The Amazing Digital Scrapbooking Race 7

Wow, I am participating in ADSR7 this year after only a year of digital scrapbooking. I remember hearing about this last year and found it overwhelming even thinking about entering into such an activity. Now I get it. I'm doing it. I'm scared. I'm doing it anyways. Enough wining. I am so excited to try this. And goodness, what a way to start right out of the gate. I lost my first layout when I saved it. I have NO IDEA what happened. I went shopping for an Alpha and when I went to open the psd. it my computer had NO IDEA what program to use to open it! What's that about? ...at least I had saved a flattened copy, so I could find it again, so I used it to recreate the layout today. Whew! Since I'm a bit nervous about this I really didn't want to start over. I have teamed up with Brenda from Brazil and we named our team Elements X 12, in reference to her 7 children and my 5, totaling 12. Cool beans, huh! I think we'll make a good team, though I worry about living up to Brenda's talent. She is more experienced than I am so I don't want to let her down. Her first layout is Awesome! I only hope she likes mine as much as I like hers. The challenge is to take a failure of a photo, for some reason, and scrap it. Wow! Pretty clever challenge. Brenda scrapped a photo her husband took with her camera. So funny. You can't tell what he was snapping. It looks like a fence with...something...behind it. Brenda created a Fantastic layout. The photo fits right into it as though it was taken just for the layout. She used perfect colors and journaled about her husband's curious photography subjects. Okay, enough blabbering for now. Here's the layout I created for my first ever ADSR. I used a photo from my son's wedding. I wanted to catch one of those perfectly posed wedding party photos the professional photographer was shooting. Well, mine was anything but perfect. It was backlit, sporting dark shadows and a lot of things were going on. The girls were, all but one, laughing at who knows what. Michelle, my DIL the bride, had a very confused expression on her face. And the other bridesmaid I mentioned was standing to one side deep in thought about something unknown to anyone but her. I love the photo, but saw it as irreperably flawed. After scrapping it, I see it as precious beyond belief. It is a magic moment caught on film (or digital film?) which will never be seen again. It's priceless, and I can't wait to show it to Michelle and Matthew. So without further ado...