Fadedwords

It’s been a productive morning.  I finished my Zoo album.  I realize I went to the Zoo 9 months ago, but I had several other projects that had a deadline!

Click on the image to visit the album!

I also took the time to take photos of my Wrightsville Beach 2009 album that I finished several weeks ago…

Again, click on the picture to go see all of the photos of the album.

I have several projects that I need to start working on or finish up now, including finishing Merlin’s last year album and starting this year’s.  I want to do an album that will house all my horseback riding photographs from when I was a teenager until now.

I’m tossing around the idea of doing a portfolio of all of my photography.  I would use this as I move toward a place where I will start charging a fee to do portraits for people.  Still not entirely sure what I need to do or how to do it.  We’ll see.

In other news?  It snowed again last night!  I woke up to this:

I didn’t take many photos but you can click on that picture to see all of them.  Thankfully this snowfall did not come with 2 inches of ice on top of it.  I should have no problem getting out and doing things this weekend, and we shouldn’t lose any more school days.  I wish that it hadn’t snowed though; I really wanted to ride this weekend.

It’s been awhile since I updated my Scrapbooking Layout album in the gallery, so I took some time to do so today.  You can prance by and see:

Andrea’s Wedding Album

The Girls 2007-2008

Kate and Jake Year 3

I’m working on a very large project right now, and about 1/3 done with it.  Keep your fingers crossed that I get it finished in time.

I couldn’t post about these earlier, as they were gifts for people who read the blog.  I made both Jake and my Mom scrapbooks for Christmas.  My Mom’s was a large album full of all the baby pictures I have of me.  She didn’t have these photos, and I wanted to be sure she did.  You can find the pictures of this album here.

For Jake I did an album of his motorcycle trip that he took with his friend Brian in October.  It’s just the photos he took, as Brian hasn’t posted his pictures yet.  :-p (hint hint hint).  I’ll add them as soon as he has posted them.  You can find pictures of what I’ve done here.

They both seemed to really like their albums, which makes the months of work absolutely worth it.  I was most worried about Jake liking his, as a scrapbook isn’t typically something I’d make for a grown man.  *shrug* He said that he liked it a lot though, so that made me happy.

Tonight we are going to my friend Bre’s house for a New Year’s celebration.  It should be pretty laid back and fun.  Happy New Year everyone.

So last night I couldn’t sleep.  I’m not sure why, but at 1:30 I was out of bed and coming out to the living room to get on the computer for a bit.  I started looking at craigslist for some scrapbooking stuff, because Bre was mentioning to me that she had gotten some great deals on things from there.  As I was surfing I saw a headline that said “Cricut and two cartridges for sale.” I glanced at the date and saw it had been posted near the beginning of August.  Even though I was pretty sure it had been sold by now, I emailed the seller.  I went back to bed awhile after that.

This morning I got an email from the seller telling me that it was still available!  I was shocked and immediately emailed back asking when/if I could come by and take a look at it.  She said that this afternoon was fine.  So I took Jake with me… because you never know who the serial killers are until it’s too late.

The seller actually lived in the subdivision that two of my friends from work live in, across the street from one and around the corner from another.   The woman selling the machine was incredibly nice, and not a serial killer.  I asked if I could try the Cricut out and she got me some paper.  It made a good indent on thick cardstock, and I guessed that the blade might need changing.  So I asked if I could try on some thinner paper.  She got me a piece of that and it cut instantly and perfectly.

So today I got a Cricut for a ridiculously good deal.  I paid only $150 for the machine, cutting mat, essential toolkit, and two font cartridges (Jasmine and All Mixed Up).  I haven’t bought one previously because the cheapest I’ve seen the machine is $184 at Wally World.  The cartridges even there are $59.  I got a really, really wonderful deal.

I stopped by Michael’s after we ate lunch and got two new cutting mats and replacement blades.  I think I’m also going to bring it to work with me to see if Bre can help me get it set up properly.  Be prepared for a list of font cartridges that I want to appear on my wishlist!

It’s been a good Saturday.  Tropical Storm Hanna turned out to be pretty uneventful; we had some heavy rain and lots of wind… but overall it was fine.  It was fine enough that I was able to go to WW this morning, despite my fear of the scale.  The fear was unfounded this week, as I lost another 1.2 pounds!!  You can read all about it at ShrinkingMe.  I have .8lbs left to lose before I hit my first 15, so I’m incredibly excited.

The rain was worst at about the time I came home from the meeting, so the ride home was a little stressful.  I made it safely, and had just about sat down when I got a text message from my friend Bre asking if I wanted to come over in the afternoon and scrap.  I said absolutely, and we each began trying to get in touch with our other two friends from school that scrap.  I got Dana on the phone and she said she wanted to come, which was great because we can carpool.  So I ate my lunch, and got all my stuff together to take with me.  I put some photos in to 1-hour photo was Wally World, and by the time Dana got here  I was ready to go.

We took a trip to the store to get photos right after getting to Bre’s, and while we were there we got a couple of other things for scrapping.  Then we went back to the house and got to work.  I finally finiched Merlin’s first year album.  Not bad… only took me two years!  I then did two pages for my girls’ album from our trip to Wrightsville Beach.  I did another 4 or 6 pages for Merlin’s current album as well.  I got *so* much done, and I feel really good about it.  I’d like to take some more time tomorrow to get Merlin’s current book completely caught up, as his 2nd birthday is soon.  I don’t want to be working on this alubm into his 3rd year.

I must say… I absolutely have to get a Cricut.  Bre has one and I was able to use it today.  I love it.  I love it much much more than I had ever guessed I would.  It cuts beautifully.  It makes getting titles on pages much simpler.  I did some beautiful pages today thanks to that.  So I think I’ll be asking for just a Cricut for Christmas, along with cartridges for it.  I want it so bad.

It was a great day.