Fire and Ice

Millions of words have already been written and, no doubt, million more will be written about the sudden death of Michael Jackson . He touched so many lives (not always in a good way) and he was simply the most famous person on Earth. He was also a part of my life in many ways. When I was a teenager I idolized the man, like mostly everyone else did in the 80s. One of my first scrapbooks was all about Michael Jackson! My dream then was to see him in concert and I would have done except for my inability to get good grades in Math (long story...) When my family finally got satellite TV and I discovered MTV, the very first video I saw was Thriller and I was amazed. It set the bar very high for all other videos and I remember at the time being very disappointed that other videos weren't 15 minutes long and had movie-style credits at the end. And the dancing: WOW. I loved the whole thing and of course bought the Thriller album, like millions of people did. His connections to Disney are w...

It will soon be the end of the school year and time to get creative and put together something nice for my son's teachers... and this year I am trying to be organized so I've done them already! I always try to make something (rather than just buy it) and also try to get my son to participate or at least to have some sort of input into what we're doing. This year I had the idea to make photo note cards but I thought that using a photo of my son would not make these note cards incredibly useful to the recipient. I mean, my son is cute but why would any of his teachers want his smiling face on a note card? So instead I scanned a picture he made in school, which had his name written on the front, and used that as the artwork in the note cards. To make my life simple, I simply uploaded the image to the Kodak Gallery and ordered the note cards there , as I bought quite a few they were very reasonable. But I could have also simply ordered prints and then glued a photo to the front...

Last week I was in the shopping center and when I went to one of my favorite stores, I was amazed to find an incredible amount of neon clothes - just like I remembered from the 80s! They had the lot: the legwarmers, fingerless gloves, bangles, head bands... everything in bright pink or orange or yellow. It sure took me back to my younger days. I know that the 80s are big right now (and I'm not looking forward to shoulder pads again, but apparently they're on the way back) and like all fashions, it will eventually give way to another revival and that will go and another take its place... and so on. In fashion everything old is new again, eventually. In the scrapbooking world it is often the same thing: trends come and go but somehow the 80s never really come back. I know not many scrappers remember those heady days when we cut photos into shapes, used bright patterned paper for everything and put together paper piecings. Sure, the trend for brighter colors seems to be making hea...