After a while without doing anything, I got the bug today. I have mucho things to do, but no gauze so I have some extra time.

FIRST ONE!

This is my grandma, or, as I call her, NONNA Rina. This photo was taken in 1978 I believe, she was 75 years old. She lived to be 101!

Used a quickpage for this one, no time to do it in a more creative way today.
BIGGER VERSION HERE:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1970s/1978.html

SECOND ONE!

My mom Laura on her honeymoon in Venice with the pidgeons! Love this one. Another quickpage...
BIGGER VERSION HERE:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/vintage/aug57.html

THIRD ONE!

Greg and I in Italy this past summer. My mommy actually took this photo, I love it! Yet another quickpage. So many ideas... so little time, what can I say?

BIGGER VERSION HERE:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/aug072.html

Having one of those months... some days are so bad I feel like driving myself into a lake! AARGHHH. This is the first day this whole month that I do not have a sore throat and I have nausea if I spend too much time on the computer, but I am so behind on my stuff, how can I? Nicky has been home most of the month, no break from the little yellow bus for me. Thankfully hubby is there for me... he's the BEST.

This picture was taken in the summer of 1970-my sister and I with my grandparents (my mom's parents). Hard to believe they were both younger than my parents are now in this picture and both died just a few years later. I miss them, especially my grandma.
I followed a Winni scrapbooking tutorial for this one, BIGGER VERSION here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1970s/aug70.html

Two more pages tonight. Not that I had time to do them, but I feel so crappy... I've had this sore throat now for a month. I am ready to go to the doctor!

This first page is my BEAUTIFUL Mom Laura. This was just before she got pregnant with me! Summer 1963. This is a quickpage by SnowsMoons Designs.
Bigger version here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1960s/summer63.html


This second page was a LOT of fun to make. First, I ran across to this 'Great Guy Spotted' frame by Cherswitz... so cute... and so true! Greg is the love of my life hands down. I knew it from the first time I saw him on a November day in 1984. I always felt he was MINE. My only regret is that it took so darn long for us to get together! We only got married in 2002, but, as far as I am concerned, it was meant to me. For us to survive divorces, kids and to find each other and be as strong as we are... it's nothing short of remarkable. Nothing will ever pull us apart. This fall will mark the 10 year anniversary of us re-starting our relationship after a 14 year hiatus.
I put this page together using a kit from Shabby Princess (Urban Kiwi Kit).

Bigger version here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/june022.html

I am in the middle of doing these cute royal dollies, but I needed 2 minutes to relax, so here's the page I whipped out. Of course, a quickpage! Nicky and Connor, too darn cute in this pic, were 9 and nearly 2 here. Awww... brotherly love!

Bigger version here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/aug05.html

Nicky's been home since his "accident". Sigh. He'll go back to school on Monday, he was in just too much pain. I am just about to go play Mario Kart for the WII with him as soon as I am done with this!
Isn't this picture amazing? I was 2 years old and I am in my grandfather's arms. He's my mom's dad. It's a RARE photo with him, I only have a handful. He died when I was 13 of liver failure. In this photo with us are my sister Lorena below us and to the side my cousins Esther, Elena and Ivo. I am probably closer to Elena right now, she's a sweetheart, she lives close to my parents so I always get news from her family. She just recently became a grandmother, imagine that! My cousin Esther's son Sabino lives and works in Australia, the handsome devil. I hear from Ivo's wife every now and again.

Bigger version of this picture here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1960s/fall1966.html

Awww... my sweet boy! Connor here is almost 4 months old. Too cute!!! Cute Scrap kit courtesy of Lisa at http://ronimasil.blogspot.com/

BIGGER Version here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/dec2003.html

I must admit... I feel pretty awful today. I was doing fine until the school called. Some girl, who obviously was not paying attention to where she was going, came around a corner skipping and tripped over Nicky's feet rest of his chair and fell right on TOP OF HIM!!!! The result... was skin off of Nicky's cheecks and a busted lip. Nicky is miserable. I made sure he was confortable and even though I was done on the computer for the day, I felt nostalgic and wanted to cheer up so I wanted to scan my senior pictures. Unfortunately the pictures I have are old and discolored or ruined. However, I found two in my Senior Year scrapbook that looked still quite decent, so even though they were wallet-sized, I scanned them at HIGH resolution, cleaned them up digitally from all the debris and speckles and made a page out of them. I will see if I can order some 8x10 of them too at Fotki.

So... that's the page I made using a QuickPage today. Pretty cute!
BIG Version is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1980s/fall1983.html

Yes! One more new one for today. I haven't made many pages of the 90s (not a great decade for me by far) so I looked for some cute pics and found these. Nicky was 9 months old, adorable!!! I used a quickpage for this one... cheated again!

Bigger version is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1990s/aug97.html

Sometimes I should never steer away from the computer. Just when I think my life is good, something happens that reminds me of the past and the 15 years I wasted rowing a sinking boat... but that's another story for another day. This new page is lesson 32 in my Winni Scrap lessons. It was meant to show how to use frames. Pretty cool. I learned a lot from these lessons. I am almost done and then I will learn how to actually MAKE digital scrapbooking elements. How cool. I can't wait.

Bigger version is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/lesson32.html
The kids at camp... so cute!!! Connor was 2!

