867-999-8212

It's always a good time for a pic of black forest cake!
click the cake for great ideas at Adrea's Recipes!

A Little Bit of This and That


If you've heard “Kiss Me Through The Phone” by Soulja Boy, you’ve heard that number before, 678 triple 9 8212. Its in the Chronicles of Nani iPod if you haven’t. I think it’s fantastic! If you call that number, you can sign up for call backs with messages from Soulja Boy with new music information. Awesome marketing! Imagine if you are a teenager and you get calls from an artist every day. Even if it’s just a recording, it fosters some great fan loyalty.

Unfortunately, it’s also being used for some pranks. I haven’t called the number. I like the music, but I’m a married woman in my 40s. I don’t need daily calls from a man my nieces would regard as “sexy.” But I did some internet research to find out if the number in the song was a real number. That’s when I discovered how the message call backs work. I guess you can put in a different number than the one you’re calling from, because there are people getting the calls that aren’t happy about it. One person left a complaint on one of the call reporting sites saying, in all caps, that she was insulted to be getting calls all the time from what seemed like a cult offering gay sex with soldier boys. hmm...

The video, which is awesome by the way, features Soulja Boy talking to his girlfriend, future wifey, on the phone from a card game. I was thinking, “hey! that could be me!” hehe Near the end of the video you see a middle aged white man talking to his wife from the office, working late so he’s kissing her on the phone, an older African American couple and an Asian woman on the phone, but I don’t recall they showed to whom she was talking. I love that. The video is totally inclusive. After showing the young black couple and older white couple, the last woman could be on the phone with her husband, girlfriend or even hot chat with a stranger. It’s whatever you need it to be to feel like you are represented in the video. And yes, it’s much more likely that David is the older guy calling home because he’s working late than the young guy at the poker table, but I can dream for him, right?

I think it’s sad that people are using the number to prank people, but it’s no different than all of the people in all of the area codes who called 867-5309 in the 80s asking for Jenny. Nah, this is better. If fans call the number just out of curiosity, they’ll likely be pleasantly surprised and keep the messages for themselves.



In Other News, Nani News,

I’m trying to get my end of the month stuff wrapped up. I have the new challenge written up or I Wanna Talk About Me at Scrap Bird, but I need to finish the posting bonus. I’m going to see my Dad tomorrow, Dave and Laura will be there with Tori and Rina, so Dad is planning to cook up family dinner tomorrow night. I am a total sucker for Dad’s grill-feats! Sunday is supposed to be decent train weather, but if I don’t have everything done by the time I leave tomorrow, I may need to stay home and finish. School starts Monday at 8AM, so I don’t really have lots of extra time!


Speaking of school, I got my lab program on the laptop and ready to go. I talked with tech support for the publisher of the lab disk yesterday since Vista isn’t listed as an okay OS on the DVD box. There are a few updates that I had to install and now it totally works on Vista. So, I’ll be able to do my lab work at home and not have to go back to campus to do it. YAY! Have I said how much I love Vista?

I will see my new doctor next week about my knee. That will make my very concerned brother-in-law and sister-in-law in Connecticut very happy! Ben and Ellen were both on me about getting it checked out both separately and then they teamed up on me last week! Oh, I take that as a wonderful expression of family love and a after the way it just didn’t bounce back like it usually does after we went to Boston, I’m good and ready to turn it over to a pro. Just any surgery that might need done will be done with a local anesthetic. I don’t want to be unconscious. Even if I’m loopy, I want to hear it if someone says “oops!”

Okay, lunchtime and back to wrapping up May. Hey David, I think I’m gonna have a Lean Pocket! ;)

Digitalegacies Designs Sale Paper

I hope everyone has been visiting Scrap Bird on Thursdays for the great half-off kits available with all of the fantastic personal and commercial use goodies in all of the stores. We’re growing again, even more designers! I’ll have all the blog links up soon. I’m still catching up from being gone a week!


This week, the Digitalegacies Designs offerings in the Crazy Thursdays sale are Eight Days A Week and One Step at a Time. Both are only $2.50 today only!!


But wait, there’s MORE!


Okay, that’s corny, but we’re talking a dollar sale! There are just a few days left to get any Digitalegacies Designs template set for just one dollar! That’s right, half off the Project 365 sets with four templates each and a third off the quilt-inspired Premier Templates.

Coming soon!

A new quick page set will be in the store soon! The Look of Love is four quick pages, one made with each of Laura, My Blue Heaven, Because of You and Your Own Special Way, the Digitalegacies love-kits!


Just put your photos behind the png files, flatten and print! Look for the set of four pages in the store soon!


As June starts, a new DST blog train kicks off the month on the first, plus a new I Wanna Talk About Me challenge and bonus too!

You Like Purple Flowers Too?

There are some big things going on in my world right now. Some of them are exciting and some are scary! Getting ready for the wedding reception and the honeymoon at the end of August, now that’s exciting. Starting back in school, that’s a little scary, but exciting too. My knee, however, is just scary.

Best as I can tell, my knee has just always been destined to be trouble. I’m a bit of a klutz. That’s heredity. Mom was on the clumsy side too. I read an article at Scrubs, which is a website especially geared towards registered nurses, but with lots of great content for patients and people interested in the nursing profession or just some free good advice! The article was titled “How Scrubs Eased The Pain.” It’s in the First Person stories, where people write in their own stories about nursing and nurses. It’s by a Mom telling about her 9-year-old daughter’s experience in the hospital with a nurse in cheery purple floral scrubs that started a favorite color and favorite flower conversation that eased the emotional pain of a sprained ankle.

Sprained ankle. My first one was when I was 11. I had mistimed a ballet leap while choreographing a number I was going to do for the 6th grade talent show. Needless to say, I didn’t end up in the show. In the 30+ years since then, there have been a couple other sprains and a broken toe, but now the falls on my knees seem to be catching up with me! Last week, when David and I were on the various trains to get us from Providence, Rhode Island to Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, we got off on the outside platform of a subway train that was posted, after leaving the train, that the elevators were on the middle platform. Groan! My gimp knee and I started up the stairs. I always use the mantra “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” when pushing my knee a little farther. I end up sore and have to take an hour or so break before I can really walk around again, but I manage. But this time, I didn’t heal back up so much. I’m facing the fact that knee surgery might be in the future, possibly the near future!

