Catching up with the Jorgensons

I haven't posted in awhile--no reason really other than busy doing other things. Friday night went with my daughter and granddaughters for a "girls night out" to see Kit Kittredge and have dinners. They picked me up and the girls asked their mother to select a song on the CD that was playing--Girls night out and then asked to have it turned up. Went to dinner at Fazolis and then the movie. Saturday Grandpa and I took Luke to the zoo. I had been to the zoo with daughter and grandchildren on July 2. We have a traveling elephant exhibit and they put on a show. Unfortunately Luke fell asleep during the show on July 2 and cried about it all the way home. So Grandpa, Luke and I spent the day at the zoo yesterday. I've got to get the pictures loaded on my camera and get some layouts done for both zoo visits.

Last night I finalized these two layouts I've been working on.

Another Jaren Brag Book photo

Here were his first "non-family" visitors--Tyler Fischer and his girlfriend and Ashleah, Dan, and Carter. Ashleah and Tyler grew up next door to us and are as close as family.

I also have ready a "first bath" layout, I just need photos. I'm hoping I can borrow some from Sarah's camera when I go up today.

I've got to get back to finishing up my "Month of Memories" assignments. I'm behind a few days. Here is my layout for day Jun 27 (I just noticed I have the wrong month on it so will need to fix it). Day 27 was exploration or discovery.

Welcome Jaren Jorgenson

Today Jaren Jorgenson entered the world at 7:42 a.m. weighing in at 6 pounds 4 ounces, 18 inches long.

 

Month of Memories Update

The assignment was to turn a picture into black and white (I did sepia print). This farm is along Scotch Ridge Road between Carlisle and Hwy 65-69.

The assignment was to scrap an accomplishment or something I've done that I'm proud of...need I say more?

This assignment was to photograph something to do with power, strength or conviction. Went up to the capitol to photograph the war monuments for conviction, but ended up using this picture of our beautiful state capitol and where I worked for 16 years.

My latest layouts

It is Sunday morning and I've been working on a layout for Jeremy's birthday. Supplies used include

Styles: Christy Skaggs: Blue
Actions: Pioneer Woman Action set 1 on photos
Papers and elements are from Doreen Stolz Kit: Rustic Fields

Month of Memories Update

Day 18 was a landscape. I am really pleased with how this turned out.Today was a group shot so I took a picture of my favorite group.
The assignment for day 16 was changing your point of view.
Day 15 was honoring the Fathers.

Day 14--What color are you

Saturday's assignment was to take three pictures of the same color family. This is my pictures and layout. I did a two-page layout for this one.

Father's Day

Spent a nice quiet Father's Day at home with Roger. Met the kids and their families for lunch at Famous Dave's--always a favorite with the men. I meant to get a group picture of the guys and kids, but forgot to do it beforehand and then Jeremy and Sarah left a few minutes before us. I have pictures of everyone except Sarah--she was in the bathroom when I was taking pictures. When we came home Roger laid down for a nice long nap, sleeping until almost 10 p.m. Of course he has to go to work while I sleep.

I took one car load of equipment and files down to the office and unloaded this afternoon while Roger slept. I've also been scrapping. Today's assignment was honoring fathers. Here is my layout I did for this assignment. I did the first one and then later decided to add the name badge to the layout. Not sure which one I like best.



I also scrapped a couple larger layouts--one honoring the Fathers and the other one of me and Luke. I don't scrap many pictures of myself and decided I should be in the albums too.

Friday, the 13th

Today's assignment for my Month of Memories was to take a picture of my house and scrap it.

Jeremy's Birthday Celebration--You're a Winner

To celebrate Jeremy's 29th birthday, we went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner followed by bowling afterwards. These are a few of the pictures I took.

Month of Memories Update

Here are my days 11 and 12 of my Month of Memories class. Day 11, which was Jeremy's birthday, was creativity. I think it was a pretty lame creativity photo, but had to work with what I had. Day 12 was called Peaceful Easy Feeling or what brings me tranquility.

I'll post in a bit some pictures from Jeremy's birthday.

Day 10: Action Photo

Today's assignment was an action photo. Since I had been up since 2 (my mind wouldn't shut down coming up with plans of action in case our office would flood), I went out before work down by Sec Taylor Stadium (for us stubborn people who refuse to call it Principal Park) to take some action photos of the river and perhaps catch some sandbagging. When I got to work we had an Email from our management company saying because of the improvements implemented after the 500 year flood in 1993, we were in no danger. Went to lunch at noon and when I returned at 1 learned that we needed to move everything out or at least six feel off the floor. I ran out to buy as many boxes as I could get my hands on. The Health Department asked for 12 volunteers to come assist us--they were a lifesaver. Luckily I had my camera with me and took a few seconds to catch some real action shots.

