I just created another page for my travel album. This time I used a new kit Mary Ridgeway designed called Forest Primeval. Her kits are always so huge there is just an endless supply of stuff to use in them.

These pictures were taken when Paul and I made a trip to Monterey. We'd been there before but this time decided to stay a few days which is much better, you can take your time exploring and just soak in the atmosphere.

I guess I'll have to go back and read Cannery Row again and see if I can visualize Steinbeck's book a little better. If you've not been and are nearby it's definitely a stop you should put on your itinerary.

Welcome to the Party................................

My Contribution
Journaling From The Heart

Hummie has hosted a Blog Party and I think it's a grand idea to get to meet new people, become inspired from their blogs and glean wisdom and tips from them. I thought this when she first sent it through one of my email groups, but then the next thought was what could I contribute? I haven't really gotten into designing, although I'm sure the itch is growing and it's only a matter of time before I begin to think I can do it too... lol. I don't have any freebies to offer.......... hmmm so what could I contribute that would have people want to come and then have them glad they did?

I decided the other day I think my contribution is Journaling... I find this such a therapeutic outlet and it just seems to grow more and more within me with each page I do. To me it’s so wonderful to get memories that have lived inside me out for others to share. If this is a stumbling block for you consider these ideas:

• As you journal on a page pretend you are talking to the person you think might be holding your page in their hands. Maybe it’s someone from the ‘now’ time, or maybe it’s someone generations from now that you will never know.
  

• Tell them from your heart what they are looking at, where the photo was taken, who these people are they are looking at, why you scrapped it. Mentally talk just as if they were sitting next to you and you were sharing one on one.
  

• If you have a specific memory from a time and place share it. I did this recently with a photo of my Grandpa and brother and myself. Sharing about a teddy bear that had been a part of my life for over 40 years before I decided it was ok to have him be a memory instead of a tangible item.
  

• Actually visualize talking to someone, that way what you write becomes so much more personable than just words on paper.
  

• Make connections so that people, places or things in your page become real to the person looking at it. Remember, this page was important enough for you to take the time to scrap so carry your feelings forward. What you wrtie may be the only way generations from now will be able to relate to the people you loved, places that made or heart stope or moments in time you just can't stop thinking about.
  

• If you’re unable to scrap all those hoards of old photos you just inherited or all those eons of kids photos that had been hiding in albums and boxes get them out and journal about them. (Perhaps number them and correspond the number to a journal book and keep the photos and journal together). If you never get around to scrapping them, someday someone will pick up what you started and thank you over and over again. It’s how I feel when I turn a photo over and someone has written the who’s and why’s on the back. It’s a treasure that I can pass forward, you do the same… journal journal journal.
  

• And lastly talk to those around you before you’re like me and ‘wishing’ you had. So many have passed on and with them wonderful memories that could be shared are lost forever. I am constantly on the phone with my Mom asking her to explain this photo or that place. (Mom will soon be 96 and still has a stunning memory so don’t discount the older generation, they will love you for caring enough to ask and you will be sooooo glad you did!) I Ask Mom to just talk and share as I write things down. So many memories, so many wonderful times in her life and my Dad’s I can now pass forward to my great great grandchildren. They won’t know her in real time, but they will feel her presence in the words that I journal on the pages I make. And hopefully, if I do my job right, they will love her and feel as if they knew her! In that way that stranger who they are looking at will once again become real.

There's one last comment I'd like to make, it's a trap I've seen myself fall into many times. I get so caught up in our wonderful digital communities, doing challenges, scraplifting another’s creation, working on CT teams that I think we sometimes loose focus of why we are doing what we are doing. We are preserving memories, places; people etc for the next generation and all those that follow. Scrap for those people and times and not for the moment.

I hope I’ve given you food for thought. I thank you for stopping by and I’d love any comments you’d care to leave. Don’t forget if you haven't signed up for the Blog party go back up to the top of this post to the party invitation to hop back over to Hummie’s to sign up, or if you'd like to visit others on the Party train they're listed just above this post!

