My Duran Duran Scrapbook

I had thought about selling most of my Duran Duran stuff on ebay but am glad that I changed my mind about this. These are some of my 8x10's that I bought online and at a shop at an indoor flea market. I never was into this group in the 1980s. I didn't really become a fan until around 1992 when Ordinary World came out. Back in the mid 90's I had a scrapbook and pins that I got at a flea market but by 1998 I had thrown all that stuff out and sold most of the pins. My interest in DD increased in 2005 when all the originals got back together and I saw them in concert at MSG in NYC. I really got into collecting books, mags, photos and other stuff a couple of years later. I felt like I was making up for not being a teenie bopper fan and recently felt kind of embarrased about this and wanted to just get rid of it all but now that I'm no longer ashamed to be a fan I'd like to hang onto the memorabilia.

Trivial Pursuit

Playing Trivial Pursuit with my family in the 1980s and early 1990s was fun but also a bit frustrating because I wasn't that great at it except for in the Entertainment categories which I did better in. We mostly played the original edition. I think that we only did the All American edition once, or maybe just read the questions and not used the board like we also did with the other editions. The 20th Anniversary and Totally 80's editions still haven't been taken out of the plastic wrapping. I might just open the 80's one soon because I am curious about the type of questions in that one.

Our Christmas Decorations 2- Snoopy and Scooby

I got the Scooby ornaments at the Warner Brothers store at our Woodbridge Mall and in CVS in the mid or late 90's. I also have been collecting the Scooby, Snoopy and the Muppets Hallmark ornaments. I didn't think to take photos of those when I was going through my decorations to better organize them. I haven't really decorated for Christmas since the late 90's. We have so many decorations. My favourite are the ones from my childhood, esp. handmade items.

Great Adventure

My favourite rides at Great Adventure were always the water ones like the Log Flume in the rememberance photo of mom, my friend Stacey and I. Stacey's mom was with us too. I've been here six times, the last one being in 1991 by myself and I didn't go on that many rides but did see an Oak Ridge Boys concert. Other trips included the 8th grade class one in 1983; with Mom, Mark, Aunt Al and my 2 cousins Mary and Janet; Mom, Mark and 3 other cousins; Mom, Aunt Al and Mary. We did the safari part of it the one time in the early 1980s. We always had a good time there. My Aunt lives in Bordentown which is closer to Jackson so we would visit her for a couple of days too. I was kind of scared on the rollercoasters though. It felt like I was going to fall out of the Runaway Train once. They used to have a bobsled ride there that was cool. Once we were on a space shuttle ride that got stuck and we were hanging upside down for a long time - that was very painful. I have this memory of being on a ride and the song Eyes Without A Face by Billy Idol was playing. I think that the name of it was the Matterhorn and it was near the Haunted House that eventually burnt down one year. I was only in that once.

My Polish Barbie

This is actually Mom's Barbie that she bought in the early 1990s, I think, but she said that I could have it when I recently asked her. I really like these International Barbies. I wish that we had gotten the Russian, French and English ones also so we'd have all my nationalities/heritage. Well, I'm actually part Ukranian but I don't think that they had this specific one, only Russian Barbie. I'm sure that I would be able to get them on ebay or elsewhere now but they probably are considered a collector's item and cost alot. I saw an Italian Barbie at Walmart the other day but it did not seem to be made as well as the ones from when I was a kid or even from the early - mid 1990s. They had retro Barbies there also, including the Peaches and Cream 1985 one that I still have from back then.

Hollywood Trading Cards

I got these cards at a trading card/collectibles show at a mall in the early 90's. My brother has some too. I also have a few more with some music stars like the Bee Gees. At the time I was into collecting this sort of thing. Now I'm not even wanting most of the ones that I have like the X-Files seasons 1-3 and Topps Widevision the Star Wars Trilogy. If I decide to sell stuff on ebay I'd definitely see if anyone would be interested in those but I would keep these.

