The Royal Wedding

I've been obsessed with the Royals for sometime, so obviously I was super excited about the royal wedding. Our family went to the Lion and the Rose to watch the wedding festivities. They were having wedding coverage all day. The food is good and pretty authentic. We arrived complete with hats and were sitting right by a giant screen. Our timing however was a little off, because the Spurs were also playing and this was the game that determined their future, so half way through the wedding coverage we got cut off with the Spurs game. Spurs mania was rampt in the pub, so there was no chance that they were switching back to the wedding coverage. We finished up our dinner and decided to go home to watch the rest of the coverage on BBC America. I was a little sad that the wedding pub party was not exactly as advertised and I probably built it up in my head (where were the prizes?!) In the end though it was fun to hang out with the family.



The ladies with their hats (Mom's hat is the hat she wore to my wedding in Scotland)


This is a great picture of Dad. Love his hat!

My Day in Photos

SEE MORE DAYS HERE!

layout

I am taking two online classes at once. Which in retrospect was a little much for someone who has not taken many online classes before. Anyway, I am learning and being inspired lots, so it's a good thing. Below is one of the layouts I did for Kelly Purkey's Sketchbook 3 class.

Blog goals

So I am taking an online course called Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers:

http://www.shimelle.com/classes/1001/online-scrapbooking-class-beyond-blogging-for-scrapbookers/

One of their prompts was to write goals for your blog. Here are mine:
Get connected to crafty folks
Get my name out there
Work on my header
Create my own blog designs vs. using other's designs.
Create sidebars/corners of stuff in neat little boxes
Better ways to archive
More concentrated journaling with themes.
...Basically, kick my blog up a notch!

Shimelle (our instructor) suggested these:
Do you want to blog more often?
Write posts that feel more special or important?
Increase the number of readers?
Have more conversation in the comment section?
Get your family to read and interact via your blog?
Start to make money with your blog?
Use your blog to help get on a design team or other scrapbooky thing?
Use your blog to help organise the stories you want to scrapbook?

I think those are awesome, too.

Scrap Poll

Good morning all!

In reference to the organizing scrapbook supplies on my part, I wanted to do a survey specfically about organizing paper. (Yes my favorite thing ever is pretty papers and I have a lot) Anyway, I want to see what my readers thoughts were on paper organization. Please take the time to fill out the poll below:

Ideas

Hello Readers!

So as you have seen in the previous post I am in the process of clearing out my scrapbook room in favor of the nursery (getting ready for the home study). I still really want a scrap space of my own, but I am struggling on what that new place will be and what it would look like. I want a space that can be organized and tucked away, especially since there will be a kid in our future. I am toying with the idea of having supplies in more than one room, but I don't want things in every nook and cranny of the house. I am looking for ideas, so I turn to you dear readers. I am wondering what your creative spaces look like? Is there a defining piece that brought your nook together? Where do you scrap/create in your house? Where do you store your stuff? Please leave any ideas in the comments section of this post. Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers!

changes

So I am currently clearing out my scrap room to make it into a nursery. I am a hoarder of things, so at times it is overwhelming. I am also not known for organizing. I really just don't have the knack. I always exist in a form of messy chaos that makes sense to me and no one else. I can find things, but others would be confused at my labeling system, since there is no logic to it.

Anyway, I started putting things in baskets, but I kinda have a lot and no scrap room, so I may have to let go of some things. Tear! Things that I am not ready to let go of I have been putting in big bins and shoving into the garage, until I can figure out what to do with it. I may be able to find other spots in my house for things. I thought about my bedroom closet or the laundry room. Of course there is tons of junk in both places already. It really comes down to Sam and I have a ridiculous amount of stuff. We are both hoarders. I am also not a fast cleaner. I always find something that triggers a memory and then I sit and think about it and usually decide to save it in a random drawer I 'll forget about later. Yea, you can imagine packing and moving go awesomely with us.

All those organizing shows say you should set timers, so it does not feel overwhelming when doing the cleaning. They also say you should lay out different sections to categorize your stuff. On TV the sections usually are categories like: sell, giveaway, and keep. I may try some of these techniques and see how it goes.

What I decide to give away I am going to give to the YWCA. Mom said they are going to do a scrapbooking class with the teens. They did it once a while back and they loved it. Even guys came. So at least I know folks will appreciate my stuff.

Wish me luck!

Lutherans!

Ok, so we set up a meeting with the Lutherans and they look awesome! They answered all our questions and we met for about an hour. There were a few questions the gal we met with did not know,so she said she would get back to us on. She was getting ready to go into a meeting after us and some answers would be revealed there. One had something to do with cost. Ekkk. She said it was more about when to pay versus rising costs. They are quite a bit cheaper. The Methodisst were great,too. However, you can't argue with cheaper.

Thier next intake is in June/ July. They do them once a year unless there is a need to do more. They have a day long orientation session that explains all the processes in adoption and also general new parent stuff. The home study expeirence they do all in one super long day. The homestudy could be resolved in a month.

I could see us having a baby by the Fall. The reason I say this is we are more flexible on race and general issues than most. We are at least willing to weigh and look at most situttions, where others are not. They give us a profile of the birth family up front and then ask if we want to meet..that is part of the discuss part. The gal we met with said we can have plenty of time to do this. Even if a baby was born and there had to be a discussion we could still do it and the baby would just go into craddle care. Essentially a very temp. home/foster sitution. She said it is basically retired ladies rocking babies. Cute!

I am hopeful!