Happy Scrapping… NW Lady

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.

Here are four pages I created using Mary Ridgeways wonderful kit: Under The Sea
I've just started on Mary's Creative Team. She sells at Deco-Pages so be sure to check her kits out they are absolutely huge so you get more than your money's worth.

These pictures are all of Six Flags/Marineworld at Vallejio California. We went on a Company
Day and thoroughly enjoyed our time there.


Shouka the Whale:
Paul’s work had a family day at Six Flags/Marineworld. We went just for something to do and because we’d never been there and ended up having a really fun day! We discovered that if we timed it just right we could get to see a lot of the free shows being offered, including this one of Shouka the Whale.. I was so excited when I got home and realized how great the pictures turned out!


Dolphin High Jinx!
I loved the Dolphins they are so marvelous. They put on such an act for everyone. I loved the way they had painted the backdrop to look like the ocean. It was soooo hot this day that we were both glad that we were under cover to enjoy the show!


Seal Cove
These guys are my all time favorite. I can remember when I was ten being at Pacific Ocean Park
and feeding the seals forever. With their dreamy big brown eyes who couldn’t love them? These put on quite a show for us even stopping for a little suntan on the rocks so I could snap just the right pose!


Marineland
The ladder sign on the left was outside the baby hospital for the animals. I am so glad I snapped it because it was perfect for my page. The little guys by it were behind the glass trying to get well. The giraffes were a total shock, we were just walking around and POW here they were, so tall and beautiful, I could have stayed watching them forever.

This picture just stuns me when I look at it. I loved my Grandma so much when I was a child. But she was 'old' lol, she must have been all of mid-sixties when I remember her the most. Old, seem's pretty young to me today!!!.

I love seeing my Dad here, he's the oldest on the right, and my Aunty Florence, wow she was beautiful even as a child, and of course Uncle Bill, my loveable Uncle Willy, I wonder if that little mind was already wondering how to be a stinker at such an early age?????

The journaling here reads:
I love this picture of my Grandma.
Here she is with my Dad, George,
my Aunty Florence and my Uncle Bill.
The back of the picture said Daddy was 4 years 8 months old, Aunty Flo 2 years, 8 months and Uncle Bill 1 year 2 months
I’m so glad she had written their ages so I could pinpoint the time.
This would have been taken in or around Los Angles California.
So many generations I see in these faces, brothers, nephews, neices, grandchildren of my own.

As I have said before and I'll say it again. Please write something about the pictures you take when you take them. Grandma, bless her heart, wrote the ages of these three on the back of this photo. It helped me pinpoint the time and place down to the month and year. So helpful. Years from now all these digital photos we snap so readily will be a quandry to the generations that follow us if we don't journal something about the why's and where's and who's of the picture. When my great-great- grandchildren look through my pictures I hope I learn enough to have left them some inkling of who it is and how they relate to them in my heritage to them.

Pictures are definetly worth a thousand words, and if we take just a little bit of time to add our own to them they will be worth a million!

This was created using Barb Speck's - Grandma's Shoebox Memories. This is a wonderful collection of kits, if you are into doing Heritage I would strongly suggest you check it out at NDISB or SOTB.

These pictures are a collection of ones I had when my Grandma Coulter and Aunty Bea lived in New York City while my Uncle Bill was out to sea (in the Navy aboard the Quick).

The journaling reads:

The framed photo on the right, as well as the smaller ones, were the ones taken in New York City. As close as Mom and I could determine these pictures must be from around 1945 and 1946. During this time my Uncle had reinlisted in the Navy and was at sea a great deal of time on the Destroyer Quick. When my Aunt moved from California to New York my Grandma moved as well. Mom thinks they perhaps lived in the same apartment complex. But the pictures here of Grandma Coutler (which was Uncle Bills Mom) were taken in New York City. I love the wrought iron bars on the windows, the curves of the cement stairs and the beauty of the black and white photos. Make sure you check out Johnny’s stroller! Amazing how times have changed.

