30 days of thankful: day 13

Today I'm thankful for my electric blanket. We live in an old farmhouse and even though its well insulated it still gets drafty. Especially when the winds blow across the fields for days at 20 mph. Our bedroom is on the corner of the house and we have 4 windows so it gets especially chilly on those brisk and windy nights. It may be cool (or downright cold) but I'm always toasty warm because of my electric blanket. So warm that I wake up sweating. So warm that I don't want to get out if bed in the morning. So warm that I want one at work. It's cold there too ;)

30 days of thankful: day 12

Today I'm thankful that the kids on our basketball team were good and listened tonight. Chris is very brave to volunteer to coach and he's great at it. I was really proud of CJ too. He did a great job!

30 days of thankful: days 10 & 11

Well, I thought I posted yesterday but it seems that it disappeared!

Day 10: I'm eternally thankful that I got to spend the day at my craft table working on Christmas presents. Every year I make calendars for my mom and grandma. I'm almost done. A few pages need some embellishments and that's about it. I will share pictures next weekend. I'm about 99% sure my mom doesn't read the blog.

Edited: I did have a post all typed out on my iPhone app but apparently didn't hit publish. Duh!

Day 11: Today I'm thankful for all of the veterans who have served and are still serve our country. I'd list all of the vets in my family but I'm afraid I'd leave someone out and have hurt feelings.

Now I'm off to lunch and my book. I'm thankful for that too :)

What are you thankful for today?

30 days of thankful: day 9

Today I'm thankful that I don't have to worry about putting food on my table. I went to my library today (by myself) and on my way home I saw a big line of cars waiting on the main road through town. Now, I don't live in a huge town so I didn't know what was going on. We live in a rural area and in a county that has a high poverty rate. Then I saw a sign with an arrow pointing directions to the food pantry. The line was easily over a mile long and snaked around the town square. I didn't even now we had a food pantry but I also live a few miles from town and only go into town once a week if I'm lucky.

We are normal people who work normal jobs. We don't have a ton of money to spend on extras. We don't really go out and do much and when we go out to eat it's at Steak N Shake before we go on our twice monthly grocery shopping trips. We cut coupons and shop at 4 (yes I said 4) different stores to do all of our food shopping. We don't always get all of the things we want but our fridge are full and for that I'm extremely thankful.

What are you thankful for today?

30 days of thankful: day 8

Today I'm every thankful that it's FRIDAY!!!! This has been the longest week ever. The biggest plan I have this weekend is going to the library and making these cookies. Don't they look absolutely decadent? 

I just feel the need to tell you again that it's Friday. That is all.

What are you thankful for today?

30 days of thankful: day 7

Today I am thankful for online inspiration be it pinterest or my favorite scrap websites. I signed up for 2 classes today and I can't wait to get started. The first class I signed up for was Journal Your Christmas. I decided to do this project this year instead of December Daily. I also signed up for Art Class through twopeasinabucket.com. I may not get to this class right away but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

It's weird to be thankful for something like this but doing these online classes is a lot of fun. And scrapping, in whatever form, is very calming to me. It relaxes me and allows me to recenter myself.

So, what are you thankful for?

30 days of thankful: day 6

Today I am extremely thankful that I don't have to work the second job tonight. I need time at home to do a few things. I got home from working late last night and came home to the boy telling me Happy Mother's Day. Of course it isn't Mother's Day, but hey, who am I to say I don't deserve something special? He even made me a crown. Such a sweet kid.

What are you thankful for?

30 days of thankful: day 5

Today I'm thankful for the various electronic gadgets I have. True, I probably waste lots of time playing games and such (yes, I only recently discovered Angry Birds and Jurassic Park Builder) but I can also do things like write this post. For some reason the web version isn't working for me right now. 

What are you thankful for?

30 days of thankful: day 4

Today I am VERY thankful for space heaters. The heat in our building at work is shut off during the weekends. That means Monday mornings tend to be a little on the chilly side. For some reason our office is colder than most of the building on a good day. Today just happened to be a toasty...wait for it...60 degrees. Yeah.

Good thing we have 2 space heaters in the office. It only took 3 hours to get the temp up to 70. And that's a good thing.

What are you thankful for today?

30 days of thankful: day 3

Today I'm thankful for daylight savings time. I wasn't too terribly annoyed when I woke up this morning at 6:50. And maybe, just maybe, I can trick the boy into going to bed at a decent time and get on a better sleep schedule. ;)

Update: The whole "going to bed earlier" thing didn't work. At all. And somehow he convinced me to set up his tent and let him sleep in it all night. Of course it was in his room and not outside. 

