First Post EVER!!

Well, they say learning something new keeps you young.  Not that I am old, but there are some days!!  My name is Marilyn Graff.  I am a working mother of three boys, who are growing like WEEDS!!  They are the light of my life as well as my reason for buying Clairol!  They are now 14, 11, and 9 years old and they are every bit the American boy.  I am also married to my husband of 16 years.  He's a great man and I am looking forward to many more years as his wife!!  From August through May, I adopt about 10-12 more kids as a 5th grade Special Education teacher.  I've been teaching since my oldest was born and I really love it.  Many...I have to be honest because I can't say "all", but many crawl into my hearts and stay there forever, no matter what grade they move on to.

The other big part of my life is scrapping.  Of course, my favorite subjects are my boys and believe me, they give me LOTS to scrap about.  Over this past summer, I've realized that a big part of scrapping is also sharing your thoughts, ideas, and inspirations with the ever-growing online community.  I have never held a blog before, so I hope you can bear with me as I learn.  I do love technology.  I love using it in my classroom (technology can do some AMAZING stuff for my students!!!) as well as a part of my scrapping.  Although, I am a avid, devoted traditional scrapper.  I just haven't been able to get into the digital world of scrapping...yet.  We'll see...like I started with, learning something new keeps you young, right?!!

I use mostly Close to My Heart products right now.  Mainly because I was/am a consultant and I have TONS of their products.  But really, they have some awesome products.  I love just choosing a paper packet, then all of my coordinating colors fall right into place.  It takes the guess work out of the picture for me.  However, once I get to a new scrapbook store again ( I live in a small town and getting to a scrapbook store alone can be a task...preteen and teen boys are not good to take to a scrapbook store!!), I want to get my hands on some of the really pretty papers I've been seeing online all summer long!!

Anyway, this is my first attempt at writing on a blog.  I hope to use it to share my ideas and hopefully inspire you.  Most everything I hope to include on this will be about scrapping, but as my school year starts, don't be surprised to see a post or two about my "other life".  I hope to have followers share their inspirations, too.  In time, I may even start some challenges.  We will just see where the wind takes us.  For now, I want to share some of the work that I have done this summer.  I hope you enjoy and follow me as I trek down this new road of discovery in the world of blogging and scrapping!!!  Have a great day!! 

These are my boys and at the moment, this is one of my favorite layouts.  I hardly ever get to use flowers and pink but this one just screamed it!!  I had to laugh at my husband though (who is your typical Texas manly man!!).  Every time he walked by and saw my work, he made comments about adding too much "froo froo" (his terms).  But I think this layout turned out real cute!  I am a girl, after all!!!

This is my rock...I love these pictures because I can RARELY get him to smile in pictures and he almost NEVER does the PDA thing (a.k.a. public displays of affection).   And here I got them both on one layout!!  LOL!  You will notice quickly that I LOVE all things from Close to My Heart.  These papers come from their collection called "Grace".  The only thing that is not CTMH are the letters for 'Love'.  I'm not sure who that manufacturer is...I've had those letters for forever!!

I also have a gallery at Scrapbook.com and Scrapbookchallenges,com.  I will post links as soon as I learn how!!  LOL!!  Thank you for your patience.  Just wait, you'll see that I will get this going...I hope!!!