I haven’t visited the doctor on my PPO in the less than half year I’ve had it yet and he’s not accepting new patients right now, so I had to choose a new doctor. In about a week, I’ll have the new card with my new doctor and make my first appointment. Part of me is excited about the thought that I’ll be able to walk without pain again, but that’s my Coveyish always having the end goal in mind. One thing that I know, that I can picture after reading at Scrubs, is that during the wait while I sit in an exam room alone preparing for strangers to visit, ask personal questions and probe areas that are in pain, I’ll be shaking inside of my optimistic exterior nervous! The first person I’ll see, the first stranger I’ll meet for a one on one talk, is the nurse. That nurse will be my first impression of the doctor, of his whole practice.

I’ve read some first hand accounts, questions and concerns from RNs. Looking at the site and really seeing health professionals in the “real person” sense, eases some of those nerves too. Yeah, knowing I’m a big baby when it comes to the doctor and knowing where to do my homework really does help!

There is an article with tips for nurses to answer questions about swine flu. By the way, patients have the same access to the answers too, the site is for and about nurses and anyone interested! I read a question and answer article about praying with patients and a short from a man who when asked what it was like to be a “male nurse,” replied, "The 'male' part I've got down—it’s the 'nurse' part that takes a lot of hard work!" Of course, genderism exists both ways. A nurse is a nurse, regardless of gender!

One last thing I’ll mention about this great site is that as I’m pursuing my certification in computer networking, there is also one other profession with jobs actually on the rise, healthcare. There is a demand for good nurses, even in this shaky economy. If you’re even considering a career in or career change to nursing, it’s a good place to get a feel for the personalities and practicalities that make up this important profession.

Okay, I think I’m ready to sit in that exam room and tell a stranger about my knee. When the nurse comes in to get my vitals and information for the doctor, he or she doesn’t have to be wearing bright blue scrubs with trains and baseballs on them...but boy, would that be cool!

Photoblog Wednesday

Providence, Rhode Island

The Rhode Island State House as seen from the train station

Monday Mug Shot

Boston Red Sox Fenway Park Boston, Massachusetts

There were four parks on my list, four that were the epitome of classic baseball parks that I felt I just HAD to see a game at in my lifetime. Two of them are gone and two that may never be allowed to go, but I thought that about the other two too!

The first was Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan. I cut those teeth that actually chewed baseball card wax pack bubble gum on games at Tiger Stadium. I saw many games there and even worked there for two seasons while was finishing my degree.

The other stadium that’s now gone is the original Yankee Stadium. I saw the Yankees beat the Red Sox and then lose to the A’s a few days later in June 2006.

The remaining truly classic parks are Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois, home of the Cubs and Fenway Park in Boston. In 1995-97, Wrigley was practically my home field. “The gang” and I made many day trips for games and even a few weekenders. The Cubs were also Mom’s favorite team, so she was always ready for a road trip! Fenway is home to the Boston Red Sox, David’s number one team. I pretty much knew that I was definitely going to make it to Fenway one day!

That “one day” was last Wednesday! What a great game to choose! The Red Sox beat up the Toronto Blue Jays in a game that featured 5 Boston home runs including 2 from Jason Varitek and finally the first this year form the team’s slumping slugger, Big Papi, David Ortiz. Center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury also tied the league record for unassisted putouts with 12. If you’re a Red Sox fan, it was an incredible game and wearing the hat and earrings I’d purchased on Yawkey Way before the game, I was definitely dressed the part of a happy fan!

Our seats were in the section with classic seats that dated back to 1936. The average human butt was smaller then and the average human legs were never as long as David’s, so they weren’t the mot comfortable seats. In fact, they are said to be the smallest seats and rows in baseball, but it was neat to sit in that piece of history for the game. The whole experience was a classic, historic. Yawkey Way, the street the park is on, is closed prior to game time for shopping, partying and generally soaking up the whole baseball experience. Inside Fenway the feel is similar to Wrigley in that you feel the history hugging you from every direction.

David got dinner for us. He brought me back a bottle of Poland Spring water, the answer to how a Coke contracted ballpark gets around the licensing agreement with Aqua Fina as the official bottled water of Major League Baseball, they sell SPRING water rather than PURIFIED water. Yeesh, huh? The water was to wash down a couple of Fenway Franks! The renown hot-dogs of the east are half price for the first hour after the gates open! Ben, David’s brother, had a seat a section over, which enabled us to have the good view behind home plate we had instead of nosebleed or standing room seats, joined us in our section before the game started so we had ballpark dinner together. I can now say that I’ve had the well-known signature dogs of each coast, having tried Dodger Dogs in Los Angeles in 2000. Guess that makes me a nationwide snouts-n-tails connoisseur!

But in all of the great points of history and the exciting blow out for the home team, the most impressive, the most enchanting part of Fenway Park is Red Sox Nation, the fans. I’ve never been to a game with more loyal and supportive fans! Although I suspect that it might be different when the rival Yankees are in town, there weren’t boos at the beginning of the game when the opposing team was announced, casual indifference, but no displays of poor sportsmanship from the crowd. That’s not a display of a lack of enthusiasm because the crowd erupted in cheering support as the beloved home players were announced. I’ve seen televised games where former players who left the organization on good terms were cheered when announced and even when they batted. Imagine, the crowd cheering mild approval when the opposing team gets a hit because “he used to be one of ours.” Once you’ve played in Boston, you really do have fans for life unless YOU spoil that relationship.

My skin just goose bumped when David Ortiz came to the plate. In most cities when one of your big boppers, the designated hitter, the man paid the big bucks to be the home run hitter hasn’t gone yard yet for the year in late May, the fans are speaking ill, calling for his head on the trading block, even booing at the announcement of his name. Red Sox fans joined in loud in applause and stared chanting in unison “Let’s go Papi!” In the 5th inning when he finally broke that dry spell and the ball sailed out of the park, the crowd just went nuts. You’d have thought the game had just been won! The cheering didn’t stop until Ortiz had come back out of the dugout for a curtain call.

The whole Fenway experience was just awesome from the festival atmosphere on Yawkey Way, to the Fenway Franks, to the historic seats, but what really makes it is the great baseball fans that make up Red Sox Nation. The people who loved and supported their team through 86 years of bad luck, curses and empty World Series hopes, deserve to see their beloved team win every time they play, well, every time except when they play the Tigers.

While I did cheer for them in the playoffs before we met, Boston is my second American League team by way of loving them along with David. After seeing a game in Boston, I have to say I’m very proud to have married into Red Sox Nation!