I don't feel quite as creative today... so, this page I made out of a ready-made quickpage. The pictures were really small that's why I opted for them to be smallish on the page as well. One of the pics it's actually a bit blurred even, but still, these two pics were taken the same day on December 11th 1972. Gosh... so long ago... and... what the heck was I wearing? MOM??? LOL. Oh yeah... it was the seventies, I forgot! LOL!!!
Bigger version is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1970s/dec72.html
It's been a strange day. I worked this AM and then my ex came to get Nicky and it's so strange not having to worry about Nicky for a couple of days. This is a new thing. Nicky's dad only moved to this area late last year and until a couple of months ago he would come and visit and stay with us. Tomorrow should be a fun filled day... we're all going to a Walkathon for Fybromyalgia Awareness and will try to raise EB Awareness at a booth. One of the other EB moms is in charge of the whole thing and a few other moms I know will be there as well, should be pretty fun. I just hope that my voice comes back full force and that my coughs goes away!
I am listening to Clay's new album... LOVE IT! Yey!

Someday my Ship will come...

I saw this layout on the August 2007 issue of Digital Scrapbooking magazine, the one I took to Italy with us. On one of the advertisements there was the back of this little boy, maybe 2 years old, looking at the school bus and the layout simply stated 'someday *my* bus will come'. I thought it was cute and thought nothing of it until one of our days in Venice, when we were having dinner by the Rialto bridge and Connor just stood there for a while, looking at the boats go by and though of doing a page of him waiting for a ship the moment I snapped this pics! So... all this time later, there they are!

Bigger version of this page is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/aug07.html

The papers and elements I used to make this page are from Elisa's Bits

I feel bad because my websites need updating BADLY, but this is so much more fun to do, and I feel so horrible today, I need something fun to do for me, LOL.

This photo I love. My dad and mom are holding me, and below is my older sister. This pic was taken in 1965, summer looks like, I was 1 and my older sister was 5.

Bigger version is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1960s/jul65.html

Another day, and I am more sick than before. So sick that I had to stay home from work... that never happens.

I love how this page came out... yep, another page inspired by a layout in Digital Scrapbooking magazine! The elements come from Rambling Rose and the bigger version of this page can be found here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/june02.html

I could not go workout today because I am sooo sick! My voice is shot. Nicky is also home and shortly I will go eat dinner and change his gauze, but first I had to do this page! Isn't it adorable? BIGGER version is here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/jan2006.html

I got the inspiration from the Digital Scrapbooking magazine. I finally can look at these layouts thinking... YES! I can do this!!!! I got the new issue yesterday and I bookmarked the pages that I want to do and this was the first one. I think mine came out even cuter than the example, but I am biased! I love having these inpirations, I could never come out with these ideas on my own...

I used scrapbooking elements from this gal over here. Very talented!!

I could not go to sleep tonight before putting together another page. I probably won't be able to make another one for several days. The BIGGER VERSION of this one is uploaded here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/1960s/dec69.html

I used a quickpage for this one again, at 10:30pm, after the day I had, I thank God for the QP, I saved quite a few in the past several months, and I am happy I did.

This photo was taken in Christmas 1969. From the left is my dad, my nonna and nonno, my aunt Anna, myself and my sister. As you can tell on the table is the famous Panettone and my aunt had gotten me these cute sewing cardboard pictures, they were pretty cute. The strange thing is that I actually remember them, I remember her giving them to me and then I saw my mom in the other room thanking her for giving both myself and my sister some towels for our 'wardrobe'. It's tradition in Italy to start putting things away for when the kids get married, but at 5 years old, I remember being disappointed that instead of getting another toy I got towels for when I got married. I laughed at it the other day to my husband, look, I told him, I have 40 year old towels!!! LOL Too funny!

The bigger image for this page can be seen here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/2000s/aug04.html

This is a very simple page I made out today with a sample kit from June Hill aka Tink © Andika Designs at http://andikadesigns.blogspot.com

Connor was almost 1 year old and he was SO DARN CUTE in these pictures, which were taken in late August 2004. The water was pretty cold but he was happy to be cooling off in a very hot day. I took about 20 pictures of so of him in his little pool but only these 3 came out half way decent! That's why I love digital pictures!!! I could have never caught the main darling shot with a regular camera, I would have given up by then!!!

BIGGER version of this page can be seen here:
http://public.fotki.com/ebworld/personal-photos/scrap-pages/misc-years/angelfriends.html

I was doing this Winni scrap tutorial and I randomly picked the word art 'Friends are like Angels' and I was supposed to add a photo underneath. I was thinking of what photo to add when I got a phone call from a friend of mine and she was crying because her daughter, who has EB like my son, is not doing well, and she was so upset I started crying. When I got off the phone I started thinking of my friends that are not "like" Angels, but ARE Angels. I've moved a lot during my life and in consequence I've had very few people that I've truly considered 'best' friends. Two of those best friends died in 2004.

My friend Paola was someone I went to school with and worked with in Italy. We were best pals and wrote letters upon letters over the years. She went through infertility treatments and after many years she finally had her baby girl in late 2001. In late 2002 she was diagnosed with brain cancer and died on February 29th, 2004. Her family told me she was in a LOT of pain in the end. To say her death upset me... well, this does not describe exactly how I felt. While it's true that we had grown apart over the years, she always signified something important in my life. I am very sad to know her daughter, whom she wanted to much, will grow up without her mother.

My friend Darren on the other hand, I met at work in 1992. We worked together for about a year and he made a tremendous difference in my life. Even though he moved back east we kept in touch quite a bit. It was truly a big blow when he found out he was HIV positive. His partner did not make it through the summer, but he did live for a decade after his diagnose. I will forever miss him.