Dad's Last Fathers Day Page

I have been doing some scrapping recently.  It is still strange not having pages to do for Scrapbook Garden and I will tell you now I am really looking forward to working at the new store.
This page uses MME and Basic Grey paper from a great kit I got from Miss Art's Paper School.  I have another page to do about my Dad, but I felt I needed to do the Father's Day page first.  The pictures are not that great.  I could do only so much with the green hue from the fluorescent lights but they are the last pictures I have of Dad.  He was so tired and so frail.  We all saw that, but still believed he was going to get better and be more like he was before he started his final slide.  I guess that is the definition of hope springing eternally. 
Photos like this are what make me glad that l take pictures, lots of them.  I didn't miss out on the party, but I was able to record the memories with my camera.  That allows me to record them in writing.  I don't always appreciate it, but that is a gift from God.

Poor Kitty

Our cat apparently got his tail caught in something last week.  The tip was all nasty looking and he was losing hair.  I took him to the vet yesterday and he determined that Gabe's tail wasn't broken, but there was some nerve damage at the end.  Lucky for Gabe this meant he gets to keep all his tail.  Unluckily for me, it has meant that I have been wiping up cat blood from the floor.  The tip does look like it i is drying up though.  I would be more upset if I wasn't going to have the carpets in the whole house cleaned after the work is done in the basement.  I took a picture of his poor little rat cat tail, but decided that it was too gross for posting on this blog.  If it made me sort of gag, it was not for you folks.

Random Photos from the remodel

The work is almost complete on the windows.  The concrete for the driveway and the patio extension is being poured today.  Needless to say we are tickled pink.  The light in the basement now is amazing.  For over thirty years we had almost total darkness in the family room without the lights.  Now you can go down there during the day and do things without turning the lights on.  The bedroom is the same way.  People won't have problems knowing when it is light outside anymore.  I have to paint when the construction is complete, but it is only a part of the wall in the family room and we have paint from when it was painted last.  The bedroom is going to be completely changed so that will take a bit longer.  Lucky for us this is the labor day weekend.  Then it will be carpet cleaning.  

Remodel

We are at the halfway point on the installation of two daylight windows in our basement.  One will be in the guest bedroom and the other one in the family room.  Ray and I had been wanting to put windows down there for years and this year we finally made the decision to proceed.  Tracy Dayton of Classic Remodeling is doing the work.  At this point I am quite pleased with everything.  Just looking at the amount of light that is coming into the guest bedroom from the opening is amazing.  It will make all the difference in the world down there.
In addition to the windows, we are adding a concrete pad where Ray has had a gravel driveway.  The gravel worked, but it didn't look all that great.  Having it all paved will improve the look of the front of the house.  It is exciting to have all this done to the house.  It is going to make the basement look completely different.

Bubble Master Page

This is the layout I did of the photos of  Wyatt blowing bubbles.  I used a paper set I got from Close to My Heart.  I had started with an entirely different layout in mind.  As it happens a lot of the time I ended up with something completely different.  After I put the pearls on the page, I realized I would rather have used clear Dew Drops.  However, there is always next time.  Right now I am working on a couple of layouts about my Dad.  They aren't that hard to do.  I just want to get them right.

Just a dive

I got the idea for this page from a layout by Debbie Hodge in the July/August Creating Keepsakes.  Hers was a digital layout and mine isn't, but the concept remained similar.  The paper is Cosmo Cricket with Thickers for the lettering.  I tend to use a lot of oranges and reds in my New Mexico pages.  It just suits the vibe.
We went to the Western Bar in Cloudcroft while we were on vacation with Jim and Phyll.  We almost always go there when we stop in Cloudcroft.  It is just an old western bar.  The food is hamburgers, but they are good, and we just sit and listen to all the other people talk.  The bar gets the local folks as well as tourists like us.  This time we put a dollar bill up on the wall as a commemoration of our visit.

Wyatt, the Bubble Master

A benefit of staying with your grandmother in the afternoon.  When she takes you shopping, you will generally get something for yourself.  In this instance, we went to Target and Wyatt cleaned up in the Dollar Aisle.  In addition to sidewalk chalk, he got a large bubble wand and bubble solution.  The joy of bubbles for a little boy isn't just in the making of them, although that is part of it.  The best part seems to be chasing them down and breaking them before they touch the ground.  I had to take the bottle of bubbles away for another day or there would have been nothing left.  I think the large bubble wand was pretty neat myself.