Jamaica Scrapbook Off to a Good Start

This weekend I managed to complete a cover page and 6 spreads in my vacation album. I think that is a record for me...lol. I really like how they turned out, considering it has been a while since I sat down to scrapbook. I guess the new Jamaica pictures provided some motivation. :o)

Here are all the pages I have completed so far. I love how they turned out.

Check out my Slide Show!

I was bored, so I thought I would play dress up with my blog and add some cool new accessories to dress it up a bit. The first is my slide show you see above. I also added all the links to the tasty food blogs I frequent. I also created a widget for my blog which feeds all new posts and added some buttons as well. My blog is pretty boring...I know...so this is a small attempt to liven it up a bit.

I've also added this cool slideshow to the bottom of my blog, but I don't think everyone always scrolls down to the bottom so I thought I'd post about my new blog accessories. Enjoy and let me know what you think. Have a reat weekend!

A Scrapping Weekend

I was able to complete two spreads this weekend and I am pretty happy with how they both turned out. The "Eggs to Dye for" spread took longer than I had hoped because I originally had completely different paper picked out. I just kept starring at it trying to figure out how I would lay everything out. It just wasn't working with the patterned paper I had so I changed to a solid color and all of a sudden things started working out. For the eggs on this spread I actually used MS Word's clip art to print out those easter eggs onto picture paper since I didn't have any easter egg stickers or embelishments.

I love how the "Sunday Brunch" spread turned out. I think the wood paper works well with these photos especially because of the wood burning fire place at this very small place. I also think I sort of captured the feel of sunday brunch on this spread with the polka dot paper and the swirly ribbon. It sort of reminds me of old tablecloth or something.

Book Meme

I was tagged by Deborah with a meme.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 or more pages. The New Optimum Nutrition Bible.

2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence. "Mercury is very toxic indeed and small anounts reach us from contaminated foods and from tooth fillings."

3. Post the next 3 sentences. "Of particular concern is fish caught in contaminated waters. "Mercury is used in a number of chemical processes, and accidents and illegal dumping have led to increases mercury levels in some areas, including the seashores and lakes of the U.S. Fish, especially larger species like tuna, store the mecury, which we then ingest.

4. Then tag 4 people. I really don't have 4 people to tag and I don't want to tag people that have already been tagged.

Happy Easter...Mmmm Banana Cake

This Easter I went over to my sisters for Easter dinner and some Easter fun with the kids. I had alot of fun with my neices and nephews dying the easter eggs. Here we are showing off their works of art.

We also had a scavenger hunt. My sister and I carefully hid the plastic eggs with hersheys kissess and other treats contained inside the eggs all around the house. The kids had so much fun finding the eggs and the winner was jordan who was able to find 25 eggs...he won $5 bucks.

The hunt is On! Find as many eggs as you can...

Jason finds some in a bush...

Alicia jumps up to reach the egg on the window sil...

Mia finds one...

Jason gets to one before Jordan...

Everyone Count your Eggs!

Mia 15 Eggs

Alicia Finds 22 eggs

Jason 15 eggs

The winner...Jordan with 25 Eggs

For Easter dinner my sister asked me to make a cake for dessert. I asked her what kind and she said she didn't care, it was up to me. First I thought of making carrot cake, it seemed appropriate for the easter bunnies. Then while speaking to my boyfriend about it he gave me the idea for banana cake. I haven't had banana cake in such a long time and I do have fond memories of the banana cake I made while in camp years ago. I remember having to triple the recipie and do all the math to figure out the correct measurements. So banana cake with cream cheese frosting it was. This cake came out so good. It was extremely moist and oh so delicious. Tastes really good with coffee, tea or a cold glass of milk.

My sister decided to do what I usually do and take pictures of me making the banana cake. I got to use this Kitchen-Aid mixer we borrowed from my sisters neighbor downstairs. I loved using this mixer it made my job much easier. I have wanted one of these mixers since I was a little girl. One day I will get one.

Saturday I went over to Deborah's so she could help me with my Odessa hat problem. Weeks ago I put down this hat because I did something wrong...I don't know what I did but I didn't want to mess it up further so I put it down and had not touched it. Deborah was able to get me back on track and hopefully I will finish this hat soon and post updated pictures. I also started a fingerless glove with Koigu yarn. This is my first glove and I find it a bit difficult working with double pointed needles but otherwise so for so good.

The First Spreads in My 2008 Scrapbook Album

Here are the first entries into my 2008 scrapbook album completed this weekend. The first titled "Snow Day" includes the pictures I took the day we got the first real accumulation of snow in the city. Unfortunately, it was a work day so I took these pictures on my walk into work.

This spread took me so long to complete for some reason, but usually the ones that take some time turn out really well. Iam very happy with the way this turned out. I originally had completely different colors picked out. The color scheme I originally had was brown and white (which I kept) with a dark pink and a light mint green patterned paper. It looked nice although I didn't have enough of the pink paper and the colors weren't really cold snowy type colors so I changed it to this ice blue colored patterned paper from my old world paper pack. All-in-all it turned out well in the end.

The second spread includes the pictures I took on my niece Mia's 3rd birthday. She is getting so big and she is very mature for her age. This is a pretty simple spread. I printed all the pictures the same size and just ran them across the page. Since the Snow Day spread took me so long, I opted for super simple on this spread.

Let it Snow...and Project Updates

I have been wanting to capture some pictures of the winter snow, but since mother nature decided to snow on a workday instead of the weekend, which would have been more convienient for me to trek out to Central Park to take some really nice shots of fresh snow, I decided to capture my walk to work in this morning. So here you go...

In scrapbooking news, I have been working on a 8x8 gift scrapbook album to give to Lenny, that includes pictures of some of the things we did together during our first year together. I had the chance to get about 5 spreads done this past President's weekend. I took advantage of the three day weekend. So here are some pics of the spreads I have done so far.

Here is the album itself. It opens like two doors from the middle and is secured closed by magnets.

Below are all the spreads completed thus far.

Odessa Hat Update. I haven't had much time to knit, otherwise this hat would probably already be complete by now. After finishing the one inch ribbing I began the Odessa hat pattern which is pretty simple. I had a felling I was doing something wrong after after rows. I either had to be doing the yarn over (yo) or the slip, slip, knit (ssk) wrong. I have done both of these before but obviously Im getting old because I forgot what I learned. I found a video online of someone demonstrating how to do both techniques and was able to easily fix my problem without bothering my teacher. So here is where I am so far. I have about an inch and a half to go before I have to start the decreases. Looks good so far and it is a simple pattern despite my short term memory loss...lol.

Oh and here is my valentine's day gift delivered to my job from my sweet valentine.