Orange U Glad I Didn't Forget my Blog?

Okay, bad joke, I know. But I was totally stumped with SYTYCS Monochromatic Challenge at LCOM for Week 2. I was so looking forward to doing a mono page, but I just barely scraped one out. Luckily, I made it through. I am much happier with this week's layout, but you'll have to wait until Friday to see that one. For now, enjoy...and you may need your shades for this one.

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So You Think You Can Scrap - Week 1

So I made it past the first round of SYTYCS at http://www.letscaptureourmemories.com!! It was a fun challenge - clean and simple. I was a little stumped at first because I tend to put lots of elements into my layouts, so I looked to the Queen of Clean, Kathy Thompson Lafoley (http://kathythompsonlaffoley.typepad.com/) for inspiration. I love the way she can put such simple shapes and geometric organization and have a beautiful result. Here is the finished layout:

Is it wrong of me that I love how miserable he looks in these pictures??? I felt awful for the poor little guy, but he looked so cute and vulnerable in hind sight.

Week 2 challenge is monochromatic. It is one that I was looking forward to because I thought it was an obvious (and difficult) choice for a challenge at some point. But -wow - did I ever struggle! I used a pic that I've been meaning to scrap for a while, picked the accent color that I wanted to use and pulled everything that I owned in that color...and then drew a complete blank. I was super tough but, three nights of scrapping later, I finished it. I'm happy with the result, but pretty shocked at the length of the process. I've never had to sit down more than twice to finish a layout and this took about 5 sittings of working away and then stepping away and coming back to it. The results are posted on Friday, so I'll be back then to show you what I came up with. I'll give you a bit of a tease....the color I used is....drumroll, please....orange.

Better late than never, right?

I can't believe that it has been almost a year since I last posted on my blog. To tell you the truth, my scrapbooking has been almost non-existant since the spring. Lately, though, my mojo has been flowing. I've made a few new LOs that I love, applied to the DT at www.letscaptureourmemories.com, am competing in the So You Think You Can Scrap contest there and have starting submitting again. Hopefully that means I'll be stopping by this blog on a more regular basis. Stay tuned for some new LOs!

Finally published!!!

I just got an email from Scrapbook Trends magazine asking me for one of my altered Christmas items for their Holiday Ideas book. I am soooo excited! It was something that I sent as an after-thought. It isn't something that I really like very much, but it was Christmas-y, so I sent it. Oh well, it is getting published and that is all I care!!

March Break is a wonderful thing!

Everyone knows that one of the many perks of being a teacher is having March Break. Well, one of the many perks of being an Private School teacher is two weeks for March Break!! I have been off since Wednesday and I'm loving it. Living at the school with my students makes the school breaks seem all the more relaxing. I love the kids, don't get me wrong, but two weeks with no knocks on the door for homework help or to sew a button on or for advice on what to buy a girlfriend for her birthday....the list goes on...is really nice.

Greg and I went to Maine on the weekend and I went silly on the clearance wall at Lane Bryant. The difference in plus size clothing in Canada and the US is ridiculous. Up here, we have our choice of different shades of sweat pants or really old lady floral flour sack dresses. I bought at least 30 different items over the course of 24 hours and I love them all! And I saved over $800 according to the receipt!

The weather hasn't been great for March break, but the kids don't seem to mind. Rhett, Sutter and I went out in the snow exploring the campus and they had a blast. Check out how much snow we have. It reminds me of a "when I was young" story waiting to happen. I can just hear Rhett telling his grandkids about the winter of 09 when the snow was 18 ft high and he had to walk 2 miles to the dining hall, uphill both ways....

Useful Art

Don't you love when you can create something that is great to look at but also useful? I created this door-hanging for the Big Girls DT call (didn't get it BTW, boo) and I've had tons of compliments on it - even from the teenage boys who live in my residence. For those of you who don't know, my husband and I live in a junior boys residence at our school and he is the Daddy-Away-From-Home for 28 boys, ages 10-17. About 75% of the time, he is the go-to guy if they have questions or anything and the other 25% it is assistant-housparent who lives up-stairs. Sometime they get confused and knock on our door when she is the one on-call. So this sign solves that problem as there is no question as to who is on-call...and it looks pretty good too.

The arrow between Greg and Maryelle is a Piggy Tales slider, so it changes the direction of the arrow by sliding the cover over when the on-call teacher changes.

I didn't know what colors to use for this project because it had to be boyish, but not babyish. So I looked in some of DHs Sports Illustrated and all the ads had this same color scheme.

I really liked the way the colors turned out and as a bonus, I got to use up some yellow!

Application Anxiety

I'm about to send off my application to the Bad Girls Kit Design Team call. I'm pretty new to the site, but the work is incredible and the kits are unbelieveable. I haven't applied for anything this big before, so my fingers are crossed. Wish me luck!!!