Hey, Good Lickin'

Today's assignment for my Month of Memories class was take a picture of an animal. Took several of all the dogs this morning, using treats. Then tonight I took Molly out in the front yard since she is the only one I can tell drop and she will do it. Max wants to investigate the camera and gets right in your face; Maddie, well Maddie is Maddie. I took several pictures, playing around with Manual mode versus automatic mode. The picture in this layout came as quite a shock to me when I looked at them. I was in rapid shoot mode--just kept shooting--and this picture was one of them I caught. Quite a tongue she has.

First Page in Jaren's Baby Album

I got motivated today and scrapped the first page in Jaren's baby book using a few of the pictures I took tonight.

Day 8: New Beginnings

When I saw today's assignment I right away knew what I was going to shoot. I spent the morning working on my layout, and all I needed was the picture. Jeremy and Sarah came over tonight and I took several photos. I had to shoot them inside because it was raining and the lighting was not what I wanted. I made the photo black and white and while moving it onto my layout and create a clipping mask to my photo holder, I realized I loved it the way it looked--the photo with my journaling on top so I just left it at that.

Month of Memories, Days 2-7

I was going to post daily my assignments for the Month of Memories Class, but have taken way too much time creating my layouts (plus it has been a very hectic week). The following pictures are in reverse order.

Day 7: Contrast was the assignment.

Day 6: Self Portrait. I played around with doing a "Wilson" from "Tool Time" but ended up showing my whole face:

Day 5: Funny. Wasn't finding anything too funny this day since I was up all night with Molly and was having serious thoughts how much longer she can go on with this level of terror of storms and fireworks:

Day 4: Journey. Mia's posed journey going for a walk in the neighborhood:

Day 3: Candid. Again, a posed portrait for the occasion. I'm terrible:

Day 2: Lucky. Not sure how much you could consider this a lucky shot since I drove directly to Gray's Lake to get a shot of the flooding. I guess it is lucky because hopefully if I went back there in August there would be no flooding.

Month of Memories

I'm participating in "A Month of Memories" class over at Scrapgirls.com, taught by Mary Elizabeth O'Toole. Yesterday was Day 1, and we could take a picture of anything, and this is the picture and layout I created. I had forgotten all about the class starting until late in the day and when I remembered I took this picture of Lukey with his boo-boo on his face.

I had had everybody over for dinner, and the kids were out in the living room playing, drawing, and watching TV while us big folks were sitting around the table in the kitchen. Luke comes running in crying and I picked him up. Carrie became concerned immediately because that was his I'm scared cry. I got him calmed down enough to realize he had somehow hurt himself. He had a small cut under his lower lip and a line on the side of his face. We had followed his sisters into the "office" (the room where my husband and I each have our computers set up) while they got a stapler. They left the room but he climbed up in grandpa's chair and was typing on the computer (probably trying to find Thomas), when somehow the chair spinned, moved or something and he fell hitting his face on the computer hutch.

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa, parts 2 and 3

Been a busy day today. We stopped at Best Buy to buy a Hannah Montana's Best of Both Worlds CD for the girls' listening pleasure while riding in my PT cruiser, then went and picked up granddaughter #2 for her bike ride. Asked her where she wanted to have lunch, and guess where she chose--Fazoli's. Had another nice long lunch spending some quality time with her. I managed to get spaghetti sauce all over my shirt and shorts so we came home so I could change. Grandpa laid down for a power nap, and Mia and I made a card for her to give her Mom. I then took her home and grandchild #2 was ready to go. He's 2 1/2 and has never gone bike riding with us. So the two of us set off to wake up pick up Grandpa and headed back to the bike trail. While riding with #2, there was a sign saying the trail was closed. I figured it was because the river was rising due to all the rain, but since we saw people had been through the area, we decided to go on ahead. At the bottom of the trail there was water on the other side of the trail, but then found it all over the water a couple inches deep. We made an executive decision to go to higher ground and walk the bikes. So when we set out with #3, we went another direction. After going almost three miles, we stopped for drinks. Grandchild #3 was looking kind of tired, and didn't want to go back. He wanted to go "three blocks that way." Convinced him to get into the cart and headed back the way we wanted to go. He quickly fell asleep. Brought him back to our house because he was hungry and wanted one of my smoovers (translation: smoothie). After he recharged, we got out his cars to play with until Mommy and Daddy got here to pick him up. They were going to Olive Garden and invited us along, but I didn't really think I could handle more pasta and breadsticks, although I love breadsticks and pasta. I think we will kick back, enjoy a little vino, and relax tonight. Took a shower and saw that I got some nice sun today. Well on my way to my summer tan.

