Flowers and our wedding

Here are some more layouts that I've done this week. The jardin one is photos of my mother in law's flowers - so beautiful!




























This layout is from my wedding, a totally unexpected event earlier this year. When I say that people always assume the worst, but it's the marriage part that was unexpected, we had been dating for years :)

It was a small event with only a few friends in attendance - nonetheless, it was totally special and I'll remember it always.

TFL and have a wondrous week!

Finally posting some LOs!

I have been ordering ScrapMuse kits (the older ones anyway) for awhile, since December at least. And these LOs are all from the July 2005 "Peachy Keen" kit - I LOVE IT.

This is LOKI, my mother-in-law's cat. He's totally adorable, about half the size of my two and totally a ball of fire! He is also the resident squirrel/vole/snake killer, which makes Julie very happy.








The 2nd layout is a 2 pager, about the day that Ben and I spent biking on the Silver Comet Trail - it was so much fun! And I totally loved using these fun, bright colors - kind of different for me!

New glasses and funny faces

These are my new spectacles -I think they rock, although this self-portrait leaves a lot to be desired. This was taken down by the Columbia River a couple weeks ago with Mina...

















My husband thinks he's funny - which is true most of the time, actually - he keeps me laughing, which is such a good combination for us. I am the practical one, he's the one who'll sell our house for a plate of "magic beans" - or at least, I keep teasing him about it. 

Lush stuff

A couple of friends back in ATL turned me onto this store - they learned of it from a friend in England who's in love with their stuff.

They urged me to go to the store and report back, as there's one in Portland, and I must say the first time I went I was totally overwhelmed.

I went back last week to buy something for one of my ATL friends and ship it to them (seems to be faster that way than ordering on the website), and the store manager talked me into some facial toner and moisturizer. She also gave me samples of an exfoliating scrub and a heavier 'nighttime' moisturizer. Now, the stuff is expensive (43$ for 45 g of product!) and it smells weird, the moisturizer smells awful, and the salt scrub smells like margaritas, which is weird on your face, but holy cow do they work! And I think they're going to last awhile, so that's good! 

Along the Columbia

Mina and I decided to take a walk one afternoon along the Columbia River - she loved it, but I was a little afraid she was going to chase after the gulls on the water and go in without thinking. She probably can swim, but I couldn't have pulled her back to the bank!

It was very windy that day, but we had fun. Now that it's warm all the time, we'll go again! 

Straw stealer

Ah yes, fond memories of drinking margaritas. I joined this scrapbooking swap, of sorts, where we made a layout of our favorite mixed drink recipe - mine of course being, the margarita, and we made enough copies for everyone in the swap. Then we all mailed them to the coordinator and she mailed us back one of each, which was fun. As I expected, several people dropped out or were 2 months late on theirs, so I don't know if I'll do swaps all that often, but it was fun to make them. We did 8x8 layouts...

Anyway, one of the pics was supposed to be us drinking our drinks, and I thought this was cute. Although Mina really only has water. And she didn't really *get* the whole drinking from a cup thing. All she wanted was the straw... 

My drama queen

Not to be accused of favoring my dog, this is my first pet, Cutlass. He's an orange tabby we rescued the night before I graduated from college in 2001.
He is one of the most beautiful cats I've ever seen, but he knows it. While he's very prissy and whiny, he's also incredibly smart - he knows sit and shake, and we taught him how to use a human toilet. But that's a different story. 

My grandmother

This, albeit a rather blurry photo, is my grandmother. I have no idea when this was taken - probably early 1940s but I just love the look on her face. In particular, the look in her eyes. You just know she's up to something.

It's interesting also because this photo shows a side of my grandma that I rarely see. And it's not just because I live far away now. I guess that's because people change, in particular women, who feel like they have to mask the fun sides of themselves to be "responsible" or "adult"....I'm sure it also has a bit to do with going through hardships and such too.

I like remembering my grandma can be mischevious.

I heart Google

I read an article awhile back (from Ali Edwards I believe http://aliedwards.typepad.com) on cool software products and one of the ones mentioned was Picasa. It's a free software product owned by Google and man it is COOL. Plus - you can post to your blog straight from there and also to your photo printer from there (like if you use Shutterfly or something like that). So freakin' neat.

Anyway, have a great day!

Best friends

This is Mina's best friend in the world, Piper. Mina really misses her I think. I wish there were a way for dogs to travel as easily as humans so that they could actually visit each other. 

He's a giant chicken - a chicken I tell you!

This is one of my many favorite pics of our dog. We dressed her up as a chicken last Halloween and we were totally surprised to discover, she LOVED her costume. Every time we would put it away she would go and find it and get it back out. 

So I've not yet gotten the hang of this whole blogging thing - posting every day and what not. But I'll give it a try - who knows - I might have a lot of fun - it certainly seems like there's a lot of people out there who enjoy blogging (and reading other people's blogs).

There are several key, crazy things going on in my world right now. 1) I just quit my job in South Carolina to take a better one in Atlanta. I'm so happy to be coming back to 'Hotlanta' - I love this place, as smoggy and full of traffic as it is. And I'll be back in technology, working with SQL which is what I love best, so that's good too. I'm also glad not to be working in manufacturing anymore. But my commute to this new job was going to be like 45 miles because I still owned a house outside the city. And now it seems that I have an offer on the house! Kind of a lucky break, I think - although the offer is only verbal at this point. I'm REALLY hoping they get me some kind of paperwork soon to sign so that it becomes binding. Or that the other couple who's interested will move on it and make me an offer. Now that I have had the chance to actually consider living in the city, I really want to sell that place!