My Croppy Summer Assignment #1

To those who know me - via newsletters, email and this blog, you may recall that Autumn is my favorite season - Love it! A close second is Winter - Love it. And, if there were only three seasons and Early Spring rounded out the year - life would be great. But alas, that is not the case, someone out there deemed that there should be the hideousness (yes, it's a word) of Summer. I hate it. (yes, it's a strong word, but in this case no other word will do) I hate the heat. I hate the blinding brightness of mid-day. I hate the stillness of it when the world is just baking at 90+ degrees; I mean for Pete's Sake even the animals don't move. Can I find anything good about Summer? My kids are home. Schedules are definitely uncluttered. And ice cream sounds better during this time of year than when you can actually make it outside on the back porch because the temps are freezing. The other good thing? I can crop during the day and because of that my mind whirls (more than it usually does) with ideas of things to do. So for the next, oh seven weeks or so, I'll be making Summer as bearable as possible with all kinds of activities here; pages will be completed, photos will be taken, games will be played, prizes will be won and fun will be had. I know that summer also means vacations for folks, so I'm taking a looser approach to these challenges - some weeks there will be daily challenges, some weeks only a few. It's more about getting done what you can, than completing everything. I'll let you know within each post how prizes will be awarded and when. Grand Prizes will be awarded at the conclusion of My Croppy Summer, around August 16 or so; not sure on that date yet. You could also win a prize for doing absolutely nothing. You can be a big 'ol couch potato and still win. How nice is that!? So go tell your friends, or sign up yourself to actually be a follower of the blog because I'll be drawing names of the followers who'll win nice little treats. Thanks to Melanie, I'm going to attempt to use InLinkz to make uploading layouts a little easier and so that everyone can see what's up. I haven't tried it yet, so if it totally blows up in my face, we'll stick with the regular old "link up to the post" routine. :) If it works look for the little frog at the bottom of each post, click the add link and follow the prompts. If it works we should be able to see thumbnails of everyone's work for each of the challenges. As with any marathon of activity, stretching and warming up must be done. In that light, here's your warm up exercise for today - use this sketch (PageMaps) to create a layout; in the .jpeg archives April 2008. Easie-peasie. This, along with whatever else I post this week will be due by SUNDAY EVENING.

So go, unearth your supplies, round up your photos, crack your knuckles and sharpen your scissors! Here we go!