Vacation Adventures

I don't mean to brag or rub it in, but I am off for the week up coming and I am so excited. No big plans, lots of potential plans, hardly any time commitments.

What a great feeling!

And it is even better this morning because I have the whole week ahead of me.

Not sure it will be a great weather week but at least it is spring and I shouldn't have to worry about being stuck in or home with a snow storm.

At least I hope I don't.

So here's a scrap-journal page from my trip in Feb. 2012 to Southern Arizona. I go in and out of scrapping mode, and lately I have been into it more. Been working on photos from this trip, even though it was over a year ago.

Fun thing about scrapping is that you can go back, and even if you don't remember every little detail (thank goodness for travel journals), you can relive the feel and the moments and the fun of a travel adventure.

This page is pretty basic- I painted the page with some leftover paint on my palette. I added the tracks which I made with a Tim Holtz's Sizzix embossing set. Added the photo, some brads, the banner label (Paper Smooches) and then stamped this little car. I have had this car stamp since early days of stamping, and I love it. Not sure who made it, but I do remember I bought it a long long time ago at the ink pad in NYC.  

Funny how you remember such details.

Here's another road page. This one has speckly spray on the base paper (I use watercolor paper for my bases because they're heavy and you can do a lot to them) and some bandana paper from October Afternoon. Love this steer skull- another old stamp- from Acey Deucy.

Here's the top of that page. I learned last spring in a Tim Holtz class I took about making these letters using his Grungeboard. I love them- they look like the old wood printer letters. Only since they are grungeboard they are lighter than wooden letters on a page. Maybe still a bit heavy for paper- especially if you use thinner background paper, but on the watercolor paper I use they aren't too bad.

So last thing for today is  my latest read and a book I picked up used that came in like 2 days from an Amazon book seller.

Can you tell lately I have been in a major travel mode?

My vacation reading list-

This book looked good and so far is good. What an adventure- walking across part of France. The author says that after living there for many years he still didn't feel like he knew the land and that this was a way of getting to really be a part of it. Love that thought- and I think being a part of the land makes you feel like you belong to it-more so than whizzing by in a car or train.

Although whizzing by is better than never being some place.

So I just finished Without Reservations  and loved it! 

So I bought a used copy of this book by the same author and hope to read that this vacation also.

In this book Alice Steinbach talks about her travel adventures with some different classes she takes around the world, and I can't wait to see if I like this book as much as her other book.

And finally

one more travel book for my vacation reading that I hope to make it through.

This is the third book in a trilogy that author Chris Stewart wrote about living in Spain. I loved the first 2, they are light, interesting and funny, and now I want to read this one and finish the trilogy. 

Hopefully I will have enough time to do a bunch of reading this break- I have been in a big reading mode lately!

Especially since the new Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood book by Charlene Harris is coming out in just 3 ish weeks.

But look what it says on the bottom of this book-

The final Sookie Stackhouse novel.

OH NO.

I guess it is time to move on (sniffle-sniffle), but that does make me want to read this and see what Sookie ends up with as a happily ever after scenario.

I am assuming happily ever after. Wonder if she will end up with Sam- who I thought she should be with all along.

The last book in this series was just ok until the very end. It finished on a big question oh no you can't end here note.

But I am sad to read this is the last book in the series.

It is like when a good friend moves away and you know they're still there but they're not close by any more.

You can still communicate with them but you don't see them regularly any more...

(I hope) you get my point.

I must say I have really enjoyed this series of books.

Enough said.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting.