Bagby

We took a road trip one Sunday up the backroads from Fresno on Hwy 49. Stopping at this wayside was a treat, the air was fresh and smelled clean like my Pacific NW.

I snapped a shot of this gorgeous tree overhanging water, this feeds into Lake McClur which is what the smaller photo is. I loved the way the rock had been piled around the Bagby monument and was so tickled when I got home to discover you could read the whole plaque. A great 'get out of the house' day.

I hope there are hundreds more of these that lie ahead of us, just waiting to be discovered.

















I used the Destinations Pak - and the frame for my photo from the Destinations Album - both from Cottage Arts by - Doris Castle. I love these paks, they have so much neat stuff in them it was just a cinch to put the page together. Oh gotta use them again!

Road to Nowhere!

We were traveling from Washington to Southern Utah in the summer of 2004. North of Salt Lake City we stopped at a cool rest stop that had this wonderful Visitor Center. The volunteer there told us we "Must" see Antelope Island State Park. We were told about all the antelope, bison and other animals that inhabited the Island. We were sold it was a 'must see'. Antelope Island is the largest of the Great Salt Lake's 10 islands. By going on the causeway you cross the lake to the Island, it seemed to stretch forever. Now mind you this was late July, the lake was low and the scenery not as lush as I'm sure it would have been had we stopped in the fall months.

Well needless to say this guy here in the photo was about the only almost-live animal we saw! I can't say I regret going because I'd never seen the Great Salt Lake and it was amazing to me to think that it could be so big, be actually saltwater and be totally surrounded by land.

We found this bison with the hands painted on him and were both in hysterics posing with him. You can't see it in this picture but right next to him was a sign that said 'The Road to Nowhere'. Well I think they got that one just about right.

Get this kit

FREE

RICH TAPESTRY MEMORIES
Beth Rimmer is to be the featured designer at Digitals October 5-19 and you will be able to download a few pieces of this fabulous kit each day. It is sooooo worth it. I just love the colors and elements.

Digitals is THREE! Join the Celebration October 1-7th!
There will be amazing prizes and gifts for you!

Check out THIS THREAD for all the details!!!

War Time

Journaling Reads:
War time separated my Grandma from her youngest, my Uncle Bill.
He enlisted before he was of legal age, skirting through the system because we were in such urgent need of prepared young men ready to go if we went to War.
How hard it must have been to see her youngest enlist and be gone. Grandma is so very young here, as is Uncle Bill. Grandma had saved these war ration books, some still intact with stamps.
My children and grandchildren have no idea what they were for. Hopefully they never will and I can only wish that some day they
and those that come after will not have to suffer the pain and anxiety of having their youngest go off to war.


I used a new kit by Michelle Shefveland at Cottage Arts - Scrap.Edges Brushes & Overlays 6. For the background I used this wonderful paper, also from Michelle at Cottage Arts, called Naturals 4 Paper Pak
The war coupon books were ones Grandma had stuck back in amongst her photos.

Bare Dimples

Journaling Reads:
Oh Eddie I remember when your Mommy and I took this picture you were just learning how to discover things and trying to reach out and ‘touch’. Mommy loved you in the bare and wanted a picture to remember all your little dimples. I’m sure the older you get the more you won't appreciate us snapping you in your birthday suit, but you have to admit you certainly were the cutest little ‘all natural’ baby boy.

Quote reads:
Dimples and toes,
That’s what you were
Little Eddie Spaghetti
We all love you so!

This is the page I made with my Gift from Heather Manning for being a Tailgater Party Winner at Hummie's Tailgate Party. This is Heather's My Teddy and Me which she sells at Digital Scrapbooking.org

Mom and Daddy

Journaling reads: Mom and Daddy became Snow Birds in the 70's with their fifth wheel they traveled to Arizona. Most years Dick and Warner Dietel and Ted and Nadine Williams were along for the trips. This photo was taken at Friendly Acres Trailor Park in Yuma where they spent a lot of winters enjoying the warmth of the Arizona sunshine. Daddy always had a soft spot for Arizona and now Retirement was fullfilling the dreams of winters of sunshine, close friends, lots of laughter and sunset and sunrises to rival no other!

Mom said they came around one day and took photos of everyone in the park. These were good times for the folks, they enjoyed being down south, and in the company of their friends. this photo was in color but when I scanned it in it had so many blotches on it that I decided what it would look like B/W. I actually like it a lot better.

I used a new kit of Beth Rimmer's for this. It's called Markesh Express and has wonderful colors, papers and elements in it. You can pick it up at Digitals.

I recently got a new laptop which has Vista on it, and with it are so many fonts I hadn't used before. I used Freestyle Script and Segoe Script on this page and really like how it looks like handwriting.

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.

I Won at the Tailgate Party!!!

