A few pictures from CKU-Boston

Here are a few pictures of Karen, Joanne, Joan and I from Boston. Fist we have Karen working away at one of the 6x6 pages we did on the "make-and-take" day. Next is at a class, then Karen, Joanne and Joan at the No Name Restaurant. We got some other scrapper to take all of us at the door of the No Name (me, Karen, Joan, Joanne) . Then, just to show we really did do some scrapbooking, here are Joan, Joanne and Karen at the Friday night crop. Finally me, Joan and Joanne with our diplomas and silly hats. For some reason, when other people take pictures with my auto-focus camera they manage to make them blurry!

Pointe du Chene Wharf

This has been a gathering place for countless years. When my husband was little he used to fish off the wharf and still many people can be found fishing there. Driving down to the wharf to see the sunset, boats and other people is a long-standing tradition too. For a while it fell into disrepair, but a campaign to save this treasure and enhance it has resulted in repairs as well as several new businesses taking root there in the last few years. There are now two restaurants, an ice-cream stand, a souvenir shop, a "lighthouse" which is used as a lookout, a fish market, lots of parking and, of course, the boats moored there which come from all over. Last night we took a drive down to the wharf and my daughters got some ice cream and we took some pictures of the sailboats. Here are a few.

Threadless

My daughters have shirts from a company from Chicago called Threadless. One daughter, in particular, has a small mountain of them. If you submit pictures of yourself wearing their shirts and they are accepted for the website, you get points towards purchase of more shirts. Last night two of the girls took pictures so here are a few of them. It was fun to watch them set up the pictures with props that matched the theme of the shirts. These are not the ones submitted in case the pictures have to be "unpublished". There were a few more different shirts they modeled, but this is a sampling.

The cottage

I thought I'd put in a few pictures of where I am spending my summer days. First is the view from the front deck, then the cottage itself (with our 2 dogs), my herb garden in the back that I started last year, and finally my scrapbooking area. The printer is off to the left sitting on top of a Victrola record player cabinet, quite an interesting mix of technology! (Sorry no picture of that. Maybe later.)

Thoughts about the beach

When we first started coming to this beach, we rented a cottage for 1 week. The next year we rented a different one for 2 weeks a couple of times and we then had this same cottage for two complete summers the 2 years after that. The summer of the first cottage I had one little 1 1/2 year old girl and was pregnant with the second, the second year I had a baby and a toddler. By our last summer in the rented cottage, there were 3 little girls: a 7 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 1/2 year old. That was the year (1991) that we started building our own cottage in the same general area. Every year since then we have come to spend the summers here, moving in as soon as the school year finished, and moving back just in time to start a new school year. My though have things changed! When the girls were little, we spent a part of every sunny day at the beach. We (meaning chiefly Mom) would carry our collection of necessary items on the 5-min walk to the beach: towels, pails, shovels, various other toys, snorkels, swim goggles, boxes of juice...and so on. We would swim and dig and make sand castles, and collect and identify shells. Sometimes we would come back for lunch and go again! At the end of the day we would have lovely outside showers ( we have an enclosed outdoor shower stall) and I would wash the sand out of the girls' bathing suits and hang them up to dry for another day. That was the routine.

Fast forward to the present day. The oldest girl is 22. She likes to stay at the cottage when she can, but generally she stays at the house in town where she is working. Last summer she wasn't here at all, and next summer...who knows? The middle girl is 20 and is living in another province, going to university and working in the summer. She's not here. The youngest is still here, but sleeps in most mornings and then finds the cottage "boring". I told her that soon she won't be here either. We rarely spend the day at the beach, except if someone comes to visit. We take walks there, as we did last evening after supper. We enjoy the quiet and the relatively cool temperatures (compared to in town). My husband and I (and certainly the dogs and cats) enjoy the cottage as much as ever, but our use of it has changed so much. Maybe one day there will be grandchildren come to visit and the days of pails and shovels, shell collecting and jumping in the waves will start all over again.