New Sponsors To Consider

We just got home very late last night, so I’m catching up on a lot of things this Memorial Day! Thank goodness for a day to catch up! There will be a Monday Mug Shot, later, this evening after I check-in on the assignments list for the last week in my web pre-class for school and see about lunch! David made a late waffle breakfast this morning, so I really at least owe him seeing if he’s hungry before I “head off to school!”

Before I wanted to take a minute to introduce you to some new ideas that sound pretty good! You’ll find these links in the bulletin board too!


Medical ID Bracelets

If you or a loved one has a medical condition like diabetes or a heart condition or allergies to medications or food, they really should have some kind of ID that’s always with them. Medical ID bracelets or pendants are a great way to do that.

I had an ID bracelet for my penicillin allergy when I was younger and I really should wear it, but I don’t. I’m rethinking that now, especially when I know there are more Nani-stylish options to the old medical alert jewelry. I love the dog-tag style necklaces and I can get one in colored aluminum. It can be engraved to say my name, allergies to Penicillin and food allergy to MSG. Hey, if I should ever pass out at a Chinese restaurant, they’ll have an idea where to start investigating!

Check out the site, even a pendant worn under a shirt could save your life or the life of someone you love in an emergency!

See the Medical ID Jewelry at MemorialBracelets:

Medical ID Jewelry





Kids Clothes

Baby Me has some awesome styles for babies, toddlers and young girls and boys, totally adorable styles!


Be sure to check out the clearance section too! for deals like this pink skirt set for only $9.00!




This toddler boys hoodie is in the clearance section for $12.00.

Get inspired for kids’ styles and check out the cute fashions here:

Girls' and boys' clothing boutique!





Baby Photos

Once you have your baby all dolled up, why not submit one of those great photos you have in the Great American Photo Contest? If your precious baby photo wins, it’s a $2500 first prize! That will buy a few diapers and the clothes they grow out of so quickly and all you have to do is share photos and show off your little one. That’s easy!

Check out the details here:

Improving Your Web Presence

If you are using your blog or if you have a website you are using as a revenue earning place on the web, you know how important search engines finding you is! Check out Steve Wiideman’s SEO consulting site. You can get some search engine optimization tips there while you have consider if Steve might be able to help you increase your visibility and your profits on the web.

Check out what Steve had to offer here:

SEO Consulting Services

Photoblog Wednesday

Always Time for Breakfast
Phantastic Phils
Punxsutawney, PA
May 16, 2009

A Kiss of Summer Fun

Summer is nearly here and it’s time to plan a vacation, or at least a weekend getaway!

What do you like to do on a summer vacation? Of course, for me, summer travel with my fairly brad spanking new hubby has to include some trains and some baseball! Kissimmee, Florida is a great central location for four minor league baseball teams, inching the Lakeland Flying tigers on AL Kaline Drive, and the Florida Central railroad. It’s prime choice for us!

My honey isn’t a huge fan of hot so I’m thinking a summer trip to Kissimmee for us would have to include a water park or two to cool off during the high point of the light, before afternoon baseball, but when the light I poor for trains photography. Kissimmee has four fn-for-all-ages parks where you can have a blast getting wet in the sun. Be sure to bring plenty of sun block~

There is so much fun waiting to be had and K Kissimmee is giving away trips! Visitors to the Kissimmee website can enter to win one of 3 weekend getaways for 2 and 2 week-long vacations for four! The final drawing in the Freedom to Enjoy Sweepstakes is June 1, so there’s still time to visit Kissimmee on them!

Baseball and trains, water parks, theme parks, nature, world class accommodations and great restaurants make Kissimmee an ideal vacation spot for a long weekend for the whole family, a group of friends or just you two. And it could still even be Kissimmee’s treat!

Monday Mug Shot

Punxsutawney, PA

Reminiscent of the loved movie with Bill Murray, there’s a little bit of Groundhog Day, every day, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

David and I ventured into Punxsutawney on our trip East. We were of cur, looking for trains, and we did get a few really good shots catching the Buffalo and Pittsburgh when the sun peaked between the clouds. But the charm of the day in Punxsutawney was, the charm of the day in Punxsutawney was, the charm of the day in Punxsutawney was, the charm of the day in Punxsutawney was, the charm of the day in Punxsutawney was, the charm of the day in Punxsutawney was ….

And they say I have no pop-culture…

The charm of the day in Punxsutawney was the street art groundhogs!

The street art has been making big cites and small towns alike tourist attractions since Chicago did Cows on Parade in 1999. 300 Fiberglass cows were scattered all over the city, sponsored by local businesses who commissioned local artists to put their creativity to work decorating the cows. Then at the end of the year the cows were auctioned for charity. So it’s been repeated in other places with fiberglass “canvases” many with local appeal. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was given a formal citation grating pardon for starting the great Chicago fire of 1871. There were three styles of pigs at The Big Pig Gig in Cincinnati a year later, including a flying pig. I saw the thoroughbreds in Lexington, Kentucky, featuring the common to these art collections puns, including my favorite of those, Mr. Ad, a horse made of a collage of advertising! The New Ewe Review, in wool industry famous, Rochester, Michigan, included a Sheep in the form of another famous product of Rochester, Madonna!

Phantastic Phils, giant fiberglass replicas of the weather forecaster that made the city famous Punxsutawney Phil, made their debut with Philage, the only groundhog that wears a top hat, on Groundhog ay 2004. One by one more groundhog started appearing in the streets decorated by artists from around the state of Pennsylvania. This display doesn’t appear to be going anywhere! There are currently 32 groundhogs in the city streets, including a few that are being repaired or repainted to go back on display.

David and I got a brochure when I got this mug, and a pair of groundhog socks, at the Chamber of Commerce Groundhog gift shop. The brochure included a map to all of the groundhogs and we set out scoping the city streets for them. We photographed 22 of them!

It was a fun half day during our trip. Yes, a little more sun for the trains would have been nice, but we might not have had the fun of groundhog hunting! It’s something we both enjoyed and would love to see the rest of the groundhogs with more sun for trains too.

We’d definitely make that trip again, again, again, again, again, again, again…..

Signs of the Times

It’s a sobering statement of the economic woes in the Motherland. I was watching the Tigers game at lunch. Gotta love afternoon game during the week for lunchtime TV! The announcers read ad copy, not unusual, but this was VERY unusual ad copy. There are still tickets available for the Red Wings game tonight! It’s the payoffs. It’s game 7. It’s hockey in the city that calls itself Hockeytown!

