Snow in Snow Hill: the digital scrapbook layout

Just a quick and easy page to celebrate my daughter and her cousin builiding a snowman at their Papa's house.
Products used:
Michele Martin
Alana Paper Pack
Ali Edwards
You Mini Die-Cut Kraft Tags
Winter Celebrations Element Kit
Grid No. 02 Layered Templates
Wood Type Alphabet
Winter Hand Drawn Brushes
Pattie Knox
Brad Bonanza No. 01: Digital Fasteners
Mindy Terasawa
Sweet Rainbow Solids Paper Pack (slightly recolored pink solid paper)
Katie Pertiet
Word Strip Labels No. 02

Snow in Snow Hill

Nikolas sledding -- too bad there aren't really any hills on the Eastern shore

 It was a nice day today to go out and play in the snow before the temperatures warm up and the snow melts. We weren't in Snow Hill for the big blizzard since we arrived late yesterday, but they had about a foot of snow on Sunday. It wasn't so cold and windy today. I confess that I watched from the window while my sister took these photos and our kids built the snowman with their Dad/Uncle Ron.  The dogs, meanwhile, we all outside having a ball in the snow -- Chloe loves snow and was chasing all around with the big dogs Bella and George. Pumpkin, the west highland terrier was upstairs having a nap with Hazel.  Jim has spent the afternoon putting together his lego aircraft carrier that my sister's family gave him.

Earlier the grown-ups went out for a Sushi/Japanese lunch -- while Hazel took the kids to Friendly's for lunch -- she should get an award!  Now Dad's cooking dinner and Emma and the twins are playing house again on the stairs to the basement (they are at one end of the family room here and are carpeted and they are hidden from the room by bookcases so they make a great little nook for playing in).

Amelia with her hat on backwards

Emma and Amelia with the snowman they made with Uncle Ron.

I think I like the pink hat better than the Ravens ballcap.

Christmas Gift Tradition

This is the second year that I've made a CD sized calendar to give as a Christmas gift. Jim actually requested one again this year as he loves having the one I made last year on his desk at work.  The great thing about digitally created projects is that it is so easy to make multiple copies. This year I made three copies and gave them to Emma's grandmother's as well.  Here are some of the pages.  I used a template by Bioggraffiti  that was linked to from Persnickity Prints and had the calendar printed there as well -- they did a fantastic job and even included the CD cases which are used as a stand.

Other supplies used:

Ali Edwards:
Ali's official handwritting font
Hand Draw Holiday Word Art
A Week in the Life Twill Strips
(All from Designer Digitals)

Carina Gardner:
Daisy Jane paper packs and embellishments (from JessicaSprague.com)

Katie Pertiet:
Clock Buttons No. 1 (from Designer Digitals)

Holmes Family Christmas Letter, 2010 edition

Dear Friends and Family,    

                

This year was deceptively eventful around the Holmes household. We never felt all that busy, but, looking back, we find we were. Beth is still working as the law librarian at Partridge Snow & Hahn, LLP in Providence and ferrying Emma around to ballet, jazz classes, and friends’ houses. She spends as much free time as possible assembling digital scrapbooks. A couple of her layouts were published on the blog of a well-known scrapbook artist and graphic designer, Ali Edwards, which was a huge thrill. (See the post here -- I am the second Beth towards the bottom of the post: http://aliedwards.com/2010/05/week-in-the-life-reader-submissions-part-one.html) Beth also attended a scrapbooking conference with good friend Wendy Rees in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. They took lots of digital scrapbooking classes together, shopped the exhibits, and had a great girls’ weekend without the kids.

Beth remains a faithful book-club member. They’ve read some great books this year and continue to enjoy the company, wine, and discussion. (To see what we’ve been reading be my friend on http://www.GoodReads.com)  Beth became a godmother again in November to Rose Sillars Rakeman, the second daughter of our friends Jen and Ed. It was an honor to be asked!