Tubing

I have discovered a new joy...tubing! While on a weekend away with my husband and a group of friends at a fishing camp (really nice fishing camp, okay...I don't do roughing it), a group of us, five women decided to try tubing down the river on Saturday afternoon. Some had done it before. The owner of the lodge called this guy who came to get us and took us up river and supplied us with big tubes, including an extra one that he helped us rope a life jacket in the middle of, and then a small cooler was roped to that and set on the life jacket. The rope was wrapped all around this middle tube and we all had a bit to hang onto so we would stay together. It was so much fun! Very relaxing, just floating down the river for about an hour and a half, chatting, looking around at nature and the different fishing "pools" where people from our group had been fishing, drinking our bottled drinks from the cooler and enjoying the sunny afternoon. I decided if I had a handy river and a way to get upstream I could do that a couple of times a week! The picture is one my husband took of us as we were arriving back at the camp.

New Layout (and more to come)

Scoot on over to "My Layouts" for a new one to look at.

City Hall and Fountain

This is just to show the Early Birds the fountain that someone put soap in last night. The deer looked like it was eating suds I guess.

A Word on Friendship and History

This is a copy of what a friend has written. She speaks so well about what a number of us think and originally posted this to the Creating Keepsakes Message board. I am proud to pass on her message.

"I don’t know how many folks remember me – I started on this mb in 2000, and used to be a real high-numbers poster – I practically lived here. I left, unofficially, about six months ago, and haven’t seen or heard of a ‘whatever happened to…’ post about me since. I do keep up with the goings-on over here, and have tried to tentatively step back in a time or two, but it is with great regret that I find that this is no longer a place I want to be associated with, much less spend time with.
In the coming months, “Chicken Soup for the Scrapbooker’s Soul” will be published, and in it will be a story from me about this mb – a story about how we pulled together as a group to help someone in need. That’s the mb I will remember and miss – the one where we had Early Bird coffee together, played on the beaches at the Cabana Boy parties, met for afternoon coffee, chatted with the night owls, scrapped all day in our jammies, and partied all day when QVC was on and we were spending tons of money – together. We saw each other through marriages, moves, illnesses, births, and deaths.
It seems that CK has created a new message board that is totally devoid of history and that history was HUGE for many people. In CKMB's quest for a new beginning, they have wiped the board clean and started over and created a whole new environment and it seems that is exactly what they wanted. In doing this, they have disbanded former bonds that had been created that were very important to people and made new rules and guidelines for their new "city". It IS very apparent that CK is after new blood. Yes, they are providing some nice new attractions like the gallery, contests, spotlights, etc, but in doing this, they didn't ADD to what they had but seem to have deleted all the old, for the new. They have created a totally new board and I think that is what they wanted.
The people who have been on this board 5+ years in some cases and thousands of posts, have been swept aside and they were the people who made this board what is was and who promoted this board, CK products and its' projects. Scrapbooking is about history, first and foremost and they have recreated the history to their satisfaction.
The layouts being picked for POTD, although mostly very good work, seem to come predominantly from new members who aren’t very involved in this community and seem to be from more professional-type scrappers than true newbies who have just now joined the mb for fun and companionship. If they are going to spotlight someone, I don't think it's too much to expect them to CONTRIBUTE to the MB so that people can learn to do some of the things they do and get to know them. Members of other message board communities are putting their LO's out there for one reason- to have CK pick them up for publication. Period. That is their goal. Is it wrong? I don't know but again, I think CK will drive away others if they continually do this and never recognize people that are faithful to the ck community at large. Also, many of them are not the type of scrapping that the "average" person who buys CK, does. What is wrong with sometimes picking LO"s that are just pretty or have techniques that people might want to try that don't involve going to 10 classes to learn or spending a lot of money in extra embellishments?
I think the "hostess" needs to be more tactful and I also think the board should not revolve just around her, which it seems to do now. The relentless banning of anyone who speaks, even mildly, against this mb, or questions the guidelines or CK authority figures only enforces the feeling that a whole new board with all new members is the goal. The guidelines have been tossed aside and members are being banned with no warning, nor are they given an explanation as to why they were banned. If those in authority don't follow their own guidelines, they can't expect their membership to know what is and is not allowed from one day to the next. If this continues, the board will be in the same boat a couple of years down the road, and the search will be on once again for what made this community the family it used to be. When will they see that it's not the moderators or the hostess or the guidelines, but the members who posted here that made it a warm and welcoming place. Many of those family members were banned, and those who weren't banned have left home. The CK board will never be the same again.
Frankly, I think ck could care less what people think as long as their revenues are up." Va Scrapper (Kath)

