Irene passes me by and my scrap mojo goes mad

Hullo, strangers! I know, I know, it's been a while. And there are so many things that I could talk about from this past month or so. Instead, I think for now, I'll bypass the road trip to Massachusetts, skip right over the B-52's concert, avoid talking about what I'm stitching (it's a model for Mom so I can't show a picture just now anyway) and go straight to this past weekend. Well, straight there after I mention that I'm super excited about Mom's new design. It's an Adam and Eve on a gorgeous milk chocolate colored linen. It's yummy. You're gonna love it. Moving on...

This weekend in a word? Scrapbooking. In a whole bunch of words? I spent the weekend at CKC-Charlotte, and have returned with a super hyper desire to create pages and pages of layouts. I took Friday off, and headed out early, early in the morning to check into my hotel and do some shopping at the vendor fair before my first class. Actually, I had been anxiously watching the track for Irene all week, hoping that it wouldn't track too close to my home and necessitate a complicated evacuation of the cats prior to my leaving for Charlotte. Happily (or relatively so), we weren't predicted to be in the flood zone, so I cleaned everything off the porch, said a little prayer and headed west.

I don't want to bore you with too many class-related details. So, um, my first class was with Studio Calico. I like their spray mists, and the wood veneers. And I thought the layout they taught was perfect to showcase Spike and Tigger when they were itty bitty:

The layout looks better in person, but it is a little jacked up due to some minor complications with the spray mist (including my color choice, ha ha).

Anyhoozles, I spent a big chunk of the day hanging out with my Aunt Teresa, who showed up with the ugliest black eye I have ever seen in my life. Seriously. It was BAD. But she was handling it like a trooper, and said it was itching more than anything else (and that no, poor Uncle Chris, who was enduring endless teasing, did not hit her, she fell in the parking lot of Jo-Ans and was attacked by her glasses). We shopped, ate dinner at Five Guys, and shopped some more. Angela finally met up with me late that evening, ready to jump into a nice long day of classes on Saturday.

I made some great layouts in the QuickQuotes class that you will see when I get back to my Egypt album. I worked on a mixed media mini album that may or may not ever get finished. I have no clue what I would put in the album right now.

I learned how to make some fabulous handmade flowers from Technique Tuesday. Here's a couple of them:


And finally, I justified taking an extra class because I needed to make sure I had to drive through as few rain bands as possible on my way home. Here are the three layouts from that class:



The picture in that first layout was taken a couple of years ago on a mountain top, at sunset, looking out over Death Valley. Sigh. I really need to work on scrapbooking that trip, too.

I am happy to say that I made it home with only 2 rain bands under my belt, and neither one contained any heavy rains or high winds. There were a few small limbs down across town, but happily, my home and cats were none the worse. I didn't even think my power had gone out, although I realized that it actually had when I went to turn my alarm on Sunday evening. So all is well in my world, and my thoughts are with those who were not so fortunate.

Since coming back from the convention, I've made A TON of progress on my Egypt album... another 10 pages have been finished! But I'll save those for another post. This one's getting long already.

But I can't leave you without sharing some pictures of the cats. Scout had his stitches removed, and I am happy to report that the surgery was successful. He has a little bit of a sag to his lower lip on the right side, and at least one of his teeth is coming in crooked, but he can live a full, happy life (if he'd stop doing things like trying to climb inside the folding bed inside the couch, that is) and he doesn't look too funny, does he?

You know, except when he's being weird and sleeping in odd positions:

I hope I've found a home for him with a friend whose home is currently cat-free. Fingers crossed that this works out, cuz I'm gonna have a hard time giving this little accident-prone sweetie to a total stranger!