Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

Today is National Scrapbooking Day. To celebrate, my local scrapbook store, Scrapbooks Plus, was offering 20% off perchases made between noon and 4 PM – fortuantely, I didn’t realize that until I was already in line with my purchases.

My own celebration consisted of (besides buying more supplies) finishing my Rome pages and starting my Cyprus pages. Here are today’s results:

Rome Intro spread:
  

Cyprus Intro spread:
  

Did anyone else out there celebrate?

Tags: scrapping

Scrappin’ at Sandy’s

Saturday was a scrappin’ day.

I started the day by driving up to Laurie’s, so we could check out a scrapbook store near her, Recollections. We spent entirely too much time and money there, so had to grab lunch at the Wendy’s drive-thru, before picking up my car and caravaning over to Sandy’s.

Once at Sandy’s, we looked through our loot again, and checked out the pages each other had done since our last scrapping Saturday, then finally got down to scrapping. I worked on my Egypt pictures from our cruise last month. Laurie did a spread of Connor at the beach. And Sandy plowed ahead of both of us on her pictures from 2004.

Here are a couple of our results:
  

A fun, fun way to spend a rainy Saturday!

Tags: friends, scrapping

Quiet Weekend

After the hellish week I had, we decided to have a quiet weekend at home. We rented a couple of PS2 games (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and X-Files: Resist or Serve), and I gamed much of Friday, since I’d already put in more than my 30 hours.

Harry Potter was quite fun, though we came close to defeating the game by the end of Saturday. (We had gotten to Voldemort, but didn’t quite defeat him – we didn’t try again, but most of the fun of the game was done.) Goblet of Fire can be played by two players simultaneously for many of the levels – not the Tri-Wizard challenges or final fight with Voldemort, but all other levels. So, Andrew and I were able to play together, which I think is the first time we’ve done that. I can hardly wait to pull out Tak and Lok and play that with Andrew.

The rest of the weekend I spent scrapbooking. I finished up the “Wedding Odds ‘n’ Ends” book that I’d been working on. Here are a few of the spreads I did:
    

You can check out all of my scrapbook photos on Flickr. Next up? The eclipse cruise scrapbook!

Tags: reviews, scrapping

Good-bye, Baby girl

Dad just called to tell me that they had to put Allie down tonight. She was 18 and had been having kidney problems for months. Tonight, her kidneys started to shut down. Good bye pretty girl. I’m going to miss you. Thank you for being our girl for so long, and never forgetting your first “mama”, no matter how long I’ve been away from Mom and Dad’s house.

Tags: pets, suckitude

Last Stop: Naples

Naples was our last port before returning home. We got up early to grab breakfast before our shore excursion. When we walked out onto the aft deck with our breakfast trays, we saw the sunirsing over Mout Vesuvius. Wow! My breakfast got cold while I snapped a few pictures, but that was well worth the resulting pictures.

It seemed that most of the ship was going to Pompeii, but Andrew and I had decided on Herculaneum. Pompeii had been covered by ash from Vesuvius, but Herculaneum, on the other side of Vesuvius, was covered by 30 meters of mud.

Our guide was a bit of a putz, but did point out some cool things to us (when we could find him and hear him). One of our first stops was a thermopolium – a shop that sold food of some kind. There were counters with huge pots embedded in them where food would have been kept and sold. Across the street was a wine shop, with similar large pots, but half-buried in the ground to keep the wine cool.

Our guide also showed us an intact store that was found, complete with a second level. The wood wall fittings still hanging on the walls and a railing on the second-level. In several places we saw carbonized wood – original wood still in place.

In addition, there were lots of mosaics that have been excavated and painted walls could still be seen. All in all, the site was spectacular.

On our way back to the ship we stopped at a cameo workshop where I picked up a beautiful cameo for myself.

Check out all of my pictures from the day in my Herculaneum Excursion Flickr Photoset

Eclipse Day!

Wow. Just wow!

We weren’t sure what time, exactly, the eclispe was going to start, because we’d gone through several time changes, and didn’t know which time zone our ship was currently running under. So, just after breakfast, Andrew and I staked out a claim above-deck, armed with books, our eclipse glasses, cameras, and pillows. The pool chairs had all been cleared from the deck to allow more people to congregate above deck to watch the eclipse.

As the time for the eclipse drew nearer, the deck started to fill up with people. Andrew and I had a great spot, and watched the moon “eat up” the sun through our eclipse glasses.

About 15-20 mintues before totality, the light got silvery. It was an odd sensation, as the light deminished, but was still coming from straight overhead. I could feel my body saying that it was getting close to sunset, but my eyes told me something different. I can imagine the experience being even more odd for animals who don’t know what’s happening.

Totality was awesome. I didn’t get any pictures, but instead wanted to concentrate on the experience. One thing I was surprised by was that it didn’t get as dark as I was expecting. It got more like twilight, with some red around the edges of the sky, than like night itself. I could make out a couple of planets, and thought I’d spied a star or two, but the sky was still fairly light. Still the sun was spectacular. The entire ship erupted in applause and woots when the sun’s corona appeared.

Words are insufficient to describe the experience, but I can say that Andrew and I will certainly look for another opportunity to see a total eclipse again someday.