Thanks Kath!

Reverse the first two dragonboat pictures

Somehow I got the pictures reversed and didn't notice. Top one has the "mixed" crew and the second one is the"real" team.

Dragonboats

Lately I have been talking about dragonboats and trying to go see them race (and not finding them for some reason) and some people wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So here are a few pictures of a dragonboat that is owned and raced by a local team of breast cancer survivors. Many dragonboat teams are survivor teams. Paddling a dragonboat has been found to be great exercise, requires teamwork, and great for a sense of accomplishment. The first picture shows the boat at the wharf in Shediac, NB, where they practice, with the team of 20 rowers, a drummer and a steers-person. The second shows the boat out in the water with some "guests" in with the regular crew. These pictures were taken at an event in September 2003 to thank the various sponsors who helped them put the boat in the water and who continue to support this team. As my husband's radiology group was a sponsor, we got to go and picture 3 shows me (in blue shirt) and Marcel (just behind and to the right of me with the white hat) ready to take off for our turn in the boat. Lastly there is a close-up of the dragon's head. We also attended a ceremony in spring 2003 where the eyes were painted in on the dragon to "awaken it".

District 2 Drama Festival

Okay, this is a bit behind-the-times, but in April my daughter Alix performed in 3 plays in the School District 2 Drama Festival and then did 2 of them again in the Provincial Drama Festival in Fredericton. Two of her roles were major ones and one was a small part. I thought I'd show you a few pictures from the plays. The first 3 are from "Women and Wallace" which explores the relationships of Wallace, a boy whose mother kills herself when he is 6 years old, with the women in his life from the age of 6 to young adulthood. Alix played his grandmother and appeared in 3 sections of the play. I have the pictures in reverse. In the lower one Wallace has just lost his mother, in the middle one (Alix in green shirt) he is a young boy and in the top one he is a university student.

The next 3 are from the play "A Night Like No Other" which was written by their teacher, Micheal McArdle and deals with a rich family on the Titannic on the night of the captain's dinner. Alix played the motherwho is anxious for her younger daughter to be as socially well-connected as the older daughter is, while the younger daughter wants adventure and has befriended a young woman from the lower class. We only find out at the end that they are on the Titannic and so all the plans are likely to go wrong for them. Note the elaborate set. Every other high school shows up at this festival with a table and a chair - Moncton High brings a whole stateroom off the Titannic! Alix had this dress made for her by someone who sews better than I do. Isn't it gorgeous!








Thes last 2 are from S.P.A.R. which is hard one to describe in a short paragraph so I won't even try! Alix was "in the audience" with 3 other people and at one point they "discovered" there were walls surrounding them and you can see them leaning up against the wall. They had a couple of lines to say as well. The whole thing was about the play's author having control over the people in the play only they didn't want to believe it . They thought they were "real". Second picture is the curtain call just so you can see all the cast members and the set a bit. Anyway that's it. I can't imagine why I didn't post these earlier except maybe that was when I was having computer problems.

