Things have been really busy here for once - lots of little things to do for SOY, page calls for Creating Keepsakes (it’s so cool to communicate with the different editors!), and some other Norwegian things I’ve been working on. So I’m a wee bit behind. Ok, I’m always behind. Anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, Tom and Amy invited us to go camping with them to Shi Shi for Tom’s birthday. Shi Shi is a gorgeous beach in the Olympic National Park on the coast. It is quite a drive from Redmond (especially with the insane ferry lines), so we stopped in Port Townsend on the way and spent our first night in a Victorian bed and breakfast. The next morning we headed for the beach, stopping only for a couple cans of beans and veggie dogs (best campfire food ever!) and to get our permits at the Makah Indian Reservation. After a quick hike (I think it’s about two miles and an easy walk - except for the *cliff* you have to walk down to get to the beach…) we reached the most gorgeous beach I have ever seen. It is absolutely amazing! I am not a good enough photographer to capture the feeling you get on this beach, but this guy is.

JK, being JK

Shi Shi by night

We got up at dawn the next day - the tide was so low that we could walk all the way up to the arches

The raccoons were up early too :D

Tom and JK (I borrowed Tom’s wide-angle lens and took several big-nosed shots of JK :D)

JK and I, tired beyond belief, waiting for the ferry on our way home

I love how happy we look (in spite of the humongous bags under our eyes); it looks just like I felt all weekend. We’ve been talking about going camping and hiking for years, but we just never get around to doing it. We’re both huge procrastinators. We even bought this cheezy self-help book about procrastination, but - you guessed it - we haven’t read it yet.. So to finally be out there, sleeping on the beach and, well, drinking by the campfire, felt amazing. I have officially been bit by the hiking bug!

The rest of our Shi Shi photos can be found here.

Oh - guess who is this month’s Honorary Garden Girl? Whee! Here are some of my pages, the rest of them and the GG’s lifts of me are on TwoPeas.

Lift of Jen Lessinger:

My lift of Anne Langpap:

Lift of Keisha Campbell:

Gaaaaaaaaaaaahk! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!! Squeeeaaal!!

For some insane reason, they liked my panicked last-minute entry - and I am one of the ten finalists!! You have no idea how hard it’s been keeping this a secret since Tuesday…

Here is the list of the finalists, if you click on the names you can read our call stories. I truly wasn’t expecting this.

When I got the call, I had just given up hope, logged off the message board, sat down to have lunch and turned on the news to get my mind on something else. Two minutes later, my cell phone started ringing and I almost choked on a piece of potato.
I honestly can’t remember much about the call. I was too shocked (and literally shaking) to think straight. I remember hearing things like “Creating Keepsakes,” “finalist” and “Vegas, baby!” (Okay, so Britney didn’t say that last part, but I can’t say “Vegas” without adding a “baby.”)

I can’t remember what I said, but knowing me it was probably, “Seriously? No, really. Seriously?”

After I hung up the phone, I jumped up and down for a bit, then called my husband and made squealing noises. After that, I called my parents in Norway and tried to explain the whole scrapbooking phenomenon to them.

I haven’t even wrapped my head around this yet—I am still shocked about being a Scrapbooker of the Year finalist! It would be a dream come true for me. I have wanted to work for a magazine since I was in junior high. It would also mean getting more scrapbooking product than I could possibly fit in our house.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but I think we have to do a phone interview at some point, and then Creating Keepsakes is taking us to Vegas (baby!) for Memory Trends to announce the winner.

This has been such a good week for me! :D

I just found out I won six free months of Label Tulip kits!

I’ve had so much fun scrapbooking lately; my friend Suzanne from Canada is in town and keeps taking me to crops - ok, I get more talking than scrapping done, but hey. Whatever.

It is too hot here today to do anything, even to blog, so I’ll do more of my boring rambling tomorrow. For now, here is the only layout I completed at the crop last night (see, talking too much!) - I decided to lift Jessica Sprague’s layout from the cover of CK (lifting = no need to think, easier to talk), but as always when I try to lift things it starts changing. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Wow, rambling. Hot. Must find ice cubes.

The title means something like “Odd one out” - my father-in-law took us to a scrapbook convention and I think he felt a wee bit out of place!

Edit: the butterfly stamps are from Rita Marie & Company :D