Doohickeywhatchamacallit

Do you ever find yourself searching for just the right words to describe something but invariably come up blank?  Well, I just happen to be good friends with the QUEEN of this phenomenon, and the scary part is that I always know exactly what she's trying to say!  Even if nobody else has a clue what she's talking about, I know precisely what she means, and vice versa.

I first "met" June several years ago on a scrapbooking message board (before Scrapadilly), and our connection was immediate. We're so much alike it's eerie, so she & I have come to the conclusion that we are actually twins who were separated at birth (or shortly thereafter).  I have this picture of Momma with Andy & Jann where she's holding two little babies - one of them is me, but I never received a satisfactory explanation as to who that other "mystery" kid is, and now I'm convinced it's none other than Junebug!

Somehow she made her way to Ohio, and it took us half a century to hook back up :-)  Meanwhile, her new parents even changed her birthday, because mine is in December & hers is tomorrow!  Since I've been my normal non-productive self and failed to get a card sent, I decided I'd post a couple of layouts to celebrate her big day.

Remember that weekend when it was Dave's & my 40th Anniversary and I abandoned him to go see friends in Oklahoma City?  Well, Junebug was one of the people I was going to meet.  We had such a fantastic time - shopping & eating, napping in the middle of the day, and laughing ourselves silly . . . it was nearly impossible to believe that it was the first time I had ever met her or Drea or Jo in real life!  Unfortunately, hardly any of the pictures we got that weekend turned out well - but I just had to do a layout using them anyway.  Since the quality was so poor, I tweaked the pictures to look kind of like cartoon drawings and made a comic strip out of them.  The reason I titled it "Joe's Gals" is because June hadn't been in town an hour when she was getting kissed by a complete stranger at the sandwich shop where we stopped for lunch, and we named the stranger Joe.

Click to enlarge.  Dialog boxes & alpha by Ana Reis (Two Little Pixels)

And this is the layout I made for June expressly for her birthday . . . the title is pretty indicative of how she communicates when she's at a loss for words.  

Click to enlarge.  For full credits, please see my Flickr Gallery (link in sidebar)

HAPPY DOOHICKEYWHATCHAMACALLIT, JUNEBUG!!

Slumber Party at Scrapadilly

Well, with CIS Summer Program going on, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to dedicate to scrapping, but I'm sure looking forward to the upcoming crop at Scrapadilly.

This month, we're having an 8 day Slumber Party (beginning on Friday - WOO HOO!), and I can't wait to see what challenges Drea comes up with this time around.  She never ceases to amaze me with her creativity, and I invariably have a hard time choosing which ones I'm going to do.  Since I'm such a slow scrapper I never get them all done, but it's always fun trying :-)

Here are a few of the layouts I did last month (Click to enlarge. Credits for all can be found in my Flickr Gallery):

The yummy house where John & Liz & Amanda stayed when we were in Arkansas:

Andy's boundless energy:

Wildflowers along the highway between Oklahoma City & Dallas:

And Marek "driving":

Fire in the Hole!

I never thought of that as a phrase I'd find popping into my mind repeatedly, like some commercial ditty you get stuck in your head & can't get rid of. But that was before Jann got me hooked on the FX series "Justified", which - much to my dismay - ended its first season tonight.

I'm pretty sure I've never been captivated so quickly by a t.v. show before, and I can't really tell you why it grabbed me so fast.  It's actually based on a short story by Elmore Leonard called, appropriately enough, "Fire in the Hole."  The show's pretty dark in many respects, but it's also funny, fast-paced, and extremely well-acted . . . and I am in LOVE with it!  Kind of like I'm in love with U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and even begrudgingly with white-supremacist-turned-man-of-the-cloth Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).  They are arch enemies and about as different as can be, yet they have an awful lot in common (most notably their ass-hole fathers), and IMHO the scenes they do together are mesmerizing.

There are plenty of other colorful characters populating the rural Kentucky landscape in this series, but the out-and-out stars of the show are Olyphant & Goggins.  No surprise on the Marshall (although he just keeps getting hotter & hotter each week).  But I doubt anyone suspected early on how compelling a character Boyd would become (for anyone who hasn't seen the show, he just happens to have hollered "Fire In The Hole!" more than once this season and got it stuck firmly in my head.)  I'm certainly no expert on acting, but I absolutely believe that Goggins should win an Emmy for this series.  Actually, there's a whole host of writers and actors who deserve awards for the show, but if Goggins doesn't get one, I think maybe Boyd Crowder should pay a little visit to Hollywood & take his rocket launcher with him!

Happy Birthday, Jay!

Well, I'm running really far behind this morning . . . headed out to the Great American Scrapbook Convention with Milli - to see if I can find another way to spend some of Dave's hard-earned money.

Meanwhile, it's Jay's birthday & I wanted to take just a minute to remind everyone and to post this layout I did for him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAYBIRD!  Hope you have an absolutely fantastic day . . .