Back from New Hampshire

I haven't been there since March! I just haven't had time to post for various reasons. I did, however, just come back from the Creating Keepsakes Scrapbooking Convention in Manchester, NH, on Monday. I had a lovely time sharing a room with my friend Gail from Vermont and her daughter Kelsey. Besides taking classes and shopping and eating and shopping and chatting and (did I mention?) shopping, we had a chance to drive to Massachusetts and visit with two other friends, Karen and Kellee. It was great to see them again! Anyway, the pictures here are ones I promised Gail, who didn't quite believe I would get all my purchases into my suitcase. In the first you can see the suitcase open with all packed inside, and then in the second, closed and everything into the suitcase and carry on bag, except for the camera, which went into the green bag once I took the pictures. I didn't even exceed the weight limit for the plane!

Layouts posted

Over in the layouts section are 3 new layouts of New York City.

Creating Keepsakes...and creating friendships

Since 2003 I have been a member of the Creating Keepsakes Message Board and since that time I have made many friendships with people on the board and have met several in person. Despite the distances that seperate us in "real life", many have become good friends, especially the group that call ourselves the "Early Birds", meeting to talk about our days, our joys and our problems each morning. Some from Australia and New Zealand join us in their evening hours. Recently the CKMB has launched a new board format, while, though it has its advantages for some, lacks the simplicity and the means to sub-post (answer an individual's answer to you or to another, which makes the posting seem more like a conversation) that the original board did. In honour of the "old board", we are having a farewell party on March 23, and I decided to post some pictures of various board members (especially EBs) that I have had a chance to meet.

From top to bottom:
1. Acopy of a copy so I think it's lost a bit in translation but... agroup at CKU-WDW in june 2003, my first CKU and my first meeting with fellow CKMBers. Top row: Janis (JTCalypso), Audrey (Lighthouses). Cindy (Cindyrella), Jan (Jamming Jan); front row: me, Chrissy (UFScrapper), Amanda (Mandalinn)
2. Janet (Planet) and me in a scrapbook store in New Jersey (April 2004, I do have a picture somewhere with my eyes open!)
3. A silly supper picture at CKU Boston (July 2004) (Anita S, Kathy A, Holly L, Janet K, and me),
4. Karen's BBQ during CKU-Boston (I didn't have an unscrapped picture of this, so here's the 6x6 page: backrow: Rebecca (BEARGAL1), Karen (KarenLouWhoo), Kathy (AKathy, Kellee (Kellee); middle row: Lori (Luvmygirls), Sandra (SandraGS), Lauren (addictedtoscrapping), Gail (VTScrapper); front row: Pam (Pam in Moncton, i.e me), Janet (Planet)
5. Linda (tadcrafty) and me at CKU-M in Nashville (June 2005)
6. Anne (3Dog Mom) and me just before CKU in Nashville
7. Jules and me at Memories Expo in Orlando (October 2005)
8. Gail, her husband David and daughter Kelsey and me at an Indian restaurant in Moncton (December 2005)

Back from New York City

I, my husband, my daughter Alix, and her friend from school and drama, Alex, have just returned from almost a week in NYC where we saw 2 musicals (Wicked and Spamalot) which were wonderful and did lots of other things too. I thought I'd put a few picures up from our trip.

Left to right, top to bottom they are: Alex and Alix on a street off of Broadway, the view from our hotel window, a view of NYC at night from Top of the Rock (Rockafeller Center), Alex "reading the news" during the NBC studios tour, a view of the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry, Alix eating her cupcake from the Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village (as in Sex and the City), the interior of St. Paul's Chapel, where many rescue and recovery workers after 9/11 were taken in and taken care of for over a year (many worthwhile and touching exhibits here), the four of us in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park, Alix and friends bargaining for designer stuff from a vender in Battery Park, the spoils: Channel glasses, Rolex watches, Louis Vuiton bags all for suspiciosly low prices...hmm...wonder where they come from...( we met friends from Moncton for a day of double-decker bus touring and cheap shopping), Alix in the modern art wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of the stage of Wicked that we saw on a behind the scenes tour, one of the 3 actors who spoke with us on the tour. We later saw him on stage as Dr. Dilamont and also Elphaba's father.

We had a wonderful time and I see many scrapbook pages to make!