I know plenty of people who’d sell a limb for one of those tickets. I’d love to see them give away any tickets they don’t sell. The Red Wings fans turned over the ticket prices without batting an eyelash when the money was there. It was the RED WINGS. Now it breaks my heart on their behalf. I know it must really sting that there are tickets available and people who just can’t afford to buy them now.

For me, getting a hockey ticket is NOT an issue. When I was in college and worked for the Tigers on game days, I had thought about working for the Red Wings in the off season. But it didn’t work that way. Hockey wasn't consideed the off season. The iltch family owns both and when the Red Wings were in the playoffs, and they are almost always in the payoffs, if the Tigers and Wings had home games at the same time, anyone who worked for both was told that the playoff game was the priority. Humph. No one's going to tell ME that hockey is a priority over baseball. It was a just over minimum wage college job after all!

As for lunch today, the Tigers gave up a 5-0 lead in the 6th to lose 6-5, completing the sweep for the Twins. **sigh** Well, I do have the sweet memories last night of the Reds sweeping the Diamondbacks. **happy sigh!**

Photoblog Wednesday

"Quick, turn your back to her and

maybe she won't take our picture again!"

Bedtime Kitties or why I couldn’t go to bed last night!

New Non-Controversial Findings in Stem Cell Research

Cyro-Cell INternational is a company involved in non controversial stem cell research. In their primary service, they have helped almost 200,000 American families preserve new born umbilical cords for potential use against disease. Umbilical cord stem-cells have been proven useful in the treatment over over 70 life-threatening illnesses.

But an umbilical cord, which must be collected at birth, provides enough stem cells for transplant and treatment in a child or small adult. Cyro-Cell is continuing research to add to that.

The latest CryoCell Press Release talks about the research they are doing in harvesting menstrual blood as a new source of stem cells. So far, they are encouraged by their findings. Menstrual blood can be harvested in a non-evasive way and the cells can be broken down and change into into important cells, such as bone or nerve cells. Based on the early findings, researchers believe menstrual stem cells can eventually be used in cell-based treatments for conditions like heat disease and stroke, even diabetes. Researchers hope to also use the menstrual stem cells in the treatments of other neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

Cyro-Cell International is based in Florida and is ISO certified and AABB accredited and had been dedicated to protecting people and saving lives through their services banking babies’ cord blood since 1992 and their continued research in the potential od stem cells.

Monday Mug Shot

American Power Boat Association
APBA Gold Cup, Detroit, Michigan

Hydroplane racing is something I’ve seen quite a bit of in my lifetime, but no because I’m a huge fan. That’s a parental thing. I guess it’s similar to trains or baseball for David and me.

In 1964 Mom and Dad both were at the Gold Cup races in Detroit. One was on Belle Isle and one was on the shore in Detroit. They didn’t go together, they didn’t even meet. That meeting didn’t happen until a few months later and it was in the early dating discussions that they discovered that not only did they both enjoy the rooster tail water sprays behind the hydroplane boats and the roar on the river, but they’d both been at the races!

They’d enjoyed going to see the races on the river together when they could. It wasn't an annual event early in their marriage. After their marriage in 1965, Dad was at trade school and studying to take the test for citizenship and they were raising their family, having me in 1966 and Dave 14 months later.

It was after we’d moved to oakland County, in Michigan, they’d built their dream home and Dave and I were older that they started going to the Gold Cup races, now called “Detroit Thunderfest,” on a regular basis. The God Cup was always held on a weekend near their anniversary and it became their annual celebration for that, eventually buying the package that got them into the better seating area and making a weekend of it with the hotel package and a nice Friday dinner.

The Miss Smokin Joe was her favorite hydroplane. All hydroplane boats are known by the title “Miss.” It later changed sponsors to become the Miss Winston Eagle. Dad’s boat was the Miss Pico (Motors). They enjoyed both cheering for and against each other.

As adults Dave and I had gone with them a couple of times, but we just weren't the enthusiasts they were. I am glad that I went the last time they did, just a few weeks before Mom’s passing. That will always be a special memory for me. Mom’s health had been poor and she was having serious trouble with complications from diabetes, but she was determined not to miss what had become a very special event for them. With the help of her scooter, she made it.
Dad hasn’t been to the Gold Cup races since that last time. I think it’s part that the memories are bittersweet now, but mostly because he holds it as an event that became too special to share it without Mom.

To me, the mugs for the Gold Cup races will always remind me of special times when Mom and Dad were ALWAYS happy.

Keeping You Off The Menu!

Ah Spring! I just love i when the warm weather comes back to live here for a few months! But tanking the bad with all that good, with the warmer weather, so return the mosquitoes!

As if the tendency to have a mild allergic reaction to their bites, a mosquito welt can match the diameter of a baseball on my leg, there is also the spread of disease, like the West Nile virus and just the plain fact that the swarming insects and their biting can ruin the outdoors for entertaining or just some peaceful quiet time with nature!

I’ve been reading up on possible solutions to get rid of or at least drastically reduce the problem. In Toledo, we are sprayed for them citywide. It’s amazing how well it works, but on those hot summer nights, when the air is damp and people are outside, ringing the dinner bell, we still get some, and picnicking away from home? No way!

Now, bats eat tons of mosquitoes, but as I understand it, it’s quite difficult to attract bats to a bat house. And in the interim, you still have PLENTY of mosquitoes! I read a mosquito magnet review and saw the pictures. Let me just say, “WOW!”

Mosquito Magnet, from Woodstream Corporation, does an incredible job of attracting, killing and collecting mosquitoes. One testimonial from Florida, told of collecting just a huge net full of them during the most humid and mosquito abundant times of the year.

It runs on propane and emits a carefully combined mix of elements to create an attractive but deadly to mosquitoes gas. The Mosquito Magnet is on wheels, so it’s portable yo take to a gathering at the beach or park too.

If you love the outdoors, but your state’s been accused of the state bird being the mosquito, you might want to give this a look!

8 Things

From I Cross My Heart add-on by Digitalegacies Designs

Edna challenged me to do the 8 Things list. You can see her list at her blog, Miss Edna’s Place!

Here are the rules for the tag:

Tag rules:

8 things you're looking forward to
8 things you did yesterday
8 things you wish you could do
8 things or shows that you watch
8 people to tag.

I’m looking forward to...
1. Games night tonight and seeing the gang who I haven’t been with since John’s birthday party!!
2. Seeing family very soon that weren’t relatives yet the last time I saw them!
3. Starting school on June 1
4. Going to my first AG in July
5. Our wedding reception weekend.
6. Collecting some new states on our “honeymoon” trip
7. Having enough in my PayPal account for a new camera or something else nice for me.
8. Our first anniversary!


