Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Um, hello?

Hey gang! I can’t believe it’s been 9 days since I last blogged. How very rude of me. In my defense, things have been pretty busy here with work, Halloween events, switching our house’s heating system from oil to coal (for purely financial reasons), school stuff, and extracurricular activities. But I’m here now, which is all that matters, right?

In glancing at my last post, I see I never posted my Sunday layouts for my Week in the Life project. So here they are for your viewing pleasure, as well as the 2 inside pages that sort of act like a pictorial “summary” of the week.

WIL-Sunday 10_19_08 WIL-Sunday 10_19_08_page2

WIL-Sunday 10_19_08

WIL-Sunday 10_19_08_page2

WIL- Inside Page 1 WIL- Inside Page 2

I just have to do the cover page and maybe one or two “outtake” pages, and then I’ll get it printed.

What else? Oh! I’m a redhead now! I went last Friday and got my hair done. It less “orange” (actually, it’s not orange at all IRL) and more “auburn” in real life, but you get the idea. I LOVE it and may never go back to another color. :)

IMG_6353 And yes, in the photo, I’m holding my shirt shut to avoid boobie flash. I had to use my self-timer and because it was sitting on our low windowsills, I had to sit on the floor and bend over. LOL!

Anyway, I need to go do some work now, but I’ll be back later. Tonight is trick-or-treat night in town (and no, I do NOT know why my town does it on the Wednesday before Halloween, but they do). So I’ll post some pictures of my little Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and my punk rocker/goth girl. Later gang!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Weekend Report

So the weekend’s been busy, but fun, I suppose. Friday night was “Movie Night” here, so we made ice cream sundaes and watched “Finding Rin Tin Tin” (cute movie, by the way). Yesterday, I cleaned during the day and then we headed to the town’s Halloween parade. Grace walked with her Brownie troop again, and I walked with Hannah and her Daisy troop. They made me wear a stupid headband and a tail, but I shoved the tail into my back pocket about 2 blocks into the parade. I have some pride. And since the entire damn town watches the parade and I know over half of them, I had to draw the line somewhere. LOL!

I’m waiting for Steve to get home from walking around on a mountain somewhere so we can order wings and watch the Steelers game I’m taping right now. I’m soooo tempted to turn it on and at least see who’s winning, but I’m fighting the urge. Sigh.

Anyway, I have some more cleaning up to do, so here are my pages from the last few days for my Week in My Life project. I’ll be back later. :)

WIL-Thursday 10_16_08 WIL-Thursday 10_16_08_page2

WIL-Friday 10_17_08 WIL-Friday 10_17_08_page2

WIL-Saturday 10_18_08 WIL-Saturday 10_18_08_page2

I doubt you want to see ALL of these pages close up, but I will post the last two larger so you can see little Hannah has a cat. Unfortunately, since I was with Hannah for the parade, I didn’t get any photos (except that one) of Grace.

WIL-Saturday 10_18_08

WIL-Saturday 10_18_08_page2

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Halloween has officially begun.

Last night, Grace was in a Halloween parade in a neighboring town. She walked with her Brownie troop. The girls were jellyfish and their leader was Spongebob. I must say, their costumes were really creative and they looked really cute! They had umbrella hats and they attached strips of bubble wrap, colored cellophane, and some iridescent charms. They each wore a blinking, color-changing light around their neck and had different colored glow sticks in the umbrella hats. They looked really neat walking in the dark.

Grace had a blast! It was her first parade she was ever in. Hannah sat with me and Steve to watch it and loved getting all the candy that the parade marchers threw to the kids along the street. (Are we the only people that do that? It’s a big thing around here for all parades, and the kids LOVE it.

This Saturday is our town’s Halloween parade. Grace is in it again and Hannah is also in it with her Daisy troop. I’m walking in the parade with Hannah, although I don’t really want to. LOL!

I’m working on another little album project too. At Artscow, you can order a deck of photo cards, with a different photo on each card. I recently discovered that you can set it so that the actual card numbers and suits aren’t printed on the cards. Since there are 52 cards in a deck and 52 weeks in a year, I uploaded one photo from each week for the past year and put one on each card. Then I turned off the card numbers for printing. When I get them, I’ll somehow bind them (probably with a ring) and have a little album of a picture a week for a year. I’m excited to get them! I just need to create the “cover” card and then I can order them. Once I get them and see if the whole concept actually works, I may order another set or two for Christmas gifts for the grandparents.

Capture

And now, I must go do something productive. Here are my pages from yesterday for my Week in My Life project. Grace is on the right-hand side of the photo, holding the banner. :)

WIL-Wednesday 10_15_08 blur WIL-Wednesday 10_15_08_page2blur

WIL-Wednesday 10_15_08 blur

WIL-Wednesday 10_15_08_page2blur

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Life Happens. And I Want to Remember It.

