Yesterday and Today

Happy New Year! Yes, I know I am a week late!  December was a whirlwind, between the end of the semester, the holidays, and a fun trip to California to visit my brother and his family.  Lucky for me, spring semester classes don't start until January 24th, so I still have two weeks to do as I please!

I'm currently taking Ali Edwards' "Yesterday and Today" class at Big Picture Classes. The assignment this week was to scan some "yesterday" photos and combine them with some "today" photos to create a title page for the album we are making.  Ali provided the design for the page, and here is what I came up with:

I'm really happy with the results. I need to remember to use enlarged photos on my layouts more often...I love the impact they have! The photos along the side are: 1) my mom and I as a newborn; 2) me as a toddler; 3) me at my high school graduation; 4) my husband and I this summer; 5) my niece and I over Christmas.  The large picture is from 1974, sitting on my dad's tractor in our front yard in Massachusetts.  I am thankful that my dad is/was a photography buff, so I have lots of pictures from my childhood...now I just need to scan all of them!

Coming soon...the results of my first ever December Daily album and photos I've been taking for Tracey Clark's "Picture Winter" Class, also at BPC.

Thanksgiving Recap

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I had a nice, quiet, food-filled day at home with my husband and my parents.

We got our turkey from a local turkey farm, Gozzi's.  Every year they draw a crowd of spectators with their "decorated" turkeys out front!

 We started off our food fest with these yummy appetizers: turkey and bacon "cupcakes" with tabasco cream cheese frosting and shrimp stuffed mushrooms:

The sideboard in the dining room was all prepped for buffet style eating in advance of the meal, using Patrick's grandmother's china:

Patrick was very proud of his smoked turkey.  (He's smiling despite the fact that my New England Patriots beat his Detroit Lions earlier in the day!)

Don't let the charred outside fool you...inside it was tender and juicy!

Mom and Dad serve themselves with all the fixings!

Garlic mashed potatoes:

Memere's French Canadian meat stuffing:

Roasted carrots, squash, and sweet potatoes:

Green beans:

Cranberry orange relish:

Forgot to take a picture of the pumpkin pie and applecake, but they were delicious!  Guess what we'll be having for dinner tonight?  Yay for leftovers!

Blog Neglect!

It certainly has been challenging to find time to scrapbook and keep this blog updated now that school is in full swing! During the week, it's nearly impossible for me to complete any layouts, since I leave for work at 6 am and don't return home til 6:30 pm.  The downside of a 77 mile commute!!  Thank goodness I only have to do this 8 months out of the year! I have been managing to get one or two layouts done each weekend, but haven't been posting them here. Without further adieu, here are some of my recent creations, inpsired by May Flaum's Use Your Stash Class at Big Picture Classes as well as challenges over at Scrapbook Central on iVillage.

Star Wars Fever: This LO feautres my niece Elena enjoying some new and old Star Wars toys on Christmas Day. I used some newer Echo Park paper and stickers, along with some older buttons & journaling spot.

Emily: For this next one, I pulled out by 2001 storage binder and came across these pictures of my best friend's daughter's birth. Dug deep into my stash of patterned paper here, using some old EK Success papers. Also broke out some Quickutz dies and a border bunch.

Visiting Jimi: I am really happy with how this one turned out! I layered some older coordinating My Mind's Eye paper, Thickers, and grungeboard flourishes that I inked up with distress ink.

Greetings from Camp: Finally, this 2-page spread features my nieces on a camping trip last year. Used some Cosmo Cricket paper that I won at a crop a while back.

Thanks for looking!