Pypers Snowball

You know how sometimes you get just the perfect shot?  Well that's how I felt when I snapped this photo of Pyper last February.  It was just perfect.  I've used the new Winter Woodland kit at Cottage Arts to show it off in this digital layout.

Snow Happy

When I was home last February I stayed with Angi and the family.  We woke up to a winter wonderland in their backyard and I got to have snow days with the girls.  I just loved these pictures of Zoie intent in making a snowman in the back yard.  I hope that teen age years, which are just around the New Year, won't diminish the zeal to just have simple fun in the snowflakes in the future.

I used a Homespun Christmas and a frame cluster from Budding Romance, both digital kits available at Cottage Arts.

Derik - Senior Memories

My eldest Grandchild getting ready to step from High School to the Marine Corp. The background photo is one of RALong HS that I took and altered by using the built in PS Filter colored pencil at default settings - Black and White filter set to Infrared and opacity at 12 - layer set to Color Burn

All supplies are from Cottage Arts

Miracle Mountain

Supplies from Cottage Arts.
Page reads:
Mt St Helens a miracle we witnessed firsthand
as the earth shook and the mountain changed form before our very eyes.
We watched as the ash plumes rose and and drifted above us,
making we mere humans don masks and watch from inside our homes
as ash turned the noon sky to the darkness of night.
It was a time of Mother Nature’s power.
Awe inspiring moments of destruction,
death and fear,
and yet so very very amazing.

It was a time for the realization
that we are but mere mortals
on this Earth
and greater powers than we
control the elements.

The top two photos were
taken by my brother as
he flew above the Mt
just before the major
eruptions took place.
The bottom photo was
taken by family
visiting from
California in the
mid 1950’s.

A beautiful
majestic peak
before and
during her
transformation.

On The Water

Finally a new page of my son in law and oldest Granddaughter Zoie

All supplies from Cottage Arts

Beach Doggy

OK this one was done for the Font Free 4 All Challenge this month at Digitals. You're given a choice of fonts to play with in your page. I chose Homework. The kit choice was the kicker though, Jen Maceyunas has these wonderful dog and cat kits and word art. Just perfect for my Grandpug, Mushu. The kit was No Bones About It and the word art (Wolf Wolf) was from Dog Quotables 3 .

Carol's Garden

My sister recently bought a new camera with a zoom on it and is sending me the most wonderful pictures of the birds and animals that visit her front and side yards (she lives in Washington State). I just had to use them with this new kit of Joyce de Jonge's called With All My Heart. Don't you just love the heart frame? So perfect for this type of photo.

My poem reads:
In my sister's garden lies a wondrous delight.
Little birds and animals come right within our sight.
Dancing on their little feet, scurrying all about,
Munching from the feeders day in and day out.
It's fun to watch them as they come, and take a picture or two
I want to reach out and tell them, I glad you came, thank you.

Daffodils

Here's my second page for Spring using Cottage Arts supplies. These Daffodils were blooming in Amber's front yard and she was sweet enough to take some shots yesterday and send them to me last night. There is nothing like a Daffodil to make you feel like Spring is just around the corner.

Acoya and Colton

Don't you just love these photos Cyndi took of the kids? I can't believe this is their backyard. Wow amazing how much snow everyone in the Pacific NW has gotten this winter. I'm sure the kids have all loved it but it's a little harder on the adults who have to shovel driveways and trek their way across town in snow and ice! Glad I decided to go home early this year!

Cyndi had emailed these two pictures of the kids and when I saw Terri Walsh's kit Let It Snow at Digitals I knew it'd be perfect for them. So easy to create, I blended the photos with the backgrounds, added the word art and voila here's a page. Of course since both photos were shot in the snow the white blended so easily. Just love how they turned out. Of course having such cuties for subjects sure didn't hurt either. Wonder how all these kids of ours ended up creating such beautiful children????

When I was home in November my sister was taking me to visit Mom. We were just leaving her driveway when we spotted dear up the road. So Carol took off to see if I could get some photos, which I did. The bonus was that I also got this magnificent photo of the Hawk here. I was so happy when I got the photos from the Camera to the pc, thank goodness for my Zoom lens! I'd never have another camera without one.

Journaling Reads

I saw him glide through the air and land on the branches in the trees in front of us.
As I struggled to get my camera into position I was sure he’d take off.
But no, he waited and watched eyes alert and taking me and the rest of the scene in.
He sat majestically upon those branches surveying the land around him.
Beautiful fierce beak and eyes, such a magical creature coming forward from generations before.
He posed, in all his glory, and allowed me to take these photos.
To you I bow oh powerful Hawk, you are a predator in your world, but such a munificent creature you are in mine.

I used two of Joyce deJong's new kits at Digitals - Magic World and Magic World Vol 2 . I always think of this stately bird as coming from the medieval time. Joyce's kits were so perfect they had just the right coloring to give my photo that kind of feel. I blended a couple together to get the right shading for the background and was happy with the outcome.

Squirrel City

These are the squirrels that live in my sisters front yard.
What a photo shoot they let me take!

In my sister’s
yard lives the most
wonderful family of
squirrels who were not
shy about strutting
their stuff for my
camera.