30 days of thankful: day 2

Today I'm thankful for this guy. He may not be perfect but he's mine. We've been through a lot over the years but we've stuck by one another. He would do anything for me and loves me like none other could. 

And because of him I have the coolest little guy in the world. 

(He hates to have his picture taken which is why I have NONE of his face...unlike the boy who is a total ham)

30 Days of Thankful: Day 1

Wow. I haven't posted since March. I guess life just got in the way....

Anyway, yesterday was Halloween which was fun, wet, and a little chilly but it's all worth it for this guy...

He had lots of fun which is all that really matters. Like I said, it was wet. It rained almost the entire time. We were done after an hour and spent the rest of the evening sorting and eating candy.

It was also a very busy day at work. I co-chaired the Halloween activities. We had a potluck, a few contests, and lots of puzzles. Unfortunately lots of people here are ungrateful and complained about lots of stuff we do for them, FOR FUN, so the day was sort of bittersweet.

And since today is November I try to do my 30 days of things I'm thankful for. Today did not start off on the right foot since I received another complaint email about the Halloween festivities yesterday. So today I'm thankful for my headphones and music so I can tune out and just get stuff done today. If my brain is listening to something, anything, I tend to not dwell on the bad stuff going on.

I'll not bore you with my complaining so I'll leave it at that. And I promise I won't wait another 7 months before I post again.

What are you thankful for?

Behind

This is what being 3 weeks behind on Project Life looks like. The post-it's are my placeholders until I can get my pics downloaded, edited, and printed. It's almost like putting a puzzle together.

being an adult sucks

I'm sure that's not news for anyone reading this. The truth is that I started a second job today. It was great. I will be providing office support for an online pottery company. They don't make pottery but they buy, resell, auction, and purchase from estates.

Anyway, between my regular job, my part-time job, and school (yeah, that sucks too), I will be limited on my crafting time. But never fear. I WILL keep up on my project life. I have everything prepped in advance so all I have to do is plunk in my pictures, whip up a little journaling, and voila! The downside is that it may take a little longer to upload my photos to the blog. I also bought a new scrapbook to put my layouts from year 4 of tha ceej so I will scan those layouts as I am putting the book together. I already have a big stack done and many more to put together.

So please hang in there with me. Only 11 more weeks of classes then I get another break. Then T-ball season starts. Sigh.

Project Life: Weeks 5-6

I'd like to apologize for the pictures this week. I fought with my scanner and photoshop for over 3 hours today.

Week 5 was a busy one. Weird weather, massive car issues, monster trucks, and science day filled up the week. I had an insert for this week and still had to cram everything in.

And Week 6

Evolving

I've been putting my giant stack of layouts in my scrapbooks. While looking through the old stuff I've realized how far I've come since I first started scrapbooking over 10 years ago.

On one hand there are so many more products and techniques available now than back in the day. But I've also been watching tutorials and other YouTube channels. Again, these weren't available long ago. I've learned design principles and so much more.

I'm also journaling a lot more now than I ever have, which is to say never. I have zero journaling in my old books.

Maybe one day I will go back and add journaling. I struggle with wanting to completely redo all of my old pages but then I kind of like to see how far I've come. If anything I will add the stories of the pictures on the backside of the pages.

Nevertheless, it's a continuous growing process. I've come to call my myself a memory keeper than a scrapbooker. And I look forward to see how much more I can grow.

No Project Life this week

There will be no project life pics this week. I didn't have time to edit and upload pictures to be printed.

But stay tuned and you will get to see weeks 5 and 6 in a few days. :)

Project Life: Week 4

Week 4 is finally finished!

Again, journaling and week cards are from my stash. I believe this is My Minds Eye. The letters that spell "week" are old Heidi Swapp ghost letters painted with a paint dabber in chicken coop. The word "four" are old Heidi Swapp chipboard letters painted with a paint dabber in soap flakes. I also used a few pieces of washi tape and a transparency die cut and a random button. The "you said" die cut is from my silhouette and inked up.

The arrows in page 2 are all cut with the silhouette and inked.

This week was pretty slow. Week 5 had so much that I had to include an insert page. But you'll have to wait until next week to see that one ;)

Project Life: Weeks 1-3

I absolutely love project life. I love the simplicity. I love that I capture everyday things that will be fun to look back on over time. I love that I will be able to see my son grow over the year.

As a scrapper I'm WAY behind on many things. I still haven't don't CJ's baby book. He's 5. Yeah yeah. I didn't think I'd keep up with weekly spreads of project life but so far so good. I have everything organized and seem to have a good system. I mostly take pictures with my iPhone because it's better than my Nikon. It's also always handy. I have a spreadsheet that lists the dates of every week and have a breakdown of each week. I fill in each day with a short description of any pictures I took and/or journaling I want to write. I upload pictures on Thursday and pick them up from Sam's on Friday. I normally do me week Friday night/Saturday depending on what we're doing. Putting the page together normally takes less than an hour.

