Wrapping up the week!

Last Friday night instead of working on my album like I've been doing almost every week thus far - I spent the night at Of Wood and River's Farewell Concert. This was their last concert - hence the "farewell" name because two of the members of the band are moving to Oklahoma - my son being one of them.

Yes I am melancholy about this - excited for him to head out on an adventure of his own, nervous about all the bad stuff the world has to offer, confident that God has all of this under control! They leave this weekend!

The next morning I woke bright and early to take my GAP Girls along with the Friend's Club to volunteer for the Children's Hunger Fund. We worked for 3 hours, with a mini break of Gator Aid and snickers bars and a short movie in the middle.



Our group bagged spaghetti noodles - we had pasta busters, baggers, and tapers all lined up. This was one of the best volunteer opportunities we've ever done - they worked the girls and made it fun. They've been shipping boxes to Haiti and they also distribute boxes through the local church.



About once a month we head to Sam's Club to pick up food for our Youth Snack Shack - we discovered the best kept secret - Sam's has the BEST pretzels - they are under a buck and usually make them up fresh, dip them in butter and salt if you want and well - yep they are yummy! Here we are enjoying them!

This next picture has not been changed in anyway - when I say it's grey around here I MEAN IT - sometimes it looks like we live in a Black and White movie during the winter!!!

Another Texas sighting! Ever since I made these awesome Texas friends I have these random Texas sightings here in Indiana - for instance how about these Grapefruit? Why do they have to be called Texas? I may just have to do an entire blog on this - I'm wondering - do YOU have Indiana Corn? What about Indiana SOY BEANS? LOL

Okay, that's about all I've got for my Project Life post this week - hopefully by next week I'll have both weeks layouts done in my book and not be falling behind!

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The Beauty and The Geek Ball

Who ever came up with the Beauty and the Geek Ball was truly inspired! I love that name! This dance was sponsored by a local church. All the girls had their hair done for FREE at a really nice Salon and the boys presented the girls with carnations. They all looked beautiful! Even the boys were handsome - not Geeky!


I loved the antiques in this place and especially all the mirrors - Her hair turnout out fabulous!




These two have been friends since before they could tie shoes! They have made so many memories over the years and I have a feeling they'll be making memories for many more!




The photo shoot included tons of pictures and I must admit most of them turned out great, it's just well - she looks so grown-up and beautiful I can't bear to post them all!

Breathtaking!

David is going to be heading out on his Big Adventure and Stephanie is going to miss him very much. (we all will) Every picture I take seems more precious than the last one! Steph hasn't been to a dance without her brother - until this one!

Move over Taylor Swift!

While Stephanie was getting her hair done the owner of the shop handed her a package and she unwrapped it to find a beautiful rose - her Dad dropped it off for her on his way out of town. He couldn't be here to see her, but wanted her to know how special she truly is........


She asked me - "has Daddy always been like this, even when you were dating?" and I said......

YES - always.

Project Life Revisions!

As I was putting my pages together for the Project Life book last Saturday morning I realized I am going to have to speed up this process. January is usually my slowest month of the year and by looking ahead at Feb. and March I'm not going to have hours each week to devote to this. In order for me to keep this book up for a whole year I am going to have to spend less time fussing over the layouts, which is eating up quite a bit of time. I've been giving myself some leeway - I mean we just started! But now it's time to tweak this a bit. So I decided I needed to change a few things - first of all I separated the journaling cards and filler cards by color and rearranged the box like this - it's a tight fit right now, but as I work on it there will be more room. Now I don't have to go through those tiny boxes looking for what I want. I also decided to hand write everything - and to use the day stickers on the outside of the pages. I like the color ones best and will use the same color as the Month card at the top. I need to keep this simple or I just won't be able to keep it us. Am I a fan of my handwriting? NO

I love it when I see something that has been written by people that have passed away that are dear to me, so I believe my family will one day feel the same. Hopefully they'll all be able to read cursive.....a skill I am realizing is quickly fading from our texting generation!

I also learned something about myself - I'm not so random! LOL So I decided to do my next layouts using the matching colors. I also went ahead and put the journaling cards I anticipate using in the book and worked on making them flow a bit better. I know that I can change them up if I want to, but now I feel like I have a framework from which to build.



Maybe some of you are thinking DUH - but possibly some of you might be struggling with how is this really going to work for me all year - so I thought I'd just share my simple idea. Time will tell if it is going to work! Here's my latest week - I am proud to say I am up to date and surely hoping with this system it's more of a "slide in, journal and go experience" than an "oh my now I have to be creative experience" which I love but don't always have the time for!
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Mysterious Lady Bug

So, I live in Northwest Indiana - right now it's 19 degrees outside maybe less and certainly less if you factor in the windchill or feels like temps. Basically it's COLD.


