Happy birthday to me

Yes, today is my birthday. I actually don't get too excited about them anymore. After all, turning 37 isn't quite as exciting as, say, 21 or even 18 for that matter. My only requirement is that I have cake. Oh, how I love cake! I would eat it every single day if it weren't for that annoying little issue of the gazillion calories and fat grams that accompany every decadent slice.

So I had my cake last night. Specifically, the Cake Sundae at La Duni. Now THAT is a piece of cake that is worth every calorie. It was bliss! And it made the fact that I am yet another year older a little easier to swallow (pun intended).

After the cake, it was finally time to see Harry Potter and, though it was a very dark and sinister chapter in the series, I expected as much based on my recollection of the book. What I didn't expect was all the focus on kissing. Seriously? Do we need all that? It's not central to the plot and a little would be fine, but it was EVERYWHERE!!! I'm by no means a prude, but when it comes to Harry Potter, for Pete's sake, can we just focus on wizardry and spells and potions and taking out the Dark Lord. Leave the kissing to Twilight or High School Musical 5, where it actually has a point.

Aside from the blatant hormone-laced kissing overtones, I really loved the movie. Snape is so evil and, though I hate him because of what he represents, I love the character. Sneaky, devious, snake-like...and you can hear the hatred in his voice every time he says "Potter..." And Draco is every bit the slimeball coward he is in the books. It's so much fun to see it all come to life.

Ok, so enough with the movie review. If you've made it this far, you must REALLY want to see a layout. And I will make it worth your time. This is the most detailed layout I've done to this point. It was a labor of love, literally. I loved the photo, I loved the paper (Crate Paper Mia collection) and I loved the Prima flowers I found on clearance at Michael's for $1. It all came together quite nicely.


For the journaling tag, I tried the distress inking technique I learned in the Thinking Inking series on 2Peas. I really like the way it "aged" the plain off-white cardstock and gave it some texture. I will definitely be playing around with Distress Inks again!


I used pop dots to give some dimension to the water lilies I cut out of the patterned paper. You can also see the detail on the Prima flowers here. I did not add the glitter...they were like that when I bought them.