Adopt [WIN] a book.

May loves books. May believes books should be read, loved, and held. May is also sad that her Borders is closing, and a few days ago when she went in, she was distressed to see some of her favorite titles still sitting there, waiting for a good home. Poor things! Why haven’t they been chosen?!

sometimes May talks to her books, and refers to herself in third person. May is crazy. She tried to warn you…

So a few dollars later these (seriously discounted) five books came home with me, ready for new homes. This post holds FOUR give-aways in one!! on SATURDAY (20th) I will announce winners and next week mail the books to their new homes. Here’s the deal. These are FAVORITE – as in – 5 Star/A /fave reads. So take a look – and let me know which one(s) you might want to adopt…

Ye olde tale of tomboy-ish girl who decides to ‘target practice’ her efforts for landing a husband on her brother’s friend… only to fall madly in love with him. Tessa Dare’s first novel – and still one of my favorites from her.

My #1 FAVE Kinsella book – this one is about a girl on a plane who confesses ALL her deep dark secrets to stranger on plane only to find that stranger is owner of company she works for. And craziness + funny things ensue. I recommend this one – often.

Courtney Milan is a mad genius/artist with her words. AMAZING would be not strong enough a word to describe her books. This one? Can’t say enough or try to explain. It’s awesome ye olde England love story – full range of emotion and soooo fantastic.

Thea Harrison writes dark, plot twisty, utterly fantastic Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance. ZOMG! Crazy good. So far just 2 books – and yes they’re the start of a series… and winner will get BOTH books. Just read #2 (Storm’s Heart) and loved it.

So what’s your pleasure? Tell me what you prefer, or if any at all would be nice and I’ll throw all names in hat + pick winners on 8/20. Good luck! I hope to send these awesome books to good homes soon…

for the first time in the history of forever…

 I love bringing my camera EVERYWHERE with me – I don’t get people who complain about “space” or “lugging it around”. It’s just NOT a big deal. Decide it’s worth it, that you want to document, and bring it along!! Isn’t SO MUCH OF LIFE about that? Making decisions and choosing vs compain/whine/make excuses. *anyhow* That said, today I went and did a big summer event, and I intentionally left my camera AT HOME.

My fingers itched to take it, but I knew I could do without and just rely on my iPhone for a few printable shots. Doing this freed me up from bringing a backpack for the kids drinks, sweaters, etc… so I went for it. After all: I have something like 10010105883 boardwalk photos from the last ten years AND the day time + outside = OPTIMAL conditions for a camera phone or any not high end camera!!

Some are hipstamatic (OH how I LOVE shooting square camera pics!), others are regular camera in phone. I got some that make me smile, captured girls (their size, pics of them on rides they’ve gone on since being wee little things, etc) in this last big hurrah of summer, AND lightened my load. I think the key is just to use your camera’s phone a lot in normal conditions so you KNOW how it works, time to open/set it up, etc. and you’re strong with it so you aren’t THAT lady sitting going “oh my, hang on, how does this work?!” because nobody is waiting on you – not when Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk awaits!!

Lovely! Had a GREAT day, so much fun, and ate at two spots in Santa Cruz (Aldo’s and Santa Cruz diner) that have been featured on Guy Fieri’s Food Network show DDD (diners, drive ins, dives) which is the girls FAVORITE! So they were geeked out to watch for “guy ate here” signs and whatnot.

Now if I just upload + order a few prints I am good to scrapbook! Most of my iPhone photo scrapbooking is done when I didn’t have a camera with me- but it’s fun to have these photos and this event that was done this way intentionally. I’ll do it again for sure.

Now we’re home (a bit sunburned, but happy!), I’m off to enjoy the last 2 days of summer vacation…

Spooky Configurations: part 1

I’m getting started on a fun Halloween project. I’ll be working on it for a while – shadow boxes require a lot of work! So watch for weekly segments updating my progress, showing techniques, and more. Here is the first segment:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tafBk2zJiY8]

and I’m just getting started! Nothing is glued (yet), and I’ve got a long way to go… but I’m loving where it’s heading!

Questions? feel free to leave them in the comments!

Scrapbook Workshop is here!

This morning i got some very cool google alerts…

My book is out – and it’s available as e-book as well as print!!

Hooray!! Scrapbook Workshop is here! This book was such a labor of love, and as I look through it at the very familiar projects, the introductions of each blogger I worked so hard on, the projects I spent hours making, all the notes that I double and triple checked, and the beautiful work from all of the contributors I am blown away by it. I LOVE how this book turned out!!

At amazon you can peek into some of the book… so much goodness…

So excited to see how people like it, AND what they create!! The team at F&W was wonderful to work with, and we had an amazing team of contributors as well. You will see these amazing bloggers featured in the book:

Anna Aspnes
www.annaaspnes.typepad.com

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer
www.balzerdesigns.typepad.com

Kimberly Crawford
www.kimberly-crawford.blogspot.com

Lisa Dickinson
www.lisadickinson.typepad.com

May Flaum
www.mayflaum.com

Nora Griffin
www.justmakestuff.com

Debbie Hodge
www.debbiehodge.com

Sasha Holloway
www.sassysasha.typepad.com

Nathalie kalbach
www.scrapbook-trends.com

Megan Klauer
www.meganklauerdesign.blogspot.com

Kendra McCracken
www.kendramccracken.blogspot.com

Becky Olsen
www.lifeasathreeleggeddog.blogspot.com

Katie Pertiet
www.katiepertiet.typepad.com

Kelly Purkey
www.kellypurkey.typepad.com

Debee Ruiz
www.debeecampos.blogspot.com

Doris Sander
www.sanderdk.typepad.com

Keshet Shenkar Starr
www.keshetstarr.com

Melissa Stinson
www.scrappyjedi.com

Irene Tan
www.scrapperlicious.blogspot.com

Sharyn Tormanen
www.sharyntormanen.typepad.com

Lisa Truesdell
www.gluestickgirl.typepad.com

Tammy Tutterow
www.tammytutterow.typepad.com

Iris Babao Uy
www.irisbabaouy.typepad.com

Wendy Vecchi
www.studio490art.blogspot.com

Dina Wakley
www.dinastamps.typepad.com

Deena Ziegler
www.deenaziegler.typepad.com

oooh… and I was just on amazon and noticed that at the moment book is #1 kindle papercraft title, #3 in craft/hobby. On same page as Tim Gunn!

SO exciting. Thank you for letting me share. 🙂