Last week it was 46 degrees for like a minute.


THEN here comes the Lady Bug. We have this mysterious thing about our house. We always seem to have a lady bug around. I have no idea why. In Autumn it's like they move in.


I never kill a Lady Bug. I kinda like them. Suppose they know that? HA


Normally I find them dead in the window - sad, but true. So I haven't seen one until this week - I want to ask her - what happened? Did you get messed up because it warmed up? Surely you haven't been flying around the house since Autumn have you?


Any ideas out there????

Just the Highlights

This week for my Project Life post I thought I'd share with you a few highlights so far.

Saturday a friend came over and we scrapbooked together - My husband was right when he said the house would eventually get bigger! When my oldest son married he left a vacant room which I quickly claimed as my scrapbooking room - Alanna my niece has renamed it the ART room and I kinda like it!



Marilyn came over on Sunday and brought me this mug.


It says - When it comes to dieting, remember one simple rule..."if you can't lose it, decorate it." She has a matching mug at her house - NO we do not have hideous matching outfits........sorry if YOU do!

Monday's are hectic here - We head off to Biology class, during which I grocery shop, then I had a conference call to listen in on, lunch and so on. Well I noticed in the morning something had exploded on my night stand, and I cleaned it up before I left........ When I came home I found this............



At first I took a close up of if - but then I decided for my Project Life book it would be better to take a mini snapshot of what's next to my bed -

Most of it is ordinary stuff - the lamp nothing too special, lotion because every inch of me has been dry since I was born.....The TV controller, I gotta watch the weather.....my Bible and devotion book and the book light - I've never used it, I have the lamp....there's the basket with pens and hair ties and it usually has the can of mousse cream for my DRY and CRACKED heals (to much info for you? sorry!) WHICH is sitting on the MOOSE coaster my Mom sent me and then the mousse can which continued to explode during the day. I noticed after I took this pic that I didn't clean up all the mousse from the morning....

That about wraps up the highlights thus far - hope your Project Life Book is coming along! Check out how others are doing here.......

Project Life Arrives!

My Project Life Kit Finally arrived! I was pretty excited to get it but bothered because I couldn't drop everything and play with it. I finally got to play with it for real on Friday! I printed the first two weeks of photos and then I just stared at it.

I have never scrapbooked like this before EVER. I had all these coordinating pieces and no plan. I searched the box, through each piece and nope - not as much as a layout idea. Good thing I had peeked at some websites. I did a little "self-talking" - ok, just do the title page, nothing is permanent - you can change it later, and I began.


I didn't get the MEMO that the pictures needed to be horizontal until after I had taken a few days worth - apparently the majority of people take horizontal pics, I am not in the majority (once again) I tend to take verticals.......no idea why. So that proved to be a little bit of a layout nightmare - thankfully my Creative Memories software allows me to print different sizes easily and so I printed the pics so they would fit in the smaller pockets. I like the way it turned out so no more fussing, it leaves more room for journaling and you can slide in a few extra pics of events that way if you can't narrow it down to just ONE.

I am super duper excited and happy to have the first two weeks of January in and I made it simple it starts JANUARY 1, 2010. The book is much larger than I anticipated! I love the colors and how it looks!! I haven't journaled yet but here are the pictures! I'm looking forward to adding the journaling tonight - and then deciding just WHAT to do with the stickers and all that jazz........ the fun of it all!






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This stuff can tear you up!

I bought this really healthy good for you full of fiber and goodness cereal because well I'm trying! I paid like 4 bucks for this. Measured out 3/4 a cup and had a yummy healthy snack.

Something called Toasted Berry Crumble OUGHT to be bad for you - kinda like coffee cake goodness.

WELL it WAS GOOD

But It tore my insides up something awful..........

however the morning shines brightly ........

Good morning – I have 35 Flex Points to spend! I made it through my first week of Weight Watchers even though I thought the filling foods were going to KILL me. Especially that Kashi cereal ……….but I have Survived! (cue the music)

I did 14 meals or snacks that included filling foods this week. I journaled everything – and went back and did the points. It was UGLY – soo soo ugly. But explains why I have been gaining weight…….and to think I cut back last week on the junk food…….my precious junk food…….

I was full most of the time HOWEVER I was STILL wanting my junk food – that’s just WRONG don’t you think?

A mini recap

Fed Ex finally delivered Project Life and I am busy printing my photos - next post will be a pic of how it's going! YAHOO!!!!!!

I have also read 3 books this year already. If I stop now, I'll have beaten last years record - pitiful isn't it. I am not planning on stopping!

Today I am starving - the apple didn't replace the salty bag of baked snackies I am craving. I have shown REMARKABLE discipline though and have not stood at the pantry and shoved salty stuff in my mouth or finished off all the left over pizza in the box in the fridge........

dinner time please get here...........