Ravi's Birthday Party

This is from a birthday party that Sophia went to earlier this month. The kids got to paint their own pottery pieces. What a creative idea. Of course Sophia chose a kitty to paint. The pieces were fired and Ravi's mom brought them to school the next week. Tom and I decided we needed to try this out. I certainly can't draw anything to save my life, but painting might work! I didn't blur out faces this time because so many people have asked me about it and said they were okay with this. If you see your child and want their face blurred out, let me know I will repost. Again, this is site is not passworded, but neither is it published anywhere, so only those of you who know about it will get to this blog.

The Holidays

Christmas Promise by Berna Datema

Gosh, it sure has been a long time since I posted. The holidays got away from me, and here it is New Year's Eve day! Sophia and Rachel spent an entire, and I mean entire, day together AFTER Christmas doing just about everything you could imagine, from baking cakes for a tea party in Sophia's new easy-bake oven, to dancing on the dance mat to playing with dolls, knitting and board games. WOW. I should have had them take down the Christmas Tree. After the Christmas Tree festival they played dress-up and decorated the tree beautifully, as you can see. I guess another playdate is in order to take it all down - is that some violation of the child labor laws or something?????

Holiday Tree Festival

Sophia and Rachel got to spend the day together. I love when they get to be together because they are such fabulous friends. They have such affinity for each other, and have such great times. They no longer attend the same school, but they had been together for kindergarten, first and second grade. I heard Rachel tell Sophia, "I love you Sophia, you're my best friend".

We took them to the Holiday Tree Festival which is a yearly fund-raising event here for Children's Hospital. They spent time looking at the trees, talking to Santa, and putting their raffle tickets into the box for the American Girls dolls "Sleigh Bells Ring".


Christmas Remembered QC - Lauren Bavin/Elegant Christmas - Elizabeth Weaver/Font Gingerbread House

King Zak's Birthday Party

Credits: At the Playground - Jamie Rousselle/Distressed Designs - Valerie Brumfield/Blooming Beauty and AOP - Valerie Brumfield/Rusty Nail - Lauren Bavin

This is from Zak's party in October, I actually did post a couple pages from it, but then I did this one for my Layout and Design class. I haven't gotten critiqued on it yet, so you may be seeing a different version of it at some point.

Note: I did repost this after making corrections.

I also note that I haven't been posting credits on this blog because I had posted the sites for all my layout where I have posted the credits. I have changed that now and will be posting credits with each layout. I will be going back and adding the credits as I go to my previous posts.

Birthday Parties

Well, Sophia and I were both struggling with our allergies this weekend, but she did manage to get to her bowling birthday party for her friend Emily. It was the first time she's ever bowled, so it was an interesting experience for Sophia. She had a lot of fun. I figured I better catch up from Rachel's Tae Kwon Do birthday party while I was at it. Sophia is playing with her cousin Matthew today. She made a puppet theatre from an old box and they were making puppets out of old socks.

Queen for a Day

I did this as part of a challenge about what I would do if I were Queen for a day. I wrote that "If I were Queen for a day I would go back to where I was born and be able to see this outside my window every day. I’d go back to a simpler way of life and a slower pace in time. I’d go back...but only for a day. (Greece circa 1988)" This photo was taken by my late second cousin (actually, it would be a cousin three times removed) Tom Praskis, who taught me a lot about photography and computers. Granted, I am NOT a very good photographer, but he did spark my interest in photgraphs and heritage, and definately computers.

The Pumpkin Walk

The kids had their Pumpkin Walk at school last week which was a lot of fun. Sophia carved a pumpkin for the first time, and got to wear a costume and do a little bit of the, uh, well, let's say the PUMPKIN thing. She was excited and had a good time. We don't celebrate or observe Halloween, so we'll just call it an Autumn or Pumpkin Harvest celebration, she understands that Halloween is not acceptable for us, but that she can still have fun with her friends at school and enjoy the time in a different way.

The layout of Emily and Sophia is actually part of a new class I started this month on layout and design. This was my first homework assignment. It's actually been redone after being critiqued. I think in the next few layouts, I will scan some of Sophia's artwork and use it in some of the layouts from school.

