It's Been a Wild Year!

Hello there.  I have been quite absent for the past 18 months or so.  My family has been through one emergency situation after another and it's been quite tough trying to scrapbook and travel up to Virginia for long periods of time.  I've spent more time up there than I have at home in Florida since Memorial Day Weekend in 2012!  I won't go into everything but suffice it to say that aging parents who were not willing to admit they were 83 and 90 and needed to plan for some sort of future arrangements made things quite difficult for my brothers and I.  However, an old high school friend & I reconnected through Facebook and her husband recommended some Elder Care attorneys for us.  It was totally a God thing & while it was not cheap, it has saved us countless dollars, time, energy and even saved my father's life a couple of times because we knew what was and wasn't legal for the rehab center and nursing home to do!!!  Thankfully, we finally changed nursing homes and now have a WONDERFUL nursing home which cared for Mom in her last few months of life and who are caring for Dad still.  If you're in the Northern Virginia area, please message me to get information because I can HIGHLY recommend the nursing home and attorneys!  Plus I can steer you away from the place that we wouldn't recommend to our worst enemies!  Just saying without saying if you know what I mean...  Anyway, my wonderful 84 year old Mother died October 14 from cancer so I've been gone for the past few months helping to care for her.  I will miss her terribly but I know she's in heaven and is no longer suffering.  My Dad seems to be the Energizer Bunny after everything he's been through and then losing his beloved wife of over 65 years!  He's now 91 and while he has some dementia and can't walk, he's doing very well thank God! Needless to say I haven't been scrapping very much lately.  I went from scrapping at least one layout a day to absolutely not touching my tools for over a month!  Since it's my sanity and therapy, I've managed to keep up with my Just Imagine/Kreaxions Design Team work and will have several projects over the next few months to share.  So last night when I actually had time and some challenges actually inspired me I finally scrapped for the first time in over a month!  I've come back home with a TON of pictures, ephemera and memorabilia that I need to work with and I chose one of my old school pictures from 1963 to start with.  I used a scraplift challenge from My Scraps & More for my design and a color challenge from Turtle Soup to create this page using some VERY old SEI papers.

Materials – Based on a LO by Michelle Gallant at My Scraps & More; Papers – SEI; Butterflies, Rhinestone Heart, 3 D Flowers, Plastic Butterfly – From a RAK; Bling – Queen & Company; Title Numbers – Thickers; Doily – WRMK; Ink – Colorbox; Die Cut Flower, Brads – My Mind’s Eye; Pen – American Crafts; Flowers - Prima

I hope you'll join me next month at Turtle Soup and My Scraps & More for some awesome fun!  There will be online crops, lots of challenges and TONS of inspiration at both sites!  Meanwhile, Happy Scrapping!