Saturday, January 31, 2009

project 365 - day 35

This photo is from the first real baseball practice of the season. Only my son is still wearing his soccer uniform, because he'd had a game earlier in the day. Oh well. He's doing well with baseball so far, we'll see how it goes when they get to the regular season and start having games!

Friday, January 30, 2009

project 365 - day 34

My littlest angel, at breakfast. Being silly, but at least allowing a photo to be taken. She's getting better about that since I started doing the 365!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

project 365 - day 33

At work, the managers each chose one person from their group to be recognized with an award, and I was the one chosen from my team. This isn't a great picture of it, but frankly I felt a little bit odd taking pictures at my desk, so this is the best I could do. lol.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

project 365 - day 32

Because we are slackers, we often forget about having the kids do their homework in the evenings. What can I say - we are busy people! So this is a photo of a little homework help this morning before school.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

project 365 - day 31

This is a giveaway basket that I put together for a silent auction being held by Tampa Prep School. Janel with Gold Canyon told me about it so I got in touch with the organizer and decided to participate by donating some Once Upon a Family items. I love fundraiser events, because they are such a great way to get a little exposure, while helping out the organization.
In other news, it's been a whole month now with this project 365, and other than falling a bit behind at times I think I'm doing okay.

Monday, January 26, 2009

project 365 - day 30

This is a photo I snapped while on the way to work, because I thought the fog over the pond looked pretty. I am sure it must have struck the other drivers as odd, but so be it.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

project 365 - day 29

This was during a trip to my mom's to go hook up the Wii that we picked up for her. Dig that, my momma has a Wii. I would say stranger things have happened, but I am not sure that's true. In any case, I know grammy will NOT like this picture of her, and I would guess that if she had any idea whatsoever how to comment on this blog and tell me that, she would. But given that her technology skills are a tad limited, I think I'm pretty safe. ;) Hi mom!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

project 365 - day 28

It's hard to see, but that's my little girlie girl out there hustling with the soccer ball. She scored four goals that game, which made me very proud!! And a little amazed, because this is her first season and she's taken to it so well. I didn't think she had it in her!

Friday, January 23, 2009

project 365 - day 27

Rico was doing something so cute, right up until the time that I got over there with my camera. Then naturally he perked right up. He's fascinated by the camera. The little noises, the flash...he loves it. Sometimes that makes for good pictures, other times not. It's so blasted hard to get a sleeping picture of him, which bums me out, because he's a very cute sleeper. Usually if he's sleeping in his cage, which he often chooses to do, he'll be flipped halfway upside down with his feet up on the bars on one side. One of these days I might just have to drug him so I can get him in that pose for the camera.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

project 365 - day 26

Never have I met a boy who is so ready, anytime, anywhere, to have his picture taken. This shot looks like he has no eyes, which is rare for him, because he actually has big beautiful brown eyes and the most amazing eyelashes that people literally comment on to me constantly.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

project 365 - day 25

Jasper, JJ, Jazzy-Fur, sometimes Old Dog. Formerly Big Dog, though that was when the competition for the title was just Calvin (mid-sized at best) and Spike (downright little, though he didn't know it). Now with Rico, Jasper has somehow become little dog. He's a good ole boy.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

project 365 - day 24

Since little miss was so cute yesterday, I snapped little mister tonight! Not quite as quiet, as he was actually snoring. But he looked pretty cute with his Build a Bear monkey!

Heart Link meeting tomorrow night and still much to do so that's all from me tonight.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

My first blog award!!

So I got a comment from a fellow blogger, Teresa over at A Single Mom and A Teenaged Girl, that she had something for me and to stop by her blog. Imagine my surprise when I went over there and saw that she'd nominated me for the Lemonade Award:

Lemonade Award

Totally sweet of her to think of me, and now I need to pass it on. So here are the rules for receiving the Lemonade award:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
3. Link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

And so without further ado (who needs all the ado anyway?) here are my nominees, all of which entertain me greatly with their words, in one way or another, though they might not all know that:

Thanks for the award, Teresa. And I hope you all will take a moment and stop by some of these other fab blogs. =)

project 365 - day 22

Unbelievable as it may seem, for the second time in three weeks, my photo is of a litter box. That's right, the litter box saga is not over. Today I returned the $150 litter box and upgraded to a $200 litter box. Perhaps this one will be the answer to my prayers. If nothing else it glows a really freaky cool alien blue when the room is dark. And who wouldn't want that? I'm sure if this one doesn't cut it I can find someone to sell me a $250 one to try out.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

project 365 - day 21

Finally, a pic of the kids together. This was taken over at my mom's house. They were wrestling around and being crazy. But in a good way, which is a nice change.

