Yay!!

You may recall this post, in which I was lamenting the end of the Legacy of the Force series of Star Wars novels and wondering if there would be another series to follow. I am so happy today that the next series has been announced- The Fate of the Jedi. It will be a series of 9 books released over a three year period, so I'll be assured of some good reading material coming my way.

Slated to author three of the books each are Aaron Allston, Troy Denning, and Christie Golden. I'm pleased to see Allston in the lineup- I really enjoyed his X-Wing novels and the books he wrote for Legacy of the Force. He's so funny (yub yub, Commander)!

Not much is known about the books yet except that Allston's is the first and will be titled Outcast, releasing March 24, 2009 and coming in at 256 pages (so short!?!). Here is a list of links where I found what little information there is.

• Club Jade FOTJ posts
• Fate of the Jedi page on the Wookieepedia
• Blurb on the EU Cantina
• An update from TheForce.net
• Allston's book listing on Amazon

If anybody needs me to do anything next March 24, I'm sorry, but I'll be reading.

Oh, and Troy, Christie, and Aaron? Could we maybe not kill off a pile of characters this go-round? It was bad enough losing Mara Jade and Jacen Solo in LOTF. If you kill off Kyp Durron, I will be a very unhappy reader. And Corran. I like Corran, too. And Wedge. And Jag Fel. And Zekk. Okay, you know what? No killing anybody. Period.

Since there is no cover art as of yet, I'll leave you with a cover from one of the Japanese Editions of a New Jedi Order novel. The Japanese covers totally rock- so much better than the US cover art. I'm tempted to buy all the books just for the covers, though I can't read a single character from the Kanji.

Of Life, Tiling, and Scrapbooking

What a crazy kind of weekend! Not really because of so much going on, but just the sheer amount of stuff I managed to pack into it. I took Friday off work just to have a day to chill out, and ended up spending most of it finishing up my scanning project. I didn't get through quite all of it, but enough to be able to loan the scanner to Mom and Dad for a while. Friday evening was spent watching Stargate: SG-1 while packing page kits to take on travel next week.

Sunday after church I spent the majority of the day scrapbooking. I wanted to finish the photos from my Aiken Canyon hike last year since I'd started making pages with them more than a month ago. I managed to get through all the photos and made 8 pages in the process. That's just a crazy number of pages (I had way to many photos printed from that trip- you can never take too many photos, but I think that you can print too many, at least for me) and I won't be doing quite that many again for any event, or I'll end up with 27 and a half million albums by the time I'm 30.

But these were fun to do, just to show off this paper. :)






So, that covers Friday and Sunday, but what about Saturday? I decided to save those photos for last, because this is possibly the most unflattering photo of me that has ever been taken. Here's the story:

I went to my brother's house to help him tile his bathroom, but first we had to pull up the old vinyl from the main floor and the carpet from the closets. I was sitting in the closet pulling up tack strips that had been nailed into the concrete, and Mom started taking pictures, saying she was getting me back for all those times I took pictures of her she didn't like...and she said something about trying to get a picture of me with something hanging out of my nose. So I, being the nut that I am, stuck end of the prybar up my nose, and of course she got a photo of it. And then I got back to work. :)





Oh, yeah, and we actually did get some tile on the floor. :)

Colorado Acrylic Album

I've had this project in progress for quite some time- since last June, I think. I finally finished the last three pages this evening!

All the photos were taken during a vacation trip to Colorado Springs last February (this was before I knew I was going to be out there TDY for 5 months and then traveling every other week for another 6 months after that)!

The papers used are from the Chatterbox "Chateau" line. There aren't many paper lines I try to keep stocked on- most of the time I'm happy with one sheet of each and when I use it, it's gone. But this line and also Black Tie from Basic Grey I try to buy whenever I find them, since both are now discontinued. Ironically, the last time I found Chateau anywhere was while I was on that TDY trip- I bought a ton of it.

Halloween Cards

I went on another little cardmaking stint today and made a bunch of Halloween cards. This one is for the sketch challenge at the 2 Sketches 4 You blog. I really love these little owl stamps from Sassafras Lass.


I also cranked these cards out for the September Sheetload of Cards sketch. I'm not terribly pleased with them, but I made them quickly and was trying to use up a bunch of Halloween stuff I've had laying around the scrap room for a year or more. They're cute, but nothing artsy.

Major Croppage

Last night was cool- I attended a crop at my church for the first time in what seems like ages. They don't have them during the summer, and I missed the last one of the spring because I was on travel. I got a lot done, but did things a little differently this time. I made lots of cards and tags in addition to a few pages.

This is the page I made for the Sketch This challenge this week. I thought I'd put it first so people didn't have to go hunting through this photo-heavy post for it. :)


This page finishes up the Continuum photos from the page I started earlier.


And a couple more from the Butterfly Pavilion. I always go nuts taking photos there.



And one more to finish off the TKD Block Party photos from several years ago. I really miss sparring!


I'm still working on building up the card stash, so I made 9 more last night using this month's Sheetload of Cards mini issue. I love the cutting guides, but decided to use my scraps along with the printed dimensions instead of using new sheets of paper.










And then some tags. I had a bunch of blank tags left over from another project, so I used some of my extra Prima journaling spots, ribbon, and flowers to make some cute gift tags.

Poetic Artistry Card Sketch #53 - Trick or Treat

Here's a quick card I did for the Poetic Artistry Monday Mojo sketch. It's not my best card ever, but I totally loved getting out the Halloween stuff and working with it. I also hadn't heat embossed in ages...I forgot how much I liked melting that stuff. :-) Yes, I know, I'm strange...

Sketch This 66: Continuum

Here's my layout for the Sketch This post this week. The photo is one I took more than a year ago at Freedom Park in Colorado Springs. The had recently opened this great fountain called "Continuum," so of course I had to go find it. :-)


Hmmm, looks a bit familiar, doesn't it?