Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Happy lamps & book covers

Greetings from the land of Barnes and Noble! Tonight is my "night out" so I'm here soaking up a bit of time in the cafe while perusing various art and project books. I just have to share a project from one of the books I'm reading:

How to make a book cover
1. Measure the length and height of the book when fully open, then cut a sheet of kraft paper 3" larger than the length and height of the book.

2. Fold down top and bottom edges until the height equals the height of the book.

3. Fold ends around book and turn left and right flaps into the inside of the front and back covers. Finish with a binder clip.

Now, I don't condone plagiarism. If I thought this was an original idea, I would never have given you the instructions like this. But HELLO??? Covering books like brown paper? I did that 25 years ago in junior high school! Only we were cheap and we used paper grocery bags...you know, the ones they used to give you before they decided they were killing too many trees? This just cracks me up, that this project is in a book published by a very popular scrapbooking company. But I will say...thanks for the inspiration. I plan to go home and cover a few books later, just for fun. The best part of having book covers in school was being able to draw all over them, and writing funny notes to friends. My best buddy Mel still has most of those book covers with all of our crazy rantings on them. WTG Moosie!

In other news, I bought myself a happy lamp today. Yes, they really do exist. My "special friend" (aka counselor) mentioned a store that sells them here in town, and right after my appt. this am I darted over to pick one up. The jury is still out on whether the thing actually works, since I've only used it for one day. I will say that I found it to be extremely bright and on a gloomy day I imagine it's quite useful. Today wasn't a good test day for it because it was actually SUNNY here ALL DAY!! LOL

I got to visit my friend Heather again tonight. She will have a c-section on Friday to deliver her little girl, who will be 34 weeks along at that point. I pray that both she and the baby, who will be very small, will fare well. If you are the praying type, please say a little prayer for Heather and baby. :-)

I want to congratulate my friend Melinda on being a Prima Hybrid Flower Girl (aka creative team member). She is so talented making altered projects and totally deserves this honor. If you haven't checked out Prima's new site, do so...they have some wonderful inspiration there, and a group of very talented designers.

(Hey, maybe they should make book covers....)

Okay, better sign off before I say something stupid. Nite nite!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Reslient

I finally made my layout representing my one word for 2008:


Didn't do a whole lot today. Rob made us breakfast, and then he had to work most of the day. The girls played outside since it was sunny and we took a walk around the block. After lunch we watched Ratatouille - very cute show.

Tonight I have been trying to organize my scrapping supplies on my HD and delete some things. I have a strange thing going on in my HD right now. I have a 142MB HD, and I can only account for 66MB of stuff on there! I downloaded one of those freeware programs that show you the sizes of all of your files, and that is what it's telling me. It's odd. I wouldn't care, but I am running out of space.

That's all for now...trying to get to bed a tad earlier these days.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Bucks blew it again

Anyone who knows me IRL knows that I am NOT a fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes. I am a fan of the University of Michigan, and in these parts you CANNOT be a fan of both places. The rivalry between the two schools is arguably the best in all of college sports. Due to our position almost halfway in between the two schools, the hype before the game where they play each other every year is insane. They even have a store called the Buckeye & Wolverine shop, there they sell only OSU or Michigan stuff, and it's organized so that each team's colors are on separate sides of the store, with a line down the middle.

But last night it was the Buckeyes' time to shine. I donned an Ohio State t-shirt, belonging to Rob, showing my support of our home state's team. I may not be an OSU fan, but I'm still a Big 10 fan. We were supposed to have a "party" here but as it turns out, only my brother and sister-in-law showed up. Nice. That's okay, I enjoyed the food Rob made and was able to relax and watch the game.

Ohio State just couldn't pull it out. I was disappointed for them. But here's what I don't get: OSU fans are SO obnoxious all year long....we're number one...yada yada yada. Then they get to the big game and blow it. It's the second time they've done this in recent years...last time they lost to Florida. Um hello? Can't execute under pressure? Hmmmm.

You didn't know I was such a football expert, did you? LOL

Speaking of football, did you see the JERK who did a front sommersault into the endzone last weekend? Uncalled for!! That coach should have BENCHED HIS REAR END!! It gets really old seeing such unsportman-like conduct on the field.

Okay. Off my soapbox now.

::Cleaning Spree::
It doesn't happen often, but when you are having people over there is a great motivation to clean! Here's what I've done in the past two days:

  • Vacuumed main floor
  • Mopped kitchen and dining room
  • Cleared off counters
  • Cleaned both bathrooms
  • Put away toys
  • Decluttered my bedroom dresser top
  • Cleaned master bedroom blinds (man, were they dirty!)
  • Laundry
  • Decluttered girls' dresser top
  • Cleaned out underneath girls' beds
  • Made appointment at foot doctor
  • Made appointment at OB/GYN
Yay! I hope this streak continues. :-)

Tonight is my night out, so I'm getting my haircut and my go to the hospital to visit my friend Heather and also my Dad. He had to go back in yesterday to have extra blood/fluid removed from around his heart. :-( He got through it fine but it has me worried that this is going to be an ongoing problem for him. I wish he could just get back to his old self.