Yesterday I...
1. Brought home my new Windows computer
2. Got my parking pass for summer semester at school
3. Got my books for this semester! (geek alert)
4. Blogged about safety for pets
5. Got really wet in the pouring rain.
6. Bought hair color - need a serious ungraying!
7. Had neon Twizzlers for dessert
8. Finished the second unit in my current online course. (right on schedule, 2 a week!)

I wish I could...
1. Add an extra 3 hours to each day just for scrapping so I can actually catch up
2. Magically make my right knee just stop hurting.
3. Make the Wife 1500 project work faster! (doesn’t everyone on any kind of diet?)
4. Fix the economy and the job market for everyone.
5. Understand the Cat language
6. Speak Spanish
7. Have a cleaning Genie!
8. Read in the car without getting motion sickness

I watch...
1. Cincinnati Reds Baseball
2. Detroit Tigers Baseball
3. Braves or Red Sox Baseball
4. Cold Squad on Sleuth
5. Degrassi on The N
6. Kaline and Baggle play together
7. “Sqiurrely,” “Chipmunk” and “Rabbit” on Cat TV with the kids
8. As much live baseball as I can

I choose to tag...

I won’t single anyone out, but I welcome anyone who wants to try it to do so. Leave me a comment so I can go read yours. This one is harder than you think to do!

Saving Without Eloping

Okay, remembering that my true dream wedding when I was a teenager WAS an elopement, I realize that’s not so for everyone. When David and I were talking about a wedding and the expenses of that, one expense many brides don’t think about too much is bridesmaid dresses.

If we’d have had a wedding, I’d have paid for the dresses for the bridesmaids, which would have been Kelly, my nieces and David’s older niece from his brother Ben, plus a flower girl dress for her younger sister. 5 dresses plus a wedding gown add up quick, but I remember shelling out $400 of my own money for a dress I never wore again for the “honor” of being in my brother’s first wedding. That’s just a “me” thing, but I couldn’t ask my attendants to pay their own money for a dress I select. Given that, price for nice dresses was going to be an important issue. Even if you are planning a wedding and asking the bridesmaids to buy their dresses, I would think you don’t want to price them into saying “no!”

BestBridalPrices.com has just a beautiful selection of dresses drastically reduced from their list prices and many of them are even on sale on top of that! You could definitely find exquisite bridesmaid dresses that you can afford a half dozen of or at least that you can ask your girls to buy without breaking their banks. If that big day is in the future, or even if you and your significant other are starting to think about crunching the hypothetical numbers, check out this site. A wedding may not have to be as far away as you think!

Friday Morning Coffee

from Coffee Talk by Beckie Wallace

Another Friday and another week is done! So far I’m doing well at disciplining and time managing in my online classes. I’m taking the free class offered by the State of Ohio for assessing and prepping for distance learning. I just finished up the chapter on time management.

To be true I an so dedicated to the importance of good time management and always have been. This all started in first grade. Imagine, 6 years old and worried about the consequences of not meeting a deadline! Oh, it started as me sneaking out when I was supposed to be getting my coat from the hall hanger and running out to be first on the bus because I was afraid to miss it. I remember one time I realized half way across the snowy parking lot that I forgot something and came back with wet boots. Sister Ann made me wipe up the floor as I whined “But I’ll miss my bus!”

Truth is I had plenty of time to not miss the bus and in retrospect, Sister Ann KNEW I was skipping out to run to the bus before I was excused. I must have appeared to be a young basket case. But in first grade, we still had a boy who was deathly afraid to speak out loud in class and a girl who occasionally wet herself in class, so I guess my psychosis was minor. After I didn’t miss the bus for cleaning the floor, I quit running out before I was excused to catch it too. Have I said before how much I idolized that woman? 36 years later I still list her as one of the first major influences in my life after my parents and she still amazes me with what she added to who I’ve become.

But that was truly a lesson in trust and time management. I had to learn to trust that the people scheduling these things were not setting them up for students to fail and that I had plenty of time to meet my goal, in this case, catching the bus. I became very good at budgeting time to get assignments done. I was throughout all of my schooling rarely the one cramming to finish the project the night before and was successful. That naturally spilled into my professional work habits and that is great for making less negative stress on the job. It’s all good!


Very Cool Opp!

If you’re a scrapper and you haven’t been over to Darlene’s blog this week, make a point of it! Now, I’m very open about being a big time Darlene Haughin fan, often referring to my CT job as a dream CT Spot. Darlene does a blog freebie every Wednesday and this week, the freebie is a contest. She's giving away a full kit of your choice to random winners from the comments. There will be one winner for every five comments, so no matter what, you have a one in five chance of winning a full kit! Head on over to her blog and see the details and by all means check out all of her wonderful designs and put your hat in the comments for a chance to win!

See Darlene’s blog for more details - http://darlenedesigns.blogspot.com




A Little Rhetorical Rant

Maybe I’m showing my age with being a Weather Channel regular, but I’ve done a lot of work outside with electric in my professional and personal life, so the radar has always been essential.

What’s with the music when they go back into the studio? I totally get it for the local forecast, where you’re only seeing graphics and the voice over is not at all conversational, but when they go back into the studio there’s dramatic music that is mixed too loud for the people talking. It’s produced poorly and it deters from the message. You don’t hear music under the news while they are reporting. Music under the dialog is for dramatic effect at prime time. When there is music under the top story, today a tornado in Missouri, it says “fiction.” Add to the fact that the music is too loud so you have a harder time understanding the anchor anyway. Yeesh!


Yummy Morning!

Skinny and The City had a recipe for fruit salad today. They talked about how high in fiber berries are and that they’re in season. I have a container of watermelon I cut up, some raspberries and black berries in the fridge. I’m disappointed with the blackberries. They were on sale and I thought about getting two containers. I’m glad I didn't. They are sour with little blackberry flavor. The melon and raspberries are good though! I had a salad of those three and banana with cherry pomegranate yogurt yesterday for breakfast. YUM! I’m going to try cutting up the blackberries and using the juices in the recipe to sweeten them up a bit. Then I’ll add the nuts and coconut to make the salad after I get some blueberries. It ought to be good!

They Can Be The Worst Nights

I know there are plenty of readers here who love their furbabies as much and David and I love ours. I sat down and had a good cry with Rina when Azzie died and David and I just held each other and let it out when we had to let Chester go.

But David will tel you about my attachment to a certain orange one and he admits that there is a special bond with her too because we rescued her when she was so young. One night, when I was still in Northville and Kaline was still a kitten, maybe 6 months, Scotty was over for our usual Wednesday night dinner and he was helping my move a couple of boxes out into the garage. He left the door open for just a few minutes while he was doing it. When he came back in, we gave Azzie her medicine and put the food out. Azzie was eating and..no Kaline. I called around the house and couldn’t find her, Scotty helped me look. No Kaline. There my face went white. What if she went out when the door was open?

We looked in the garage and area around the house calling her. we walked up and down the street calling her. I was trembling. Scotty took a ride in his truck to the next street over and the sub under construction across the larger street. I called David, in tears, frantic. He said he’d come over.

Remember, that was an hour and a quarter drive at that time!

Scotty came back, with no kitten. It was getting dark. We went back into he kitchen and I told him David was coming out, fighting back more tears. Then, the tiny tap of claws on the linoleum and a little meow followed by a big yawn. The whole time we were looking for her and I was freaking out, Kaline had been asleep somewhere in the house we hadn’t looked!

I hugged her like crazy and called David. He was almost at the state line, which is closer to Toledo than Northville, so he headed back home, relieved that she was okay.


Thankfully, a happy ending. But it’s not always like that. I remember one Christmas party night that John came back after he left and brought Azzie in. She’d gone out with everyone when they were leaving and was sitting in the front yard in the rain, shivering. She was lost and scared. Thankfully she didn’t run looking for home and get more lost. But cats are curious creatures and sometimes they do go out, even house cats.

Home Again is a wonderful answer to the nightmare of thoughts that your furbaby could be the one in three pets who get lost in their lifetime. According the the Home Again Web Site, 90% of pets without proper identification never make it home. With a membership with Home Again, your pet is injected with a microchip, the best way to identify him or her if they ever get lost, better than a tag that can fall off, or be taken off, and much better than describing a spot or stripe in their fur! The member ship also includes the National Home Again Pet Recovery database, lost pet alerts, medical insurance for lost pets and a 24/7 medical emergency hotline.

In support of the American Humane Associations’ “Be Kind to Animals Week,” For each pet registered, Home Again will make a donation through Bring Pets Home, a fundraising Web site specifically created to help shelter animals, so protecting one furbaby is also sheltering more while they wait to be found or to find a home.

I know what it feels like to hold a wet, scared and shivering cat who was lost out in the rain and I’ve felt the knots in my stomach thinking a kitten has gotten out and run off out of the neighborhood. The microchip is the best way to be sure your cat or dog is identified right away and if they do get lost, there will be humans to help them find their way home.

Oh, This Is For You Too, Nani

This was one of those all for me days. Don’t get those too often!

First off, the new computer came home. I like it fine as I’m settling in. It’s nice to be able to sit at the dining room table and watch the Reds game while I’m working on it. I missed a few plays and even a delayed reaction to the last out as I was trying to figure some things out.


First off, Vista is a lot like the Mac OS in many ways. I didn’t get what the fuss about it was from the things I’ve done or fixed on David’s, but then again, I was really only familiar with it in a maintenance way. Now, getting a closer look, I think a lot of the complaints are from people having to learn something so new. Like I said Vista is more like a Mac than the old Windows. But that isn’t such a huge difference really, Windows has been morphing into the more user-friendly Mac style since Windows 1995. That’s my opinion, I really saw Windows move more towards a Mac style then. I think the number one problem with Vista is that it really does need 2 gigs of RAM to run efficiently and it was shipped with computers that only had 1, so they were shipping too big a system for the computers it was on. In my laptop research, it appears that is a problem that’s passed. I didn’t see much that had less than 2 GB of RAM.

My only big complaint thus far is that it loads programs like windows. What a pain. I’ve grown used to the two click and a password and the computer does the rest. There are a lot more steps and everything you put on a Windows machine has to have software. Nothing is automatically compatible. I am having fun with getting into all the system folders. I’ve never had access to a Windows machine that I could really play on. There was always the knowledge that it was a friend’s computer or someone from IT breathing down my neck. Now, I’ll be that Geek soon.

Which is the next coolness of the day! Just before I left to pick up the computer, I checked the mail and my parking pass for this semester at school is here! They really are going to let me on campus twice a week...at 8 AM. The building my class is in is also the building with the grille, I hope they serve morning coffee. A college HAS to have coffee, right??

It was raining all day. Now, my knee hurts worse when it rains. That’s just a sad fact, I have an obnoxiously barometric knee, I got wet yesterday when I bought the computer and wetter today when I picked it up! Try carrying a computer box, a purse and an umbrella when one hand is occupied with the stick that keeps you upright and still have a hand free to open the car door...ain’t happenin!! But, I wanted to get the new computer home and start to get friendly with my Windows system. I think the kids kinda like the new computer too. They stayed downstairs with me and played like kittens, until...

There was a knock at the front door, followed by the mad scramble for the stairs. It was Fed Ex! I’d gotten an email in my school account that they’d be here today. My books for my June class are here!!


To prove that I really am geek enough to be getting this certificate, I immediately opened up to the first chapter and started reading. Now I’m really excited for school to start. Yeah, I was one of those kids until about high school too. High school was sometimes a bit boring for me, but the excitement came back when I started college. Now, I’ve been out of school for 12 years and I miss that something new to look forward to. This is an area that I know just barely enough to be dangerous about. Now, I’m going to learn just how dangerous I am! LOL I think I may curl up with a good text for a little before bed tonight.

Now, I have a few cleaning projects to do tomorrow and I want to move the rest of my job hunt bookmarks into the new computer. I also want to try to spend some time with PSE. When I’m scrapping on the road, . is what I have on trial in the new computer. The first roadblock I came into trying it out was I can’t figure out how to ut shadows on layers! I can’t afford PhotoShop for the laptop, so I need to go with something cheaper, but PSE may just not have enough. I have 30 days to find out!

It’s All In The Perspective

I enjoy art in many forms, but sculptures and scale models are a particular passion. I’ve raved in this blog about the larger than life sculptures that I so love, the everyday things built to scale but so but they’d never be used except as a monument to everyday life as a celebration. I also love the scaled to very small. That’s everyday life as a treasure, a keepsake. My mooshy sentimental views aside,one site I really love to visit an browse is Zoolabees, makers of wonderful dollhouse miniatures, specializing in 1:12 and 1:24 scale.

