MEET OUR MAY BLOG MEMBER OF THE MONTH SHIRLEY BURKETT !!!

Congratulations to our May Scrapbook Place Blog Member of the Month Shirley Burkett. Many of you may know her but how much do you really know about her???? Shirley joined Scrapbook Place on May 29, 2011. She resides in Pennsylvania with her husband, who is fourteen years her senior and " Her Angel and Life Saver in All Ways" Shirley and her husband have been together, since 1995. They were married on December 13th (Friday) 2002, she told him " If we survive this day, we will make it work!" Shirley was a single mother raising a beautiful daughter Patricia, when she met her wonderful husband. By the time Shirley reached age 56, she not only was enjoying her three beautiful grandchildren, she also inherited three step-daughters and nine step-grandchildren (one deceased) and five step-great-grandchildren. Included in this large family also are Furbabies, she had a grey tabby cat but sad news here, she just passed away this month. Rest in peace furbaby. Her Tabby was with her for almost 16 years, Shirley enjoyed raising her and having her around for all those years. Also in the family is a little black and white male furbaby dog, whose father was Shirley's too, but furbabys father was tragically killed by a bear and furbaby's mother belonged to a neighbor and she too died after sadly being struck by a car, so this poor little baby has been a very big part of her life as well, he will be six years old in October and his name is Chance. Shirley is celebrating her birthday this month May 1st HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHIRLEY!!!!  She loves children and animals and knows both are wonders from God and cherishes her time with all of them. Shirley shared that she had two major accomplishment's in her life so far and both are unique, her first accomplishment and most enjoyable one was raising her family and blending and building a solid trusting foundation for all of them, nurturing them with love, patience and understanding and being there for them when needed and her second major accomplishment is that after being out of school for twenty years, she chose to go back to school and she achieved her GED! Now that is quite an achievement!!! Congrat's Shirley!!!  Shirley has been an avid scrapbooker for almost twelve years now and has been making cards for past last five years. She blames her love and obsession with scrapbooking on her enabling sister who needed people to come to a scrapbooking party she was hostessing to sell items. Upon arrival to the party and seeing all the items for sale she still did not know if this was her cup of tea, but within a couple of months and a few lumps of sugar and lots of cream, she was hooked and spending all her money on her new found hobby. Shirley is sharing that she is learning more and more each day about the craft of paper art and feels that she is still far behind others in her creativity and artwork but she really enjoys seeing all the wonderful work of others and knowing that it will someday enhance and help her to grow! When Shirley is not scrapbooking or cardmaking she can be found working on one of her other interests, quilting, crocheting, knitting, embroidering, cross stitching or perhaps working in one of her flower gardens. Some of her job related experiences include, her working at one time behind a desk in a beauty school she attended. One day in walked Linebacker James Ham and Fullback Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers and for once in her life she was speechless. She said she felt like a dunce and that she is such a diehard Steelers Fan but she was just at a loss for words. She has really had some neat jobs in her lifetime too. One such job was working in a bike cycle factory for high end bikes. Shirley decaled bike frames before they were put on the bikes and she built wheels for the bikes and the shocks for the front end of the bike. At one time she was also an inspector there checking as the bike frames came off the paint line from the ovens. Wow, talk about an interesting job that's way cool Shirley! Some other interesting work she did was sitting with the handicapped and the elderly, and also working at a daycare. She was a Fire-fighter and a EMT until she had to resign due to health reasons. She misses it so much as she really enjoyed helping others. Now she is a avid scrapbooker for life and loving every minute of it.