I was gathering my latest layouts to post them here, and suddenly I realized that they are all from the desert. Methinks my brain is telling me we need another Southwest vacation soon… :D The first three are for Cathy Zielske’s Design Your Life class – most of the assignments are perfect for hiking layouts because there’s room for so many photos while still maintaining a good focal point. Now that’s my kind of scrapbooking!

This one happened because a) I had some leftover photos from our two trips to Zion that I wanted to use, and b) because I wanted to put them in our Places We Go album. There are plenty of layouts from Zion in my old 11×8.5 hiking album and in the Southwest Road Trip album, but nothing in my main albums. Since Zion is our favorite National Park (so far – I have high hopes for Yosemite!), it needed some lovin’ there.

Egads – no patterned paper! Can’t remember the last time I did that.

I never thought I would end up scrapbooking this photo of me looking, ehm, FLABulous and overheated in a COWBOY HAT, but it really does the job of conveying the absolute horribleness of being out of shape and running out of water on the way out of a canyon. So here you go:

This one is a non-Cathy layout from Havasu Falls. Yeah, we’re pretty much going to have to go back there as well. Hopefully it will be back to its beautiful self once it gets cleaned up from the flash flood. The chipboard tree and leaves are from the same CK Kit of the Month as those transparent elements I love so much.

I am still sick (and tomorrow JK is going hiking without me – hrmf), but we had a good Thanksgiving anyway. We made a tasty little feast (including the yam soufflé I’ve been dreaming about since last year) and snuggled up together on the couch with Bobby to watch Dan in Real Life. Love that movie. I hope you all had a great long weekend with your friends and families!

One of the things I really miss about Norway was that you were pretty much guaranteed a white Christmas (at least where we lived). Here? Not so much. Sometimes a really good storm will hit and Redmond will get a light dusting, but it usually disappears in a day or so.

Luckily we don’t have to drive far to seek out the white stuff, so on Sunday JK, Carlos, Bobby and I headed to Melakwa Lake for a quick hike (I love that I can call 9 miles and 2300 feet of elevation gain a “quick hike” now; a year ago it would have killed me!):

We had a perfect day except for the icy, relentless wind by the lake. When we stopped to eat lunch, it was too much for little fat- and furless Bobby to take, so JK stuffed him inside his jacket and opened one of the ventilation zippers on the side so Bobs could stick his head out for air (and snacks). Marsupial madness!

Loved the snow on the trees (even though they kept aiming for our necks with their cold, soggy snow bombs:

Bobs made a new friend:

Walking in a winter wonderland:

It was great to get out there, the snow conditions were perfect – fresh and shallow enough to not need snowshoes or have to worry about avalanches yet.

Unfortunately it’s also the season for Kleenex, and I have come down with a lovely sinus infection. I haven’t had one since I was a kid, so I forgot how much it hurts – and I’m being exceptionally whiny and annoying about it. I just want to pull out all my teeth and pop holes in my ears and rip out my eyeballs to relieve some of the pressure. Gaaah!

All hope of joining our friends for Thanksgiving is now lost, so we’ll try to make the best of the situation and have a cozy meal at home.

My friend Latrice put together a cool Christmasy kit for her Etsy shop and I got to try it out! I put on some Christmas music (Ingrid Michaelson has a new holiday song out, whee!!) and pulled out some photos from last year that I LOVE and that mortify poor Bobby to no end.

Everything I used is from the kit – my favorite part was a cool 6×12 piece of transparent craft plastic that I used to make the snowflakes (I used my Quickutz Squeeze to cut them out). I want to try cutting out some titles with it too, to layer directly on top of photos or journaling.

The kit will go on sale on Wednesday (November 26) in Latrice’s shop: anyoccasion.etsy.com – in the meantime, check out the snowflake rounds and mirrors that are already in her shop! Waaant.

We’ve entered monsoon season here in Seattle, and even though I’ll admit the weather has been surprisingly good so far this November (then again we live on a hill and didn’t get flooded), it’s still getting harder to get up in the morning. In the spirit of staying positive, here’s a list of randomness that’s making me happy right now.

Snoqualmie Falls roaring after the storm | Obamarama

1 ) The election: wow, have I really not updated since the election? See, it’s getting harder to do stuff. Anyway, we had a wee party to follow the election results and there were huzzahs all around. Even though I’ve spent most of my life in Norway, I’ve managed to be in the U.S. for three presidential elections – 1992 (success!) when my family lived in New Jersey, 2004 (FAIL) when JK and I were going to school in California, and 2008 (great success!) now that we’re being all grown up and stuff in Washington.

2 ) The holidays: I absolutely love Christmas, and now that we live in the U.S. I absolutely love Thanksgiving. Anything that gives me an excuse to start celebrating earlier. This past weekend Tom and Amy hosted their annual Fakesgiving Feast. Since so many people in this area are transplants who go home to wherever for real Thanksgiving, Fakesgiving gives everyone a chance to celebrate together here. And to eat twice as much.

The Fakesgiving table | Candy Cane Lane
3 ) Candy Cane Lane: this is the best tea ever. Trust me. Try it.

4 ) My happy lamp – I’ve been talking about buying one of these for years, and I finally got around to it last week. It is amazing. It ACTUALLY WORKS.

5 ) Ingrid Michaelson: we finally got to see her live last week. I love her. I just want her to come live with us so she can entertain me all day. I think JK has a crush on her too, so it would totally work.

6 ) More music: Me and Armini by Emiliana Torrini (Birds is my favorite song at the moment) and Winter Songs, a Christmas compilation from The Hotel Cafe.

7 ) Idea books: Quick & Easy Photo Albums is freakin’ awesome – even if you’re not a scrapbooker. I am so full of ideas after reading this!

I’m also really looking forward to Month by Month Scrapbooking by Amanda Probst – I love Amanda’s style and I’ve been waiting for this one a long time!

Ok, this one isn’t actually an idea book but rather a collection of humorous scrapbooking tales: Snippets by the awesome Lain Ehmann. To whom it may concern, I want this one for Christmas!

8 ) CKC Seattle: I got to take two perfect classes with Stacy Julian on Friday (ugh, I am really starting to feel like a stalker) and met some great people (*waves in case they’re reading this*). I love CKC.

Nothing much to say, just wanted to upload some of the pages I’ve been making. The best part about Library of Memories is that it really makes me want to scrapbook again after months and months of couldn’t-give-a-crap.

This one is for Cathy Zielske’s Design Your Life class – the hellish part was hiking up in the absolutely intense heat (Norwegian blog readers may not know that on the other side of the Cascade Mountains it is basically all desert country – not like rainy Seattle at all!), the heavenly part was cooling off in Ingalls Lake. Aaaah…

Last Tuesday, JK and Mark got up stupid early to hike up a mountain before work. I stayed at home since I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them for more than two minutes…anyway, Snoqualmie Mountain is the highest peak in the Snoqualmie Pass area, so the views were pretty much perfect. At least I got to see the photos! Speaking of photos, the enlargement plus the silhouette of JK were taken by Mark and stolen by me.

I’m not completely happy with this one; it looks too angular. Maybe I’ll have to sneak some rounded corners in there somewhere. The little rising sun is an old flower die from Quickutz.

This is a lift of a layout by Cathy Zielske. I’ve been wanting to use that title forever!

Finally, an old layout I found as I was sorting my albums:

Right. I seriously have nothing interesting to say (do I ever?), so there you go.

If you are an American citizen, please go out and vote tomorrow – it is so important. Think of all us poor little resident aliens who don’t have that right! :o)