"The rain continued the whole evening without intermission." (Pride and Prejudice)

So don't believe the naysayers... Hurricane Irene was NO joke... She left quite the devastation behind, and because of her, my basement (and, scrap room!) was flooded with up to three or four feet of water... But I have to thank God I escaped relatively unscathed... She damaged SOME of my prized scrappy goods, but the advance warning and dire predictions helped salvage my more sentimental items, such as my unscrapped pictures, favorite papers, and more portable goods...
(Here's a shot of Main Street in my town, Lodi, NJ, where ALL commerce was shut down... this is down the block from my house)

My Cricut, however, suffered the wrath of my husband's angry hose... The machine ALMOST avoided destruction because I placed her on the windowsill in the basement, high above where the waters would have collected... But since Andrew chose to switch the hose's position as we were pumping our waters out of the affected areas to the same exact window that housed my prize machine, well, you get the picture. I can't say that I'm not highly affected emotionally by the loss of my bug... I may not be as attached to the machine as I was when she first arrived in our household three years ago, but I still cannot figure out how to title a scrapbook page without her... A memorial service will follow. :)

Today we hiked up to Sparta to visit my parents, and I dragged my bag of salvaged Graphic 45 papers with me... I had a pad of Memento Tuxedo Black ink along and my tape runner. And some cardstock that escaped the wet bucket... (Ugh, just for future reference, even if a bucket SEEMS watersafe and is plastic and seems durable, it may not be... I had a nice sized bin full of papers, embellishments, and other scrappy goodies (e.g., stickles, bling, flowers... RIP Prima... that floated out of my basement when we realized we had gotten so much water. After, of course, all the contents sank to the bottom :(.

Anywhoo, I dragged my papers along to see if I could still scrap a bit with limited supplies. Though I would've LOVED to add a flower or two to this project or even some bling, I was able to eek out two cards for some educators who are going back to work this week using the new ABC Primer Collection from Graphic 45. I'm SO glad these papers were in my Scrap-A-Doodle Doo tote and NOT stored with my older G45 papers (like my Romance pack... that was a painful loss).

SOOOO, simple as they are, I am submitting these to Crazy 4 Challenges and One Stop Craft Challenge, as their challenges this week feature a "Back to School" theme....Thanks for looking, and hope you are all DRY!!! :)