Glad I bought that IU paper!

There are some topics which are hard to scrapbook. For us, one of those subjects has been the college selection process. Fraught with emotion, it started last summer and just recently ended. The prospect of finding the "right" college -- then auditioning AND being accepted there -- was daunting, to say the least. And then there was the part about actually making a decision...

Over the past few months, I had printed photos from our college visits, but the emotion associated with them was such that our daughter didn't want me to scrapbook them until she had made a decision. Truth be told, I could barely look at them either.

But now that a decision has been made, I'm tackling the photos of all the colleges we visited. The college selection process has been such a significant part of our life this year that it really needs to be documented -- the good, the bad, and the ugly! :-) It feels good to finally document this important stage in our lives.

I started with several pages (two of which are shown here) about the Summer Percussion Academy she attended last year at Indiana University, the school she'll be attending in the fall. This is a good example of how Bailey and I have worked together on some layouts. I started the journaling block with my thoughts, then she added her own. I made three additional pages for this camp with many photos of the percussion performance and friends, and she wrote extensive photo captions for all of them. Writing about the camp almost a year later -- after she had been accepted as a student at IU -- gave her an interesting perspective.

I also made a layout about the IU audition weekend in February. Of course, auditions were the main part of the college selection process. Thanks to Spouse (I've trained him well!), I had several camera and cell phone photos of the weekend, so I was able to make two pages about it. I'm planning to make an additional layout about the final part of the decision making process when she chose IU.

While we were in Bloomington picking her up from the camp last summer, I stopped at a scrapbook store and bought one sheet of IU paper. Now that we're Hoosiers, it looks like I'll be needing a few more sheets! :-)

Purple Iris

The purple iris are in bloom! We brought them from our first house (the one I consider our REAL home) 16 years ago and they are still doing well.

We have a few patches of these iris. I had planned to divide them this spring, but that didn't seem to happen. For now, I'm just enjoying their beautiful color.

Feline Friday: Whodunnit?

I walked past the bathroom this week and noticed that something was amiss:

The toilet paper had been unrolled.

The spare roll was also unrolled. Toilet paper was all over the floor.

Who could be responsible for this naughtiness?

A gray tabby suspect -- with cute little white tennis shoes --
is in custody but so far, she isn't talking.

Memory Bound Page Kit

Each month, I have the very enjoyable job of designing the page kit for Memory Bound, the scrapbooking store where I teach. The kits come with complete instructions and all the materials needed to create a two-page layout.

This is the Mother's Day page kit I created for the month of May. The paper is by K&Company. I cut the round piece in the center with our store's large Accu-Cut die. The title was cut with the Cricut.

{Almost} Wordless Wednesday

Bluebells from our yard, given to me by my dear late grandma.

Tabby Tuesday: Im wateen

Sumtymes i just wate an wate bi da bak dohr fur mi mommie 2 git hom.

I kinda miss hur but moslie i jus want fuds.

Hurrie, mommie!

73 Pages and Counting

If you've been reading my blog, you've probably read that I've been feverishly working on scrapbook pages for my daughter's upcoming graduation open house, to be held in early June. (Any chance I could move that back by about a year? No?)

I had done a LOT of scrapbooking over the years, but I hadn't kept up very well with her many activities and events. When her senior year began, I thought that with a little more focused effort, I'd soon be on top of the situation.

Well, I was wrong. I didn't realize how much there was to do. You see, the girl who lives in this house is involved in many activities. Most of those activities include multiple performances each season. And that equates to many, many layouts for a given school year.

This month so far, I've completed 73 pages. That seems like a lot, but there is SO much more left to be done. My lofty goal of having her entire life scrapbooked by the time graduation rolls around is slipping away from me. I'm a tiny bit discouraged about that, but I'm nonetheless continuing on. I still have a few weeks to go!

So enough whining! Here's a layout I finished earlier this month documenting her 13th birthday party. This particular paper is one of my favorites so, of course, I only used a strip of it!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some serious scrapbooking to do. Bye! :-)

Feline Friday: Puffballs FOUND and LOST!

Of call the cat toys we have around this house, Lily loves her puffballs best. These fuzzy toys are remnants of past craft projects. Lily has commandeered them in several sizes and colors, but the puffballs she prefers are the small white ones, about the size of a quarter.

The first time I saw Lily with one of these small puffballs in her teeth, I took it away from her because I thought she would choke. But upon closer observation, I could see that she never puts it completely in her mouth. She simply clamps onto the puffball and transports it for short distances to find a better spot to play.

Of course, these puffballs are so small that they easily get lost. In fact, they had been lost for months and just recently resurfaced. Lily was quite excited to be reunited with her puffballs and took to carrying them all around the house.

It was quite an adorable sight to see.

Lily was in Puffball Heaven until yesterday, when both white puffballs disappeared again, no doubt under some appliance or piece of furniture. I've offered the large red puffball or the medium black puffball as a substitute, but she rejects them flat out.

She only wants her white puffballs. 

So this weekend, I'm thinking of asking Spouse to help slide the refrigerator out from the wall, under the guise of needing to clean for our graduation open house.

Sure, that probably needs to be done. But really, I'll be looking to put the smile back on Lily's face. :-)

And an occasional "family" page...

Well, with about six weeks to go, I'm still plugging away at the scrapbooking for our daughter's graduation open house. I'll admit that the college decision process was pretty stressful and zapped almost all of my scrapbooking mojo for awhile. But I'm back in the saddle again and am trying to do as much as I can before the big day.

In addition to all of her activity and event pages, I am trying to make a few "family" pages because life is not just a series of events -- even though it really does seem like it right now!

Here's a page I recently finished made with photos of Spouse's family. I've been hanging onto this set of Making Memories paper, waiting for something "teal" to happen and this particular set of photos seemed to fit the bill. All products are from MM, except for the QuicKutz swirl, the brown buttons, and the cardstock.

Now, back to my regular scrapbooking: marching band, jazz band, show choir, wind symphony, chamber choir...repeat! :-)

{Almost} Wordless Wednesday

Indiana University - Bloomington, snowy audition weekend at Jacobs School of Music, February 5-6, 2010

Who would have dreamt that our very long and emotional college search process would lead to IU, one of the top music schools in the country? We could not be happier for our new Hoosier!

Let the play-fight begin!

There is a lot of play-fighting around here. Lily generally starts it by taunting Tinsel in some fashion: dive-bombing her from the top of the couch, smacking her on the head, or blocking Tinsel's path, as she was doing here. You can see that she has her sweet back feet positioned against the wall so that she can push her heavy little body directly in front of Tinsel, not unlike a slow-moving missile. You can tell from Tinsel's ear position that she's irritated!

What follows is a lot of growling, head smacking, and chasing. I will say that Lily never snarls or uses her claws on Tinsel, who was front-declawed when we adopted her. They each do "pretend biting" but never touch the other with their teeth.

Even though this play-fighting sounds and looks scary, I think it's all in fun. And as much as Lily drives Tinsel crazy, I think she secretly enjoys having an irritating little sister around the house.

Feline Friday: Meatloafing on the Deck

Now that the warm spring weather has arrived, you can find Lily meatloafing on her corrugated scratching post "deck", enjoying the fresh breeze wafting through the sliding door and

plotting her escape. But that might involve actually standing up so...

Never mind! :-)