2 Deaths And a Bad Fall In The Family

I haven't been at this site much lately because I've been kind of depressed about a few awful things that have happened over the past few month. My Aunt Dorothy died at the beginning of February and a few weeks ago my Uncle Mike also passed away. They are both my Dad's siblings. And last week my Mom fell three times and on the third one wound up breaking her collarbone. She is in a special rehabilitation unit of the hospital now. I just found out today that this is not covered under charity care, only Medicare so we are responsible for 20% of the bill. My mom has so many medical bills as is. I feel so guilty for being mad at her because the reason that she fell was because she overdid it on her as needed meds which she has been doing for many years. It is hard focusing on much of anything even reading blogs and doing posts because of all of this stress. I will try to get back into doing both sometime soon. I miss my friends here.

The top photo is of mom and I at the Danbury Depot Restraunt in the Poconos PA in 1994. The one of Uncle Mike is from the Christmas of 1980 and that's my Aunt Dorothy at my 8th grade graduation party in 1983. I feel so terrible because I didn't really associate with Dad's side of the family much after my parent's divorce in the early 1990s. I only saw them a little in the mid 90's and a few times after that. Uncle Mike was in the VA hospital for many years. He would send me a Christmas card with money in it every year. I wish that I had been closer to them. I have some good memories of them from my childhood like getting to go to movies for free because my aunt worked at the theater and Uncle Mike teaching us lessons like look both ways before you cross the street and don't sit too close to the TV because it will ruin your eyes.

Our Mookie

I keep writing about our Buffy pup and feel bad that I have only mentioned our Mookie a little bit and that was a while ago. This picture is from 1993. She looks so adorable. We got her in October 1992 from friends of the family who already had 4 doggies and someone had given them Mookie because they didn't want her anymore. At first I didn't really like her because I didn't want another doggie, not after what had happened to my Ginger 6 years earlier but eventually I grew to love her too. She is a terrier, Llhasa Apso mix. She was about 2 years old here and we had her until 2005 when she got so sick that we had to have her put to sleep. She was a very playful doggie and loved her stuffed llama and football.

Buffy Memories 2

Poor Buffy - she really needed under her eyes to be cleaned here. I had 2 containers of eye cleansing pads ordered from a catalog and feel bad that I didn't use them that much on her. She didn't mind when I did unlike my other dog Mookie who did not like this at all. Doesn't she look so cute in her little bed? We got that when she was a puppy on the day that we adopted her into our family. We probably could've gotten her a bigger one when she grew up but she just loved sleeping in that one so we didn't. I just had to put that bow on her head that Christmas of 1998, she was like a present from God that year and I'm so glad that we found her. Mom and I were talking about how very much that we missed her yesterday so I just had to do a post about her today.

My Souvenier Patch Collection

I've been getting a bit overwhelmed with my post ideas - I have many but don't know which to pick some days. I will go with the souvenier theme because I so enjoyed seeing Darrin's Disneyland ones. His are cool compared to my kind of lame patches. I started collecting these in 1981 during my vacations and by the early 90's stopped getting these and would mostly buy postcards which I probably should've done in addition to patches all along. My plan had been to make a wall hanging of these. I was going to ask my mom to help me with this but over the years just kept putting it off until I decided to just buy special pages to put them in my scrapbook instead. These are just 2 of the 8 pages that I have and in the future will be posting more. Our 1983 Florida trip is my favourite vacation. I just noticed that my dolphin patch got a little cut off when I scanned it. My cousin Mary was into getting souvenier spoons and had a special holder for them hanging on the wall.

Scrapbook Stuff 1

I was looking through one of my many scrapbooks the other day and seeing this made me both happy and sad. I miss our sunshine spaniel. This is my favourite scrapbook because it has mostly spaniels in it. I have another one with other doggies like golden retrievers. My brother says that I have too many scrapbooks. I had more stuff in them but over the years got rid of some of this. I was thinking of throwing out some more like from the TV ones. I would never throw out any of my animal pictures and articles though. Other scrapbooks that I have - about 4 tennis, classic actors, 70's - 90's TV, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, James Franco, British TV, Don Mattingly, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Travel, Concerts and Events, personal and more also. I use the 1 , 2 or 3 inch binders and put sheet protector pages in them. Maybe some people might think that doing this is kind of teenagish but I enjoy it.

