Monday Mug Shot

Galveston Island, Texas

It’s a topical mug today. It’s heartbreaking to see the photos of Galveston Island after Ike blew through. Yes, homes in more opulent beach front areas were destroyed. Homes, beautiful homes, owned by people that chose to build there for the beauty and pleasure of the location. I’m not going to imply that they are “faultless victims.” When you can afford to build where you want and you know the risk of living where you do, you’ve carefully weighed out the pros and cons. You’ve decided to take that risk because you worked hard to earn the ability to live in your version of paradise. And now, many of those people have no home to go to. Their mayor has told them “don’t come home,” even if their home is still standing. Even knowing the risk, it’s still a devastating blow!

I can’t imagine being homeless, I have someone who loves me enough to be sure I have shelter, as I’m sure many of the refugees from Ike do, but I do know what it feels like to know that if it wasn’t for that love from someone else, you’d have nothing. Just losing physical property is not exactly having “nothing.” Insurance will help to rebuild and replace, but there is that interim time of helplessness that’s incredibly stressful. That feeling I know well!


Mom and I were in Galveston in September 1999. We’d taken a long weekend and met friends in Houston to see the Cubs and Astros last series at the Astrodome. Our friends, a family we’d met through a baseball chat room on AOL, were Astros fans and Mom and I were there to cheer on her Cubbies. It was a fun rival weekend. We stayed at the same hotel the Cubs did. That wasn’t planned that way, it just happened to be that way! We went on one elevator ride with Jeff Blauser and got a glimpse of Sammy Sosa and entourage headed out to the team bus before the Sunday game. Baseball travel always brings about some fun memories and brushes with the stars.

On Monday, we headed out to Galveston. I’d never been to the Gulf of Mexico before and wanted to put my feet in the water before an anticipated lunch of fresh, I mean FRESH, gulf shrimp. I love palm trees and I just marveled at the beautiful homes and shops and all the palm trees. Then there was the water, all glistening and an oil rig in the distance. I’d never seen an off shore oil rig before either! We picked a nice beach spot and parked.

As soon as I hit the sand, as is my custom, off came the shoes! The sand was warm, pleasantly warm and odd for a then Michigan girl in September. Then I waded in, up to my knees. I just turned around looking at Mom, smiling.

“It’s BATH WATER! It’s just like walking in BATH water!”

The water was so warm! After being in the water of the Great Lakes all my life, and even when I’d been to the Atlantic Ocean, it was in the cooler off-season, the Gulf of Mexico was just a shock, a very pleasing hock, but still a shock. In the hottest part of summer, Lake Superior will still turn your feet blue if you stay in too long! The Gulf was like a hot tub!

When we’d driven onto the main road by the water in the morning, I saw the restaurant I wanted to have lunch at. There was a huge shrimp in front of it! I had to have pictures of the shrimp anyway, so why not stop for lunch, right? We had lunch at Casey’s restaurant at Gaido’s Inn. I had grilled shrimp that had been swimming that morning! It was SOOOO good!


But now, as I tuck those wonderful memories back into their mug, I wonder, I worry, about that great restaurant and the giant shrimp with which I was so enamored. You see the address for Casey’s and Gaidos is on Seawall Boulevard. I really don’t even want to know.

Photo from the web - Helen Anders AMERICAN-STATESMAN

More Scrapbooking Meets Cross Stitching!

Get the quick page as part of “I Cross My Heart”

available for download at Stone Accents Studio!

I hope all the scrappers who visit he Chronicles of Nani are enjoying the abundant freebies at Stone Accents Studio and the increased freebies from Digitalegacies when you visit here this month! There are so many talented amateur designers in this contest that even if I don’t advance, I’m going to try to stay somewhat involved in the contest, maybe in support of one of the other designers who do advance as a guest CT or something. Then again, I may advance to round three for next week myself, so I’m not committing to anything yet! We’ll see what happens. I’ve already learned quite a lot in this endeavor, which is worth the price of admission. That price of admission is, of course, the free kits which are not downloadable from The Chronicles. We pay with advertising for SAS, by bringing our readers to their site.

It’s a brief entry today! I wanted to show and offer! Show you this:



And offer it for free here:

Sorry, this link is expired.


This add on is all the extra elements I did last weekend and the numbers 0-9 to go with “I Cross My Heart” which I hope you’ve already downloaded, but if not, get it here:

Sorry, this link is expired.

Voting starts tonight at 6 PM Central Time. I hope you’ll consider checking off the box next to “I Cross My Heart” by Nani when you vote!

Now back to my daily Monday grind. Scrapbookers and non-Scrappers alike, look for the Monday Mug Shot this evening! Thanks for looking!

The Scrapping Hermit Comes Up For Air

No, I didn’t work on the new kit steady for 2-1/2 days. I don’t scrap during the weekdays 9-5 and well, I left that telegram yesterday! We played drowned water rats in the Motherland for much of the day!

We met Dad and Aunt Judy at the produce market in the Motherland just before 10 AM. It’s a huge market! I ended up bringing home a watermelon, a cabbage,some zucchini, tomatoes, grapefruits and a pomegranate. David says the pomegranate is ugly. I think that has more to do wit having never had a pomegranate before, t just looks strange to him. We bought a bag of Tootsie Pops before we went on our Labor Day trip. Tootsie brand has been introducing some new flavors into the Tootsie Pops. The new flavors are in specially marked bags of the pops, one new flavor to a bag. I’ve tried the watermelon, cotton candy and green apple, but tis bag had a new, new flavor, pomegranate!

