Ukranian Gospel, Shopping, and a Birthday

Well this was a really busy extended weekend. First and foremost my Dad sang in a reunion concert with all his friends that have been singing Ukrainian Gospel music for about 40 years.  It was really neat to finally meet all these people and to get to know their kids who are not kids at all, they're my age. The concert was beautiful and everyone sounded great. This is a picture of my dad in the orange shirt practicing

Here are some of the singers and their families:

Overall, it was an amazing experience to get in touch with my culture and make a ton of great friends.

Now, being from a Slavic background, it is entirely likely that we'll stay latched onto a bottle for a majority of our natural lives. And I'm not talking baby formula here. My younger sister, who is much more introverted than I am, turned 21 yesterday and we have yet to see if this is going to be the beginning of a downward spiral but so far so good. Per her request, we chowed down on Italian (our Mom's heritage). And after much prodding she agreed to order a token 21st birthday cocktail which she ended up splitting with the whole table. Not a very promising drunk. I got her a bunch of gorgeous Stila and MAC makeup, shoes, a dress, a jacket, and jewelry. She deserves it. She also made out with some Juicy Couture perfume from her boyfriend. And it wouldn't have been a family dinner if the evening didn't involve us causing a scene with our loud blabber, lame jokes with the server (who ordered the check? hardy har!), and failed attempts at constructive criticism all around. Happy Birthday Jenny!

AND I received a challenge: A zip-a-dee-do-da (splash mountain) banner for my Mom's Disney themed desk at work. In the meantime I am continuing my work on my Venice Album:

I used the new elegant cakes cartridge to highlight this photo of me in front of the Rialto bridge in Venice. I attacked the cut pieces with platinum stickles and glimmer misted the layout with some Tattered Angels Coffee Shop glimmer mist. Unfortunately I forgot to block the photo when I sprayed it so I have a speckled face now. I used my ATG gun to adhere the ribbon which I found in the dollar bin at Michael's. I folded the ribbon over and adhered the underside in order to create the pleated effect. The photo matt is from DCWV Happily Ever After matt stack. I feel like I was able to achieve my usual fussy look without all the fussy materials (prima flowers, bling, layers of distressed paper, etc.). Probably due to the intricacy of the Elegant Cakes cartridge shape. Hope to feature more projects on that soon!

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

This made me laugh so hard and went perfectly with my enjoyment of Gone With the Wind that I described in my last post so I had to share. Enjoy!

Mother's Day in Disneyland!

Well I just got back from a family trip to Disneyland for Mother's Day. Because there's no place my mother would rather be than Disneyland. As a family we make the 7 hour drive about 2-4 times a year to the happiest place on earth and never get sick of the place. This time was no exception. From lounging by a pirate ship pool, to the food and wine festival, shopping and eating; it's far more than kiddie rides to us. The main purpose of our trip was to experience the Disney Mother's Day buffet. As far as buffets go, it's pretty decadent. Piles of crab, shrimp, berries, cheesecake, crepes, cheeses, cured meats, mimosas, piano players, chandeliers ands 15ft floral arrangements at every turn:

We got fairly sick from eating too much and I managed to escape the penance of my gluttony by taking a 3 hour nap.  We were due to travel home the next day, so after we managed to recover a bit we headed out for our last night in the parks.

All in all, it was a wonderful Disney trip. I even managed to learn that Disney has it's own breed of rose.  We saw them in the park and they were absolutely Gorgeous! Take a peek for yourself:

So in honor of my Mother and her love for Disney, we used the Disney rose as inspiration for the present we bought her from the parks:

Isn't it just perfect?! And she loved it!

So my book for the trip has been Gone With the Wind. I am enraptured with Scarlett O'Hara. She absolutely fascinates me. I can't help but love her brand of common sense at the pointlessness of tradition and how she is going to knock the world on its rear with her own success and independence. It will definitely go on my top ten book list, which I will definitely be sharing. One particular snippet from the book just made me laugh outright. It takes place after Scarlett married the mild and pliable Frank Kennedy during the reconstruction period of Atlanta post-Civil war. Scarlett isn't entirely honest with Frank about her ambitions to become financially independent after the Civil war. She plays into his expectation for a sweet, docile, air-headed wife until he puts a ring on it. Then Scarlett immediately begins to take hold of Frank's business interests. Frank is reluctant to think that Scarlett has any sort of mental or physical capability to deal with his business. But Margaret Mitchell writes "Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment at discovering that a woman has a brain." Classic! What a pesky thing is a woman's brain to a man.

