When I left for work this morning it was hardly daylight and almost at freezing point. By the time dinner was done with the sun was almost gone. It has been a great summer. Stacy Julian got me going all summer long with her Have more FUN class. It was challenging for a few days there…seeing the FUN in all this. Still working on that one, but I did enjoy the whole thing. July was great with the four very talented girls challenging our creativity. I loved Stacy’s photo album scrapbooking in August. I will be making a lot of those. And I never thought I would finish my 30 days Hath September album…but, I did.

Welcome October...

Most of all I enjoyed Tena’s 52 card pick up class. I had never learned anything about techniques before, so to be given 52 lessons in a row by this talented girl was fantastic. It was so fun to make these 5×7 cards and the deck look so great hanging right there by my desk. I will do this all over the next time Tena teaches this class.

The last card to the deck...

I also had the pleasure of joining Ashley Wren’s class at Scrap in style TV. That was fun. She is the most amazing girl. If I ever need ideas for scrapbooking I just go to the files of her class. She gives you a prompt….followed with 20 ideas of how to approach this…which gives me 20 new ideas…

Obsessed. Inspired by Ashley Wren.

Between all this “paperwork” we had a wedding in the family, the most important event this summer. Jan and Linda was the most beautiful couple and we had some really good days with family and friends. And I am so happy about the “honeymoon” baby arriving in May. Three babies in six years ….that make us feel blessed.

And the kissing just would not stop....

And finally at the end of the summer comes our two weeks at Viva Bahia, just totally relaxing and gathering strength for a long winter to come. I have to admit that I did spend some time on the computer looking up what was going on in my Have more FUN class, and I was seeing Stacy’s FUN colours all over the place.

Have more FUN at Mallorca...

It is 12 weeks before Christmas, and we just finished our class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I had to celebrate that making a layout about this summer. Since I seem to be obsessed with Squares these days it turned out like this;

Intentional Play......Productivity.....Present-moment awerness....

At the end of this summer I have some thoughts about what I want to do with my time in the months to come. But right now it is all about Cathy’s Design Your Life, starting tomorrow. I do have a few other projects coming up also…..

I just want to say thank you all for a great summer.

…and that means 30 days of Hath September finish in two days. A little sad, but it feels good to see the end of this project. It is time to move to the next project. We did learn something in this class: to be present in our life, and to value the everyday life.

Since this is the last weekend and because this is the first Sunday we haven’t been able to have dinner together as a whole family I did some special pages today. I asked for a photo of everyone, taken today wherever they were.

Elin Janne - Bud - 28.09.08

Tor and Marita - Heimdal - 28.09.08

Jan and Linda - Lyngstad - 28.09.08

Of course…not everyone is able to do what they are told…It was supposed to be photos of Tormod and Kjellaug here too…Well, I can be good with revenge.

Tormod has been busy today. The weather is wet and nasty so there in no hikes in the mountain today, but he did learn some new actions in photo shop. From now on I am going to send my tired old face to him. He might be able to make me young and beautiful…..

Elin Marie

…is soon over.

The idea behind this project is to be present in the moment. It is a good idea. But, how much present in the moment can you be when living alone. I have made my pages everyday, and I have enjoyed the process. I have to admit it has been hard not to do anything else. These last days all I have done is hanging over the computer. I don’t think that qualifies as being present in the moment. ….so I am going back to my way of life as I know it. I will be doing my page every day for the rest of September, but it is time to move on.

To be honest I came to this realisation two days ago. A little bird called me Saturday to sing a song about a new baby due in May, so I made this page to celebrate the number one grandma.

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Pleasure…., originally uploaded by elinjanne.

Pleasure…..So, after two days at home I want to go back…..but, I will get over it.

I came home last night and had a good night sleep in my own bed. That is the only good thing about coming home….sleeping in your own bed. Nothing beats that.

 Stacy Julian gave us an assignment for the first day of September. We were to get out of bed and take a photo of the sunrise. Even though I am still on vacation time I got out of bed at 6 am and went outside to get my photo. Lucky me….I had forgotten my memory card at my brothers…. My brother, who can be a nice guy found my card and went outside this morning and got my sunrise.

I have not decided yet how I want to do Stacy’s project: 30 days Hath September. I am in….and I want to do it….but I am not sure how to do it. I really like Stacy’s idea and I will do this her way sometime, just not now. It does not fit into my plans to just concentrate on this for the whole month. There is so much else I want to do in September. I will feel this out for a little while. I will make a page every day and I will make it about present time, but hopefully there will be time for it all.