The Princess Who Went to the Center of the Earth

Kits used by Christine Borgfeld


So, I'm working on a few pages from this show I attended at Sophia's school. It was quite beautiful and I went because she's taking eurythmy classes at school and I had no idea what that was, other than it was something to do with dancing or movement or something of that nature. So, when this group was to come perform, I thought I would go and see what it was all about. It was quite beautiful, a fairy tale narrated by the "king" and done in dancing and music. The children were mesmerized and hardly moved during the hour-long production.

Michaelmas and Knights and Faeries

These were taken at the Michaelmas play which was put on by grades, I think it was 1-3, or 4. The second grade class were Meteors. All the children made different things for their particular parts. In Sophia's class they made Michaelmas lanterns out of coffee cans. They used a nail and hammer to punch holes in a design on their cans, then a tea light was put inside and a handle attached. When the children came in, they all carried these lanterns. The dragon costume was made by the parents and children of the 3rd grade class. It is stunning. This was a new costume this year, I understand, retiring the old one from years past.







These are a few pages from a birthday party one of her classmates had which had a knights and fairies theme. I've made great use of these photos, and actually have several other layouts that went with these. Technically, the dragon would be tamed and not slain, but nevetheless, in Greek mythology, the dragon is acutally slain so lets go with that! Totally fun!! Again, part of my class, so I really had fun trying out all these great new techniques.

My favorite pages.

Here are a few of my most favorite pages that I created recently.

My Snowglobe Tubby Baby

Okay, this is a little bizzare maybe, but this is what is called Photoillustration. It means using photos to make illustration type pictures. I had this picture of Sophia from when she was about 8 months old maybe. I used a couple dozen different elements from various digital scrabooking kits to make it look like she was in the tub, in a snowglobe, and behind a curtain in space. This actually was an early layout I did when I was starting to get away from simple scrapbook style layouts and trying to branch out into more artistic layouts.


Then I did the mermaid picture. I actually didn't do that great of a job with this one, but I played with it for so long that now I'm done tired of it, so I can't do any more. I'd like to actually take a picture of Sophia sitting in the right position so I won't have do so much editing the next time! Now that I'm actually doing this photo editing and photoillustration, I understand the need to start with a picture that will work with your art, rather than trying to edit the heck out of your photo to force it inot your art, which actually only works part of the time anyway.

The Unknown

I did this for a challenge at DigitalScrapbookPlace.com regarding where I wanted to be, or, where I saw my self in the future. I actually did quite a bit of work on this layout because I 'm still in the class for Advanced Photoshop, so I still was using a lot of techiniqes I was working on for class. I liked this pretty well. I had several photos which I merged here, and blended and used a lot of brushes and filters. Also I used some lighting filters too. The journaling on the notebook paper says:

I am here. I was there. Now,
where will I be? Now or later?
I see myself in a state of
grace. I see love through the
trials and tribulations. I have
patience, I have wisdom.
I can make better decisions, I
can see the future to prevent
the past. I am old in years, but
young at heart. I’m not there,
I’m still here, but on the path,
I am headed there now.

Well, it was an interesting challenge to say the least, and the response to my submission was quite overwhelming.

Papou Manoli

This is a layout I did about my grandfather. I actually did it for a class I'm taking for Advanced Photoshop CS2. I love the class. My mother took the photo some 20 some years ago and I scanned it. I applied several filters to it and used some brushes and blending options. I also used the clone tool to make the duplicate of the photo in the background. All the background papers and elements I got from my favorite digital scrapping place, DigitalScrapbookPlace.com. I love how it came out.

The beginning of a new school year.

I can't believe I have waited this long to post anything. Things have been way to busy to even try to catch up. Sophia loves her new school. It is like a dream come true for all of us. She is meeting so many new friends, and Tom and I are too. I did manage to scrap a TON of pages though, which I will start to post from her school activities.

The Summer's End

Well, the summer has finally come to an end and Sophia had fun swimming nearly every weekend, as well as spending every chance she could with her best friend Rachel. Sophia had a Cinderella Birthday Party which she enjoyed very much, and even caught Toby the Toad Prince for the party. She let him go again after the party...sadly though, she took good care of him and go quite attached to him. Although she was sad to see the summer vacation come to an end, she was excited about going to a new school. Spring Garden Waldorf School. A whole new experience for her.