I used Silvia Romeo's Sunflower's Garden for this page. Silvia sells at many stores including Digitals, please check her designs out!

Lake Sacajawea

Here's the lake in my hometown, isn't this just gorgeous? I was so fortunate to plan my visit for this week when the skies were clear and the leaves so vibrant! By the end of the first week here the skies have darkened and the air is really beginning to get that fall bite to it. The leaves have fallen so much since I took the first pictures but each day reveals a new beauty. I'm so happy to see all the work the Parks department has done, installing new pathways and iron railings. Everything just looks so beautiful. Of course now I see it with eyes that have been away instead of ones who took it for granted.

Mom and Dad

More photos found and scanned this weekend. I love this photo of Mom and Dad together.
Journaling Reads:
Mom and Dad, had five children, one who passed early in life. They worked hard, in the early years raising pigs, chickens and cows. They had huge gardens to provide food for the year, milk and cream from the cows and chickens well I can still remember the block for the chickens demise in the back yard, icky! Hard working people who cared for their family with all they had and cared for each other with a special kind of love that lasted over 50 years.

Again everything here created with Beth Rimmer's It's Raining Men! Collection at Digitals.
Check it out here.

Out Home

This is a photo of our family home on Bunker Hill. The only home I knew growing up. It's just a single photo and a thousand memories. I called Momma last night and read her the journaling and took her back with my memories to a simpler time, well simpler for me but I'm sure a much more physical, demanding time in her life.

This was created with a new kit from Maddy Fernandez called Nuts About You at Digitals. It's a great fall kit, if you haven't used Maddy's things there is no time like the present to check them out and see what you've been missing.

Jouranling Reads:
What is this you ask, a photo of a house? No it’s a photo filled with so many memories I don’t know where to begin. This is our home, the only one I ever knew, on Bunker Hill in the Southwestern part of Washington State.

When Mom and Dad moved here it was a small 3 room house with no running water, no indoor plumbing except in the kitchen and a trek from Longview, the closest town. With determination, inner strength and a love for one another they built it into the home you see before you. And it was a home, not a house, but a home, filled with laughter, huge family dinners and always people. Friends came on vacation from California that knew the folks when they lived there, neighbors from the hill or town, family from near or far. Everyone came to see the folks, visit, laugh and enjoy the newest baked goods coming from Mom’s oven. California visitors relished in the spring water that flowed year round to our home and for many years my Uncles as well on up the road. Nothing will ever compare to that wonderfully clear, very cold water we always took for granted.

When you look at the picture you see these beautiful Maple trees. Dad had a spike in the one by the driveway for years trying to glean the sap like the NE trees. The big oil truck would come to feed the oil drum for the oil furnace in the living room, It had a little door that swung open to light it, and it’s warmth drew our little turtles we had one year, but that wasn’t a good thing for them.

To the right of the picture, not in the view but in my mind were the holly trees. We had several different kinds of holly. Mom would pick them along with fir boughs and send them to our relatives down south so they could have a little piece of us with them through the Christmas Holiday.

It never seemed a big place, just lots of wide open space, clean fresh air and trees everywhere you looked. So much of nature surrounded this home, walnut trees, blackberries, huckleberries along the culverts up the road, apples crisp and sweet their flesh as white as could be except for the pink blush in the middle. Necterberries that grew under the clothesline that stretched down the back yard, bing cherries that turned your lips deep purple and your hands to match, how wonderful to sit in the fork of the cherry tree and just eat to your hearts content.

This picture is way back before Daddy planted the laurel hedge that edged the driveway and across the front. But it’s so wonderful to gaze at the porch and see yourself there a hundreds times, coming and going. It’s always a joy to go ‘Out Home’ even though now I must do it in my heart and in my soul.

Mayfield Lake, Washington State

SIMPLE PLEASURES

IT'S JUST A ROCK MOM!

Both these pages are made using Beth Rimmer's Everything Amy Papers and Everything Amy - which sells at Digitals.

I love this kit! It just worked so well for both pages with such a different look to both. The boys had gone with the family to Dad's work picnic weekend. Dad was hoping to win a big B-B-Q but had to settle for all these great pics of my Grandsons!

The page of Eddie I did for a Font Free 4 All Challenge for August at Digitals.
You had your choice of three fonts give and you could use one or more in your page. I chose Kids First Print in this, perfect for Eddie.

I love these pictures of my sister and brothers. I was so glad I went hunting for another photo to round out the page and discovered the one that had Carol in it I'm sure taken at the same time. As I wrote in my journaling, I remember building snow forts and having snow ball fights. But the thing that sticks in my mind the most are the icicles that hung from the porch roof down. They were sometimes so huge at the tops and then hung all the way to the top of the steps, many of them. You don't see cold days like that anymore, or very rarely.

I just created this page of Chris and Ed and us taken over the 4th of July. It was so much fun. Each day you got a free piece of this kit from Cheryl McCain at The Scrapping Garden and you were suppose to create part of the layout each week using different elements given and adding on as the weeks progressed. This is my final, unless there's and element or two that she adds in the next few days that I just can't live without.