paper passion and pixel mania

getting the call...

When I got “the” call, I was web-camming with a friend and diligently refreshing and responding on CK’s contest message board. I was watching as the calls started going out. When Erin Lincoln posted, “1 call down, 9 to go,” the normally laid-back person that I am took a lunch break! My hands started shaking and my heart started racing. I watched as Erin reported call 2, then 3, then 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

. . . Then the dreaded post from Erin came: “The last call is being made . . . right now.” I felt a little (okay, a lot) disappointed. My phone was just sitting there on my desk, where it had been all day . . . not ringing.

As I resolved to myself that I was very pleased with my layouts, regardless of the outcome, MY PHONE RANG!!! I waited, looked at the caller ID, and it was Britney Mellen from CK! I wanted to scream and cry at the same time, and it was a darn good thing I was sitting down!!!

When I answered the phone, Britney asked if Noel was available and YES, I WAS!!! I had shrieked right before I answered the phone, so my 7-year-old daughter ran into my scraproom with the camera in tow. (Yes, I have trained her well!) While I was on the most important call of my life thus far, my wonderful little girl was snapping pictures!

As I’m sitting here just hours later, trying to recall what Britney actually said to me, my heart is pounding and my mind is coming up blank! She told me that she loved my work, and that I had great style. She sure knows how to make a girl feel like a million bucks!

When I hung up the phone, I’m pretty sure I screamed!!! My girls both gave me a huge hug. The only downside to the moment was that my husband had left early the same morning for a Navy trip to Guam, and I couldn’t tell him my news right away.

Then my phone rang again! This time it was Erin Lincoln calling to congratulate me! While talking to Erin, I was trying to come up with a new pseudo message-board name so I could share my excitement with all my CKMB friends (which, by the way, are the best girls around!!!). My “new name” wasn’t particularly clever, but it was all I could come up with while my heart was racing. (Not that my “normal” message-board name “noel joy” is extremely clever, either!)

While I could still speak, I called my mom and dad, my sister and my grandma. I then raced to my room to change my clothes for a birthday party I was going to. My daughter knocked on my door and said, “Mom, there’s some strange lady at the door!” I came to the door and someone was delivering flowers with a congratulations note. An all-around amazing day!

What would winning this contest mean to me? I’ve been a subscriber to Creating Keepsakes for about 7 years, and over the years it has been a constant source of inspiration to me. So, getting the call that CK thought a lot of my work was something akin to winning an Olympic medal for me!

But most of all, I would be thrilled to no end just to get a chance to share scrapbooking with others! Scrapbooking is my passion. It encompasses all of my loves, from my beautiful little girls to photography, from art to friendship. The joy of sharing what you love and getting the chance to learn from others as they share what they love would be the biggest thrill I can imagine.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned through scrapbooking has been sharing MY story. I’ve had a hard time putting myself into my scrapbook pages over the years, and one day my daughter asked why there were no pictures of me in any of our scrapbooks. Her comment hit me like a ton of bricks! I resolved to add myself to my scrapbooks, and I made my first scrapbook page about myself this last year. Years from now, when my girls look back they won’t just see scrapbooks filled with them and their daddy. They will see our whole family, Mom included! No matter if my make-up looked nice that day or my pants fit the way I wish they would, I have resolved to spend more time on the front end of the camera. This has been a huge revelation to me, and something I would love to share as Scrapbooker of the Year!