Its all over the internet again, Becky Higgins has released this year's kit and everyone is taking up the craze. Everyone is jumping on the band wagon of quick yet creative scrapbooking and even Hobbycraft are in on the act, devoting a whole section to PL goodies. It seems it is the next best thing to sliced bread in the scrapping world. Every year I get a little swept up in the hype too but my take on it is a little different.
When I was little one of the great things I enjoyed was when my mum/dad got out the Roses tin full of all the family black and white photos and go through them with my brother and I, telling us the story behind each one as we went (even though we had heard them many times). The one of my dad during his National Service in Singapore, stripped to the waist in his army issue shorts, walking up the trunk of a leaning palm tree; the one of my mum wearing her 1950's one piece swim suit (a la Ester Williams) clinging onto a road sign, taken on the day she nearly called off her engagement because after 4 years courting my dad still hadn't set a date for the wedding; oh the stories were endless and going through the pile of scattered photos was magical.
Along with the loose photos came a couple of old fashioned photo albums. They had ornate padded and decorated covers, silk tassels to mark your page, and on opening each black thick card mounting page was separated by the most amazing frosted glass paper to protect the photographs which were held in place by beautiful little gold paper photo corners. Each photo (those that had not fallen out) was provided with its own little caption telling its own special story, and carefully dated in neat handwriting completed in a lovely clean white ink. Before we were allowed to open them we had to ensure our hands were clean and were admonished to be very gentle and careful.
The memory of those photo albums haunts me every time I pick up a pack of Project Life divided page protectors, because to me they seem to be a poor relation or bad echo of those earlier beautiful books so I end up taking the pages out of my basket and scurrying off home to do a PL look-alike scrap page using traditional scrap-booking methods on a 12x12 card-stock page, trying to use all my creative talents, making all my own embellishments and attempting to make my page do justice to those early scrapbooks.Then because it took so much time and effort and didn't meet my style of scrapbooking, I usually tailed off doing it by March.
This year though, I have finally surcome because my photos are simply loitering inside my hard drive and going no where as it seems my craft room is still a faint glimmer in the future, I am desperate to do some scrapping so I have finally bought a set of PL pages, downloaded some freebies and set to work on last year's photos. The biggest thing that altered my mind though is that I have discovered that since I can change my Dell notebook into a tablet, I can load up a picture and then use the pen to scribble all over it to my hearts desire. At last I am not just bunging photo's into pockets, I am being creative!
I don't take enough pictures to fill a double spead a week but I am more than happy with a page a month, so here is my first attempt and hopefully I can complete the whole year this time.
Today I wake up on a world that is a bit emptier and a bit sadder than it was yesterday. Today I wake up on a world that no longer holds my beloved fur baby Pumpkin. : (
I have been attempting to get this blog back on the road for ages but even though I have had plenty of happy and exciting stuff to write about, its actually taken a desire to write a little tribute to the little mate to get it back up and running,
We took our fluffy friend to see the vet last week as he had developed a cough and wasnt eating. Since everyone else in the house was suffering either from full blown flu or chesty cough's we thought he just had a chest infection, so it was a bit of a shock when the vet said he needed to stay in and go on a drip. After a long weekend of tests, antibiotics, drips and such, Monday he was scanned (no xray, too much handling made him panicky and end up in an oxygen tent). Inconclusive results did force an xray yesterday though, which showed his little lungs were full of the wicked C growths. There was no other solution than but to say goodbye to our little mate.
Pumpkin never was my cat to start off with. He was bought as a birthday present for Laura. Which one is a bit of a debate because she is insistent it was 2002 - her 17th yet I have photos of him as a kitten taken on an early school digi camera labelled 2000. Anyhow whichever year it was I can remember we went to collect him from the pet shop with my parents and after we stood in sainsbury car park debating which name to choose for a ginger cat. Obviously Ginger was thrown in the pot along with all the other fav names for an orange striped cat but Pumpkin was a bit unusual and seemed to fit.
He was a tiny scrap, the runt of the litter (but all the rest were black or white and Laura so wanted a ginger puss) and he had so many fleas you could see them running across his face. The pet shop had treated them but the injections killed off the ability for the fleas to breed so you had to wait for the initial ones to finish their lifespans. Yet we all loved him, even Martin who insisited he was scared of cats and who had made us wait so many years to get a cat,
Pie Alley became an indoor cat, for the simple reason he couldnt be trusted outside on his own. On his first attempt at the outdoor life he had managed, somehow without our seeing, got into next doors garden. We searched for 2 hours, panic setting in, before Martin finally heard a mewing and discovered him trapped by the neighbour's cat between the side of their conservatory and our garden wall. On his second outing he decided that Yes it was possible to walk across water. No! Its not, and a very wet drippy cat had to be rescued from his improptue dip in the pond. So after that he was only allowed out under strict supervision.
Pumpkin has been a wonderful cuddly friend and we will miss him desperately. He left us way to early and way too quickly, but he has left us with many happy memories. Only a few weeks ago, he had us in peals of laughter attempting to get his christmas treats out of the new fangled Whiskers treats dispenser, not by swipping it with his paws as intended but by trying to get his tongue into the holes and lick them out
Go in peace little mate, with all our love xxxxx.
