Orange You Glad It's Almost Halloween?

Speaking of orange, I’m just glad we’re past another weekend of College Football and one win closer to the SEC Championship game. C’mon Gators, hang in there! The game against Mississippi State was a nail biter, much closer than it should have been. And I love my Gators, but even I think that one touchdown call they got could have gone either way. Next stop - Jacksonville, where we meet up with Georgia.

Lisa invited me to carve pumpkins with the kids on Saturday, remembering my comment that I hadn’t had the chance to carve a pumpkin in years. For some reason I got it in my head that we were going to a pumpkin patch to pick out the pumpkins. I’m really not sure why I thought that, maybe I’ve seen one too many pumpkin patch layouts posted in the ACOT gallery, lol. Anyway, just before I went over to Lisa’s house on Saturday she mentioned that she was at Wal-Mart and would be home shortly. But it wasn’t until I had parked in front of her house and was walking up to her door when it occurred to me that she had probably bought the pumpkins at Wal-Mart. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw 4 pumpkins sitting on her kitchen table. Hopefully I’m right about people not paying attention when I talk, because I know I told at least a few people that I was headed to the pumpkin patch, including John.

There were 4 pumpkins – one for each of the kids and one for me. First we had to cut off the tops and gut them, and we had a great time tormenting Lisa with the slimy mess of pumpkin guts as we mashed them down into the provided pans. Afterwards I had to separate the seeds out so Lisa could bake them for us to eat as our after-pumpkin-carving snack. The kids wanted me to make a pumpkin pie from the remaining pumpkin innards, but Lisa insisted that you have to buy special pumpkins to make pies. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I didn’t have a recipe for pumpkin pie and she doesn’t have internet so I let her throw it all away.

We had a book of patterns to choose from when it came time to carve our pumpkins. Trinity chose a happy cat, Taylor chose a Goblin, Trevor chose a skull & crossbones, and I let Trinity pick my pattern out. She chose the Jack-O’Lantern for me, and I let her help me carve it after she was finished with her own. Trevor finished his first and went on to carve the back side, then headed over to play the Wii. Taylor took more time on her pumpkin, but also carved out both sides and joined Trevor in front of the TV. Trinity and I were the last to finish up. It drove the kids crazy that I took pictures of the finished pumpkins, but how could I resist those works of art? Here they are:

Supply List:
Kit – Falloween and Falloween Add On by Kay Eflin
Font - Memo

Lisa insisted I take my beautiful pumpkin home with me, so it’s sitting in front of our front door. And decomposing fast, I’m not sure if it’s going to make it to Halloween. I guess you need colder weather to preserve pumpkins. Lisa says their pumpkins aren’t faring much better.

We’re Grown-ups Now (Says Who?)

I wrote up the best blog post last week after a fantastic weekend of Gator Football and Sister Hazel Concerts and then forgot to post it. Now it’s all ancient history, so I guess I’ll just save it for a layout instead. I only have one more thing to say about that. Go Gators! It was great to see Tebow back in action and to watch my boys pull out a victory over L.S.U.

This past weekend John and I attended a wedding in Key West for my almost-sister Holly. After 6 years her and Frank decided to make it official and I couldn’t be happier for them. Not only did we get to see these two get married, I also had the chance to reconnect with Holly and her sister Ashley after too many years of silence. The last time I was around the two of them together they were 11 and 13, I believe. And they were both shorter than me. What I have noticed is that except for my cousin Anna and my brother-in-law Jimmy, every single kid in my generation has outgrown me. In fact the kids in the next generation are outgrowing me too – Tabatha is already as tall as her mom and Trinity is catching up.

Here I am at Holly’s wedding with Holly (right) and Ashley (left):

Notice how I even remembered to use Holly's new initials.

Layout credits:
Tulip Papers and Tulip Elements by Werinka
Fonts – LD Enchanting, LD Formal

Holly’s wedding was amazing. She put us all up for the weekend at Old Town Manor, a B&B on Key West, and the wedding was held in their courtyard. Holly’s dog Dillon was the ring bearer, which I thought was absolutely precious. All of her guests served as the “aisle” as she walked towards her true love. She was beautifully decked out in a gold dress and a dazzling smile of happiness. A steel drum played in the background. The reception was held in the same spot with a delicious meal of pasta, chicken, fish, garlic bread and veggies. And for desert – Key Lime Pie on a stick!

The B&B was just off of Duval Street so those of us who didn’t go for a late night swim after the reception went off to join the all-night party that defines Key West. John, Ashley and I stopped at Bilmar Station for a late night meal after hitting a few of the local bars. One of John’s favorite discoveries about Key West is the number of live bands playing at local bars and restaurants for no cover charge; towards the end of the night we came across a seriously good rock band performing a Pearl Jam cover at Dirty Harry's. Key West nightlife doesn’t cut off until 4 am (well, that’s the official cutoff, although it seems most of the people in Key West prefer to watch the sun come up before they think about crawling into bed) and we surprised Ashley by lasting until the end.

