I am leaving for San Diego tomorrow to visit my friend Lori. Lori is amazing and I miss her so much and I’m so glad we get together once a year to get caught up on life and just chill. Seriously, total girl weekend with massages and everything. And maybe a little dancing. We’ll see. We’re usually up to no good when we break out the bottle of tequila. See ya!

So its Tuesday evening and I am really not feeling well. I’m not sure if I caught whatever Isabella has or if its something else. I’m tired, worn out, achy, but no sinus symptoms so its not allergies like I thought. Scott thinks I am low on iron so he’s going to make me eat red meat and spinach for dinner.

Meanwhile, despite feeling like crap, I managed to make another digital layout. Well, geez, it was either that or laundry and ya know, that’s just not even a fair fight.

This is another layout using some of this week’s techniques from Digi In Deep at Jessica Sprague. Loving these classes. So quick and easy to get a layout done. And can I say cheaper? But I still love playing with paper and making other layouts so this is still a work in progress on what will be what in my little craft world.

Ciao for now, if anyone is reading.

Started today. Here’s my first layout.

Wow. So much to learn. This was a lot but I got through it. Now I have to go back and do everything again so I can remember what the hell I did. Seriously. Lots of masking and other stuff I already forgot. Its a teensy too frou-frou for me, if that’s a word. Too swirly, too frilly. But the techniques were very cool so I’m going to try to do the second project with a little more of my own style and see what happens. I’m also running out of photos. Okay, not really, but I need some new recent ones so that I am excited about the subject. However, vintage sounds kinda fun. Hmmm…. on that note, I’m off to get some sleep. Isabella is better, she had the croup, but she’s at camp now getting all of her bunkmates sick (just kidding) and now I don’t feel good here at home. Figures. That’s what I get for writing a blog post about being glad to leave home. She ended up in the emergency room while I was gone, how bad did I feel? Seriously bad. But Scott is an awesome dad of course so he had everything under control and by the time I got home on Saturday she was feeling much better.

Goodnight all.

Seriously. The house smells like paint and stain. The bedroom is looking fabulous but man, it smells really bad. Isabella has a cold. I took her and had a strep test because she leaves for camp on Sunday for 12 days and oh. my. god. if she had to cancel, I would have a major drama on my hands. So she doesn’t have strep, its just a viral infection. Of course, that means we’re stuck with OTC meds and have to just hope she feels better by Sunday. Oh. And I’m leaving with Mom to a client conference tomorrow morning at 6am. In Portland. It should be a really nice conference – dinner cruise, beer fest, okay, that doesn’t much sound like work, does it? Did I mention the all-day seminars and roundtable discussions about foreclosures and outsourcing models? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Yawn. But hey, its a day job and it buys lots of patterned paper and cardstock and stamps and buttons. So I’ll be back on Saturday and will have major crafting withdrawal. But Mom bought a great looking laptop bag for the new laptop, too bad it’s a “working” laptop and doesn’t have PSE on it. Might have to fix that before it leaves town with me again… LOL. Good night Gracie.

Summer is half over. We have four weeks until school starts. Oh. my. god. Only four weeks. Dare I say… HALLELUJAH!!! Okay, it has not been that bad, but I will be ready for us to get back to our routines. We like routines. We all do better when everything runs like it is supposed to run Monday through Friday and everyone knows where they are supposed to be. Like school. Ah, but then we won’t have many days like the one in this layout either.

This design came from Jessica Sprague, in a mini-class on journaling strips. This was a fun layout. I switched all the papers after I finished the layout because the class papers didn’t go with my summer photos, although they are gorgeous for future use. I’m using products from LivEdesigns, Michelle Underwood, Michelle Coleman, Meredith Fenwick and Jessica Sprague. Some have been recolored. And a cool free font from www.dafont.com.