I started a new “project” yesterday. For what it’s worth, this project wasn’t my idea. I first read about it on Ali Edward’s blog. She’s an amazing person (from what I gather) and an amazing scrapbooker (from what I’ve seen). A few week’s ago, she posted about a Week in the Life project, where you document a week in your life. No pressure of Project 365 where you’re committed for a year. No reason to try to be overly creative or impressive. Just recording what a week in your life is like. Take photos for a week, write a bit about them and be done. Seven short days to do it, but something you (and others) can look back on for the rest of your lives and smile, cry, reflect, etc.

So I decided yesterday to give it a whirl, and I have to say, I’m having a blast with it. I took photos yesterday and today and spent the majority of today deciding what I wanted my finished book to look like, what I wanted to do (and not do) with the whole thing, etc. I decided from the get go that this wasn’t going to be crazy ADHD about the photos (like I normally am). Sure, they’re an important part of the whole thing. But I wasn’t going to spend hours (like I usually do) touching up photos, trying to make them perfect, etc. For me, this is just about getting the details down. I’ve made myself shoot in Auto mode on my camera, just because I don’t want to get all “artistic” with these photos. I’m adjusting exposure, contrast, and white balance in the photos, but that’s where it ends. No fancy post-processing… no touch ups… no  cool effects… no mind-blowing conversions. Just the photos and the story behind them.

I think it will be so cool to look back later on and browse through the book I intend to get printed out. In fact, I’m loving it so much, that I think I’m going to do it once a month. One week out of each month, I’ll do this, so that at the end of a year, I’ll have 12 photo books with each one documenting one week during each month of the year. I just think it will be cool to read back through them later.

So I decided to make these fairly simple. No fancy scrapbook elements and drop-shadows, no spending hours making sure all of my colors match, etc. Just a basic template, my photos, and my thoughts.

Here’s what the first page will look like.

WIL- Inside Page 1 []

Obviously, there’s a second page with the remaining days of the week. I’m just pulling in 4 photos from each day, as a brief “summary” at the beginning of the book.

Then, I’ll have 2 pages for each day of the week. The left side will have one (or two) photos with half a page of journaling just talking about what we did that day, what happened, what kind of day it was, my thoughts, etc. The right side will concentrate on just the photos.

WIL-Monday 10_13_08 [] WIL-Monday 10_13_08_page2 []

WIL-Tuesday 10_14_08 []WIL-Tuesday 10_14_08_page2 []

Here are some close ups of the pages.

WIL-Monday 10_13_08 []

WIL-Monday 10_13_08_page2 []  WIL-Tuesday 10_14_08 []

WIL-Tuesday 10_14_08_page2 []

If you think this might be something you’d like to do, you can go to Ali’s blog and see a whole list of the posts relating to the project. There are so many approaches you can take with this. You can do it digitally like I am. Or you could just print out the photos, crop them, and handwrite the story behind them. In my opinion, the appearance of the end result isn’t nearly as important as the process and the idea behind the end result. I just think it’s a cool concept, and one that I think the kids (and Steve and I) will really enjoy as they get older and can look back on our lives.

So who’s joining me? Anyone? If you decide to give it whirl, drop me a line and let me see your project. I LOVE look at everyone else’s. :)

Saturday, October 11, 2008

And the hook brings you back…

The title has nothing what-so-ever to do with this post, but “Hook” by Blues Traveler happens to be streaming on my computer, so we’re rolling with it. See how creative I am? I deserve some sort of award or something. For real. If any of you have a creativity award out there to give me, I think I deserve it. I mean, seriously, when was the last time you saw such a creative blog post title? <--- Total sarcasm here people.

So what’s everyone up to? <--- This is another hint I don’t have much to talk about. When I start asking my readers “what’s up” as if they’re sitting in the same room as me, ready to answer, it means I’m just wasting time and filling up some space with meaningless words. Not that I don’t care what’s up in your lives. I just don’t think anyone will actually bother to comment here just to tell me what’s up.

I’m actually almost ready to fall asleep, surprisingly enough (12:12 AM is early for me in terms of a bedtime), so this won’t be long (or so I say now…).

Thanks to everyone who took my poll. I have to say, I’m a bit surprised by the results. I didn’t expect it to be so close, because frankly, I thought Obama would “win” here. What the hell are conservatives doing here reading this blog? I mean, I’m actually a registered Republican, was in the Young Republicans Club in college, was on Governor Ridge’s campaign committee and attended his inaugural ball, etc. But the truth is, that I’m always pretty much smack dab in the middle. There are certain issues where I lean to the right (I know… I know… shocking.), and certain issues where I lean to the left. I posted the poll because I, honest to god, have no clue who I’m voting for yet. I tend to sway back and forth, and will probably walk into the voting booth, close the curtain, and then decide who I’m voting for (just like the last 2 presidential elections). So the poll was partly because I can still be swayed either way, but mostly because I’m curious. I posted the same poll on some internet boards I post on, and honestly, on all of them, the results are pretty close between Obama and McCain. I’m not really sure why this surprises me. It just does.

