My New Toy

Yesterday, I bought myself a new toy at the craft store. I used the gift cards that I had been saving up to purchase a machine called "a personal electronic cutting machine." Wow! This little machine does so much with paper! I just have to load the paper into the machine, select the clip art or font that I want, choose the size and push "cut". It is all done for me! This is wonderful for my scrapbooking and cardmaking projects. I already made some Valentines for a bulletin board in my school library.

I even purchased the machine on sale! (I have never seen this machine on sale at the craft store before now.) The company that makes the machine is called "Cricut" and their website is www.cricut.com

This machine is so much fun! It is portable, so I am going to take it to school with me. I am going to bring it to my Mom's house so that we can work on scrapbooking projects.

Hopefully, I will be able to post a few of my creations here soon. Have a good week everyone!

Sammy

This is my nephew Sam. He is now five years old and attends kindergarten classes at school. He is four months older than my niece Rachel (his cousin.)

Sammy has big brown eyes and curly brown hair. He loves to visit my parent's house because he can run in the backyard and play with his cousins. Sam loves music, cars, and dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, Sam lives with his parents (my brother and sister-in-law) in New Jersey and my family only gets to see him a few times per year.

I am glad that I have photographs of him. I was going through more photographs tonight and found this one of Sam in action. The photographs really help me to feel closer to Sammy across the miles.

The joyful part of photography is that we are able to create lasting memories. I have started a scrapbook for Sam, too. I have all of his baby and birthday photos in there. (Sam was born a month early, but it happened to be my brother's birthday, too.) In addition, I have photos of Sam at his martial arts class as well as his trip to Disneyland. Now I have his kindergarten photo in there, too. I can look at his scrapbook and feel closer to him. That's the power of photography.

Baby Oh Baby!

I was so happy to be able to visit with my little nephew yesterday. Christopher is just seven months old and he is such a good baby. He loves to jump around in his jumper and babble. He can even sit up now!

Christopher brings so much joy to his family. He squeals with delight when he sees his parents (my sister and brother-in-law.) His big sister Rachel just loves to hug and kiss him. Of course, his grandparents (my Mom and Dad), argue over who will hold him. And his Aunt and Godmother thinks that he is such a handsome and smart little fellow.

I am posting my nephew's photo here in my blog. I took it yesterday and it is a very informal photograph! (I forgot to bring my Canon Speedlite flash.) However, I know that this photo will definitely go into his scrapbook!

Now, I have to start a scrapbook for him. I have started scrapbooks for each of my nieces and my other nephew. I plan to give them their scrapbooks when they are older. Kay loves to look at the photos in the scrapbooks when my mother and I are working on them. It is well worth the time to put these scrapbooks together (although I never seem to be caught up on them.) "We gather up pictures and bits of our past and scrapbook them into a gift that will last." ~Kim Rinehart. Does anyone else do scrapbooking projects?

I am going to have an early night. We are having horrible weather here in Central NY State again. The wind is just terrible and it is blowing all of the snow we already have around. We are getting some snow flurries and the visibility is very bad. And it is bitterly cold. Where is spring?