Big News

Our daughter called us yesterday and announced that after nine years of marriage she is going to have a baby. We are ecstatic. We've been saying for years that we thought we would be good grandparents. And my mom is thrilled about being a great-grandmother. It's so exciting. Now I'll have my own grandbaby to scrap. Meanwhile I can practice on our best friends' grandchildren: a boy who is five and twin girls born last December. My hubby thinks that if I go to a yarn shop and/or a scrapbook store and he goes to Toys R Us and Best Buy that we'll max out our credit cards. So we have to be careful and space ourselves. Now I know how all our friends feel since we're about the last in our group to have a grandbaby.

I haven't posted anything for a while because our son flew down from Boston and spent a long weekend with us. A couple of his college buddies bummed a room and breakfast on their way through. It was great fun having young people around, although the friends were only here a short time. Our son stayed until Wednesday. It's fun hanging out with your adult children when they actually seem to like us and have a good time. We are very lucky.

Hubby had cataract surgery on his left eye a couple of weeks ago and will have the other done next week. I'm jealous. It appears he won't need glasses when both are healed. I've worn glasses since I was ten and have always despised them. Finally got contact lenses about 14 years ago. No problems, except that I'm so near sighted I don't need anything for up close. Expecially digiscrapping. It's much easier with glasses as I can take them off to see the small stuff.

I have more family heritage photos to scrap, so I'd better get something done there. I did a new page about my dad. He was a bomber pilot during WWII. He died in 1999. I always thought he would like the coastal area of South Carolina where we now live. He was an avid fisherman. We recently discovered that when he was very young he flew into the Air Force Base here in Myrtle Beach and taught other young pilots how to make bombing runs. Right after we moved here an unexploded bomb was found in the Inlet. So I made the page with a quote from the poem "High Flight" that is beloved by fliers everywhere.

Paper Scrapping

Today I went to a paper scrapping workshop. We made gift bags with tags. It was lots of fun, especially being with a group of women and talking girl stuff. And I will make bags in the future for gifts. But I have to admit it was a pain in the neck (actually the back) having to bend over and pick up all the little pieces I dropped on the floor. And although the bags are really cute and people will appreciate them, I really like the results of digiscrapping better. I guess I've progressed beyond cutesy.

Don't get me wrong. All the old family photos and documents I'm digiscrapping--some from the 1870s--are going into albums and archival boxes for safekeeping. But I really like what you can do with digital images. The variations are limitless and ten people can make dozens of different effects from the same image.

Does that make me an artist? Yikes. Never thought of it that way. At least my fan base extends to my family. Maybe my friend Pat in Michigan will help out here. She's really an artist--a watercolorist. You know, some of her art work would make wonderful backgrounds. Maybe I can bribe her into letting me have a copy of something. So Pat, when you see this, be kind.

Okay, so I Lied

I didn't go public. This is a lot more work than I thought. I'm going to start sending the link to family first, then friends. And I started work on another novel. It's a fantasy set in another world about a woman who doesn't fit in because she is a Fire Mage and wants more than her isolated village can offer her. Of course, she's the only Fire Mage in town and folks resent her. So when she manages to call a dragon to her aid, she had the means to leave. Stay tuned.

I found a wonderful site. It's in the Google search at the bottom.
http://www.scrap-gratuit.fr/
She has wonderfully magical digiscrapping elements. All the things in the I Love This Doll came from this site. Magic Moments. Thank you.

And I subscribe to http://www.scrapbookflair.com/. My Home is: http://scrapbookflair.com/tibwriter.

I'm having great fun with all the old family photos and newer ones of us and friends. Hopefully no one will object since they're anonymous.

Ta ta for now.

Today I go Public!

Okay, world, I'm sending all my friends and family an email welcoming them to my Blog. I'm getting braver as I get older.

Golf is Flog Backwards

An interesting day on the golf links. Shot 42 on the front which is good for me. But on the back I fell apart and shot 52. Oh well, considering I haven't played much this summer that's still pretty good for me.

Today's digiscrap page shows part of my roots. My mother's grandparents were all from Canada. This page is her paternal grandparents. They settled in Northern Michigan near Munising. My mother is the youngest in her family and all she knew were stories told to her by her sisters: that her grandfather had run off somewhere and come back very ill. He stayed with her parents for awhile before he died, which was right around the time my mom was born. I haven't been able to discover his burial site. Someday I will. There is so much available to the genealogist on the Internet. Eventually I'll track him down.

Page credits: Very Victorian Page Kit created by Susan L. Gabriel of SueAngelDesigns. I don't know who did the background and torn top. I seem to have lost the credit. If I find it I'll add it. Fonts: 2 Peas Scrapbook from www.twopeasinabucket.com and Batik Regular.

I'm a new user of Photoshop Elements 5.0 for my digital art. Today I learned how to squeeze an object--like a ribbon so you can thread it through a hole--and how to make a curled corner. But I didn't make it from scratch. I downloaded a template that did it and followed the directions. I'm still not sure I can do it next time without going through the tutorial again. But it was fun and rewarding to learn something new. Apparently I didn't learn well on the golf course.

Another Day

It's only fair to say that I scrapped the photos for my hometown of Marenisco, MI. The town hall burned in the 50s, destrooying all the birth records. My grandmother's house was torn down in the 80s. All that remains are two of the birdbaths--just half of each--holding up a bench in a stranger's yard. Things change. But I still have cousins who live there and it's a beautiful wilderness around a tiny town.

When we retired my husband and I bought a condo for easy living. I will post some of the photos I've taken of all the water damage to our building--only nine years old--caused by poor workmanship. Fortunately it will all be covered under a settlement from the builders.

Hopefully we'll get to play golf tomorrow.