hello february!

Hello February! I was not expecting to see you so soon. But now that you're here, make yourself comfortable and please stay as long as you'd like...

ha...ha..

Seriously, what happened to January? And all my plans, mostly unwritten, starting last year to be a more active blogger? Ugh. Not doing so good, but I have some friends out there who are inspiring me to be better. Once life settles down a bit, fingers are crossed that there will be more time to devote to recording my (our) lives and sharing more here on my blog.  

January was a whirlwind. In a nutshell... we got some snow which resulted in the boys having quite a few snow days, I've had a bout of the winter blues, basketball season started for one of the boys, and we started doing a lot of work on the house which has been the largest source of chaos the during the last month. HUGE deterrent to me being able to play around with my computer. But we are slowly getting closer to being done with all the major projects (paint, floors, and such), slowly things are being put back in place, and soon it will only be a matter of needing to attend to finishing touches and decorating. That, my friends, will be a slow process for sure.

The beginning of the year also brought back my desire to attempt to participate in the 365 Project again. We shall see if I can actually keep up with it this time around. I made it through the whole month of January - one month down, eleven to go! I'm not gonna stress out about uploading them anywhere on a daily basis, but so far I've been (kind of!) good about adding them to Facebook as I get around to it. Here's a peek at some of them...



Even though the wind is howling outside right now, and tomorrow is sure to be chilly, it seems as though the worst of winter may be behind us. *fingers crossed* Soooo looking forward to spring!

I do love February though. Two of my boys, Jared and Jace, have birthdays in February (plus several other family member's birthdays), and then there's Valentine's day, a.k.a. - the day every other woman in the world is showered with chocolates, given roses and cards that make me want to gag myself with a spoon, taken out to dinner, and so on... I, on the other hand, have to settle for whatever candy I can steal ask the kids nicely for AND the only (very sweet I should add) cards I will receive will be from my two younger boys, who fortunately still realize just how amazing of a person I am. Ha! Even though my husband and I had our first phone conversation on Valentine's Day of 1992 (which is worth a day of celebration in itself, huh?!) he still does not take the opportunity to exercise his romantic side. But, I digress... Like I said, I LOVE February! I'm looking forward to the boys' birthdays most of all. We aren't planning any extravagant parties or anything like that, keeping it low key as usual, but birthdays are exciting! My soon to be 9 year old, Jace, has been reminding me about his birthday every. single. day. since. Christmas. Let's get this over with already! ;)  

OK, so here's to a fabulous month of February!!! It's already past midnight here and although I could probably write a few more paragraphs I need some sleep.
Goodnight world!

impossible to scrap just one

I'm beginning to believe that it is impossible for me to create just one scrapbook page at a time. Just one page and then stop, close Photoshop, and move on. Seems like an easy enough concept, but my creative juices get to flowing and it seems silly to stop while I'm in the zone. This pretty much sums up everything I do though. Once I get started on something I don't like to stop until I feel like I have accomplished something BIG. It's always all or none with me and I feel pretty frustrated when I can't finish something, so I never start or I put it off until there's more time. Unfortunately, there'll never be more than 24 hrs in one day though. I would probably be more productive in life, as a whole, if I could learn to control this "bad habit" and just do a little here and a little there of everything. That's the same thing as learning how to balance it all, right? Funny how even when I know what is wrong, it's so hard for me to put a fix on it. Ahhhh, I'm rambling on about the same ol' stuff again.

So back to scrapbooking. I have three new pages to share.

First, another page for my Stinky Inky Poo. And this time I controlled the urge to use her name in extra large letters as the title. Hehe. This was her first bath in the big tub. We found out that she already knows how to swim. She starts to doggy paddle as soon as you hold her over the tub. It's hilarious! 

Since our main bathroom is the ugliest Pepto Bismol pink you will ever see, I changed the pictures to B&W. Black and white works great for Inky photos because she is... well, black and white. Dianne Rigdon's Homey papers and elements seemed to be the perfect pop of color that I needed to finish the layout off. Gotta love scrapping for my doggie because it gives me a chance to use girlie stuff that I can't get away with using on layouts for the boys.