Over Emma’s February school break, Emma and Beth spent almost a week in Summerland Key, Florida, about 25 miles east of Key West. Ron and Hazel had rented a house there. Despite the freakishly cool—for south Florida—weather, Emma spent lots of time in the swimming pool. They toured Key West, and Emma informed her grandpa she’d like to live there for a year to get a real sense of how the people live. We traveled to Stone Harbor, New Jersey, for family vacation over the Fourth. We enjoyed our time there, as usual, and visited with Jean, Kate, Ron, Nikolas, Amelia, and all of the dogs.

Jim was in Washington to speak at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the American Enterprise Institute, and the German Marshall Fund. He traveled to Milwaukee to lead a Great Decisions event at the University of Wisconsin, to New Orleans for the International Studies Association annual conference, to Nashville for the National Security Symposium at Vanderbilt, and to Taiwan to address the annual Regional Security Forum put on by the Ministry of National Defense. This month the Atlantic Monthly named his and his pal Toshi Yoshihara’s new book Red Star over the Pacific a Best Foreign Affairs Book for 2010. (See the full write up  – Jim and Toshi’s is the 3^rd book featured: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-best-books-of-the-year-foreign-affairs-edition/67994/ )

Miss Emma is in fifth grade and doing fine. She’s in the school musical and has a solo part. Their performance is in January. Emma started off the New Year with a trip to see the musical Wicked in Providence with Beth. Santa gave her tickets to see it as her Christmas gift. Emma got braces in March the day after Katie, one of her best friends. They like to coordinate the color of their rubber bands. Emma continues with ballet and jazz-dancing classes. She danced on pointe for the first time before an audience at her recital in June. It only for a minute or two, but it was neat!

She went to Summer sleep-away camp at Chimney Corners in Becket, Massachusetts, for the third year, and had another great time. Beth joined her for Mom’s Weekend towards the end of her four weeks there, and enjoyed the best weekend yet. This year Emma took two dance classes, swimming, climbing, arts & crafts, and games. She also spent a week at the Episcopal church camp in northwest Rhode Island with two of her friends from school and church. It was Emma’s second summer there and their first. She is reading all of Beth’s English Enid Blyton boarding school books for about the fourth time and spending lots of time designing and making board games about boarding school, and also writing schedules, curricula and class lists for make believe boarding schools.  She and Beth also both love to watch the TV show Glee together.

We look forward to keeping in touch with all of you in the New Year!

Ballet Center Family Day

Emma chatting with one of the ballet movement class students before the demonstrations

It's that busy time of year again and today's first activity was attending Family Day at The Ballet Center.  All the students get together with their families, and demonstrate some of the barre work they do in class, and this year each group did a dance from the Nutcracker.  Emma's group did the Spanish dance. Since Emma doesn't have any siblings we brought along her friend Katie.

Next up is dinner and watching Frosty the Snowman with some friends and their kids. Coming soon photos from yesterdays cookie swap.

Demonstrating barre work they do in class

Ballet 3 & 4 class doing the Spanish dance from the Nutcracker

Singing at the State House

Rhode Island State House in Providence

The Hampden Meadows School 5th grade chorus (as well as the 4th grade chorus) sang at the State House today as part of the Governor's Holiday celebration series. There are concerts by lots of different school groups from all over the state every day at lunchtime in the rotunda of the state house during the month of December. It was an honor to be chosen to be one of the groups performing as there are lots of groups that would like to perform. I was able to nip out of work during my lunch and head over to see them sing. I was really impressed at how well behaved they all were while waiting to sing, and how well they sang! There was some really nice harmony and the space is very alive acoustically and so not all that easy to sing in.

Hampden Meadows School 5th grade chorus waiting to sing. Emma is in the back row center with white sweater and red hairband and silver dress

I watched from the second level so the photo I took is from above. I could get a front row place to stand up there so it was worth the odd viewing angle.  I also got a great view of the rotunda above which is much prettier than my photos show. The concert was broadcast on Capitol TV on cable and the school got a copy on DVD so hopefully they will make copies for all of us. We are about to watch the rebroadcast on TV

It was a great break in my day and fun for the kids too.

Looking up at the rotunda

Relaxing after the concert and looking bored as parents take their photos