I was looking at their bathroom miniatures. Maybe that’s because this morning I was looking at all the gray showing in my hair ad I’ll be stopping at Rite Aid for a new box of color, so I’ll be spending some time in that room today. Oh my goodness, Zoolabees has so many teeny tiny products to fill your mini medicine cabinet!

My little fantasy bathroom would definitely have the toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste set. It has a little cup to hold the toothbrush too. Hey, they even have a dentures set! I’m not ready to put that in mini-Nani world yet, but they have itty bitty rolls of toilet paper too! How cool!

I could set the mini brush and curling iron next to the scale box of tiny tissues on my white bathroom cabinet. That bathroom cabinet is too sweet. I wish we had room in our bathroom for the full-size version!

They have a plush white rug and robe and slippers. It almost makes me feel spa-relaxed just looking. Well, okay, mini-Nani feels very relaxed!

Dollhouses are kinda like a gazing globe. I bet that’s why so many adults love them and actively participate in the hobby. It lets you create a very personal fantasy setting to peer into an taker a little vacation. Yes, world in miniature is a mini-vacation too, but sometimes, that’s all you need. Meditation is great, but when you don’t have time to get all the wy to nirvana, your own little victorian spa is a nice place to rn to!

Art, sculpture, is all about stretching your mind and giving your emotional self a break from the mundane and reality. Whether I’m being humbled by the very large or seduced by the very small, I love scale sculpture. I’m wooed and captivated by the call of the world in a different perspective than my own. If you're thinking about creating your own little gazing place, your Zen House, Zooabees is a good place to get inspired!

Did I Switch Teams??

I did it today, while David was at work. Oh, I did call him just before I did, to get any advice he had. He told me that I’d actually know better than he would and told me if I thought it was right, I should go for it.

So I did it... I own a windows laptop!


First, let me say that anyone who was thinking other than computers, SHAME ON YOU! This is a family friendly blog. Some of the jokes (okay, like the beginning of this entry) are adultish, but I have space in the basement for dirty laundry. No need to air it in cyber space!

I‘m studying with the goal of a network administration certificate and ultimately a Windows certification too. I will be a Windows-geek so I can afford to keep my Macs! As part of that, some of my classes will be online classes and I need Windows for that. I need to be able to work and learn kinesthetically too! So, this afternoon after some careful research and over an hour at Best Buy with Phil, my sales associate and a fellow Mac user who works on and knows Windows equally well, I got a laptop that meets all of my school needs, has virus protection that makes my Mac-brain a little less nervous about using it and has the required attributes to run PhotoShop Elements, so I can scrapbook in the family room while David’s playing games and we can “spend quality time” together.

I was really hoping they’d have all the antivirus and security setup done tonight, but I called and they’ll be finishing up overnight, so I’ll pick it up tomorrow. As of right now, The Reds are down 10-0 in the fifth inning, so I don’t mind that I’m upstairs and away form the TV or that Boston in Cleveland means David gets the priority game. We usually watch the Reds, except when there is a Red Sox game we can see on TV in Toledo. That’s only fair.

David sent me an Lolcat this afternoon with the message “This is perfect...”

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We’ve decided that the Lolcats are like potato chips. You can’t just look at one if you go to the site. Ten pages later you’ll remember you were “just stopping by” to look at one.

This is the one I just loved today:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Now, he’s suggested that some of our kids’ pictures would be fun captioned on that site. I dunno. Other people captioning Kaline and Baggle? How? I mean, don't you need to know the purrson you’re captioning??? ;)


Oh yeah, in the scrapping world, I have a new kit out!


There is coordinating word art for the kit too.



Actually, Talkin Baseball ended up released sooner than I thought, so it did make it into the store in time for the NSD sale! But you can still get a deal on it! If you want both of them, you can get the combo pack!


The combo pack is both Talking Baseball and the Talking Baseball word art, priced at 20 % off the price of each separately!

I’m kinda itching to use this kit myself. It was fun to make! This isn’t posted at any of the scrapbook sites yet, it will be by the end of the week, but if anyone is interested in doing a one-kit CT gig, I’m offering three spots for Talkin Baseball. I’ll ask for two layouts with the kit, posted to Scrap Bird and three galleries of your choice. For your layouts you get the kit for free, your blog listed in the CT section for a month and the current bonus, Laura Add-on, when you send me your links. If you’re interested, drop me an email at chroniclesofnani@gmail.com and let me know that you’d like to do a guest CT gig for Talking Baseball and where your most complete gallery is. If you have baseball pics, whether it’s a game you saw with the family, little league or just the kids in the yard, Talkin Baseball is the perfect kit to scrap them!

I hope you’ll think about this one-kit call!

Photoblog Wednesday

Hideous hats? No way! FASHIONABLE!

Oh the irony!

Sash and me at the hideous hat contest last weekend at SEMMantics. There is something defining about brains that can actually come up with matching hideous hats! (No pre-planning possible - we just met each other last weekend!!)

Sash won, but not at all because it's a hideous hat! He made a face for the judges that tipped the scales!

Monday Mug Shot

Seattle, Washington

I guess the first thing I must confess is this mug was bought at the airport souvenir shop. I was in Seattle for about an hour, maybe two. It was long enough to grab dinner and get on the next flight. So this is a twofold mug shot. One is the let’s talk about planes part and the other is about that coffee Seattle is famous for.

When we went to Montana in October 2007, we flew in and out of Spokane. Spokane was my personal nemesis, much like Bugs Bunny’s Albuquerque, my luggage was always going to Spokane when I wasn’t. The first time I ever flew was in 1979. It was a family trip back to the Fatherland, San Marino. After a month in Italy, one of the suitcases didn’t make it back! It happened to be the one with the carefully wrapped hand blown crystal horses that Dave and I were given by the glass blower we watched in Venice. One of the horses came back from its side trip to Kansas City and Chicago missing a leg! After getting a piece of luggage lost on my first trip in a plane, I had a somewhat cynical view of airline luggage routing and always expected my luggage to go to Spokane. It’s also why my makeup and a clean pair of underwear always traveled in my carry-on when I flew!

Coming home on that Montana trip, we flew a prop from Spokane to Seattle. That was my first prop! It was SO COOL! The Alaska Air attendants were awesome and the plane was truly one of the most comfortable I’ve ever been in flying coach! Free beer too!