(credits here)
 


And below is a two page layout that I created for all of my "Mule Day" parade photos. I feel inspired to create more two page layouts with tons of photos more often. It's a nice feeling to have almost every picture I took that day scrapped and accounted for.

(credits for left page here, and credits for right side page here)

 

What else is going on in my world? 

The Boys:
Jace and Joey are still going strong in baseball/T-ball. Baseball has taken over our lives! Have I mentioned that lately? LOL They are loving it and having a great time though so I can't complain. As far as Jared is concerned, I had a very bad Mama moment last night! He left his phone in his jeans pocket, and you guessed it... I washed his phone. So it's currently buried in a bowl of rice in the hopes that all the moisture will be absorbed. He just got his own phone for his 13th birthday in February, had it taken up at school (and they kept it for almost three weeks) the first week he had it, and now this. Someone needs to be a little more responsible. Eeek. And I need to remember to check pockets! You'd think after killing 3 ipods I'd know by now. Sigh. Last but not least, Josh, our 16 yr old, is getting his license today. Well, I am taking him to take the road test at least. We always said he wasn't going to get his license until he was 18, but I think it's time. He needs to find a job by this summer (not to mention buy a car), and while I wouldn't mind taking him back and forth to work, him being able to drive will certainly come in handy.

365 Project:
I've all but fallen off and been run over by the 365 Project bandwagon, but I'm trying really hard to catch up and jump back on and get back into the habit of taking a photo every day. Since May is my birthday month, perhaps I will put extra effort into it. I'm not giving up just yet!

Cooking:
I burnt my hand THREE TIMES on the oven rack last week. Twice on my middle finger and once on my thumb, which caused a pretty nice blister. News flash: ovens are hot!!! Another sigh. I still plan to share some of my dinner creations here. One day, one day...

That's it for today.
I'm going to challenge myself to blog at least one more time by the week's end, even if I gotta do it from my phone again darn it!

365 project: i'm doin' it.

Oops. It's been a little bit since my last post. I was doing good for a few days there though, huh?

You see, I promised to catch up on my 365 project pictures in my next post, and being a girl of my word, I felt like I couldn't post until I was actually ready to do so, so I kept putting it off. And I had pictures on my camera, pictures on my phone, pictures with an incorrect timestamp (I really should just set the time on my camera in order to help relieve some of my frazzled-ness), pictures that needed to be resized for web, levels adjusted, etc..., etc...

Now I'm all caught up, more or less (minus the few days I have not taken photos), with them at this point. However, being that we are already in mid-March, I realize that I can't very well post 70-or-something photos in one blog post. Can I?   Hmmmm.... No, I'd better not. hehe. So. Today, I will just start with a few of my favorites. By the way, if you are a facebook friend, I am putting all of my 365 photos in an album/s on facebook, too. Just so you know, they are there for your viewing pleasure. I have been pondering whether or not to post them at the 365project.org site, flickr, or somewhere but I think I am going to stick to randomly posting them here and on facebook. If I have the time, I might start an additional 365 blog. I know that would help me keep up with the journaling that goes along with them. Finding the time to catch up with the past three months though, is easier said than done. Or, I could make the time for it, like I do scrapbooking, and let everything else fall to the wayside. I'm bad like that.

For the record, I would like to say that I am a totally amateur photographer. I am not doing this project to prove my photography or photoshop skills, but I am doing it to have fun with my camera, photoshop, and most of all my family. This project has become a new way to document a year in my family's life. We will have an amazing visual journal covering an entire year, that every single one of us took some part in. My sons are really into it... "did you take your photo of the day yet, Mama?" , "hey, this can be your picture of the day!", "Mama... you forgot your camera!!!!" LOL

OK, enough rambling. Here are a few of my favorites so far:




 

 

 


That's all for now. Thanks for reading :)