Jacksonville Parks

After working several hours today to finish up a project at work I decided to take a ride to a local park/trail that I read about on this site. I chose the Cradle Creek Preserve to check out, will probably visit more of the other parks eventually.

I stopped at Dunkin's for an iced coffee, and headed a few miles down the road.

As soon as I got out of my car and saw the boardwalks I couldn't wait to see what was out there!

I mostly saw lizards and lots of large bird nests. I wish I had a better zoom, but I think this one may be an osprey. Heard some woodpeckers as well, but didn't/couldn't see them. Lots of elusive butterflies as well.

This little lizard was pretty neat. The photo is actually upside down, since that was the only angle I could get him at. I was hanging over the railing as it was. :)

Can you see the lizard in this photo?? He wasn't into getting his picture taken, and I took that as a personal challenge. Managed to get a couple of him, but he kept scurrying under the leaves, and boy, did he blend perfectly!

Also saw lots of flowers, spanish moss, and various palms.

Managed to get a shot of myself sitting on a bench at the end of one of the trails. I only saw one couple walking around, other than that I pretty much had the trails to myself.

Windy Weekends..

I was able to scrap part of my saturday events from the Seafood festival, but not all of it. It was so windy, I have no idea what made me want to walk out onto the very long, even windier out over the ocean pier. May have been the attractive price of only a dollar. A superb bargain, considering I had just paid $13 for some fried shrimp and a lemonade. Ah well, not like the seafood fest is every weekend.

Here is my layout from the Shuttle Discovery launch at the beach. I printed out the patch from the internet.

~details: Cardstock: Bazill, "blastoff" letters: K & Company, Discover, believe, Imagine rubons: Junkitz, imagine rubon(top left): Swatch book, calendar stamp: Collage Press, Journaling stamp: Autumn Leaves.

That last pic that looks like a cloud is actually the leftover gas from takeoff, it was very bright! The pic on the left with "discover" on it is the rocket boosters dropping off.



As I mentioned earlier, while I was at the seafood fest, I decided to take a stroll on the pier. It was actually pretty neat, spots for people to clean their fish and some benches. I will definitely have to take the walk again, on a much less windy day of course!

~details: cardstock: Bazill, "@" stamp: Fiskars, "the pier" stamps: Autumn Leaves (more on these later), Pointing hand stamp: Melissa Francis.

So, those new Autumn Leaves stamps are pretty cool. they are the layering ones, and so an endless amount of possiblilities for color choices. I'll have lots of fun with those over the holidays!

So, that was my weekend! I still want to scrap the actual seafood fest, and then at the beginning of April, there's the Springing the Blues fest, with more food, music and fun to be had. That one goes on for 3 days.

While I was trying to find less windy places to hang out during the fest, I went to a small park near where I watched the Shuttle. There's a bronze statue there called "Sea Express". It depicts a boy riding on the back of a dolphin. I took several pics of it in different lighting, so not sure which one to use on my layout. I'm sure one of them will be fine.

That's all I've got here. As always it was a very productive scrappy day. Don't forget to visit Jeanne to see all the cool stuff she made!

Have a great week!

**only 62 days til my vacation, and 64 til I get my new tattoo!! w00t!!!

My, My...

I had a pretty quiet week for the most part, and really didn't go anywhere until last night. I ended up at the beach with probably a couple thousand other folks all to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery take off. I'd never gone to watch that before, and even though I'm quite a ways north of Cape Canaveral, you could see plenty, it was very cool!

As usual Jeanne & I had a scrappy session going on. It wasn't as long as some of them, but still fun & productive as always!

I got 2 layouts done, both super simple. First one is for my baby girl Sadie. Ok, so she's a dog. I love this pic i took of her on my last vacation home, she was so happy to see me, and I was very happy to see her as well!

~details: PP: American Crafts, date stamp: Collage press "office Policy", "sadie" bone and paw stamps: Studio G, ink: stampcraft and ColorBox.

Next one is a few favorite beach pics from january and february. I used sketch 12 from Inspired blueprints for this one, and since I didn't cut the contrasting blocks to exactly 6x6, I had to finagle it to get the pics to line up right. It's still not quite lined up, but I like the way it came out.

~details: background papers: Colorbok "jewel", PP used for button in center: American Crafts, Thread: DMC, Rub-on flowers: American Crafts, Date stamp: Collage Press.

So, there you have it! I can't wait to get prints made of the shuttle launch to scrap that. How am I ever going to fit 50 pics on a page?? lol

As always, go here to see what Jeanne made!