I won at Hummie's Tailgate Party gifts from Heather Manning. Heather sells her designs at DSO - Digital Scrapbooking dot Org



Besides the two great kits above Heather has let me pick anything from her store. Having little grandchildren I fell in love with the 'Me and My Teddy' kit So big fuzzy thank-yous to Hummie for always dreaming up these great things to do and for Heather for her generosity in sharing her creations with me. I hope you'll take a moment and check her stuff out. Check back later to see my pages created with her gifts.

A new Freebie!

Lori has a new kit out and is offering this cute little
notecard as a freebie to introduce you to her new

Red Velvet & Black Lace Kit

Go on over to Digital Scrapn and check it out!
You can get the Freebie here.

Little Gardeners

I did this for the Picture It Challenge for September at Digitals. You were to scrap any learning experience. It was perfect for these pictures of Zoie and Pyper learning how to plant their seeds, just like Mommy does.

Journaling Reads:

Your Mommy loves to work in the yard, feel the soil in her hands and watch her little plants become beautiful flowers. This year the two of you wanted to help as well. But it's much different with 4 little hands in the soil. Everything becomes giggles and laughter. I hope that you'll still love to watch the little seeds become flowers when you are your Mommy's age.

I used Joyce deJonge's new kit Joyce's Garden available at Digitals.

Family Tree Kit (Free with Purchase!)

I asked my friend Lori Giles, who owns Digital Scrapn, if she could create something with a Family Heritage feel to it and this is what she created! Amazing! Now the best part is she's giving it away free!~!

Family Tree Kit

It is free with any purchase of $8.00 or more. This is the Monthly Kit for September at Digtial Scrapn.

There are (13) 12 x 12 brushed backgrounds and 5 solid pages. Lots of old fashioned elements such as glasses, an hour glass, tin can, feathered pen & ink, old frames, a magnifying glass along with much more.

Alpha's & Elements Pkg

Elements Pkg

Paper Pack No.1

Paper Pack No.2

Paper Pack No.3 All are created at 300 dpi and created for your personal use.

Now I'm off to see what I can create with all this great stuff! Better go check it out for yourself!

Tailgate Party!!

I got a note from Hummie about a Party before the Party so I thought I should check it out. Seems we're having a Tailgate Party. The theme is to scrap your Heritage in a layout and enter it in the Tailgate Party on Hummies Blog for cool prizes from now until the 3rd of November. Click the link under the picture and it will tell you all about it.

Since Heritage is my passion lately and I've accumulated hundreds upon hundreds of Heritage photos this summer I decided to enter this newest one I did of my Grandma. Take a look and see what you think... and get those pages in for the Party!



Read here to join the party.

Grandma's Days

Last month I completed almost all of the Challenges at Digitals.
I've never been very good about doing very many of the store challenges around the digital world but since becoming more involved on the Digital stores CT team I've given it a go. What I learned was it made me step out of my comfort zone and try things differently. This is a real good thing, you tend to get 'set in your ways', lol. A little nudge in different directions is a good thing!

I did this page for the September Font Free4All Challenge. This is a super simple one this month, pick your favorite font(s), explain why you like them and where they can be gotten from.

I used Adorable and Angelina both from daFonts and both free downloads. BEWARE! if you've not visited a free font site before, grab that cup of coffee and get comfy, because you may be there a while. It's like a digital kid in a digital candy store.

I wanted to scrap a variety of photos of this period of my Grandma, again, as I've said before I was amazed to see my father's face reflected in this young version of Grandma. Perhaps I'm hiding in there somewhere, nope, I think I got her disposition instead, which some would say was good, others might tend to differ.

Notepaper reads: Photos of Elsie Ann Debus Coulter. Dates are from 1918-1919 and would have been in and around Los Angeles, California Top left photo is taken with sister Lillian.

I used Maddy Fernandez Funky Farmer kit again, I love the colors in this kit it works so well with this age of photos. It's a Digitals, check it out, if it doesn't suit what you need Maddy has a ton of others that will!

I played with one of the flourishes in Maddy's kit. The Photo Dividers were done by duplicating, flipping and merging Maddy's flourish, adding an Action FX style, duplicating again and changing one to horizontal and one to vertical and then resizing to fit. It's so fun to try something new this way and see how much more versatile you can make a kit, and how you can best fit it to your scrapping needs. Try it you'll like it! Just don't forget if you post it to a gallery or online group, note the changes and don't take credit for designing - remember to give credit where credit is due to the talented designer you got the kit from! (By posting your changes you not only note that what you've created is not what they will get in the kit but also give someone an idea or solution of how to accomplish what you've done.)

Oh yes the quote, appropriate I thought. My sister sends out Thoughts for Today to a multitude of people around the world. If you're interested on getting on the list email her at Carols-Thought-for-Today-subscribe@googlegroups.com. There is no spam just a wonderful little quote each day in your email to get you going. Today's was this quote, it came from a church billboard. So look everywhere, there is inspiration to be found where ever you are.