Clay Aiken

Back to Spamalot

WOW, it's almost time for the orchestra to tune up, the audience to settle in, and the curtain to go up!! Clay's BACK. Ad from the NY Paper:


I think they missed him. I think the revenues went down after he left, I think the crowd at the stage door diminished to a few stragglers. The stage door crowds were huge. I was there in April and again in May and every performance I attended the crowd surged into the alley to wait for Clay to make a brief appearance. Some of my favorite stage door pictures:




Check out the crowd in the one above and the one below. HUGE.


And, who can forget closing night, when Clay came out on the roof to wave goodbye. Little did we know the goodbye was an "until I see you again" goodbye. Little did we know at that time how spectacular his album. "On My Way Here" was going to be and that little Parker would be joining the family.

I loved my two trips to NY to see Spamalot. Although I'd been to NYC on business in the past, I didn't like going ther. But, on vacation - visiting the theatre district, seeing Times Square, getting run over by crowds of people all talking on cell phones - well, that was a great adventure and I'll be back for this run. May even spend New Years eve in Times Square....now there's an idea. (tm The Lady of the Lake)

Clay, Break a leg!!!

Technorati tags:
Clay Aiken
Spamalot

Digital Scrapbooking
Some Heritage Designs
Using Freebies

I've been having a ball chasing after digital scrapbooking freebies this last week. The weather was abysmal, so I didn't mind sitting at my computer playing with what I found.

The first one used a wonderful freebie template I found at Tracy's Scraps
What I love about templates is that you can add papers, embellishments and fonts from other kits you might already have, which is what I did in this case. The picture is a scan I made of my great grandparents silhouettes they had made back in 1885.

This one is a little different - it's a "Quick-Page" (some people call them Ploppers) and it's all done except for plopping a picture behind the frame and adding journaling and any extra embellishments you want. This freebie came from Au ScraPatou - a site that's all in French, so it was a little challenging to find the download button. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page click where it says Telecharger and you're good to go. The complete kit is beautiful and I might buy it for more Heritage pages. (They entice you in with the freebies, LOL) The younger gal in this page is my mom and the other her older sister Margaret. There were 12 "Darling" children in all.






This is not a freebie exactly, DigitalArts-Cafe is having a Birthday Blowout and one of the designer's (Rachael) put up three of her kits on sale for $1.50 each(reg $4.99) and if you uploaded a layout made from the kit she will give you two more of her kits - your choice, free. I looked at her stuff and quickly downloaded the Rue Beinville Page Kit because I loved this beautiful background paper. I didn't add too much because I thought the paper was wonderful by itself. Again this is my mother in the mid 1930's, either before or right after she married my father. She handcolored the black and white photograph. If you go to the Digitalarts-Cafe, you may have to register, but they give you a goodie for doing so. I think the Birthday sale goes through 9/23/08. Click on Rachael's name above to go to the page where she makes the offer. Click on the page to make it larger and check out the wonderful texture of the paper.

Enjoy - go and find some freebies. Be sure to thank the donors and if you love their work, buy a kit from them.

Digital Scrapbooking
digifree
Digital Arts Cafe
Scrapbooking Freebies

Whooping Crane
2008 Migration to Florida
Journey South Update

The Whooping Cranes at the Necedah Wildlife Refuge that are being trained to fly south following an ultralight aircraft are getting closer to take off. Unfortunately, one of the birds (#810) got a little hostile and one other chick was killed and two were injured. One of the injured birds was sent back to Maryland as it has super genes and they want to preserve it for breeding. The other one is OK, but the attack messed up it's feather development and it was having trouble flying. It will be sent to a Zoo, where lots of people will be able to see this amazing bird.

My little gal, yes I have "adopted" #824. She jumped out at me from the page of 15 birds and when I saw her number was my birthday I decided she was the one for me. I just read that in her group (there are three age groups or cohorts) she was the first to "fledge" AND she did it on my birthday 8/24!! She's apparently a good flyer, however she's also a little aggressive - from her writeup:

Cohort 3 (the youngest birds) has a few meanies — and #824 is one of them. However, these youngest meanies have been associating with other chicks with a little less hatred than the bullies in Cohort 1. She is a good follower but makes a beeline to peck at any other chicks that she sees.

"Chick #824 is one of the only two girls in the last group probably tries the hardest to be the most dominant bird. She will stand up so tall when #829 is near and give him the stink eye. He really doesn't want to fight, but she provokes him. She normally ends up turning and walking away."

Well, you go girl. Wonder if she thinks #829 is cute?

Some pictures of #824.




Pictures are from the Whooping Crane Journey North/South website.
Field Notes on the progress of the training can be found at the Operation Migration website.

Next weekend there is a Whooping Crane Festival near the wildlife refuge where these birds are being trained and we are camping near by and attending the festival. Should be a fun weekend and although I'm sure we won't get to see the flock, there are tours through the refuge and perhaps we will see some of the adults who are also about ready to take off on their own migration south. They have made the trip before and know the way.

I found some interesting video's on YouTube that I thought I would share for anyone interested in this fascinating process. The first is of them leaving Necedah and the second of a flock arriving in Florida.

Technorati tags:
Whooping Crane
International Crane Foundation
Operation Migration
Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership
Journey South

Clay Aiken
Digital Scrapbooking

Clay Aiken Website

Several days ago I added a new link in my favorite blogs/websites list - it's a blog called digifree. Since then I have been having a ball downloading some of the wonderful wealth of freebie digital scrapbooking kits, elements, papers, etc that are available. Lots of wonderful artists are sharing some of their work for free while selling kits through websites and/or their own blogs. It's been a fun adventure, now I have to get creative to figure out how to apply all these goodies.

One website I landed on gave out a beautiful free kit called "No Milk or Sugar" just for registering on the forum in their site. Needless to say, after poking around I found something else I just had to purchase - the freebies serve a purpose!!!

Here is a picture of what is in the kit.


I only used a few of the items to make this scrapbooking page this morning.


Click for the digifree blog.

Each day the owner of this site runs a search for blogs that have freebies, today there were 190. Needless to say I won't make it to all of them, but there are lots I want to check out.

Click for the digitalarts-cafe website. Go to the forum to see how to download the freebie.

Off to see what I can do with some of my new treasures.

Technorati tags:

Clay Aiken
Digital Scrapbooking
digifree
Digital Arts Cafe
Scrapbooking Freebies

Clay Aiken

and Friendship

I don't usually do two Clay blogs in a row but I have been doing some digital scrapbooking the last few days and found a scrapbook page I did awhile back in a competition.

We were to create a page using the phrase "Real Friends Don't Care if you are a Little Different"

Clay came to mind at the time because, if I have come to understand anything about Clay Aiken, it's that he holds his friends close to his heart and he practices what he "preaches" as regards inclusion.

It's not everyday you let your friends duct tape you to the wall, LOL.

For some reason, I suspect Clay is going to be every bit as great a father as he is a friend.

I'm looking forward to Spamalot again......as well as whatever else Clay finds behind the next door he opens.

Oh, is you're a digital scrapbooker - check out the new freebie link I added to my Other Interesting Website list. I found some great stuff in there the other day.

Technorati tags:
Clay Aiken
Digital Scrapbooking