Sleeping the Day Away

Ah, here's another layout of my nephew, Chris, snoozing away after being a general whirlwhind. There's just something precious about kids sleeping. Isn't he so cute? I could just eat him up. I tried that once actually. My brother had to restrain me and then distract me with a hamburger. Kids are so lucky--they can just pass out and be asleep at the drop of a dime, no matter what is going on around them. I'm such a light sleeper that I wake up if a grasshopper sneezes outside. I can also be an insomniac, which doesn't help matters either. Anyway, this is another of my layouts doing pretty old pictures. As you might guess, if you've seen some of my other layouts (and if you haven't, then never mind), I'm working on some 1990-1991 fun. It's nice to travel back in time a bit, even if my mind doesn't quite remember all the details. Since Chris was too young to remember the details as well, I can always embellish the truth along with my pages. I used all Echo Park's new "Boys Life" on this bad boy. I really love Echo Park--in a purely platonic way, of course. I have a harder time using their bright and buoyant papers but they're still stinkin' cute. This is a pretty minimal layout for me, too. It's SO tough for me to leave any sort of space, but in the fight between space and I, space came out the victor. It's so hard for me not to want to put something in every nook and cranny. Even now, I'm pondering changes. But I won't. Because space was the victor, after all. I made the little circle embellishments myself with a couple of punches and those handy dandy Pop Dots. And a couple of brads. Have I told you how much I love brads? In a purely platonic way, of course.

Crop Time

Now that Christmas is over, it seems an apt time to post a Christmas page. Because Christmas is right around the corner and just over 11 months away. Anyway, here's a page of myself and two of my friends at my LSS in Northampton, MA, Paper! Paper! during a morning crop. I'm the strange looking person in the red shirt. Technically, I was supposed to be Santa. I got the bright idea about five minutes before leaving to go into Kevin's closet and pull out the shirt he wore for a Christmas show the year before. Sure, it was wrinkly, but when one is infused with Christmas spirit, wrinkles don't matter quite as much. I arrived at Paper! Paper! bearing gifts and donned in my huge wrinkly shirt and realized that I'd forgotten the Santa Hat at home. Suddenly, my idea wasn't sounding so good. Now I was just sort of wrinkly and red and not quite as festive. But I persevered and even have photos to tell the tale. By the way, this layout uses mostly Echo Park stuff, except I believe that's a Doodlebug journaling box and I don't remember where I picked up the funky Santa Belt ribbon. I'm not even sure the ribbon goes with the page, but I was determined to use it.

And speaking of Paper! Paper! (which I was a few sentences above, if you care to go back and check), tomorrow is their monthly 12 hour crop, and barring a possible snowstorm, I'm excited to go. The only bad part, of course, is packing for it. I always start out with the best of intentions. I plan on making very detailed page kits so that I don't have to carry much. Sounds simple, doesn't it? And I always start out well. I get one page kit ready--I pick out the paper, the embellishments, think about how the layout is going to look. And then I look at the clock and realize that it took me two hours, because in between I've been puttering around, ogling my stuff, staring meaninglessly out the window. By the end of the day, when it's getting time to have it finished, I end up haphazardly throwing a bunch of stuff into a bag. Ribbons? Sure, I'll need ribbons! Hmm...you never know what color ink I might need--better grab these 27 pads. I don't KNOW what pictures I want to do. I'll just grab this stack and then these 700 papers that might possibly go with it. Well...you get the picture. I'm hoping to avoid that today and get an early jump on things and get some fine work done towards the packing. And then we'll get 40 inches of snow tomorrow.