Oh, Scrappy day!

Today was a busy, but good day. I came home to not one, but TWO packages in my mailbox! I ordered a few items at Addicted to Scrapbooking, and a paperback from the paperback swap site. I've seen this author's books at the library, and since I'm so slow at getting into reading I didn't want to borrow it and not have it done, or need to renew half a dozen times. His name is Jasper Fforde, and the books are a sci-fi/mystery mix. It would figure that Book 2 arrives before book 1, too. Ah, well.

The scrappy goodies are Creative Cafe Travel set on the right, and on the left is Dear Diary from Collage Press. Both very cool looking!

For our usual sunday scrap session Jeanne and I both got quite a bit done. I hit a roadblock later on, but she came thru with a lift idea, that I'm still playing with.

For the ones I did finish, I'm quite happy with those! In 2006, the company I work for decided to move us from TX to Jax, and I really wish I was able to get more pics of the very long drive out, but due to traveling with others (all in our own vehicles), I managed just a few photos. The photo of the hotel they put us up in I took this past week, it hasn't changed. Sadly, the Dunkin' Donuts that was here is now gone. All is not lost, though; they've put Dunkin's in the local Hess stations! hehe.

For my second Layout, I did a 2 pager for the JDRF walk on saturday. I had so many cool pics, that I couldn't decide how to put that many on there without looking too cluttered. I remember Shimelle had a Scrap your Day challenge similar, and I used that idea, worked just perfect!

Working on a LO (or 2) for the pups back home, and have more downtown jax photos to scrap from the walk, as well. So, a very productive scrappy day! As always, go here to see what Jeanne made!

JDRF walk..

Today was the Juvenile Diabetes walk here in Jacksonville held at Metro Park. Our company had over 100 registered walkers. The weather was beautiful at almost 80 deg. F and sunny, glad I brought along the sunscreen.

I'll be scrapping tomorrow, as I've already ordered those prints from walgreens. I love those 50 prints for $5 deals!

The 3 mile walk started on the waterfront, and continued down Gator Bowl Dr, onto Bay St, towards s. Pearl St, crossing water St, and then back down to Gator Bowl Dr. Along the way we passed all the cool places I see when driving thru and can't take pics. So I used this opportunity to get some shots of Jacksonville landmarks. I'l show more pictures monday on the layouts I make tomorrow.

Starting top left: juggler, reflection in the Modis building, the balloon arch that started/ended the walk, some girls that were very happy to have finished the walk. (Glad I had the camera up then, LOL), The Maxwell House factory (oh, the smell of the coffee!!), the Gator statue in Metro Park, and in the center is the Jacksonville Landing. A mall with a very noticable orange roof.

More to come....

Stormy Sunday Scrapping

Sunday began with some whipping winds and rain. There was a large lock of finches flitting about in the tree outside my window. The cat really enjoyed that!
At the most all I had to do was head out to Walgreens to pick up my prints, and mail a couple things out. I was back home by 8am, and ready to eat and get started thinking about what to scrap for the day. I had a couple ideas, and one led to another and then another, til I had a good 5-6 plans for pages. 3 of those ideas will have to wait, and 2 are completed. Yeah, I'm kinda slow, not to mention I kept getting sucked into surfing online. One more LO is in progress. My "HOME." album is on hiatus until I go home to get some new shots of things that aren't already in there.

At first I was just going to do a general Red Sox LO, and when I started looking thru the photos I had, I noticed how all of Jason's pics were from behind...how odd! ;) That one was a no-brainer..

~Details: Cardstock: Best Occasions, "B": printed off the net, Markers from Zig, "Jason" rubon's from Monograms set, "Varitek": Edwardian Script ITC font, chippy button from Love Elsie, thread from DMC.

So, eventually I will do a Red Sox LO, and a Johnny Damon one, since I met him at the local mall back home before the 2004 season started.

Next layout is one focusing on the Sand dollar I found in St. Augustine last week. Even tho I'm not a religious person, I included the legend that goes with it. I printed the photo out on cardstock, and kept the colors simple.

~details: Cardstock: The Paper Company, Font: Monotype Corsiva, "memories like this" rubons: Swatch book, "treasure" sticker: Adornit, Chipboard border: K & Co.

So there you have it! A fantastic day of scrapping and no better way to spend a crappy weather day than inside, warm & cozy, scrapping with my bestest friend! Yes, the sun did eventually come out, but the winds remained!

As always head over to Jeanne's place, and see what she made on our scrappy day!