I'm pretty wordy this week....

If you know me you know I like to talk alot and sometimes I do that on my layouts too.  Hey, when there is a story to be told, there is a story to be told!  I had two stories this week that needed to be told!

The first was a challenge from Jean at Inspired to Scrap.  It required us to scrap "the unpleasant side of life".  By fussy cutting the banner out this layout also qualified for the first February challenge at Scraptastic. I chose to scrap my son Rusty's hand accident in 1994.

Rusty was doing yard work at his college-Olivet College.  He didn't realize there were blades in the leaf blower and while cleaning it he caught his hand in it.  Rusty underwent several hours of surgery at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing.  He was home for a week before going back to college.  During that week a nurse came every day to change the bandages.  (Rick had to copy Rusty with his make believe bandage)  Thru all of this I don't remember Rusty complaining one time.  He showed a pretty strong character and I thought he was amazing.

Scraptastic not only has great kits but every Thursday they post a new challenge to win a great monthly prize.  This next layout qualifies for the last Thursday challenge of the month as it has mist on it.  (which is just something I've been doing more and more lately)

Last year when Allan's mom Aileene, passed away it was my job to clean out her apartment.  (You just can't imagine how much stuff she had packed away in that apartment.) Allan mentioned to me that it would be neat if I found the heart cake pan that his mom had used to always make him a cake in on his birthday.  In fact he mentioned that several times.  Aileene really didn't save many mementoes so I didn't hold out much hope of finding that cake pan from 40 plus years ago. On the day that we turned the keys into the office for the apartment, Allan mentioned that we never did find that cake pan.  This really bothered me and I was telling my friend Stephanie about it, and the next thing I knew she gave me a heart shaped cake pan. I didn't tell Allan about it and this year on his birthday I surprised with a heart shaped cake just like he used to get from his mom!  Allan came in from work, took one look at the cake and said lovely, "Do you know how many years it's been since I've seen one of those?"  So I think now we have a new old tradition at our house on Valentines also known as Allan's birthday!

This next one isn't too awful wordy, but I think it says alot!  I was challenged at Scraptastic to use a honeycomb background along with this sketch, Cookin' Up challenged me to do a layout about a couple and Burlap and Buttercups asked for a layer of three borders and this is what I came up with:

I'm not gonna lie to you, in the last 27 years we've had some pretty awful arguments, BUT our love has been strong enough to keep us together and for it to keep growing.  I love you Allan VanDyke, your wife Rebecca 2-25-2012

 (and just in case you were wondering, the borders are actually straight, they just don't look like it!  LOL!)

Thanks for looking!