A few pages...

I haven't updated my blog in a few weeks. School keeps me busy, but I've managed to make some pages for my challenges. I've had to resort to combining challenges in a few cases. Here are the past few week's worth of pages I made for the Color Combos Galore blog:

Here was the color swatch Janet sent me:

and this one, which I combined with the Page Planner challenge:

using these colors:

And this one:

Using this interesting color combo:

And here are some pages I made for the Sketch This! blog:

Remember September 11, 2001

My heart has been heavy all day remembering that terrible day. What's really sad is how my fifth grade students seem to have no idea of the profound impact that event had on our country.

I made this two-page layout two years ago, on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and I thought I would share it here. I chose this BasicGrey paper because it looked like a setting sun, surrounded by darkness. A fellow scrapper said to her it looked like a target. I found the photograph on the Internet. The journaling on the second page might be hard to read, so I will include it below the layout.

I've wanted to record this event in my scrapbooks for a long time. It has been five years since that horrible, horrifying day, yet I can remember it as if it happened yesterday.I was at school.

It was a truly beautiful day. Blue sky. Crisp. A fresh school year had just begun two weeks earlier.

My students were at music class when a mom dropped off her daughter, late to school from a doctor's appointment. "Have you heard?" she asked. "An accident. A plane flew into the World Trade Center." Neither of us knew the truth of the situation.

I picked up my students from music class, and soon after that, we began getting calls over the P.A. system for so-and-so to pack up and come to the office; their parent was here to pick them up. Pretty soon, half of my class had emptied out. By then, I had heard what happened (Rita came around and discreetly told the teachers what was happening). The remaining kids were asking what was going on, but I wasn't allowed to tell them. It was so hard to keep going with the school day, teaching and smiling, all the while having those constant interruptions over the P.A. and knowing what was going on outside of the isolated little world of my school.

When lunch finally came, we teachers couldn't wait to go back to our classrooms and turn on the T.V. to see what was happening in the world. Our eyes were fixed on that T.V., and the horror of what we saw was surreal. Those horrific images. Of airplanes flying into the towers. Of exploding clouds of fire. Of people--people--falling from that skyscraper. Of mighty towers collapsing to the ground. Those images burned into my mind forever. And a feeling of horror and disbelief and hopelessness and sorrow burned into my chest so hard that I can still feel it squeezing my heart right now as I am writing this.

By the end of the school day, there was just a handful of students left. I felt so sorry for those kids. They knew something bad was going on, and nobody was telling them what was happening. It was terrifying, really. That one plane that flew into the Pentagon was just a 40-minute drive from our school.

That night I went home and turned on the T.V. to find those same images playing over and over and over again. I cried looking at those buildings I loved, buildings I had been in. I cried, thinking of all those people lost in a senseless act of hatred. I cried, thinking there were people out there who hated us so much they would do such a horrific thing. I felt such despair and hopelessness on that day and for weeks after that.

In the months after September 11, there were flags everywhere. On cars. In front of houses. On storefronts. A feeling of hope and patriotic pride flourished. Farzad and I even tied red, white, and blue ribbons on our rearview mirrors.

As time passed, though, the flags started disappearing. People started forgetting. Politicians started pointing fingers.

Five years have passed and more terror has been committed throughout the world. Bombings. Beheadings. Kidnappings. Threats.

I wish I could turn back time. I wish that September 11th had never happened. But that day is forever burned in my mind. I cannot forget. And I don't want to forget. I need to remember. We all need to remember so it doesn't happen again. Ever. {09.10.06}

Color Combos Galore

I love all the challenges I play in, but one of my very favorites is Color Combos Galore. I don't know how she does it, but Janet always manages to make the coolest color combos for us to use!

I heard "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night on the radio a few days ago, and it brought back this random memory, so I knew I had to scrap it. It gave me an excuse to use this fun BasicGrey frog paper and worked well with the Color Combo.



And here's the color scheme Janet Gave us--aquamarine, pale turquoise, deepest brown, goldenrod:

Did I Mention I Love Challenges?

You could say I'm addicted. I wish I had more time to play on all the challenges I love. So many challenges, so little time...

Here are three pages from last week's challenges. I made this one for the Color Combos Galore blog. Such a silly photo of my brother-in-law and nephew. It's for my silly family photos album.

Here's the color swatch I was working from:

I made this page for the How Much Is Too Much? blog. Debi challenged us to use 4 pieces of fabric and 4 embellishments. I also made this page for the Scrap Your Childhood challenge that I host at Two Peas.

And I made this page for the Sketch This! blog. I've had these photos in my stash forever and was happy to get them onto a scrapbook page.