But moving on…

I know I said it the other day, but I swear that this weekend, I’m going to post about all of the cool applications, Firefox extensions, etc. that I’ve installed that I’m pretty sure have me bordering being called a total computer geek. But they DO make my life on the computer easier and faster, so I guess I’ll wear my “Geek” badge with pride. :D

And with that, I’m out of here. I just wanted to swing by and say hello. I’ll post a few photos for you from last week’s pumpkin patch trips. You know… because I’m sure that’s why you came here, isn’t it? [rolling eyes]

Hannah and Grandma (my mom) Sharing a Funnel Cake (PLEASE tell me the rest of the country has funnel cakes. Because if you don’t, you have NO idea what you’re missing out on.)

Funnel Cake Sharing

Queens of the Mountain The girls on top of some hay bales at the pumpkin patch. (I am well aware this photo is WAY over-processed and over-worked, but I was bored and avoiding working, so deal with it.)… (And yes, their size difference still amazes and amuses me on a daily basis. They’re only 2 years apart (almost to the day), but you’d swear Grace was a good 3 or 4 years older. Totally cracks me up.)

Queens of the Hill Crop

 

Not-So-Scary Cheetah (Or leopard? How the hell DO you tell those two cats apart, anyway?) Grace with her face painted at the pumpkin patch.

Friendly Cheetah

“See” you tomorrow gang. I’m heading to bed. G’night!

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Please take this for me…

Thank you, my dear friends. :)

(For those of you that use a feed reader, there’s a poll embedded in this post I’d really appreciate y’all taking.)

Cookie Tray Template

For those of you that have been asking, I apologize for taking so long to put these together. But here they (finally) are. The templates (.psd and .tiff) for the cookie tray chart I made a few weeks ago. Enjoy! And if you create one yourself, I’d love to see them! :)

You can download the templates here.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Chelle made me do it…

1. Where is your cell phone? Charging
2. Your significant other? Steve
3. Your hair? straight
4. Your mother? saint
5. Your father? protective
6. Your favorite thing? kids
7. Your dream last night?
none
8. Your favorite drink? beer
9. Your dream/goal? wealthy
10. The room you’re in? living
11. Your fear? midgets
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? here
13. Where were you last night? soccer
14. What you’re not? disciplined
15. Muffins? chocolate
16. One of your wish list items? lens
17. Where you grew up? Pennsylvania
18. The last thing you did? smoked
19. What are you wearing? jeans
20. Your TV? Nickelodeon
21. Your pet? none
22. Your computer? Dell
24. Your mood? good
25. Missing someone? John
26. Your car? Accord
27. Something you’re not wearing? coat
28. Favorite Store? Aeropostale
29. Your summer? fast
30. Your favorite color?
blue
31. When is the last time you laughed? today
33. Who will/would re-post this? Geena
34. FOUR PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER: living room, basement, Girl Scouts, soccer games
35. Four Foods I Like: steak, chicken, cheese, pasta
36. FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW: Home (for good tonight), couch, Florida, restaurant

It’s that time of year…

That time of year when the kids are in 8 billion extra-curricular activities and we have someplace to be or somewhere to go every night of the week AND on weekends. And then there’s the usual family fall stuff, like pumpkin patches, preparing for Halloween, etc. As much as I love this time of year, it also completely exhausts me. LOL!

That being said, it was a really busy weekend for us. Grace had a 3-hour Brownie hike on Saturday, so my mom and I took Hannah to a local pumpkin patch. The “problem” was that the next day, Grace wanted to go to the pumpkin patch too, so we took both girls on Sunday. We were there for hours both days, and to say that I’ve had my fill of pumpkin patch activities for the year 2008 would be an understatement of huge proportions. LOL!

But at least I got some great photos, right? I didn’t upload the pictures from our day there on Sunday when Grace was along, but I have some from the day just Hannah was there with us.

IMG_5520Final []

IMG_5526Final []

IMG_5535Final_1 []

IMG_5556 []

I’ll post the ones of Grace later. Wait until you see her face painting from that day. LOL! ;)

And yet, in the middle of our craziness this weekend, I managed to get some more layouts done, which is cool.

Grace_Closeup_Fun Day

Sister_Flowers

Hannahs_Boots

Hannah the Explorer

So I guess that’s it for now. Later tonight, we’ll discuss how I’ve become a TOTAL computer geek in terms of Firefox add-ons. Seriously. It’s become a sickness. Good times, I tell ya…

Later gang!