Now, there are core kits that available to make the entire process easy but I have plenty of paper and other pretties in my scrap stash. I made my own kit out of 6x6 paper packs.

I've used all sorts of old product. It's great!

Project Life is a system developed by Becky Higgins. If you want to find out more watch the video here.

me vs. the mice

I live in the country. Country like surrounded by cornfields country. We moved here almost 6 years ago. Over the years we have learned the good and bad of country living.

We are on about an acre of land. We have one neighbor and they are separated from us by a stream. It's quiet (except when it's cropduster season). My son has plenty of room to run and play. I don't have to worry about him running into the road because we spend all of our time in the backyard. It is so peaceful.

And then nature rears its ugly head. As I said, we live in the middle of farmland. We live in an old farmhouse. I have learned to accept certain things. We have learned to keep our windows closed in May when the wind blows. No matter how nice it is outside the windows stay shut. Why? Because we get constant wind in May and it blows all of the fine black soil that our area is known for into our house. It covers everything. It's a pain in the ass to clean up. I have also learned to accept that we get critters. We've had our fair share of snakes, deer, raccoons, opossum, ducks, and mice. I hate the mice. The mice mostly stay downstairs and in the shed. We put poison in the shed and set traps in the basement. They pretty much stay in the basement. And they get into your car. Did I mention I hate these little bastards?

Flash forward to today. Normal day. I started my a car a few minute before we were to leave. Nothing out of the ordinary. We leave. A few miles from home my battery light comes on and my lights are dimming. Hmmm, that's not right. So I turn around and head for home. Then the battery light goes on, goes off, my ABS light goes on and off, other various lights on the dash do the same. Less than 3 miles from home and all of my instruments stop working, the car dies, and I try to pull over to the side of the road. As I said, we live in the country and live on backroads where people drive 70 mph even though the speed limit is only 55 mph. But that's another rant for another day.

I don't make it to the side. I'm stuck half on and half off the road. No juice in the battery means no power for the hazard lights. We wait for Chris to pick us up. Try to jump the car several times but it immediately dies. We finally get it started long enough to get it into neutral. Go home and get stuff to tow the car home.

Let me tell you people, that was the LONGEST 3 miles I've ever driven. We chain my car behind the Jeep and Chris pulls me home. No power to the car means no power steering and no power brakes. I will never take those for granted again!

We get home...5 hours later Chris get the alternator off. Damn mice had made themselves a nice little home behind the alternator. The part was all stuffed with leaves, tree stuff, and seeds. Finally he leaves for work at 3:00. Poor guy.

 

Destructive little bastards. Last summer they made a nest in our central air unit. We didn't know until our a/c quit running. 

I've learned a few things today...I'm grateful for a wonderful husband who fixes things like this for me...I'm EXTREMELY grateful that the road I was stuck on has light traffic in that direction in the morning...I'm grateful for the two people who stopped and asked if I needed help...and I'm blessed that I have a patient son who just sat there the whole time telling me dad would help us and that I needed to get gas so my car would start. He sat quietly in the warm car while me and hubs sat in the freezing rain trying to hook the car up, jump start it, etc. He even helped us push the car into the shed. I'm blessed to have a boss that is understanding when I have to take 2 emergency vacation days off of work. And I'm extremely lucky to have a great mom who will find a ride to work so I can borrow her car for a few days.

And the mice? Not only do I hope they die but they owe me $190 for a new alternator and a few other parts Chris had to break to get the part out.

Stash busting?

I'm absolutely loving project life right now. I love seeing the every day. I love that I can look back on this in a few months and remember the little things. I love that I can look back in a few years and see how much my son has grown.

I love that I have been using items from my scrap stash...slowly.

So far I've used OLD stickers, OLD rub-ons, OLD chipboard, flowers, brads, buttons, papers, grunge paper, die cuts, the list goes on. I love that these old items have a chance to see the light of day instead of being forever banished in the drawer.

I promise to post pictures tomorrow when I have actual daylight.

December Daily: Days 11-25

And I present to you the remainder of my December Daily...

Yeah, yeah, I still need to print the picture for this page

Overall I LOVED this project. I'm not sure if I will do one again this year since I'm doing Project Life but maybe I can incorporate the two projects somehow. It was a great way to use paper and embellishments from my stash.

December Daily: Dec. 1-10

Here is the second part of my December Daily. Part 3 will be up tomorrow!

Thanks for looking!