National Scrapbook Day Challenges!!!

Okay, so some of you may not know this but today is National Scrapbook Day! That means that today people all over the country are having parties, contests and excuses to create. I decided to participate is a couple of challenges this year and will be posting up pictures of what I create throughout the day.

First up is the scrapbook.com general challenge which was to create a page on why you scrapbook. Here is the link to the challenge: Scrapbook.com NSD 2010 Challenge
And here is my entry:

L'amour Layout

This is my most recent layout of our honeymoon in Italy! Use the link below to access my scrapbook.com gallery and see some of the products I used.

Katierose87's Gallery: L'Amour

As Mothers' day approaches I have been spending the week creating some cards based on the personalities of the ladies responsible for me. In addition to making cards I spent the afternoon yesterday with my beloved sweet grandma, or Baba as I call her. She is 88 years old and doesn't leave home much but there is deffinitely more than meets the eye. As a young woman she was taken from her home in Belarus to Nazi Germany and was sent to a labor camp. Luckily for her a local family needed an extra hand on their farm and so she was sent to work for them and became part of their family and was able to survive rather comfortably. After the war she immigrated to Canada and met my grandfather. 5 children later, they moved to San Francisco. I am so greatful for her! We had a great time talking about vitamins, eating borsht, and laughing. So glad that I have time now to spend with her before I lose my chance!

Creative Diarrhea

After a long drawn out period of holding in all that creative juice it's now blowing out in catastrophic proportions! I'm sitting here in my little studio, being all manic with a glue gun and paper flying everywhere, and I can't stop. I actually woke up at 6 am on Saturday morning to fiddle around. So I got halfway through a dignified scrapbook page of my Husband and I in Venice and then when that ran out of steam I moved on to a Hello Kitty greeting card, then a little throne made of paper. What could I possibly need an 8" throne made out of paper for? Well considering it's far too small for my ego, I think I'll settle on using it as a little display for other random things that I smash together and top off with a sneeze of glitter. Here's some of what I've been cranking out:

So May 1st is going to be my first official National Scrapbook day! I will be working on some projects for challenges and hopefully posting them up here as they come along. I will be participating with the challenges at http://www.mypinkstamper.com/ as well as http://www.scrapbook.com/ .

In the meantime I am reading Gone With the Wind and it looks to be AMAZING! I love historical fiction with a passion and will probably make some recommendations in a future post. Gone With the Wind is my all time favorite movie and I kick myself for having waited this long to read the novel. So Fiddle-de-dee and Great Balls of Fire!!!

A New Enterprise

Here begins Katie and Company.
Mission: to spread glitter everywhere while raking in ludicrous amounts of money.
CEO: Me
COO: John
CFO: Pickle
Chairman of the Board of Directors: Bambino

Today the executives of Katie and Co got some serious work done.

We attacked rugs (Pickle, CFO):

We attacked socks (Bambino, Chairman of the Board):

We found a new office space:

We added glitter to things:

And we gave dirty looks (Pickle, CFO):

So far, business is booming and we forecast 500% growth in the second quarter of 2010.

So my first couple of days being myself again have been amazing and I seriously am so happy I can cry on demand. My CFO is actually perched on my head as I type this and is making snorting noises as he cleans his pink little butt. Distraction. Focus. In fact its like my life is thawing out after a prolonged winter and spring has come. Life is creeping back in and shoots of my former self are sprouting all around. I didn't expect that I would fall right back into my old girlish habits that I had in high school and college but I did and it feels so dang good. My mind is my own again and I've been running it at lightning speed.

And when you have/take time to experience life you realize again that it is charming. There are so many little things to enjoy right down to the little white paw that is in my ear right now thanks to my kitten.

Tomorrow I turn 23 years old. This is going to be good.