I copied this from my friend Helen… this was fun and made me think about something, anything else, than real life. And for that, i am thankful. So my paper pack is blues and browns in honor of Helen!

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into FD’s Mosaic Maker.

The Questions and Answers (and none of these photos are mine except #10, the rest are all from Flickr, sorry I didn’t keep the credits, I’m a very bad blogger:
1. What is your first name? Carol and a photo of coffee seemed quite appropriate.
2. What is your favourite food? Chocolate chip cookie dough
3. What high school did you go to? Waltrip High School and yes, that is a photo of our most famous student, Patrick Swayze, before my time
4. What is your favourite colour? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Angelina Jolie, well that woke you up didn’t it?
6. Favorite drink? Tequila with a little salt and lime please
7. Dream vacation? Greece
8. Favorite dessert? Fruit tart
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Happy
10. What do you love most in life? My daughter Isabella
11. One Word to describe you: Goofy
12. Your Flickr name. Well its my name so here’s my logo back at’cha.

So I’ve been busy. And bored. No, bored is the wrong word. I hate it when Isabella says she is bored. To be specific, I’ve been bored with blogging. And busy with other stuff. First of all, no, Scott does not have a job yet. He’s been working his tail off trying to make it happen but to be quite frank, this economy sucks. No one is moving jobs, no one is growing their businesses, so there are no jobs for the people who have lost their jobs. Isabella had a piano competition this past Saturday and by the way, in piano, you *compete* against yourself, not others. We were not allowed to be in the room but she says she did a good job and so I am glad. She has also decided that she would like to stick with piano at least one more year. So we are going to make that happen and are proud of her decision.

So we’ve been SERIOUSLY AWESOME about not spending money and its SERIOUSLY OKAY. Really. Who knew I could be so content with so little? Okay, stop. I don’t have *so little*. I have a LOT, a whole lot. But I don’t have anything NEW in the house, on the body, in the craft room, nada, nothing, zilch, since the holidays. And that has got to be a record for me. And it feels GOOD. It is gratifying to know that we CAN live with less when push comes to shove and the world will not fall apart. So I am GRATEFUL for this wakeup call. Now, can it be over some time soon please?

So as for crafting. I decided to participate in a little contest that turned into a big contest. And before you read any further, I did not win. I was kicked out after the first round when they reduced the playing field from 90 to 25. I knew it was going to happen so although I had big dreams and a hopeful heart, I was not surprised. But anyway, it was a digital scrapbooking DESIGN contest. Not create a layout but create a kit for other people to use. It was FUN. So here is the kit I created. My grandma might recognize the button because I got it from her and she won’t *recognize* the green and brown papers but they have a texture on them that I got from a vintage linen tablecloth she gave me recently. LOVED scanning in these goodies from my grandma. THANK YOU GRANDMA!

THIS DOWNLOAD IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. So the next round in the contest is a paper pack and even though I am not in the competition, I am going to play along and create a paper pack. I don’t know what colors yet so if anyone is reading this and has a favorite color, reply to this post by Wednesday night and I will try to work your color into my paper pack. No promises because I might get to work tonight and a color scheme seems rather like a criticial first step. Although I don’t have all the textures I need yet either so maybe I will start there.

Speaking of which, does anyone read this anyway besides Claire? If you read this, could you please just reply with a hello? It might help my whole blogging funk to know I wasn’t just writing this for me, although perhaps that is the point, right? Huh.

Let’s see, lots of layouts have been made and posted around the internet by yours truly. Here are some of them.

This is my grandfather and his sister.

This is the story of how my grandparents met (my mother’s parents). I love that I have these stories in their own words. My grandpa is doing a fantastic job writing family history, although my grandma helped me with this one. THANKS AGAIN GRANDMA!
This is from our day at the zoo last weekend. It was a beautiful day and this gorilla was totally playing with the crowd.

This is a picture from last year but I was playing with blending photos and papers and I am pretty darn happy with the way it turned out. Scott doesn’t like the graininess of the paper on the photo but I do. So good thing its my art and not his!
This is a photo I took a couple of weeks ago near the synagogue and I loved that the flowers were just blooming right through the fence. I hope no one takes a weedeater to this, it was really a sign that nature could not care less what kind of boundaries we humans put up to separate ourselves.

Okay, enough for today I think. I might write more later after I work on my paper pack!

I’m here. I’m just not all here. I’ll post a bunch of stuff tonight while Isabella and Scott watch American Idol. Thanks for checking back…