Friday, January 16, 2009

project 365 - day twenty

I meant to to do this one a couple days ago when I first put it up but I forgot. These are rub on wall words that I hung over my scrapbooking desk. I got them from Holly over at Stampin Up and they are super cute. I have a second one that I ordered from her, and I thought I knew where I wanted to put it, but now I can't decide, so it'll have to wait. Maybe that will be a pic for another day!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Free Suze Orman book

courtesy of Oprah. Today is the last day to download, however. Go here if you're interested.

project 365 - day nineteen

Today's photo was a no-brainer - my son's soccer practice. I snapped this shot right after the coach stopped play to point out to the other kids what a great play MY son had made and why what he did was correct. That's right, my kid rocks.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

project 365 - day eighteen

This picture made me laugh, because I've seen this same look on every animal in the house. It's the "she's hugging me" look. My daughter is extremely enthusiastic about the animals. She loves them. Which is awesome. But the ways in which she shows her affection, quite frankly, sometimes scare the crap out of the poor animals. She tends to pounce. To grab. To hug in a manner that makes those of us watching both smile and cringe at the same time. And then she will always say, after letting go "he likes that". This is usually said right when the newly freed animals is high-tailing it outta there. The fact that she's so sincere about it is what makes it so incredibly cute. The particular victim animal in this picture, btw, is Jasper.

LOST is back...almost

I truly do not watch that much TV anymore. Not really. But LOST is about the one show on TV that I cannot live without. I obsess over it. I read the blogs and message boards about it. I analyze it to death along with hundreds of other people every Thursday after the new episodes. And now it's coming back. Tonight they are re-running the season finale from last season, in preparation for season five premier next Wednesday night. And like they always do when they re-run episodes, they are doing it pop-up video style, where they give you answers about stuff you've been wondering about and analyzing. Too freakin phenomenal for words. Of course I was NOT thinking when I scheduled my January Heart Link Meeting for next Wednesday. OMG, I seriously suck. Thank GOD for TiVo so I can stay up and watch it when my meeting is over!!

free Suave - 1/14 only!!

Suave is running a fun freebie today - go to http://www.suavenomics.com/ and get a completely free bottle. Today only!!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

A-Z of me

this was posted on a yahoo group I'm on and I love it. Figured I'd share. :)

A - Age: 34
B – Birthday: December 9
C - Chore you hate: folding laundry
D – Drink of the Day: Diet Coke
E - Essential start your day item: Shower
F - Favorite actor(s): Hmmm...I have a thing for Mark Harmon. And George Clooney
G - Gold or Silver: BOTH
H – Homebody or party girl: Mostly a homebody
I - Instruments you play(ed): none
J – Jewelry you are wearing: silver necklace with a big chunky stone, two diamond rings, a watch, dangly hoops, and five bangle silver bracelets. I love my bling.
K – Kids / grandkids: one son, one daughter
L - Living arrangements: with dh, dd, ds, 2 doggies, 3 kitties, 2 turtles, 2 water frogs & a bunch of fish
M – Movie Faves: Hmmm....another hard one. LOVE Stealing Home, Less Than Zero, Titanic, Dirty Dancing...
N - Nicknames: Mommy
O – Own how many camera’s: Two
P – Part of the country you live in: Tampa, FL
Q - Quote you like: If you can't say something nice, try shutting up
R - Right or left handed: right
S - Siblings: none
T - Time you woke up today: 5:25 a.m.
V - Vegetable you hate: peppers of any type
W – Why are you doing Project 365? branch out in my scrapbooking...take pics of something other than my kids
X – Xtra Curricular Activities: scrapbooking, decorating
Y - Yummy food you make: delish shrimp and scallop pastry appetisers!
Z – Zodiac Sign: Sag

project 365 - day seventeen

Another shot of my sweet son. Not for any reason in particular, just cause he's so damn cute and I didn't know what I was going to take a picture of today. Unlike Nicole, this boy LOVES having his picture taken. He'll stop whatever he is doing, even playing video games, if mom wants to take a shot. Ask him to do it with one of the animals and he's even more enthusiastic. Doesn't stop him from the cheesy fake grin that drives me crazy, though.

Monday, January 12, 2009

project 365 - day sixteen

I finally got her! Sixteen days in to the album and my darling daughter finally makes an appearance. It's not a fab picture, but I shot about five and this one was the best. She tends to hide from the camera, or at least make faces at it. Not sure what's up with that. I am fairly certain that at that age, I was a complete photo hog. Anyone and everyone would have been welcome to take my pic. Not my little girl. She has to make it difficult for me. I did a cute scrapbook page not too long ago of a bunch of photos of her ducking from the camera. It's surprising, actually, given what a little diva she is.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

