A Dog and His Stick

So, this summer we found out that Nox likes sticks.  He mostly likes to chew on them, but sometimes also to play fetch.  Here's a cute video of Nox playing with a large stick--the stick is almost as long as his body:

Artsy Photos

I love New York!  It is my favorite city in the U.S.  This page is comprised of some random photos from walking around the city.  I used two different pieces of paper for the base: the black with the green and blue dots, and the multi-colored piece that has purple, blue, and aqua.

I love this photo of the library.  It's the library from Ghostbusters.  At the top of the photo you can see some birds flying.

I think this photo was near Rockefeller Center.  I love the huge, red ornaments!  :)  I matted the photo with an orange piece of paper.

And here is a cool building with trees on the rooftop:

And finally, some journaling so I would remember details about the photos.  :)

Gratz Can Bite Me

Have you seen the recent article about Gratz v. Kimbrough?  I actually have a HUGE issue with Gratz.  She claims that "The government should be out of the race issue.”  As someone who has been a part of the admissions process, you can not blind applications.  People identify with even subtle things that are in applications (personal essays, high schools, etc.) and automatically raise their assessment of that application.  Instead, the opposite should be done, and people should be aware not only of diversity (race, gender, or otherwise) but also be aware of the other (nontraditional) attributes and qualifications (which are just as valid!) these candidates bring to the table.

There seems to be an argument against Kimbrough because her GPA is 3.6 and the average GPA of admitted students was 3.8...Average suggests that some students who were admitted had a lower GPA than 3.8...Just saying.

As research has proven, diversity actually helps everyone--diversity in the workforce / on teams helps to increase productivity and creativity.  And, by the way Gratz, it's easy for someone from a privileged class and race to say that race should stay out of these decisions...

As pointed out in an Inside Higher Ed article:

That challenge (and most of the opinions released Tuesday by various coalitions of justices) focused not on the appropriateness of affirmative action, but on when statewide votes are legitimate tools to set policies that have an impact on minority citizens.

Why should the majority get to make laws that directly impact the minority, to their detriment? Is someone going to say that slavery is ok now?

It's a Floor!

Yes, we have finally been working on our wood flooring in our house!  It's great because the new floor seems like such a luxury, especially in comparison to just having subfloor for the last four years!

Look at the beautiful variation in the floor!  I love it!  :)  We finished the floor in the living room and have put up our newly painted trim (to match our nice window trim), and we're trying out a new layout in the living room to see what we think.  The cats seem a little weirded out, and are scoping everything out.  Can you find them?

I was trying to use red arrows to point them out in the above photo, but in case you still couldn't quite find them, here are (from left to right) Octavius, Neko, and Ceilidh!

A Night Walk

Here is another scrapbook page from our fall break trip scrapbook:

We arrived at Sleeping Bear Dunes late, and once we had camp all set up, we took a walk:

I used bubble letter stickers to make the title, "a night walk."

So I used blue paper with squares to make a pattern for the background, behind the two photos.

I used the blue to mimic the color of night.

And I used a little tag to put the location of where we were.  (Otherwise, I'm sure I would never remember, since you can't see any distinguishing features!)

Heart NYC

I love New York City--I think it's my favorite city in the U.S.  I've been many times over the years, and decided to make a scrapbook dedicated to my visits there.  So, you're going to start to see some scrapbook pages from this scrapbook.

The first page inside the scrapbook introduces the theme "<3 and="" are="" black="" colors="" cricut="" cut="" different="" featured="" heart.="" heart="" in="" letters="" my="" nbsp="" nyc="" out="" p="" silver="" that="" the="" to="" two="" used="">

I hope you enjoy future pages you'll see from this scrapbook!  :)

Discover

Here's another scrapbook page from our Fall Break Trip.  It's a really simple page, but I love the photo and wanted to showcase it.

I used stickers of butterflies to embellish with because the paper is pressed with flowers.

I used a sticker that says "Discover" because the photo is of Meridith looking done the road, like she's on a journey.  Look at how beautiful the road looks:

And then I journaled so I would remember that this photo was taken while we were camping up at Pictured Rocks.