is our miracle baby and Andy reminds her constantly that she owes him her life.
When I was printing this photo of Erin, all the old memories came rushing back and I knew I needed to make this page.
Here is Oops :)

Hey Sweetie? What Did You Think Of The Superbowl?

Yeah, me too! :::yawn:::
Probably had something to do with the fact that this was the first time in 30 years that I was not in one single Superbowl pool.
Maybe had something to do with the fact that in the said 30 years I won money almost every.single.year.
It kinda got to the point that people didn't want me to play in their pool.
Bitter, much? lol
Anyway, I pretty much hate football, but love to get together and chat and eat and laugh and that was accomplished with our impromptu Superbowl bash with some good friends (Hi Gale!)
This week my littlest has her drama production and I volunteer to take photos and make posterboards of all 90 kids.
It takes me all week, I bitch and moan and then happily volunteer my services the next year because these productions are THE cutest shows ever.
I hope to scrap a page of something Erin (a horn-blowing/parade marcher in the play) said to me about her costume.

Today's page I am posting, was made 2 months ago of another family member who was bored as well.
This is Ryan at 4 months meeting Santa for the first time.
I think only Barney the Purple Dinosaur would have elicited a happier reaction out of her that many years ago.