good monday morning to ya *edited cuz I didn't before*

I got goosebumps over and over as I watched the announcement detailing that President Thomas S. Monson is our new prophet, and that he has called President Eyring as his first counselor and President Uchtdorf as his second counselor.

For those who have asked, no, Danny does not now need to go find a job. He's worked for Southwest Ambulance for almost 2 years and will just move up from EMT to Paramedic. It was Southwest's academy via Paradise Valley Community College that he just completed, completely sponsored by them as well. Now, he just needs to get to some paperwork issues--getting his cert card/number to and from the right people at Dept. of Health Services and his own H.R. and other mumbo jumbo. We have a 4 day long vacation planned the end of February to celebrate our 10 yr anniversary (we're going to Disneyland without the kids! Shhh, don't tell them!) so he's kinda worried that starting his new shift/position now might mess that up. Hope not! He will likely be working on the east side (boo) on their ABC-Kelly shift (double boo) but I'll be sure to update here when we find out.

Now, for something completely different.

This weekend at The Nook, I participated in their Virtual Crop. It's basically a setup of 40 challenges, games, trivia, prize packs, etc given to scrappers who participate, contribute, and complete layouts, cards, etc over this specific weekend--all done from home of course. I got to about half of the challenges. Today, awards will be given for Queen of the Crop and random drawings as well. Last time I won a particpation prize for one of the challenges. I completed 16 layouts and 10 cards during the weekend, starting Friday! Wowza! I am scrap-xhausted!

Wanna see what I did?

Wanna?

Say please...

OK, ok, nobody likes a beggar. ;)

Here ya go.


This first one was a red and pink challenge and had to say LOVE somewhere on it. I fudged it a bit and only used pink on the journal strip--technically a dusty mauve that I inked brown. But I loved this color scheme too much to muck it up with pink.


On this side view, you can see that I used my coluzzle to do knifework on the flowers, popping them out to make them stand out more. I love this technique--I wish I was brave enough to do it more often.


This was a scraplift challenge--I took a layout I liked from someone else and lifted my favorite elements from it.


Here we have a challenge to picture something about our shoes on our layout. These are my favorite $2 yardsale shoes that I wear every chance I get. =)


The challenge on this one was to scrap about who or what inspires us. I used this picture from our weekend getaway crop in Prescott last October.


This challenge was to use several layers.


On this layout, we were to use 5 of anything we used--so I have 5 chipboard hearts, 5 buttons, and 5 journal strips.


Here, the challenge was to have hidden journaling somewhere. Mine is behind my photo.


For this challenge, we had to include a clock and the word TIME.


This one required us to use several copies of one photo. I love this technique and this is one of my favorite layouts from the weekend!


Here we were to use wallet-sized photos. I printed a bunch of them and just had fun with it.


The challenge here was to use three photos, bling, brads, and one other kind of embellishment (I used flowers). This is another photo taken at the Scrappy retreat in Prescott in October.


This layout was to display different ways to spice up chipboard. On the chipboard flower, I covered it with patterned paper, stamped it with white pigment ink, then added buttons. (It says Creativity--kinda hard to read in this picture)


This last one was a challenge to use paint on bubble wrap (a big trend right now). I didn't have any, so I used my son's legos. =) Kinda fun!

Here are several cards I made--some having to do with different challenges and so forth, but I won't bore you with the details.













Lastly, I just wanted to mention that in doing this crop, I finished the our Accident layouts album. I feel good about it. Thanks for your support and encouragement on that project!