The dining room seemed charged when we arrived later that evening — it seems that everyone was still jazzed up from the eclipse. We had a fun night, with an Italian theme, dancing in a mambo line and watching waiters dance for us on a nearby table.

Excursion in Turkey

I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous about going to Turkey, almost more nervous than going to Egypt. Why? Because Turkey is a strongly Muslim nation, and I’m a US citizen. Sure, Turkey is the most secularized of the Muslim nations, but that wasn’t much comfort. I’ve said before, I’ve lead a bit of a sheltered life.

Our port, Antalya, seemed a bit like the Myrtle Beach of the States – a sea-side town built up with lots and lots of hotels and resorts. My fears of Turkey were quickly forgotten as I saw women dressed much as they would have been in the States: skirts of all lengths, jeans and slacks.

Our first stop was the Antalya Museum. We had hesitated about signing up for an excursion that would put us in a museum, since, presumably, we could see similar things at a museum near us. However, the other stop on the excursion, Perge, sounded interesting, so it wasn’t like our entire time in Turkey would be stuck in a museum. Once again, our apprehensions were silly. Despite its small size, the Antalya Museum is now on our list of favorite museums, and I think we’d be happy if we could go back sometime and spend much, much more time there.

There were about three rooms filled with Roman statues, the remains of which were found in Perge (our second excursion stop). One thing we really liked about the museum was that they displayed even half-complete statues. They didn’t fill in the missing parts. Instead, they mounted the pieces that they had allowing spaces where the missing pieces would go to allow the imagination to fill in the full statue.

Another unique thing at the Antalya Museum was its displays of finds by different researchers. There were several cases showing pictures of archeologists with a brief background on the researcher and the site where they were digging. The cases held random-looking items, all of which found during a dig with the showcased researcher.

We didn’t have enough time to explore the other rooms at the museum, but would love to return sometime to see all of the treasures in the Antalya Museum.

Read more…

Tags: trip report

All Rhodes Lead…

Today was our most enjoyable shore excursion yet! The ship arrived in Rhodes around noon, so we had a leisurely morning lounging, reading, and journaling. Our shore excursion left around 1PM, and we rode in the bus for about an hour. Rhodes is beautiful with mountains and seashore vistas throughout our ride.

Our destination was Lindos, a village of a few hundred people, built in a traditional Greek style – boxy houses painted white and washed with lye soap twice a year at Christmas and Easter. The roads of town were twisty and narrow (and confusing!)

We walked with our tour guide, Anastasia, through the village and then up, up, up, up to the Lindos Acropolis (acropolis: acro meaning height and polis meaning city, so high point of the city). The acropolis was surrounded by a medieval fortress built by the Knights of Sir John. Inside the fortress is a temple to Athena, the goddess of Rhodes. Somehow, I was still able to climb all of those stairs, despite my back troubles from the camel ride.

The trip up was well worth the work! It afforded us a spectacular view of the ocean and of Lindos:
      

We had two hours to explore the acropolis and the village – a wealth of time compared to our other stops. Andrew and I explored the ruins of the temple and the fortress. Then we took our time descending back to the village, snapping pictures along the way. We explored the village a bit; its a charming place with winding streets and lots of shops (yay!).

We had to walk up a bit of a hill to get back to the bus, but took our time, finding a small cemetery and then grabbing a Diet Coke at a small convenience store (next to the cemetery, oddly enough).

On our way back to the ship, we stopped at a local ceramics workshop, where we saw a demonstration and had the opportunity to buy some souvenirs (which, of course, we did). Then it was back to the ship.

A few notes I want to remember:

• There were goats all over the island
• we could have hired donkeys to get us back down to Lindos from the acropolis, but it seemed a bad idea after all the trouble I’ve been having since the camel ride
• the guide told us that the deer is a symbol of Rhodes because deer were brought to the island to help with the snake problem – the idea is that deer will stomp on snakes and kill them

Check out all of my pictures from the day at my Rhodes/Lindos Excursion Flickr photoset.

Tags: trip report

Cyprus

We pulled into port at Limossol, Cyprus around 1PM. After a short bus ride (anything seems short compared to yesterday’s 3-hour ride!), we arrived at our first stop: Kourion. There was a hillside with several different archeological sites. Sadly, we only had time to make one stop: a Roman private residence with a public bath and a nearby amphitheater.

The house had amazing mosaic floors that were fairly well preserved.
   

There was also an incredible view of the ocean:

When our group moved to the amphitheater, Andrew and I skipped off to explore the theater on our own. We weren’t ready for another history lesson, but wanted instead to experience the theater without the background drone of a tour guide. We snapped a few pictures, and checked out the beautiful sea-vista from the theater.

Read more…

Tags: trip report

Scrappin’ with Laurie

Last night Laurie came over to scrapbook. Normally we wouldn’t be able to get together on a “school night”, but she was in my part of town for some training and came over after her class.

We immediately made a large mess of scrapbooking supplies in my living room:


(This picture does not do justice to the amount of stuff we had strewn about the living room – maybe Laurie’s pictures will show it better)

Most of my scrapbooking is done solo, and I have to admit that I loved having someone else there to poke for ideas. Laurie worked on a page of Connor’s “first sit”, and I worked on a wedding rehearsal spread. Here she is laying out her page:

And here are our results:
   

We’re not going to be able to get together again until April, and I can hardly wait!

Tags: friends, scrapping