Anna Ruby Falls

I'm on a mission to hunt down all of the great hikes within a 60 mile radius of my house. Who knew that someone already beat me to the punch? There's a book out there called 60 Hikes in 60 miles from Atlanata. And with me being so close to that, I am in heaven!

I've already done several of the hikes listed in the book (Cloudland Canyon, Amicolola, Tallulah Gorge) and recently did one at Kennesaw Battlegrounds because of their suggestions.

Today I needed to break in some new hiking shoes I bought for Hawaii. Hiking the Volcano National Park is quite an ordeal, so I hear. Pulled up the website for that book I mentioned earlier and found a hike listed for Anna Ruby Falls. It is located up above Helen, Ga. Hmm, never been there!

It took almost two hours thanks to construction on 85. But we arrived and found the spot in Unicoi State Park with little trouble. The hike was almost non-existent, since it took less than a mile to reach the falls. But MY GOODNESS! Talk about being worthwhile. Here's a shot:

That's Gordon at the bottom of one side of the falls. There were two cascading spectacles. It was really quite beautiful.

Here's a shot of the other side :

Okay, one more picture of the whole reason we traveled two hours ($35 worth of gas!).

It's late. I'm tired. I promise more tomorrow!

How easy is it to forget.

School has been out for an entire week. Do I miss it?

Umm, no.

How easy it was to completely lose all of the stress, frustration and paperwork.

Now I sit around all day and wonder, "What should I do today? Do I have anything I need to get done? How long til lunch?" Then I get out of bed.

I have time to read now (two books). Time to go through all of my old Creating Keepsakes magazines and tear out what I want (three hours). Attend lunches that last two hours. Watch old dvd's I haven't seen for a while. Oh, and teach myself how to use Adobe Illustrator.

One of my biggest problems is staying on my diet. With more free time, I am uncovering those deep seated desires for CHOCOLATE! I had to stop myself physically from going into the Coldstone Creamery. Oy. I think I need a sponsor to help me over the withdrawals.

Okay, I'm gonna stop rambling now and watch Last Comic Standing.

My Story

I wrote this out over on the Spraground. Thought I'd throw it in here.

My story?But why?It's boring and lame-O.Not inspiring at all.But I am proud of my scrappin' journey!!Hmm, where to begin? I have always tried different crafting hobbies as a means to express my creativity. Nothing seemed to fit perfectly. I couldn't play a musical instrument, painting came to stick figures for me, can't sew a straight line, quilt quickly, or even design my own cross stitch. I fell into scrapbooking quite accidently. I hosted a Murder Mystery Party with a 50's soda shop theme in October of 2004. Everyone came decked out in poodleskirts, leather jackets, ponytails, and slicked back hair. It was so great. The pictures were even better. I knew I couldn't just stick these into a magnetic album. I googled 'scrapbook' and found sb.com, and then started to talking to like minded individuals. Before long I had an entire group of people in my area who wanted to hang out and crop together (we just celebrated our third year of meeting once a month!). I was hooked. I think the missing link to my creativity was having a supportive group of friends to encourage and inspire me. I turned to digi in Feb of 2005 because I was teaching technology at an elementary school. They had a business version of Elements loaded and I started poking around. I immediately fell in love with the freedom it offered me. With paper I would look at the layouts and want that EXACT paper, the perfect embellishment, that color ribbon, etc. It was very stressful and within 3 months I spent $4000 on tools and supplies. OY!It was much easier to collect what I needed with digi without poking holes in my pocket. I could also recolor and resize to my liking. Pretty soon my brain started asking, "I wonder how they made that brad." I googled 'digital scrapbook tutorials' and was amazed at how much was available to me. I studied one tut after the other and pretty soon became pretty adept at creating my own stuff. It was so freeing!I joined another message board and was asked to become one of their design team members. Not long after I was selling kits and stuff at their store. It became difficult to juggle both my creative side and my career. I had to choose one or the other. Sigh... I chose teaching because it paid the bills. I didn't give up my digi scrapping though. Next, I stumbled onto the Spraground right about the time Jessica offered her Now We're Rocking class, so I jumped at the chance to learn more. Her teaching style is so encouraging and easy that I was hooked. I stood in the long line all day to sign up for her beta class of Digi in Deep. LOVED that class too. But I felt like something was still missing. I didn't have a perfect set yet. With CKU-Houston looming (21 days!!) Jessica, being the awesome person she is, offered her digi album participants a free U&R membership. Now how could I pass that up??That's the story of my journey. King of convuluted and backwards, I know. But one that makes me supremely happy. Happy that is until Jessica offers her next class!!Thanks for listening.

Two Weeks til CKU

School is out. Yes, you heard correctly. I am officially done with the school year with students!

Now all of my thoughts can turn to something fun. Something I've been waiting for some time now.

CREATING KEEPSAKES UNIVERSITY!!!!!

I am headed to Houston, TX for five full days of digital scrapbooking with Jessica Sprague. This is the first year CK is offering a digital album track. And of course I had to take it!

I begged and pleaded and begged some more and finally convinced my Peachy friend, Meg, to come with me.

I am so excited about this. These thoughts of an interactive time with my favorite digi goddess instructor is pretty much what got me through the last sixty days of a rough year. The amount of interaction I threw myself into with CKU shows insight into my frame of mind. Actually how much I wanted to escape the humdrum of my daily job.

I'm in charge of collecting the money and passing out namebadge holders. I am in charge of collecting and then redistributing not one, but two Christmas Card swaps. I joined an Anything Goes card swap and an ATC (artist trading cards) swap. So much to do I will have to carry an itinerary!

Right now I am waiting for my tshirts (three of which I designed) from CafePress. I must be weird to be waiting at the door watching for the UPS man. Who knows.

My homework for class is all complete and burned on CD's awaiting the plane ride. I haven't exactly started packing, but I have definitely started thinking about packing. ScrappyNan showed off all of her goodies from CKU-Chicago. I just KNOW I will need a whole other suitcase to bring it all back home with me.

I definitely have to remember to pack the 100 namebadges for the yahoo group (hi you guys!!). Here's a shot of what they look like:

We did a whole vote for the color choices. The design is something I cooked up. It's a little small and not placed where I would put it. But the name badge holders are going to be much cooler than those plastic doohickeys they usually give out.

If I forget these, I will have some very unhappy individuals circling around me!

So, in only two short weeks I will be boarding a Delta airplane next to Meg and flying to Houston to enjoy myself!

I've been SACKED

Jessica Sprague is such a fount of inspiration. She sent us over to the AIGA design gallery (http://designarchives.aiga.org/) to check out all the really cool idea generators. I found this paper sack at #49 and thought it would make a fun embellishment on a layout.

So, while I was playing I made four sacks just for you! One is blank and the other three have barcodes.

Hope you enjoy!

[url=http://www.4shared.com/file/47084385/15f0ae49/SG_Sackedzip.html] SG_Sacked [/url]