Figure Skating Shows

My mom and I really enjoyed watching figure skating during the Olympics in the 1980s and early 1990s. We got to go to 2 shows in the early to mid 90's. Brian Boitano was at both of them. We took some pictures but they did not turn out that great. Boitano and Witt are in the first 2. In the bottom 3 are Petrenko, Kerrigan and Boitano. You can clearly see on the program page who was at the first one but it's harder to see on the second - Torvil and Dean, Nancy Kerrigan , Oksana Baiul and Victor Petrenko are included in this one. We went with a couple of friends. Skating 2 was at MSG in New York City and the 1994 show was in New Jersey at the Meadowlands. I'm not sure why after 1994 I lost interest in the figure skating. I must've been watching it in the late 70s a bit too because I remember getting the Dorothy Hamill haircut a couple of times back then.

3 Concerts - 1991

I didn't go to my first concert until August 1991. My brother paid for my ticket to a Styx concert because I drove him there. It was at the Garden State Arts center. Tommy Shaw was not a part of the group at the time and they did not perform Mr. Roboto which was disappointing. We went to see John Denver there a week later. Lawn seats then. He did a song called Home Grown Tomatoes and dedicated it to our state. My brother went off on his own. About a month later we went to the Brendan Byrne Arena and saw Rod Stewart. He wandered off during that a few times. Rod said "Hello NY " or something like that and I was thinking we are in NJ, Rod, not NY. I didn't go to another concert until 2000. Well, there was an Oak Ridge Boys one at Great Adventure in 1992 that I was at.

My Buffy Puppy

The best thing about the 90s is when we got our cocker spaniel puppy Buffy in 1998. My brother paid for her but he wasn't even with mom and I when we picked her out. We were visiting my Aunt Al and were supposed to go to a flea market that morning but it was raining so we decided to go to the petstore nearby. They had cocker spaniels but all of them were males and we really wanted a female. The guy employee had overheard us talking to the girl one about this and said that there was one in the back. I'm so glad that he was standing there otherwise we would not have her in our family today and thank goodness it rained too for the same reason. I only wish that I had taken more than 13 pictures of her as a puppy.

Northern Exposure

This was one of my favourite shows from the 90's. My mother saw some episodes and liked it too. I had a little bit of a crush on Rob Morrow and John Corbett. I would debate in my head who did I like more - the latter would often win out. I had a John Corbett poster that was only on my wall for a couple of months. I had a calendar one year that I cut some of the pictures out of for my scrapbook but eventually I threw them away. My brother got me the mug and I got a street sign - Cicely Alaska. Sometimes I wished that the characters and place were real and that I could take a trip there.

I also have some 8x10 photos of this show still in my scrapbook. This is one of them. I have the book which has an episode guide but only of the first 3 seasons. I didn't care for the last season that much because Rob Morrow was not in it. I saw some reruns of it on A&E when they still had good shows on that channel.

Arts and Crafts #1 - Punch Embroidery

I wasn't that good at doing arts and crafts. In the early 90's I got a little into doing punch embroidery. You would pick patterns out of a catalog that you would transfer onto cloth with an iron and use a needle type thing to punch the yarn threads through the fabric. My cousin Karen who worked in A.C. Moore craft store liked my raccoon so much that she had it framed and it hung in her store as a display for months. I'm just glad that I asked for it back before she moved to Florida otherwise I would've never seen it again. I didn't do that many projects but I still have all the punch embroidery stuff in a container in my basement. I don't think that I'd start doing it again but I wouldn't want to get rid of these things.

My Old Swatches

I got my first Swatch at Macy's in either 1983 or 1984. It's the one on the right. This isn't the original band - that was yellow, blue and red. I liked the Egyptian pattern on the center one that I got about a year later. The battery cover broke on that after 5 years. The one on the left is from my class trip to Switzerland in 1987. They are cheaper over there although I'm sure by the time my mom paid interest on credit card bills it worked out to be the same or more! I have others too from the mid - late 90s. I even got my mom liking them. We need to get new batteries for our Swatches. I finally went to the Swatch store in NYC last year. Such nice stuff there - not in the budget though.