Until tomorrow...

Monday, January 07, 2008

Manic Monday

Yup, this qualifies as manic. My plans for today have changed about 12 times already, and the day is only half over. So let's see...

Mom was supposed to pick up the girls from school and keep them for the afternoon. I had a whole list of stuff I wanted to get done. Great! Mom calls at 8:45am saying she and Dad are headed into the cardiologist...Dad is still having symptoms of irregular heartbeat and shortness of breath. Turns out he still has fluid around his heart and they decide to admit him to the hospital for some procedure where they remove the fluid. Yikes! Okay, plan B, no problem.

Kids come home, we have lunch, color, read stories, etc. Rob has the afternoon off so he can help get ready for our little college football championship party tonight. Great! Then my MIL calls at 1:30pm, saying they have some friends coming to visit at 2:00 and they'd like to see the girls. Now this is where I get cranky. I'm supposed to drop what I'm doing and just go over there, so she can parade them around like little dolls to show off to her friends? Hmmmm, don't think so. She's supposed to call when it's time to go over, but guess what? ROB will be taking them. It's his mom, right?

I know I sound really snotty about this, but there is a long history of spontaneous, lack-of-planning kind of stuff and right after the holidays I just want a break from all of it.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

New Layout

Credits: Be the Change, brand new from Traci Reed at Sweet Shoppe Designs as of today! Paper tear by Jen Caputo. Font is DJB JGeek.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Testing out a video

Since I'm such a fun mom, I let the girls do this today:


Quick Post

We finally got back to the routine today. The girls went to school, I had an appointment in the morning and had a chance to spend 20 minutes by myself at Panera before picking them up. It was wonderful!

This afternoon I had a chance to do a few chores, assisted by the girls, and catch up with two friends. One of them, Heather, is in the hospital on bedrest. She is 32 weeks pregnant and her water broke Wednesday. So far she has managed to keep from going into labor, thanks to anti-contraction drugs. I'm trying to figure out what I can do for her. She has to be bored out of her mind! And, she already has two kids. I sure hope she can hold out for a few more weeks so the baby can grow.

This weekend will be quiet. Rob has to work tomorrow, so it will be another long day. I hope to take the girls out to do something entertaining.

I've been taking my daily photos and have them set up in my Flickr. I'm not sure if I will do anything with these aside from posting them there, but I have them nonetheless.

I need to figure out what we are doing for dinner. Rob is playing video games downstairs and is apparently waiting for me to take the initiative!

Have a happy weekend!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Back into the routine

Finally...well, almost. Rob goes back to work today but the girls don't go back to school until Friday. I am soooooo ready for them to go back to school, and have our daily routine get back in synch. I'm sure I'm not alone! LOL

Tuesday we got a few things accomplished. I put away all of the Christmas decorations except for the tree, and we decluttered several bags and boxes of junk. Man, does that feel good. I can't wait to have the chance to fill up the back of the van and make a trip to Goodwill!

::Trip Layouts::
A few more finished pages...I have to bust a move to get these done if I want to use that free Shutterfly coupon I have.




I love that shot I got of Rob and the girls watching the other ship leave. If you look closely, you can see their reflections in the window. So cool!



So far this beer tasting page is one of my favorites. It came out just the way I wanted it to...quirky and "doodly". And yeah, Rob really did have to "chug" beer through a straw! LOL The guy who won was one the cruise playing the part of Jack Sparrow, meaning he had to dress up and walk around the ship and pose for photos with the kids. He was very convincing in costume. Rob didn't have a chance against him...he was all of 22 and in college. Please!

Today's agenda includes some more decluttering, cleaning the floors, laundry and hopefully a trip SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE, PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE! with the kids (oops, did I actually type that?).

Until tomorrow...

A fresh start

Happy New Year! It is officially Jan. 1, 2008 here in Ohio. We ended up spending a quiet night at home. Rob stayed here (after I not-so-subtly suggested he do so) and we played some online Hearts, watched football and drank some sparking wine at midnight.

So far today things are going okay. One thing I'm trying to do now in the new year is to get up at a reasonable hour. Most of the time it's really hard for me to get up if I don't have to, so today we were all up and going by 9am. I'm going to gradually make it earlier, so it won't be so shocking. Heidi is having some gastrointestinal issues...the poor thing can't catch a break. And Gretchen has a slight fever now so this means we've all caught the illness during Christmas break. Good thing we don't have to go anywhere today!

We enjoyed the Rose Parade this morning and will be watching football the rest of the day... as much as we can get away with, anyhow. LOL

I took my first photo for my 365 challenge, and will attempt to set up a Flikr thingie for my project.

Hope your New Year is going well so far!