It wasn’t so great the rest of the way back to Detroit though! We were crammed into a Northworst 757 with a shoehorn. I was tempted to give the person in front of me a shoulder rub since once he reclined the seat back he was laying in my lap anyway. Im quite sure if one of those planes goes down, lives will be lost simply because people won’t be able to move to escape.

I wish we could have flown all the way to Detroit in the prop!

The other story is one of irony.

When we walked past the Starbucks in the airport, I made a comment that after dinner, I wanted to get a coffee to take on the plane. Even if I wasn’t actually going to see any of Seattle, I still wanted to have a Starbucks coffee in Seattle! This was after all, the same trip where I had potatoes in Idaho and huckleberries in Montana.

Now I’d wrestled with Starbucks before on the availability of the logo but not the coffee at their establishments. Once when the Airport Starbucks in Detroit wasn’t open at 5 AM for morning coffee and once when in all of Las Vegas I’d only ever seen one place that was closed, that was Starbucks...at TEN O’CLOCK! In VEGAS!

So now, I was in the city where it all started. The coffee Mecca of America. We finished dinner and I was ready for my Seattle-made latte! We walked back to the Starbucks on the way to our gate. The lights were dim and the chain curtain covered the opening of the store. IN SEATTLE! Starbucks was closed and my flight hadn’t left yet! What were they thinking?? Starbucks closed in Seattle? At the airport, where you’d expect the hometown famous coffee giant to be welcoming out-of-towners, they were open before dinner to call out to me and closed after dinner, giving me a big raspberry...and it was NOT raspberry mocha!

So now, I have to go back to Seattle. Maybe I’ll see a Mariners game, but for sure, I’ll get my latte! Starbucks owes me at least that!

Celebrate Outside The Box

I’ve been doing a lot of looking at promotional items stuff getting ready for our reception. You all know what a marketing fan I m, so of course, my brain drifts that way for the wedding things too. In fact, there are a lot of things that can help anyone avoid what’s known in many circles as “The Wedding Industrial Complex,” by not requiring flowers and veils all over the website or storefront.

I recall the business showcase I did for my video business back in Michigan. I had balloons and pens and many of the businesses had reps in company Logo T Shirts. It was a more casual showcase and the T shirts were perfect for it and they were nice company logo items for the employees too!

It would be so cool and fun to Customize T Shirts for a wedding. I’m not saying T shirts to the wedding, but for the bachelor and bachelorette parties? Many weddings have a logo, something for the favors and programs with a picture or monogram, even if you choose to do a ball game or picnic with the friends of both the bride and groom before or for wedding day brunch with the family, a lot of places do Custom Printed T Shirts in groups as small as 24 in the price range of $5-7 each

You can usually find other things in the marketing items that are quite useful for weddings at a business discount rather than the wedding surcharge too. Depending on the size of your wedding, because the minimum orders are sometimes large, you can get printed candies, keep this date magnets, smaller quantities of personalized items that make great gifts for the wedding party and of course, I’ll mention wedding coffee mugs!

For even a small business, you can invest in some good promotional items for a modest cost and if you are planning a wedding, you can definitely add a personal touch without blowing your budget using the same tools! Maybe, a casual reception or pre-wedding gathering can be made perfect if everyone on “your team” has a wedding logo T-shirt!

Happy National Scrapbooking Day!!

This is a big deal to me because it’s my first year as a Designer on NSD!

I hope you’re having fun shopping the sales at the many digital shops, especially the sale and freebies at Scrap Bird!!

Just in case you were thinking about NOT getting Java Blues, let me whet your whistle for it a little with a little sample in honor of the scrapbooking holiday!


It’s actual size, about an 8” wide cup. Mmmm... COFFEE! LOL

Click the preview to go to 4-Shared to download for the rest of the weekend using the password coffees-got-me. After this weekend, the sampler will move tot he store, still as a freebie.

Enjoy the rest of the scrap-happy day!!

Great Weekend Coming!

The week is over, YAY!!!

No, it really hasn’t been a bad week. There is just a lot going on as May gets rolling.

The biggest thing this weekend for me, is that tomorrow, May 2 will be our fourth Dativersary! Yes, we still acknowledge that. A big part of the reason we do, is it also means SEMMantics weekend, which is where we met in person after a couple weeks worth of emails. As much as I thought, “If he’s a gentleman, we’ll still go to the ball game, but he won’t call again,” I came to find out that the feeling of “spark” was real and mutual! Our first date was May 2, the day after SEMMantics in 2005 and well, David’s my husband now!

It was also our first thought for a wedding day had we gone that route. Honestly, I’m glad we didn’t. We‘d have had to miss SEMMantics!

So, this weekend is SEMMantics and we’ll get to see Mensa friends we haven’t seen in a year. As it worked out, SEMMantics was the only Mensa gathering we attended last year! This year, we already know we’ll be going to the AG, so we’ll have a long week later with our pals too!


Tomorrow is also National Scrapbooking Day. Scrap Bird is having a blowout sale, as I mentioned in the “Sale Paper” yesterday. Make sure you check out the NSD section at the store for 10 designer’s freebies! The freebies, including the collab Flowers Blooming part 2, are only guaranteed free for the weekend, May 1-3, so make sure you get over to check them out.

The song that’s playing first for the weekend is an old live tune from Nazareth, called Java Blues. David often tells me the coffee’s got me! It’s also the name of the NSD freebie kit from Digitalegacies Designs!


If you like your coffee or anyway the social implication of coffee with friends, this is a great kit for scrapping those friendly occasions!

If you don’t have coffee or “at coffee’ pics to scrap, there are other things you can scrap with this kit too!

Credits: Lay0ut by Jana with Java Blues by Digitalegacies Designs

My CT member, Jana, did this precious layout called “Bubbles,” using the coffee ring circle in the paper to make frames for pictures of her little one!


The first of May is also a new I Wanna Talk About Me challenge!

This month, we’re focusing on the ME and I want to see layouts with a picture of you and some journaling about you.

Here is the layout I did for the challenge:

Credits: Flower Blooming part 2 Collab by Scrap Bird Designers.

That’s all from Flowers Blooming part 2, so you can grab that for free this weekend too!

Be brave and join us in making the layout ALL about you this month, and you’ll get Butterfly Kisses by Digitalegacies Designs as your posting bonus


What an exciting weekend this is going to be! A Mensa gathering, and all the chocolate that goes with that, a little bit of Dativersary romance with my hubby and all kinds of fun, new stuff at Scrap Bird and all over the Scrapbooking world!

Heck, I’ll sleep on Monday!