…I am taking a class with Claudine Helmuth called : Home Is Where the Art Is at SiSTv. It looked like a fun thing to do when you have vacation with no plans. I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I discovered that the first 6 mixed media techniques already had been thought to me by Big Picture Scrapbooking last summer. But that is okay, it`s still fun.

I am ready to go. Sometimes I love to get messy.

Congratulations to Ansgar and Karen with their third great grandchild.

Early this morning this little girl gave birth to a baby girl at ST.Olav.

 Here she is with her uncle and aunt the day after their wedding in 1978.

Congrats to the new grandma!

Ansgar and Karen will have a busy summer because with any luck “our baby”, their fourth great grandchild, will be born at the same hospital in a few days. We are waiting and waiting…In the meantime I will mess around with some paint.

Day one…

I had a hard time finding inspiration to get creative today. Thanks to Jessica Sprague`s class last night I finally got going. But, I would not have thought of doing this layout without Alijoyc. She was the first one to post in the Load challenge gallery at Flicre today. She made a beautiful layout using the same inspiration. That is the best thing about Load, you find so much inspiration looking in the galllery.

And I bet this girl has grown this last week…

It has been a beautiful day with no work. Celebrating our rights as working people. Having a job is a good thing today. And the svineflu, now called the A-flu,  has been detected in Denmark. That does not worry me. Only – I haven`t had the flu since 1983, and one of these days it will be my going down.

It is also 20 years since my father died. That does bring out a lot of happy memories. Looking at that happy little girl helping her grandfather working in the garden points me to a happy little boy, her dad, helping his grandfather in the garden.

Dad and Jan - 27 years ago - in the same garden.

It is all about makeing connections like Stacy Julian has been teaching us in her Library of Memories.

…of my mother – born March 29.1932. She died March 19.2005 and we followed her to her final rest March 29.2005.

Little did we know in the summer of 2004 when we did our best to convince your parents to start a family.  We so much wanted little ones in our family that we promised them everything in return.

Not so much of everything came your way, but a lot of care and love.

Almost before we got to begging for more babies, and before you turned two, your baby brother came along. How would sharing affect you? You know what? A grandmas hart is big – so big.

Soon you will be four, and another little brother is on his way. In four years our family will be blessed with three little ones. How lucky are we?

But one little girl will always be the first and hold a special place in her grandmas hart.

I did The Art of Becoming More with Kolette and Jason last year and now was a good time to look at the goals I sat during that class.

1. Working less

2. Losing weight

3. Learn something new

Okay. I did good…

Working less was my main thing last year, and I think I have succeeded reaching that goal. And that feels good. I don’t see a need to put that one on my list for 2009.

Losing weight and eating healthier – did not happen at all. Did I forget? No, I just overlooked that one. That was not a good choice, but a choice I can live with. Hmm…that means I have to drag that goal all the way into 2009.

Learn something new. I did, I did. I learned a lot in 2008. Finding the courage to take the opportunity to learn through the internet was a lucky choice for me. And I will keep doing that.

This tells me that one of my goals for 2009 will be eating healthier. I don’t want to focus on losing weight, mostly because there really isn’t that much weight to lose. I am just talking about feeling more comfort buying cloths.

It has been snowing all day. It is wet and I don’t think it will be there in a few days. I have been working on finishing my pages for my Christmas journal. I went back to work on the 27′Th and worked until New Year. I was planning to make an album featuring the highlights in 2008 for my brother and his wife for Christmas. Since my photo developer didn’t deliver at their end, I wasn’t able to finish. I used the evenings between Christmas and New Year to finish the album. So I cut my journal short and did 28, 29, and 30 into one page highlighting the album.

The days between Christmas and New Year

On December 26 grandpa and grandpa had the pleasure of giving the grandchildren the “cars”. So – maybe the adults had more fun than the kids – but who cares…

Elin had to try the car outside and she did have FUN.

Kristian liked this one best, and his feet were almost long enough...

Let me just say that being a grandma – and filling the advent calendar, is not easy when “the gremlins” are helping.

Go Kjellaug ( I wonder who eat the most ?)

Finally the classroom in Cathy Zielkes opened the doors. I have been so exited about this class and I was not disappointed. Since I know nothing about design I was seeing myself sitting in the back of the class – missing out on the good things. But the first lesson was great. Even I understood what it was all about….

Our first assignment was to make a layout after Cathy’s sketch.

Elin Marie is sitting down for a moment....

Ok…I am talking baby steps here. I know it is allowed to stash it up a bit. But since this is all new to me and since I am not much of a stasher anyway I am taking this step by step. I know it will be more challenging week by week, but for now I am keeping it simple.

Last night this two lovebirds celebrated the day they met one year ago. Congrats to the two of you. Now is a challenging time for the two of you; new town, new home and work. Hopefully you two had a great evening last night.

…I spent the whole day at work. I needed this time to get ready to go back. Three weeks is a long time for me to be off work. I have never had five weeks of vacation in one year before, but it will not be the last time. I have enjoyed my time off.

And I have been productiv. At least I finished my deck of cards. I am proud of this. 52 cards with tecniques I never done before. That is something….and I finished….at least I am if I can find the last three cards I made before going on vacation. They are here somewhere.

My deck of cards…, originally uploaded by elinjanne.

I have made several albums using Stacy Julian’s method of Photo Album Scarapbooking. That has been so fun. I might not do ordinary scrapbooking ever again.  Still have some work to do on the last album – the vacation album.

I  do the 30 days Hath September project with the same album and I having fun doing my daily pages. It is so much easier without worrying where to put everything. I will show some example later.

The Brady bunch goes camping....

I have no idea why anyone would put up a tent in September, but the kids had fun.

…and I do not want to go to bed. I want to sit here working with my paint and enjoy the sun going down in the ocean. But…tomorrow is Tuesday – the hardest day in the week, so I better go to bed. We are still blessed with warm sunny weather. That means ice cream and beach time.

Baby Elin eating ice cream and flirting with the camera.

Kristian, a little more shy when he is flirting.

 We were supposed to use something other than a scrapbooking product for this one.  That would be easy. It was not. I totally blanked. Finally I found a piece of fabric I could use. And I made a connection to my own obsession with crocheting – that would be before I became obsessed with scrapbooking.

card nr. 21

I am always obsessed with something……

How fun it is that your remember Jan going fishing late in the evening during summer. Let me tell you – he still do that. The only difference is: now a kid is tagging along.

Look at her. Our fish-loving girl. So proud.

But….I am not sure where she got that attitud….

We are almost ready for the wedding. Everyone is starting to freak out….that is normal? I hope so. The first guests are arriving tomorrow so we better be ready.