The storm that left us in the dark

 *Irene 2011, view from my front door*

Well we weathered the storm, it was a rather calm storm in some ways.  However there are tons of down trees, no power still(since 8 am Sunday Morning and it is now 11:34 am Monday) my train service is not running, street lights are out causing crazy driving and well we had a bit of a cop car chase/shooting last night in our neighborhood.  Joy!!!  I am currently at a sort of local Starbucks, it is quite busy here with people just wanting  to plug in.  I got my fill and will be on my way home in just a bit but before I go, I wanted to share a layout I did during a power outage. If you could have only seen the silly head lamp I wore while making it, haha.  Well here is to hoping to electric and normal routine once again, soon!

This layout was done for the Elle's weekly sketch challenge.  I have so many photobooth pictures that we take, I just have to start using them for pages.  This one was taken in San Francisco at the Mechanical Museum.  If you ever get out that way, be sure to check that place out. Its a really neat place full of old carnival games, also they have a vintage photo booth in which I took this picture.

Ok I am off to see if our electric is back on.  High hopes!

Did you feel that??

So first off  I wanted to start off by saying that there are states and even countries that experience far worse events caused by nature then what we felt today.  To tell you the truth it was not a scary event but it is something that I will never forget.  While out to lunch today with Will we were sitting in our local Friendly's which was packed to the gills with families eating  lunch.  It was probably the worst timing for us to have gone there, our meals were taken forever and the noise, oh the noise.  At around 1:45ish or so I started to hear this thumping and my booth seat started to move quite a bit.  I of course assumed that it was the person behind me just being rude and moving a heck of a lot but then I saw that the whole place was swaying.  I looked at Will and he looked at me in a sort of confusion.  Then we looked around and noticed that some of the people were questioning what had just happened as well.  Yup it was an earthquake and compared to the disasters that have happened in Chile and Japan, this was nothing but for an east coaster like me it made me a tad uneasy and a bit concerned if something bigger had happened perhaps in the city or in another state.  Luckily it was a minor earthquake located in VA, and nothing happened after that one earth moving  moment that lasted  thirty seconds or so. 

And there you have it, my major event of the week!  Hope all is well:)

This weekend.

This weekend I tackled the large, enormous pile of unorganized chaos in our spare room.  It had become my throw all in between coming and going.  There was luggage galore, piles of stuff I wanted to give away(which found its way to the church thrift store today) new scrap booking stuff I had purchased this summer(which totally got used last night) and just lots of odd and ends including some items that need to be shipped(which I dipped into yesterday) I can proudly say that yes you can now walk through that room and I can access things so much better then before.  After all was said and done, I sat down and scrap booked.  

Last weekend Shimelle Laine had a scrap booking event all weekend on her blog, I however was upstate and was unable to play along.  She left the challenges up till midnight last night, so I choose three and finished three layouts with some spring/summer photos that have been laying around.

The first challenge that caught my eye was the "grid it up" challenge.  With a grid plan you can do anything.  You can use different small photos to create your grid, or like I did just small pieces of paper and embellishments!

This was a picture from this past May when I visited the Brooklyn Botanical gardens with Kara Haupt and Amy Tan.  I had never been  there before and have always wanted to go.  It was my last outing with Kara before she went back home and Amy had been visiting from CA so it worked out perfectly.  If you are ever in NY(Brooklyn) be sure  to check this place out. It is quite relaxing and beautiful, and there are a heck of a lot of photo opportunities!

Next up I wanted to do the "from the heart" challenge.  I decided to use tiny pictures of me and my boyfriend, and ones of just me or him.  In the past Studio Calico kit I received some of the Sassafras "sunshine broadcast" paper which is probably one of my favorites by them.  I loved that instagram sort of paper, its perfect for a background piece and it just makes everything look good.  

I do heart us, we are definitely two peas in a pod.  We always have tons of inside jokes, silly dances and voices, we enjoy the same music and some of the same movies.  I would say that we make a good pair.  I like how this one turned out, I used a dollar stamp from Michaels to stamp those frames which I then stuck  the pictures into.  Very easy, very simple but cute!

And last but not least I tried out the "starting point" challenge.  This is out of the norm for me, all that patterned paper, no regular white cardstock or kraft background.  I am not quite sure how I felt about it all, but I like how it turned out.

This past August 2nd(not July, I messed up on the date on  the layout) We finally got to see Sufjan Stevens in concert in Brooklyn.  Me and Will have been fan's of his for years, but whenever his tickets go on sale they sell out super fast.  My friend Sara who is also a fan of his was on top of those tickets as soon as the presale was released and well we finally got  them.  To say Sara is over the moon with him is an understatement, so as you can expect she was beyond excited(as were we)  I loved this picture I snapped of her at the show which was held outdoors.  It was a really nice night of good music and good people!

Well lookey, lookey.

Nope I have not fallen off the face of the planet. I have been caught up and lost in summer going ons. Trips galore, concerts, and work away from home. I have been a busy bee I guess you would say. I hope to eventually jump back into the swing of things, update my blog more often because I truly do miss it.

For starters I have my Creative Type August layout to share. I am posting this a tad early on my blog because A) I will most likely forget to post it when it goes live on The Creative Type blog and B) this was also a sketch from Shimelle Lane's blog for this week and I wanted to share it before they move on to another sketch.

The Creative Type's August challenge was scrap your Summer Vacation(perfect seeing how I have been so caught up in Summer this year) We also had to incorporate paint or mist into our piece which is easy for me because I use water color in each layout I create. 

For the 4th of July weekend me and Will headed up to Old Sayerbrook CT to celebrate with some friends.  We had a great time.  One evening we took a trip to Mohican Sun which I had never been to. It was like Disney land for adults pretty much:)  This was one of many picture me and Will took at Johnny Rockets, we are known for our silly face pictures. Now to get to scrapping  the rest of our Summer vacation adventures.