8 am comes too early when you don’t go to bed until 5; we almost missed breakfast on Sunday morning. Breakfast at the B&B is not to be missed – it’s the best Continental Breakfast spread I’ve ever seen with delicious mini pastries, fresh fruit salad, several different fruit spreads for the bagels and toast along with the traditional cream cheese and butter, hard boiled eggs (for that boost of protein), yogurt with fruit & nut toppings, gourmet cheese, and of course plenty of coffee and juice. We were sorry to have to call it a weekend on Sunday, but duty calls and we had to head back home for a full day on Monday of “things you have to do” like returning the rental car and going back to work. On our way home we stopped in Miami to visit the family – Richard met us at Fernando’s house and we ate dinner with them (Fernando grilled meat – skirt steak – YUM!). By the time we got back on the road Highway 27 was pretty deserted and we had smooth sailing all the way home.

Luckily the Gator Nation did not disappoint, to cap off a wonderful weekend Mom sent me a text message that the Gators squeaked past Arkansas to win 23 – 20. That’s a little closer than I like to see them get, but a win is a win. Go Gators!

Oh Baby - The Trick to Recognizing Babies

Scrapping baby pictures, particularly of people who are no longer babies, can be very tricky. I have two sisters and it's fun to scrap our childhood photos, but more than once I've scrapped a picture of my sister Nicole as myself. And there have been times I've mistaken my other sister Lisa for Nicole. In my defense we looked a lot alike as babies and even as toddlers. I'm learning to check with Mom first on the identity of the children in the picture before I start scrapping all willy nilly.

Now you would think that telling babies apart would come easier for the actual parents of said babies but I'm here to tell you that is not always the case. I came across a picture in my stash of family photos that was obviously one of us. And there's a 33.333333% chance of getting the identity right - after all, there are only 3 choices. On the back of the picture, in what is clearly the handwriting of one of my parents, my name is written. And crossed out. Then Nicole's name is written, along with her age. Hah, Mom, not so easy now is it? (Watch her tell me that's Dad's handwriting. Wait for it...)

Mom claims there are ways to tell us apart - Nicole has the big brown eyes, Lisa has the lighter hair, etc. I'd like to point out that we all had brown eyes, brown hair, and we were pretty much the same size for the first 5 years. Plus we shared clothes. And we lived in the same house for all of our infant and toddler years.

Assuming you will recognize your child 25+ years and thousands of sleepless nights later is not the best plan I’ve ever heard of. A better plan, one that should have been born in the sleepless nights while you were pacing the floor comforting a crying baby, would have been to slap a big ole initial on our foreheads before taking a picture. Or dress us in clothes with our names on them. Even color coordinating by child - this is the blue child, this is the green child... Probably I should write a parenting book. I could call it "How to Turn Sleepless Nights into Marathon Planning Sessions." Don't tell my parent-friends that I said that, they'll lynch me for sure. I'm not supposed to be giving parenting advice. Or baby advice. Or toddler advice. Or child or teen advice. In fact I was given specific instructions not to give out any advice at all. Good luck with that.

This week I had the opportunity to digi-scrap with some really cute baby kits, starting with Karen Aicken's Oh Baby. That's when I reached back into my stash and came up with the now infamous "I'm not sure who this baby is" picture. After having my work corrected a couple of times lately for mislabeled people, I was happy to scrap about someone else's failed labeling attempt. Here's my layout:

And that sweet baby is about to have a baby of her own. I'd better make sure to share my baby labeling tips with her pronto. The first one should definitely be the Blue Baby.

(For the record, the easiest way to make something "infamous" is to call it that on your blog. It worked with Tampa Airport; someone got lazy during a newscast and now every Joe and Jane on the street is calling it TIA. Years from now you'll hear someone refer to my sister's infamous childhood photo and you'll remember that you read it here first.)

Welcome to My Blog - An Introduction

Hello all, and thanks for visiting my blog. My name is Tania and I'm addicted to scrapbooking in all forms - paper, digital, and hybrid. I'm almost as addicted to challenges; they play a big part in how many layouts I manage to churn out each month. Challenges force me to stretch out of my comfort zone and I believe I've become a better scrapper for doing them. I've also found that digital scrapbooking, with the handly Ctrl+Z command to undo all my mistakes, has made me a more daring scrapper willing to try new techniques and use more supplies. This has carried over into my paper creations as well, I'm hapy to report.

My online scrapbooking history:

• My first Creative Team position was for Katie the Scrapbook Lady back when she was a digital designer. She's retired from designing now but I still follow her blog. She has a lot of great information and helpful tips to share.
• A Cherry On Top is my home base in the scrapbooking world and I was honored to be named Guest Paper Creative Team Member for August 2009. During my month as GCT I hosted a month of challenges (posting one challenge per day). As usual, ideas born in my head are larger than they appear once they enter real life, but although it took some serious brainstorming I had fun coming up with 31 different challenges and examples.
• In June 2009 I was invited to become an E-scape Artist, a Creative Team position for E-scape and Scrap, an online digital scrapbook boutique that sells products from many talented digital designers such as Julie Mead, Kay Eflin, Karen Aicken, Ruth Davis, Laura Burger and more. These ladies are always creating new and beautiful designs, it's a pleasure to be among the first to scrap with their latest kits. The E-scape Artist layouts are posted on The Nifty Boutique blog each week.

So here I am, sharing my love of scrapbooking and challenges and my layouts with the world wide web of scrapbooking. I'm just another scrapbooker making and preserving memories and having oodles of fun while doing it. If you choose to hang out with me here on my blog, thanks! I'm ready to tell my story, one page at a time.