project 365 - day fifteen

Wow, two weeks down on the Project 365 thing. Woo. Today is the "after" photo of Owen's room. I didn't do a "before" pic for him. I think doing his room was overall maybe a little bit easier than Nicole's. He had less that I had to get rid of, and I didn't have as much furniture moving to do. But I think he has more stuff. Or at least more categories of stuff. It wasn't quite as easy to classify his things into the different bins. And I think in some ways that his room was more frustrating, because I have spent hours in the past, organizing him and giving him a system, and he continually blows it off (well, Nicole does too) and I have to start all over. Maybe this time will stick. I've told them both they have to pick up their rooms nightly and whatever is left out is trash. Not sure if that'll be enough motivation for them to do it or not, as they seem to both think that if something goes away, they can just get it again. If only life were that simple.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

project 365 - day fourteen

My daughter's room - finished. Woohoo! I think that was more work than my scrapbook room. Or maybe it just seemed like it because I worked on it for more hours at a time. Between last night and today, I think it was about 11 hours. Insane. I got rid of several bags of trash, rearranged furniture, and organized all the toys. I'm going to try not to completely lose my mind in a week when it's a complete disaster again.

featured

I completely forgot to post a link to this the other day. I've been featured on another site as a rep of Once Upon a Family. Check it out here: Network Marketing in Review.

Friday, January 9, 2009

project 365 - day thirteen

This disaster is my daughter's room. I don't know if it is because I redid my scrapbook room and it looks so awesome, but I've been a freak for the re-do the past few days. Organizing, cleaning, throwing away...I just can't stop!! It's possible that I've met my match with dd's room, though. Man, this child of mine is a packrat like none I've ever seen. Old stuff, broken stuff, empty stuff...she can't part with any of it. Luckily I have banned her from her room while I work on it, so plenty is finding it's way into the trash. This photo shows only an itty corner of the room, but unfortunately pretty much the rest of the room is just as bad. God help me. And here's how crazy I am - I'm doing my son's room once dd's is done. Fun weekend for me, right?

Thursday, January 8, 2009

project 365 - day twelve - everybody get out

This beautiful place in today's shot is the office building where I work, taken from outside in the parking lot of the next building over where we were evacuated to. For the THIRD day this week. The first couple days it happened was because the fire alarm went off, the fire truck came, went through the building, found nothing, and cleared us to go back in within like 15 minutes. Today, however, the fire alarm didn't go off, but our area of the building upstairs started filling up with a smoky haze, so we got out of there and someone called the fire department. They showed up with three fire trucks, and an ambulance and we waited outside for over two hours before we were let back in the building.

Apparently oil leaked from one of the air compressors onto a pipe and started smoking. So when we were finally let back in we were told that they couldn't turn the air on until they got this fixed. ETA: don't know. Sweet. In the meantime, we've got portable units running that are approximately as loud as a jet engine. Mind you, this building is already ripped up downstairs because the bathrooms broke before the holidays and caused some type of sewage leak, forcing them to replace carpeting, drywall, and God knows what else down there. And the air thing isn't really new, the AC goes out at least once a week. Though when it's working it's anywhere from literally 52 degrees in there to about 68, so maybe we're better off with it busted. Most of us think they should probably just go ahead and condemn the place and be done with it.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

project 365 - day eleven

Tonight I did something that I've not done before - went to Dinner Done to create meals! For those not familiar with these types of services, it's basically a giant kitchen, where you choose entrees to create from a list of about 20 choices, and they have everything you need to make the meal at little workstations that you rotate around to for each of your meals. All the boring prep work is done for you, such as onions chopped, meat seperated into portions, etc. and you just follow along on the posted ingredients and directions list to assemble a meal, that you then take home and freeze for whenever. They provide you with throw away aluminum pans to freeze it in, and thawing/cooking instructions on a label that you throw on there after you've assembled the meal. Could NOT be more easy, and fun! I am super excited to try out the meals I created (twelve different entrees). We've been in a huge dinner rut, and more often than not have ended up eating out instead of cooking, which is pricey when you do it practically every night. So I am hoping this will end up saving us some money. =) The photo is a shot of the meals in the cooler that I packed them in to bring them home.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

adorable animal video

This is just too cute - check out best friends Bella the dog and Tarra the elephant. Thanks to Sally for sending this to me!

project 365 - day ten

This is one of my favorite spots in the house. It's the mantle above the fireplace, and I love it because it so well represents our lives. There are two of my wedding pictures, and then pictures of each of the kids as babies and as they look now. Above it all is our Family Tree poster, and in the center, our Keys of Happiness. I wouldn't say my life is very tranquil by any means, but this spot is a place of tranquility to me.