Click to enlarge. (All elements from "Celebrate" by Elise Hansen at The Digichick)

Happy Memorial Day!

While most of us are all cozy & warm in our beds this morning, Amanda's friends are in Austin getting ready to start their triathlon.  They've been training for such a long time, and I know they're all excited (and a wee bit anxious) about how they'll do both individually and as a team.  Once again, here's a picture of the team, Good Ass Fried Chicken.  Please don't anybody bother to ask me how they came up with that name, because I do not know!  I can only conjecture that they ate some really good fried chicken one day & decided that would be a good team name.  I truthfully have no idea, but maybe Amanda will fill me in when she gets back in town.  As some of you may recall, she's the team's No. 1 athletic supporter - so she's in Austin as Jockstrap LBS, cheering her team on to victory.  Regardless of how GAFC places in the race, I'm extremely proud of all of them for the time and effort they've put into preparing for this event and helping raise money for the LLS.

As much as I admire them, the REAL reason for this holiday shouldn't be lost on any of us who live in this wonderful country of ours.  It may be flawed here and there, but it's still the greatest nation on earth - and hundreds of thousands have fought and died to keep it that way.  We owe it to them to take at least a few minutes today to pause and think about the sacrifices they made to preserve our freedom.  And while we're at it, I think we should also stop & say a little prayer for all the military personnel who are currently serving in combat.  Even if you disagree with the political reasoning behind their deployment, these men & women are performing their duty - and the very least we can do to repay them is to remember them in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, 

Please hold our troops in your loving hands.
Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform in service to our nation. 

In Christ's name we pray.  Amen.

If You Don't Believe Me . . .

When I was a kid, it seems like the last day of school was nearly always May 27th. I don't remember that as much for the fact that summer was starting as I do because it was Joe's birthday.  It was always a day of celebration, and it's still hard for me to realize sometimes that kids nowadays go to school all the way into June!  A lot of years have passed since I could even remotely be considered a kid, and I have a tendency to forget a lot of things these days.  But I guess May 27th is forever etched on my memory, because I actually remembered a birthday on time for a change!

It's a shame that we can't all be together to celebrate the occasion like we did in the old days - but there's a new generation of Muterspaugh kiddos running around the Wichita Falls area these days who IDOLIZE their DooDad, and I know that he will be treated with the appropriate amount of hoopla.  I was lucky enough to be in town last year for his birthday cookout, and I don't have the words to tell you how heart-warming it was to witness Joe surrounded by his amazingly wonderful family.

I have to admit that there have been times over the years when I could never have envisioned Joe as he is today - most notably, when we lived on Polk & he hung around with Jackie Cameron.  Now, except for Joe and (perhaps) his grandmother, nobody really cared much for Jackie.  In his defense, he had a really crappy home life, but that didn't change the fact that you couldn't believe a single word that came out of his mouth.  Well sure enough, Joe picked up the habit & started coming home with all sorts of wild tales - some were true, of course, but it was difficult to believe him a lot of the time.  If challenged on the "facts", his response was invariably "Well, if you don't believe me, just ask Jackie."  (And of course, we always jumped right on that!)

But time has a way of changing us all, and that was many long years ago.  Who'da  thunk way back then when he was telling us all about quackless ducks (actually true) and other implausible stories, that one day Joe would become the quintessential family patriarch?  Certainly not I, but that's exactly what he is . . . and I guarantee I'm not alone in that opinion.  Heck, if you don't believe me, you could always just ask Jackie!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOE!!  In honor of your big day, I did a layout about another one of your "eccentricities" when you were a kid.  I love you sooooo much and hope you're having a FANTASTIC birthday . . . xoxoxo

Click to enlarge.  (for credits, please see my Flickr gallery - link in sidebar)

I Have a Confession . . .

I'm a thief.

Even worse, I steal from people I love.

I'm sure there's some fancy-dancy cyber term for what I do, but essentially I'm an internet photo thief. You see, I go to Amie's blog and Kelly's, Amanda's, and Erin's Facebook albums - and I take their pictures! If any of the rest of you had pictures for me to steal, I would probably burglarize you as well.

Sure - occasionally, I acquire my treasures by legitimate means. Stephen and Jann are pretty good about sending me pics of our little miracle baby, like the one in the layout below of Stephen & Marek at the kitchen sink. Then, of course, there are my all-too-infrequent visits where I actually take my own photos (what a concept!). But mostly I just have to rely on my pilfering skills.

A few days ago, Amie posted school pictures of the girls. Besides the fact that they're pics of three of my FAVORITE little girls, they're excellent photos. (I know that most of you don't need me to tell you that they did NOT take school pictures like this back in the day.) In any case, I just couldn't help myself - I took those suckers and turned them into a layout for a challenge at Scrapadilly.

Bottom line, if I know the pictures are out there, I'm gonna grab 'em. So if you don't want me snarfing them up to drool over and use in my scrapping projects, just don't ever tell me where I can access them. It's as simple as that.

(for layout credits, please see my Flickr gallery - link in sidebar)