Ice Storm!

Well, my area got hit really hard by an ice storm the past few days. I mean REALLY hard. Mostly all of my county and the neighboring one lost power. There are trees down everywhere and power lines across the roads. Now that it's starting to melt there are flooded roads all over. It's quite a mess.

Thursday night we lost power at my house. And no power means no heat! So I spent the night laying in bed worrying about whether my kids were warm enough, and listening to branches and tree snapping right outside my windows and hoping none of them hit the house.

By the time we woke up in the morning around 6 the house was down to a brisk 50 degrees. The County had been declared in a state of emergency. And things were not looking good in terms of power coming back any time soon. I took the dog out for a walk and surveyed some of the damage. Of course you know I had to take the camera right?

This first shot is the tree right outside my window that I had to hear snapping and cracking all night. Check out the huge branch that is speared straight into the ground!



At one point I heard a huge crack and a crash outside my daughters windows. I ran over to check things out but it was too dark to see. She was safe and that's what mattered at that point. In the morning I found the source...

This the view from the side with the window I tried to look out that night.


This is a closeup from the other side. My landlord usually has his truck parked here but something told him to get up and move it in the middle of the night. Good thing, huh? Too bad he couldn't have moved that fence too.



And I'm glad it didn't fall to the left or my cute "reindeer" car would have been all squished. It's hard to tell here but there is about a full inch of ice on this car! It took forever to chisel it all off.


And this one hit my landlords porch but thankfully didn't do any damage thanks to the big bush taking most of the weight.


Too bad the tree didn't fare as well. This was a gorgeous tree too. :(


Strangely, in all that destruction there was so much beauty.



And this is my favorite. This is that gorgeous tree that we now have to cut down ...


We ended up packing up some stuff and braving the roads to get to my parents house. They didn't have power, but thanks to a propane heater they at least had heat. One of the first places that power was restored was the local shopping area so that people could at least get food and anything they needed so I headed there for coffee and to pick up some food that we could eat without needing to cook it.

It was a long day packed in a house with 6 bored people and no working toilets. We did have a battery powered radio for updates and some Christmas music at least. I got a call around 6 pm that my house had power back! I can't tell you how relieved I was! However, as of the time I am writing this (almost 11 am the next morning) my parents and many others still have no power. So if it keeps up the tables may turn and I may be packing a bunch of people into my rather small apartment. Oh well, we do what we have to, right?

I think I'm done!

You know...it took WAY longer than I would have thought to redo the whole blog from scratch but I think it was worth it! What do you think?

I used my collab kit with Madame Wing called Azure Whispers.

Pardon my mess...

Sorry about the messy blog. I'm in the process of making a new skin and have run into some glitches. It'll be prettied up soon :D

Improvements....

Do you know what I love about scrapping and designing? The fact that I am always learning new things and improving. I hesitate to rescrap a photo I have already done before but sometimes you just have to. I did this LO back a while ago.



It's alright but nothing great. When I saw Franziska's gorgeous Grace kit I decided maybe it was time to redo this photo since it is a favorite of mine. I also did some work on the photo itself. Thanks to Lynda.com I am learning a TON about retouching my photos. I would like to show you the improvements.

First, the original photo as my mother took it.

And then the improvements I made .... the leaves actually have color again!

And with a little help from a great kit... the new and improved LO...

Full Credits

You can get this beautiful kit at SBG.