What a day!

Did you watch the news today and see that we got hammered with snow? It's not a joke! I had 15" of fresh powder on top of the jacuzzi about 5 pm. What the camera didn't pick up were the gadzillion tiny flakes coming down.....and it's still coming down tonight!  The airport and all the major roads have been shut down....even the malls (gasp)!!!



I skyped Kerry and showed him what's going on here. He decided to cancel his flight home tomorrow and I don't really blame him. He'll be coming in Monday now. So that means the "cat's" away a little bit longer.....and this mouse is gonna play a little harder!

Now, with 15" of the white stuff on the ground....and our little chihuahuas are not even 8" tall (the little one is not even 5" tall), there is no way they were even going to attempt to step out the back door. OK - I couldn't even get the screen door to open out.....that's how heavy this snow is! So the pups and I are bound to get cabin fever in a couple of days!!!

Sweet Susan emailed and asked if I had enough food (ok, I could walk to the store from here if I really needed to!) and Kathy offered to drive over (which of course I declared she was nuts!) But see, what better family than this? Oh, and Linda and I have been skyping off and on all day long - it's like having her right here. (OK, Linda, be thankful I didn't take a snapshot of you today! LOLOL!!!)

I had these "family" elements left over and decided to turn this into my "creative family".  B&W photos and lots of stuff going on with the background and papers

There are pockets that open up, there are file folders to stick notes down into, there are clocks with spinners on them......


And there are folders that fold down.  Yep, another class.  We're going to be using the color wheel to make our colored paper work with black and white photos.  I'll do a color photo class as well....but I really seem to get a ton of requests for B&W photos....and today was my day to play with them.  And I'm going to teach my students how to take any sentiment.....and "fix" it so they can use it.  Yep, here the word "family" was turned into "my creative family" and I write about how my artistic friends are just as close to me as my family is.

For this layout, I'll again use the color wheel to match scraps for background matting and show how to tell a story no matter what the embellishment says.  This is my dad.  And it says "Family established".  Well - he did establish this family and while he's been gone a number of years now, I still see glimpses of him in each of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  It's like he never left.

Years ago, Jim Croce wrote a song titled "Photographs & Memories".  One of the lines was this:

Photographs and memories

All the love you gave to me

Somehow it just can't be true

That's all I've left of you.

I am so thankful for photographs and memories, for whiteout blizzards, for time to play, for my family and my family of friends, and for Kerry who can entertain me while he's a thousand miles away.