Squeezing in

I'm not sure how we doubled our living space, yet still can't fit my whole clan in our dining room. Minus two of my siblings and a new SIL, even. Oh wait,

One seven-foot Christmas tree

One six-foot-five nephew

One high chair shoved in a corner

One obscenely giant pile of presents

...and a partridge in a pear tree.

At least I got to crop for 13 hours yesterday...roughly 11a to 11:30p. I finished the cover art for Ben's Favorite Photos album, the first circle journal for Creative Escape (two 8"x8" pages on My Town), two two-page layouts for Ben's First Year album, and our Thanksgiving layout (another 2-pager).

One of my gifts for Christmas was a gift certificate for Shutterfly, with which I promptly bought one of their Most Excellent pre-paid plans (500 4"x6" photos for 12 cents each, expires in 2 years but I've already ordered 50 photos and I'm not nearly done with my 2007 photos/pages yet).

Good thing I signed up for Lain's FREE class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. That will help me finish up 2007.

For Kids Young and Old

I love it. The NORADsanta.org site jams up around midnight, after all of us adults get home from candlelight service and the kids are finally asleep. Or maybe not.



Man! That big guy is really on the move ;)

Visitors and cookies

Sorry to have been quiet for so long (like that's never happened before)!

My folks have been visiting for exactly a week; they leave for home (4 hours north) tomorrow, but are coming back Monday night. Not sure of the duration of their next stay, but as long as my mom keeps making Christmas cookie favorites, I'll be okay with it. The free babysitting is just a perk.

My dad, remarkably, survived pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in late 2000. He had a full round of chemo and radiation back then, and was declared cancer-free for 5 years just a while back.

His doctors don't think it is cancer now (fingers crossed), but he hasn't been able to eat or drink anything without pain for over 2 weeks now.

He's on what we joking refer to as the "feed bag" overnight; he became so grumpy on Wednesday that we "forced" him to eat something; the stomach pain soon returned and he had a procedure this morning that forbade him eating, so he's back on the bag.

Anyway, they NEED to go home for a couple of days, mom is involved in a charity raffle and she has to get tickets organized; they've also been washing and wearing the same clothes for two weeks now. Dad was first admitted to the hospital in Saginaw where his internist practices; that doctor has released him to care at an Ann Arbor hospital, thus the extended stay Chez Denise & Co.

Despite the free babysitting (or perhaps because of it), I'm exhausted. It's hard to cook for people when you know someone in the house is starving for a good meal, yet can't eat it.


Needless to say, I'm quite relieved I decided a while ago to send out (gasp!) ordinary store-bought holiday cards. Adding "create card masterpiece to send out to 60+ mailing list" would have meant no holiday cards this year. "Just Moved" postcards were enough this year.

Found!

1. My iPod*
2. My quilting books**
3. Our two red boxes of Christmas ornaments***

*I went back to the coffee house where I last remember taking it and posted a note (I need to go back and take that down), then remembered that was one of the last warm days we had, looked in the pocket of my warm-weather jacket, and there it was. Whew.

**They were stored vertically, so I didn't spot them the 6 or so times I looked in that box (E discovered them).

***Irreplaceable, so and even bigger WHEW than #1.

Disco Fever

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!Waaaay too much fun.

FInally, a new layout

I don't know why it's taken me so long to FINISH something; oh, yes, (A) very few Friday night crops in the last month, my 5-hour stretch to get stuff DONE and (B) been hard at work finishing an 8x8 mini-album of favorite photos from Ben's first year (still have to do the journaling on that one before it's ready for its close-up).

Becky Higgins has been a real inspiration of late; this layout is one of her sketches, and the First Year Favorites album was totally her schematic (scroll down to near the end of that entry and you'll get a taste of what Ben's album looks like. Very, very, VERY similar...).

You know, I was just kicking away toys after I put the kids to bed, and I had the funniest recollection. I was remembering a manuscript that came in to the publishing house where I used to work. It was cute, all about a kid who imagined his parents playing with his toys after he went to bed. Not sure why we didn't publish it...oh yeah, a senior editor with serious procrastination issues, and the story probably had a flat ending (the fate of many of the unsolicited manuscripts we received).

Not long after we turned the manuscript down, I saw an episode of Growing Pains (remember when they brought a little kid into the show, long after it had jumped the shark, to try and improve ratings?!) where the young boy goes to bed and imagines the older Seavers...playing with his toys.

Nothing new on the earth, I'm telling ya.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Make a slide show, scrapbook, or ecard

There's FIVE pages to this; it freezes up my computer every time. If you're patient, you should (eventually) get a play arrow to move around the "layouts."

At least the music is pretty.