The framed photo on the left was taken in El Monte California after the family moved back west when Uncle Bill got out of the Navy. I love Aunty Beas shoes! She was a tiny little thing probably 4’10 or so and she is so very young here.

Not only are they great family memories but they also give us such a glimpse back in time as to what they wore, the shoes, the clothes the hair styles, even the baby stroller as I mentioned in my journaling. I love the black and white photos I have. Sometimes I wonder if color actually distracts the eye from the importance of what's in the photo?

So many photos I have and when I read the comments people write to me when I do these Heritage photos I realize how lucky I am to have them to pass on to future generations. I feel most fortunate when someone took the time to jot the year, the names or the places on the back.

Please take note, learn the lesson here, if you have photos, printed or digital, take a few moments to help the generations to come by putting something about the people, place or time the photo was shot. Why did you take it? Who are these people in it, and how do they relate to you? What was going on at the time the photo was taken?

We snap snap snap, but so often forget to document what it is we were so taken by that we took the time to grab the camera and take a shot. Time passes so quickly, jot the memories you have as soon as possible so you'll remember next year, or the year after, or twenty years after why you took the photo you did.

Aunty Lil and Uncle Ernie- Taken in Modesto just before leaving to visit us in Washington. One of their last trips north I believe. I love that she wrote on the back of the photo, those are the priceless things.

Larger photo available in my Gotta Pixel gallery.

My middle one and her family. A great moment in time captured forever. These little girls grow so much, it's usually six months in between Gammy's visits and they change so quickly, so these captured glimpses in time will be even more valuable as the years creep on.

I absolutely love the poses the girls made so cute!

If you like the frame or heart it's a new kit designed by Lori Giles - Pages of the Heart Collection - Love Each Other Mini Kit. Lori sells at Natural Designs in Scrapbooking.

This one is just for you Amber. (My youngest) who left me a note there weren't enough pictures of my three, just the grandkids! So here's one for my baby (yep even at 31 you'll be the baby, it's a label that sticks to the youngest like glue, just ask me I know!).

The kids went to Disneyland to celebrate their Honeymoon, even though they married in July they Honeymooned in October. They were given the Royal treatment everywhere they went in this magical land. I think because they wore their 'Hats' that it was a dead give away to all the characters that they had Honeymooners. Everyone was super nice and posed where ever they went.

It's just hard to believe it's now been 2 1/2 years!

If you like the Kit I used it's Barb Speck's My Tattered Heart (the ribbon is from her Swirly Sheer Ribbons).


Wow I was picked! What a great surprise today. This layout was picked at Scrap Outside The Box by the Atta Girls Team. They have left me great compliments about it. Now Amber you've been seen around the world how's that????

Journaling Reads:

I don't remember seeing a picture of my Grandparents taken together,
So, much to I'm sure my Grandma's dismay,
I 'put' them together with modern technology!

I was born long after they had ceased to be a couple
but I wonder about the early years.
What drew them to one another,
what bond they found that started the love at the beginning?

Grandma lived next door when I was a little girl;
She moved from California to Washington
And eventually settled beside us in a small little mobile home.

Grandpa was always the California Grandpa that I only saw on rare occasions.
Someone who never complained about the little
Granddaughter that clung to him on visits
Or sent him letters in her little girl handwriting after each visit.

Memories have grown so dim over the years, just a few fleeting ones remain
And they hold fast in my mind. But, in my heart the love never wavers.
Differences and life's choices separated them years ago. When I came along I loved them individually and equally.

But today it makes me smile and gives my heart such
Joy to see them side by side here,
For to that little girl and the grown woman she has become
They were, and always will be my

Grandma and Grandpa

I used a beautiful kit from Lori Giles Serenity available for purchase at Natural Designs In Scrapbooking to create my page. Lori does a fabulous job designing her elements.