Finale to Fantastic Alaska

It was the trip of a lifetime. I'm glad you are enjoying the photos. I still haven't journalled on the pages and don't know if I'll ever get to that. Some of the pages need a bit more embellishment.  Words may be just the thing. Someday.

I will tell you that bear is real. And he was real close. Our guide actually took the safety off of his bear spray - something he has never done before.  The bear was as curious about us as we were him. Eventually he got bored, turned and walked way.  No drama.  Plenty of thrill.

The zip line - exhilarating! What.A.High.  (Pun intended.)

Yep, definitely the trip of a lifetime. I'd love to do it all again, though I doubt it could be duplicated.  Here's the end of our awesome vacation.

More of Amazing Alaska

Alaska is so beautiful. The few days we spent there were much too short. Perhaps one day we will return.

Our whale watching trip was awesome.  We saw two pods of humpback whales bubble feeding.  Our naturalist had just told a little girl it was rare to see this and then, not five minutes later we witnessed this spectacular event.  Hard to capture on film without fancy equipment; however we did get a few shots.

On the same excursion we saw dolphins swimming beside our vessel, sea lions playing King of the Hill on a bouy and an eagle stalking & diving for its dinner.  Can't ask for much more than that!  Here are more pages that celebrate this terrific frontier.

Stay tuned for additional pages that will post later...

Amazing Alaska Cruise

We celebrated our 20th anniversary with a totally awesome trip to Alaska.  It was the perfect trip, with gorgeous weather.  Our excursions could have been filmed for the travel channel.  Here are just a few of the pages that represent just a small portion of the trip.  I'll post more soon.

She's Done with High School...

...and it's so classicly bittersweet.  We are very proud of her successes and the honors she received.

I created her HS scrapbook in digi format, was able to keep up and it's also done.  So happy that I did that!  She was surprised at her celebration lunch, right after the ceremony, to be handed her memories.  Here are the pages for her last few traditional events.

Now, if I could only find the energy to finish up the early years...

Gay Paris! (You gotta say with a french accent)

Okay, the Paris pages are complete.  Paris was so fun and the people were uber friendly.  This trip reminded me of my first trip to Paris when I was in Jr. High.  I'm so glad that Ashleigh saw what I remembered. Subsequent trips as an adult had been disappointing. This one was awesome!

Some these LOs were created as two-pagers and others as single pages in response to MM challenges.  Even if they don't look cohesive, I think I like them and I'm resisting the urge to edit!  I've also created the opening page and a few random others that will fill in to make the book flow the way it should.  I'll share those in another post.  For now, enjoy a virtual tour of this beautiful city...

Umbria and Florence

My, oh my, I so want to return to Italy.  It is one of the most beautiful and vibrant places I've ever visited.  The Italy pages are now complete and next I'll tackle Paris.

As I uploaded these pages, I just realized that I have the date wrong for Assissi. These are the only pages that I actually dated.  So, I'm happy that these are digital pages and I can easily correct the error.  It also means that I'll have to put the pages in a different chronological order.  Hurray for digi and the electronic eraser!

Rome - the pages

So, this leg of the trip is finished. Now I'll need to back track and complete pages for Paris, Florence, & Umbria. It's so much fun reliving this trip.  It was amazing indeed!

I also created a page highlighting the fundraising we did for the trip. The kids just weren't that interested in raising money, even their spending money, so I was the most aggressive on that front.  Ruben didn't go on the trip and he was at almost every event to raise cash - so very special!  Ashleigh managed to save enough of her work dollars to have the spending money she wanted.  Since I was not working at the time, I budgeted myself and even came home with a few dollars.  Very different from when I was a teen trying to find money for retreats and trips!

Europe Album

The album is coming along -- I've focused on London this week.  Those of you on the MM boards have seen the fruits of my labors.  Well, some of them anyway!  Here are a few more pages and these complete London.  I think.  I'll have to go back and reassess those early pages that I created.  I remember doing a page on the Flowers of London, so it will be added to these when the book is assembled. 

It's so much fun going back over these photos and reliving the trip.  I was the best trip to Europe - EVAH!

Yippeeeeee -- Mojo has returned!

and I've been able to create a couple of digi layouts this week.  It feels good!

Yesterday afternoon, I went with a crafty friend to a class and learned how make roses out of Tim Holz grunge paper.  The roses were awesome, the grunge paper not so much.  I believe it is a really cool medium and I'll be attempting other projects with it; however I think I'll stick to just cardstock when making these flowers in the future.  His tattered flowers die rocks!  Here's the end result of the class with an awful photo and a pretty cool end result.

The LOs I did this week are from our summer trip to Europe.

I'm still trying to figure out how to save CM Storybook pages into .jpegs that can be uploaded.  Ditto for the Scrapbook Factory Deluxe version 5.  Why do software developers change how you do things and then hide them or rename them to some function alien to the actual users?  It's mondo frustrating!

Ohhh, I'm so excited - I did figure it out in CM.  However. I was helping DH with our 2010 taxes.  Now I cannot remember how I did it. Geez it's terrible getting old.