I Concede

Yup. She looks like me. :)

Because It's Been Nearly Three Weeks...

I should update this thing! How about a "top ten" events since my last post? Here goes, in no particular order:

1. The first week of September we were in the ER in the middle of the night with a croup-y Sadie struggling to breathe. In typical Sadie fashion she charmed everyone in the ER and turned the whole thing into a 1:00 am game of "I'm Darth Vader," because she thought she sounded like him with the raspy voice. Also, the clip they put on her finger to measure her pulse glowed red, like Darth Vader's light saber. (Mind you, she's never seen the movies, which goes to show you how much Eli talks about them!)

2. I went shopping at Ann Taylor for work clothes, hit a 20% off everything sale, had $50 worth of coupons, and scored $200 worth of clothes for just over $100.

3. Enough of Eli's Kiva loans were repaid that he was able to make another loan. This time we really got into it and we got out an atlas and printed out a blank map and mapped his loans. He is so excited about keeping this map going and eventually filling it up as money is repaid and he makes new loans.

4. Cards picked up one of my cards last week and Scrapbooks etc. picked up one of my layouts this week.

5. My parents celebrated their 40th anniversary! :)

We also went to Los Angeles (one day at Disneyland, two days at Seth's parents' place in Venice Beach) for a long weekend and...

6. Sadie's dream came true when she met Ariel:


7. and Belle:


8. Eli's dream came true when he trained as a Jedi:


9. and got to fight Darth Maul (while wearing Crocs):


10. Four generations got together:


And...bonus #11, we saw Jon Heder (of "Napoleon Dynamite" fame) at Disneyland and Michael Keaton at a restaurant in Santa Monica. Gotta love LA!

I promise a scrappy post sometime this weekend!

I Think I'm In Love with Weathervane

Weathervane is one of October Afternoon's soon-to-be-released collections and is perfect for fall and Thanksgiving layouts, cards, and projects. The colors are gorgeous - deep brick red, rich orange, pale aqua, dark aqua, golden yellow, cream, leaf green, and pale and chocolate browns. Mmmm....I look at these papers and want it to be fall already! I got my hands on all six of the papers and the stickers and can't wait for the rubber charms, chipboard, alphas, die-cuts, rub-ons, and stamps. (If you want to see the whole collection, go here.)

Here's a card using images hand-cut from my favorite paper in the line, "Cozy Home," paired with a page from October Afternoon's Label Journal mini-album and American Crafts vinyl and chipboard Thickers:


And here's a layout using two of the patterned papers and the stickers, paired with a grid paper from October Afternoon's Detours collection and American Crafts chipboard Thickers and leaf shapes:


I shall leave you now to return to thinking about crisp fall air, hot chocolate, and changing leaves. :)

I Gave Away My Obama Ticket

One of the perks of having a husband who is a delegate is that you get to claim one of his tickets to the Obama speech at Invesco Field. This perk, however, is in direct opposition to the perk of having adorable young children...who bring germs home to share, specifically stomach virus germs. Sigh... I just couldn't imagine competing for a toilet with 75,000 other people and made the decision yesterday afternoon to offer up my ticket. So, instead of me, my lovely friend, Susan, who is a history professor, will be enjoying the use of my ticket this evening. Of course, in true Murphy's Law fashion, I had my first real food an hour or so ago and seem to be doing fine.

Here's how close I was:


I think I will just have to console myself with the fact that I have this:


And with the fact that my children are watching the convention right now and just saw their dad in the audience three times in a row within about a minute and a half. That makes multiple times we've seen Seth on TV - I keep getting phone calls and emails from family and friends near and far who've caught him in the audience at the Pepsi Center while watching C-SPAN or MSNBC or have seen him being interviewed on some of our local TV stations.

Got My Hands on the New Scenic Route

I love the colors in the Surprise line! I haven't done a birthday layout or card with the papers yet, but my photos of Sadie playing basketball were a perfect match with the Surprise color scheme:


And, in true Vivian minimalist style, I used a couple of the Sonoma papers to make this card:


I am trying to get back into the habit of scrapping regularly and posting here regularly but this whole going-back-to-work-full-time transition has been a little more challenging than I had anticipated! I'm hoping that once Eli's back in school next week things will become a little more routine around here and I'll be able to get that work-life balance back.

October Afternoon Catalog

Okay, so I don't post for weeks and now I've got two posts in one day. :) October Afternoon has their new product catalog up on the website. I am so in love with Weathervane. Fall is my favorite season and I can't wait to use this line to get caught up scrapping the gazillion fall photos I took last year!

It's Been A Long Time

Sorry about that. Life sometimes gets crazy. We went on a week-long vacation to the UC Berkeley family camp with extended family and then I came back to a crazy two weeks at work, filled with eleven hour days (it's summer institute time for teachers). There's been a wee bit of scrapping amidst all of this, but I've got nothing final to show just yet. Things should be back to normal sometime this weekend. At least that's my hope.