Pomegranate is a fruit that has a higher appeal! It’s featured in Christian, Muslim, Greek and Roman art as a fruit to serve to God or the gods. I loved to eat pomegranates as a kid. (delusion of grandeur that long ago, huh?) Both of my parents were avid fans of fresh fruits and veggies and trying new things, but my Dad was especially a fan of trying things he’d never had before He’s in his 60s now and I’d be surprised if there’s a fruit he hasn't tried! Well, the pomegranate tootsie pop had enough of the actual pomegranate flavor to give me a taste for the real thing. Yanno, pomegranates are just not your usual Kroger fare! So, one came home form the market with us!

I also got some risotto rice, that might end up being part of dinner tonight. The afternoon will be a baking afternoon. David’s been craving cake to go with ice cream for dessert. I’m making a yellow cake with fudge frosting to go with the David’s mint chip and my pumpkin ice cream in the freezer. Pumpkin ice cream, mmmmmm..... I LOVE this time of year!


Whew! This week’s designer challenge was really a challenge for me! But pulling me out of my comfort zone is the purpose for this contest, right? We were given a color palatte to use to make a kit. My biggest problem and the source of my initial block was that I’m in full fall mode as far as designing and decorating goes. This swatch is definitely NOT autumn! I stressed over this one for a while, then inspiration hit me!

“I Cross My Heart”, shares its name with a song by George Strait, but George was singing about love, this kit is the love of the craft. My heart is cross stitched! I’ve been doing counted cross stitch since my high school days. I found a starter kit for it in the bargain bin and thought it would be interesting. I was hooked! Now I have all kinds of decor and kitchen stuff that’s cross stitched, including a train ornament that’s on a shelf in the living room. The great thing abut this kit is that even if you don’t cross stitch,it as that warm country feeling for scrapping other things too!


We had structure that we had to follow too. Our kits have to have 10-20 papers 15-20 elements, the alpha counts as one and two of the elements have to be layered elements. I have a layered frame and an embellished journal frame. We also had include one quick page.

Of course, for the competition, you’ll need to go to Stone Accents Studio to download the kit for free! You don’t have to be a member of Stone Accents Studio to download,but you do need to be a member to vote,, and I do hope you’ll consider voting for “I Cross My Heart!”

Download “I Cross My Heart” at Stone Accents Studio

I’ll have an add-on embellishment pack up this evening some time for you that you can download here. I’m also planning on doing some brag book pages for Monday night to remind everyone to vote!!

Stay Tuned!

Telegram from the Motherland

Letters From Home Quick Page

See what you can do with Letters From Home???

Dropping to say “hi!”

Did you like the Photoblog today? See IQ is just a number that doesn’t mean a whole lot in the greater scheme of some things. Take for instance toaster ovens. When a toaster oven is getting up there in years, just because something has always worked doesn’t mean it always will.

For as long as I’ve lived in this house, with this toaster oven, the “toast” setting has sufficiently toasted a corn tortilla. I mean, better than just sufficient, corn tortillas, that I get at the local dollar emporium in a pack of 36, toast up to perfection by putting two in side by side and pulling the lever down. When it pops, the tortillas are ready for a slice of cheese or a little jam for a great sack.

Ah, but Monday was not like that! Monday was torchtilla day! I turned around from finishing my coffee to see smoke rising up from the opening of the toaster oven! I pulled open the door, and flames spewed out!

So, what does this modern woman with a high paper IQ do? I yelled, “David! Help!” Then I started blowing on the flames like it was a birthday cake!

In my own defense, that did help. The tortillas ignited, not the toaster over, so once, the tortillas were out, so was the fire. But oh, the kitchen smelled like burnt torchtillas all day! Yuck!

Oh, while all this was going on, my macho and equally high IQ man was wresting with the kitchen fire extinguisher. We’re still not completely sure how it works. Looks like we both need to spend some time doing home fire safety studying!

The layout at the top was done with “Letters From Home.” That’s my Papa when he was in the Navy. The wife and baby are Grandma and my Mom. I’m really pleased with how the layouts I’ve done with that kit have turned out! I’ll be posting a sample layout with “Indian Summer” soon too. Between my 9-5 working on working, evenings with the Design challenge, my CT layouts and my heritage project and trying to find new ways to burn down the house, I’m pretty occupied!

In celebration of NOT burning the house down with a toaster oven and the possibility that I still might pull through to the second round of the contest, I decided to make that layout a quick page! I also made one with the Mommy and Wife stamps and bundled the two into one freebie!


Here’s the catch with this freebie - In thanks for hosting the design contest and giving the opportunity to all of us who entered it to try our hand at a possibility of a professional design placement, I’ve decided that I‘ll make this freebie a Stone Accents Studio exclusive for the duration of the contest. So, you can snag the freebie from the layout page at SAS!

If you are a member and haven't voted yet, won’t you please consider me as one of your votes? If you’re not a member, you can still download the freebie from the link in the gallery, but check out some of the other stuff they have in the shop and the challenges there! If you're downloading the quick page, you must scrap at least a little! Joining to try it out is free and if you do join, you get to vote! You don’t have to vote for me, but I’d really love it you did!

Download “Letters From Home Quick Pages” at Stone Accents Studio

If you have't voted yet, consider checking the box for "Letters From Home" by Nani!

Voting ends tomorrow at 6PM central time. I admit I’m kinda nervous about this last day. I’m not sure if I should be ready to delve into another design marathon Sunday or just a quiet day of scrapping or baking. I’ll know in less than 24 hours now!

Okay, back to scrapping for me!