I also reworked my Squirmy Wormy layout by changing the title to look like stickers; changed the stitching on the journaling box, took the worm out of the jar and placed it peeking out from under the journal box and added a lady bug to the jar. I also added a tag with "I love bugs" on it.

New Adventure for Grandpa and Me

Last night when I left work I was shocked to see the sun shining and no rain. So instead of heading to the gym, I thought I'd see if Grandpa wanted to get his bicycle out for a little ride. Then I thought, "we ought to use our bike trailer and take a grandchild with us." The bike trailer can fit two smaller children, which we've done with the twins, who are now 6 1/2 years old, but it would be a tight squeeze now. The problem was, all three of our grandchildren live in the same house with the same set of parents. How do I take only one? So I called their mother, my daughter and told her what I was thinking of doing, but that I couldn't decide how to choose only one. She put it to the grandkids. I could hear all kinds of screams of excitement and discussion. She came back and said that granddaughter #1 figured out a plan--she was the oldest by 20 minutes so she would go first, followed by her twin sister, and then their little brother. Sounded like a good plan, kind of how I worked out years ago which one of my brats children got to ride in the front seat (can you believe we used to let them ride in the front seat with no car seat ) with me and which one had to ride in the backseat--child #1 was born on an even date and child #2 was born on an odd date, so #1 rode in the front seat on even days and #2 rode in the front on odd days.

Back to last night...we got there to pick up granddaughter #1 and all of them were in a good mood although they all said they wanted to go to. We promised them we would take them today and tomorrow. So we did our little bike ride, picked some flowers, caught some bugs, and then went to eat at #1's choice: Fazoli's. (Did I forget to mention we washed our hands first?) She was a little on the fidgety side at first, not knowing what to do with herself without her sister, but was also eating up the two-on-one time, chatting away, cuddling with Grandpa, and playing with her food. You would have thought we were at a fine dining restaurant with seven courses--we were there for over an hour and a half! Grandpa and I just kept looking at each other smiling, glad that we had taken the steps to spend some quality time with her. She also wanted to go get ice cream at a place in an adjoining town where her other grandparents live. As it so happened her parents and siblings were there visiting so I asked her if she would like to have them join us, which she smiled big time and shook her head yes. So after a phone call, we all met there and as soon as she saw her twin, they were in each other's arms hugging and dancing away. You would have thought they hadn't seen each other in weeks instead of 3 1/2 hours.

I meant to take my camera and can't believe I forgot it. Going to take granddaughter #2 today, but since I didn't take my camera yesterday, I can't do it today--got to keep it fair.

Squirmy Worm

This layout is in honor of Cailey's dead pet worm. The journaling reads "One day at school Mia found a worm and gave it to Cailey. Cailey put it in her coat pocket, where it stayed during the school day. When s he came home the worm was dead. She then made the dead worm a nice home in her but catcher.

"She loves to catch bugs and worms. While at Living History Farms her friend picks up this worm. I wouldn't let them keep it. As a compromise, I promised to take a picture of it."

I used Kim Hill's Girly Bugs kit, that my daughter and her family gave me for Mother's Day. I love the jar. I can think of lots of uses for these jars.

Nikon Family poster

Che-Guevara-Nikon-Family-poster-web, originally uploaded by queenshakenbake.

Saw a great tutorial by Ariadna Wiczling in ScrapGirls.com Newsletter on How to Turn Your Photos Into Pop Art. I played around with a couple pictures of Roger and myself, both with our wonderful Nikon cameras. Scraplifting Andy Warhol's “Che Guevara” poster, I created our own little poster. Wonder if Nikon would be interested in it?

Pella Tulip Festival

Earlier this month we went to Pella with our children and grandchildren to enjoy the Pella Tulip Festival. I've finally gotten around to scrapping a page from this visit, thanks to some scrapbooking kits I received from my daughter and her family for Mother's Day. I used the Girly Bugs Kit from by Kim Hill.

Living History Farms Field trip

dj_LHF-12x12-double, originally uploaded by queenshakenbake.

Last Thursday I went along as a chaperone with my granddaughter's kindergarten class to Living History Farms. I used Pioneer Woman's actions on my photos, and Doreen Stolz's Rustic Fields Kit from http://godigitalscrapbooking.com.

Soccer

2008-May-08_soccer_0392, originally uploaded by queenshakenbake.

I am still amazed the difference a year makes. The girls are right in the mix this year, with smiles on to boot. I shot over 300 pictures during their game. The hard part is choosing which ones to post. I've posted a few more over on flickr. Check them out!