Weathervane is one of October Afternoon's soon-to-be-released collections and is perfect for fall and Thanksgiving layouts, cards, and projects. The colors are gorgeous - deep brick red, rich orange, pale aqua, dark aqua, golden yellow, cream, leaf green, and pale and chocolate browns. Mmmm....I look at these papers and want it to be fall already! I got my hands on all six of the papers and the stickers and can't wait for the rubber charms, chipboard, alphas, die-cuts, rub-ons, and stamps. (If you want to see the whole collection, go here.)

Here's a card using images hand-cut from my favorite paper in the line, "Cozy Home," paired with a page from October Afternoon's Label Journal mini-album and American Crafts vinyl and chipboard Thickers:


And here's a layout using two of the patterned papers and the stickers, paired with a grid paper from October Afternoon's Detours collection and American Crafts chipboard Thickers and leaf shapes:


I shall leave you now to return to thinking about crisp fall air, hot chocolate, and changing leaves. :)

One of the perks of having a husband who is a delegate is that you get to claim one of his tickets to the Obama speech at Invesco Field. This perk, however, is in direct opposition to the perk of having adorable young children...who bring germs home to share, specifically stomach virus germs. Sigh... I just couldn't imagine competing for a toilet with 75,000 other people and made the decision yesterday afternoon to offer up my ticket. So, instead of me, my lovely friend, Susan, who is a history professor, will be enjoying the use of my ticket this evening. Of course, in true Murphy's Law fashion, I had my first real food an hour or so ago and seem to be doing fine.

Here's how close I was:


I think I will just have to console myself with the fact that I have this:


And with the fact that my children are watching the convention right now and just saw their dad in the audience three times in a row within about a minute and a half. That makes multiple times we've seen Seth on TV - I keep getting phone calls and emails from family and friends near and far who've caught him in the audience at the Pepsi Center while watching C-SPAN or MSNBC or have seen him being interviewed on some of our local TV stations.

I love the colors in the Surprise line! I haven't done a birthday layout or card with the papers yet, but my photos of Sadie playing basketball were a perfect match with the Surprise color scheme:


And, in true Vivian minimalist style, I used a couple of the Sonoma papers to make this card:


I am trying to get back into the habit of scrapping regularly and posting here regularly but this whole going-back-to-work-full-time transition has been a little more challenging than I had anticipated! I'm hoping that once Eli's back in school next week things will become a little more routine around here and I'll be able to get that work-life balance back.

Okay, so I don't post for weeks and now I've got two posts in one day. :) October Afternoon has their new product catalog up on the website. I am so in love with Weathervane. Fall is my favorite season and I can't wait to use this line to get caught up scrapping the gazillion fall photos I took last year!

Sorry about that. Life sometimes gets crazy. We went on a week-long vacation to the UC Berkeley family camp with extended family and then I came back to a crazy two weeks at work, filled with eleven hour days (it's summer institute time for teachers). There's been a wee bit of scrapping amidst all of this, but I've got nothing final to show just yet. Things should be back to normal sometime this weekend. At least that's my hope.