Monday, January 5, 2009

some scrapbook pages

Because one of my goals this year is to get better about working on my scrapbooks, I figured I'd post a few of the pages that I've gotten done since the calendar flipped from '08 to '09. Now, you scrappers out there don't need to tell me that these aren't exactly award winning layouts - I'm aware. I think that right now I'm so behind that I'm focusing more on quantity than quality. Maybe once I get a bit more caught up I can get back to spending more time on a single page and making it something to be proud of. For now, I'm proud of the fact that 5 days into the year I've gotten 7 pages done. Go me. And at the moment I'm too lazy to crop these, so you're getting some background behind the pages. Oh, how I wish I had a 12x12 scanner!!

project 365 - day nine

Today's photo is quite simple - my blog. Blogging has become a pretty integral part of my life over the past several months. And now with doing project 365, I'm doing it at least once a day, if not more. It's kind of fun sharing things with the world (or the little corner of it that reads my blog) so hopefully this is something that will continue.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

project 365 - day eight

What you're looking at here is one of those overpriced automatic cleaning litter boxes for cats. I bought one today. I know, it astounds me, too. I swore I'd never be one of "those" people, who buys every single gadget out there for their pets. But lo and behold, the kitties now have a $250 climbing tree play thing, their own constant flow water fountain, and now a $150 litter box. Get me, I'm the crazy cat lady. Though in all actuality, this is purely a selfish act on my part, because this latest purchase is an attempt to get Jefferson (fluffy butt on the red pillow from yesterday's post) to actually USE the litter box. Currently he prefers the bathroom floor in front of the litter box. It was suggested to me that perhaps he won't use a not fresh box. And since Sherbert (orange and white cutie in yesterday's post) finds it necessary to "christen" the box immediately upon my cleaning it, Jeff doesn't ever get the joy of clean litter. Assuming that's a joy. I guess I wouldn't know. In any case, we're going to test drive this thing and see how it goes. Keep your fingers crossed for me that my days of scrubbing cat poop off the tile every day are over.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

project 365 - day seven

Wow, at this a whole week now? Amazing. I would think this would be the type of thing that I would give up on fairly easily. I guess I'm making progress. Go me. I just can't wait to get my kit so I can start on the physical, hold-in-your-hand piece of the project.
Those little darlings above are two of my kitties, Jefferson & Sherbert. They just looked so cute I had to snap them together. I had just come in from finishing up the removal of Christmas (taking down all decorations, putting them up in the attic, etc.) and was completely hot & sweaty and quite frankly wiped. And there they were. Not a care in the world. Typical cats.
Incidently, here's a random factoid about my kitties. Of the three (the other being Lily), not ONE of them was named by us. They all still have the names that they came with when we adopted them from their various rescue organizations. And they all used to be strays. Go figure.

Focus on Family in 2009

I would be remiss in not sharing that Once Upon a Family has a couple great specials going this month for those that are interested in focusing more on their families in 2009. =)
If you have young children, Lessons for Little Ones is an awesome product that gives you 12 months of fun activities for your child, all having to do with whatever holiday is that month. You get great tradition ideas (the Magic Easter Cake is especially fun!!) that you can do year after year. With monthly themes like Honesty, Gratitude, Respect, and nine more, these important values are woven in with fun activities that your children will love to do. This set comes with all 12 months of activity packets, along with a decorative storage box to keep the packets in, all for just $49 in January. Set is valued at $153, for a total savings of over $100. Visit my website at http://www.createyourtraditions/ to read more.
Our other HUGE special this month is on our Live Laugh Love Club, which I call the girl’s night out club. This is a club like no other, where you get together with your girlfriends each month to learn new ways to connect with your family, get a take home tradition to start with your family, and get a featured keepsake idea each month. Valued at $169, you get all 12 months of packets and a keepsake traditions binder for only $49 during the month of January only. Visit my special LLL Club website at http://www.livelaughlovetampa.com/ to learn more and see the different themes of the month.
Additionally, January is double hostess rewards month, so if you are interested in purchasing several sets of the above, or other products, let me know and I can hook you up with some great free product.

Friday, January 2, 2009

project 365 - day six

This is Owen, trying his hand at some scrapbooking. I was hoping to get Nicole to let me take her picture, because taking Owen I get mom guilt for having now featured him twice in project 365, and her not at all. But she was mad at me because I told her she couldn't use the marker she wanted to use (why is it they always want to use the pricey scrapbook supplies rather than the cheaper kid version? lol). Both kids were making little masterpieces with paper punches and glue. This is another side benefit of having my scrap room clean - I can FIND my scrap paper, my punches, etc. and let them play with them. The first thing each of them made they brought to me and said "I made this for you, mommy". I am very blessed, indeed.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

project 365 - day five/my scrap room is DONE


The overhaul on my scrapbook room is complete. Wow, was that a LOT of work but I think pretty worth it. I ended up cleaning out the closet, as well, and a misc. crafting cabinet. All in all I'm getting rid of three stacking drawer organizers (a 3 foot tall one and two 5 foot tall ones), a 4 foot long table, and EIGHT bags of trash. Wow. There is SO much more room in here now. Loving it. Now I just have to scrap. lol.