Index, originally uploaded by elinjanne.

In August we did several of this cute photo albums. It is fast and fun and get the photos and the story into the albums and out of the way. This one is from our homecoming from Viva Bahia last year.
We are packed and ready to go home. Maybe not so ready…but packed. Still four hours until the bus leave for the airport in Palma and we plan to enjoy those hours left. Grandma can not wait to get home to Elin and Kristian. She just left to spend some time at the beach before we go home.

…I was so exited when I came down to the reception to log in this morning to read Stacy  Julian’s presentation for the third part of her Have more FUN class. I read her one hour long presentation and I love it. To get involved with life here and now….To scrapbook every day life one day at the time….for a whole month…. At first I wasn’t sure if I would do this, because I have done it before. But, so has Stacy…. I just have to think this through, maybe I want to do this another way.

This two last days have been so good. The weather, the temperature, the beach, the bar, the food, the company….just perfect. A vacation you just don’t want to end. It is a long time since we have been so blessed with perfect weather. Now it is almost over…just one more day left.

 I was the first one in the shower today, and I am spending some time in the reception waiting for Tormod and Kjellaug to get ready for dinner. I love the buffet and I have to do a serious weight program when I come home. …I am not so happy about that.

How to get tougher when you need to be…, originally uploaded by elinjanne.

Inspired by Ashley Wren.

…that I get the fine details in what Stacy Julian is teaching us, but I don`t care so much about that as long as she keeps inspiring me to have fun and to get the photos into the albums. I am not going to quote Stacy, just in case…. Instead I am going to tell how I did this photo album scrapbook.

My sister in law turned 50 last August, and her parents came to visit for a week. We took a lot of cute photos of the kids and their great grandparents during that week. Not so much happened…just playing, hugging and being plain cute. I started out making a front page;

Front page

 There were supposed to be questions asked and answered in this album. I made 12 questions wich I sent in an email to the great grandparents and their daughter. Just some : where, when, what…..and I had some photos from Kjellaugs childhood in black and whith, wich I used to divid the days.

Spending summer holliday at Ona in 1961

Then I just kept writing the answeres and slip in the photos, day by day.

The hugging cermoni...

A bit of information for the kids to enjoy ...in the future.

One thing they all have in common - the love for fishing...

I love this mini photo album scrapbooking projects. I got 75 photos stored in an album. I got to tell a story we all can enjoy, and we got bits of information documented for the future.

I tend to make things more difficult then it have to be, and sometime I am worried about doing it right. But I am sure that Stacy just want us to have fun and enjoy.

…

I have spent the last hour listening to Stacy Julian’s presentation for the august part of the”have more fun” class. I never took time to go through it all earlier. She says to let go of the expectations, and to stop and ask your self if you really want to scrapbook all this photos. Honestly, I never thought I could. It was a good idea when baby Elin was born, because there weren’t that many photos. And I never “scrapbooked” the photos, I just put them in albums and did some journaling. I made the whole album with 50 pages in an evening. I can not believe that there a people out there who thinks that it is possible to scrapbook the thousands of photos that goes in to the computer during a short period of time.

The big question is; what to do with the big chunks of photos. Stacy showed some cools things to do. I have been looking around for these albums with no luck. It seems to me that to scrapbook ordinary one page album is not a big thing in Norway. Unfortunately we don’t have Target, Wall marts or whatever….

So…this fact means that this part of the class is not so exiting for me. I would love to follow Stacy’s directions, but I just have to tag along and work with what I have at hand. That is okay. The idea works fine with whatever album I am using.

Tonight I have been playing with my paint. I put all this work into something that just did not turn out that great. It might just go into the paper bin. That is okay, it happen sometime. At least I made my card. And here comes one more honest moment. Tena`s technique class is a lot more fun. I you feel like learning something new you should take her 52 card pick up – class. You really get a lot more than you are paying for.

Writing with glaze pen directly on the photo.

…before going to bed I always search my favourite blogs. Sometimes that takes me in to the early morning and that’s the bad thing. The rest is my pleasure. I was so happy to find out that Kolette Hall has gone blogging. I am so looking forward to follow her input in the world of blogging.

I have finished one more mini scrapbook for my BPS class. This one is all about a summer day in young baby Kristian`s life.

Mini scrapbook about Kristian`s day of July 16 2008.

Grandma says he plays like a BOY...is that a good thing ?