A Week In the Life: Thurs.

So as I move forward with Week in the Life, I notice that I do have fewer pictures and my daily sheets are not as detailed as the beginning of the week. Some things are repetitive, but i still think you can capture the same thing just with a different picture or another angle to keep it fresh. Some pictures I have of Thursday and they will go in my Week in the Life album, but not on the internet. Mostly because I  know they would not like their picture on the internet. So I am respecting that wish. (ie my grandma, the Oxbow board and students in our lobby.) My Thursday:

12PM: lunch was the terakayi bowl at the JPL. I just discovered this and it's so good. The woman at the counter that makes it is so full of joy and I enjoy seeing her and talking with her.

6:PM the Land's End catalog is here and they have dresses now! The black notebook is my tiny watercolor/art journal. This is my first foray into art journaling. I will show more pictures once I finish my first page.

This agenda will represent the neighborhood association meeting I went to. It is a voluntary neighborhood association. I am the VP and the webperson.You can kinda see what we talked about. I did it at an angle to hide our names and phone numbers.

These puzzles will represent my grandma. She is the type of woman who will not leave the house without hair done and makeup on. Knowing this she would probably does not want her picture on the internet. However, I do have one of her and me to put in the WITL album. I took it with my phone (:

After the meeting I came home finished reading my catalog, hung out with the dogs and then went to bed. I never ate the dinner Sam brought home for me because my stomach hurt all day. I just went to bed early.

A Week in the Life: Wed.

So Wed. I did not get as many pictures.... but still a good representation of the day. As time goes on I get more and more tried with freshmen registration and its hard to remember to get pictures when you have to see a room full of students. My Wed:

8:20AM So this week I had decided to bring coffee from home. However, every other week of my life I go to the campus Starbucks. Wed. I was running late and broke down and got Starbucks from campus.

12:00PM During lunch I went to a Lunch & Learn sponsored by Frost Bank on campus. It was packed! They even provided us with McAllister's for lunch. The Lunch & Learn was on Wills & Testaments. I had no idea it was such a hot topic.

 7:00PM was Book Club. We were discussing Whip Smart. Some we talk books and sometimes we just talk. Tonight it was a combo of both. We always bring foods and have a little dinner as we talk. I love this Book/Social Club. Great group of gals.

 9:30PM This is Kat's new dog Panda. Last time I saw him he was a tiny fluffy ball. He is big now! Kat is actually the dog whisper in disguise!

9:45 This is sweet Toby. Who is growing like a weed. This is the best picture I could get because he kept hiding from me. My future child will probably do the same thing, because you know I will be shutter happy!

A Week in the Life: My Tuesday

I am continuing with Ali's A Week in the Life today.

Some thoughts:

• My overheard moments and my favorite moments tend to be the same.
• I like noting the song/artist on the radio on my daily sheets. I have not gotten the morning song thus far, but mostly because I don't function well in the morning and some days I barely remember driving to work. Don't worry I live close to campus. I am not on any major highways or anything. I enjoy the night life, baby! (yes, I went there!) I have always been more of a night person.

My Tuesday:

Notice no morning pictures. Woke up late and barely got to work on time. Tear.

1:00PM lunch from Broadway Daily Bread. Yea, healthier than yesterday's Chick-Fil-A.

5:30 just got home and parked the car in the driveway. (This one's for you, Sara!)

5:30 started taking pictures of my house. My plants survived the drought from last summer pretty well. New paint on the outside. No longer pink.

5:45ish I bought this carrot cake cupcake with cream cheese frosting at the bakery when I picked up lunch. It called to me! MMMM.noommm.MMMM. Drool.

6:00ish: I love sweets, but somehow this cupcake was too much! Dare, I say such words! Not even the tall glass of milk could help me get through it. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach. Sam ate the last little bit for me. My stomach began to hurt soon after. ):

 6:15PM a rare photo of Wallace. My dogs hate the camera. The planets most have aligned to get this shot. FYI: I took about 20 shots before I got this one.

 6:30PM Sam practices the cello.

 6:35: I take a picture of my favorite lamp.

 6:45ish realized that the furry ones must have slept on the couch why we were at work because it was covered in fur. They are currently shedding their coats. Yea! I vacuumed the couch before I sat down. Notice fur on the brush. Eeeee.

7:00PM I just got the Draw Something app today. OMG! It's so fun. I love pictionary, so I should have known that this game would suck me in. I spent a full 45 mins. playing with Sam who was in the other room of the house (hilarious) and random strangers.

The rest of the evening was spend reading magazines that came in the mail that I never ordered and watching You Tube make up guru videos. Current fave is Make Up Mommy. The tips are cool, but I also just like to hear about her life and what is happening in it. Cutest little girls.


Until tomorrow....

Ali Edwards' A Week in the Life

I have been wanting to try Ali Edwards's A Week in the Life project for sometime now. This time I decided to give it a try. I found that the daily sheets were helpful for keeping track of things through out the day and noting things I may have missed. I decided to do this during freshman registration week at the university. This will be interesting to see if I can make it though the whole week. This is a very busy time for our office.The second daily sheet really helped to sum up your day and really focus and view your day at a higher/deeper level.

 Here is my Monday:

7:00AM this was my breakfast +coffee. Yes, my kitchen table and scrap table are one in the same.

8:00AM at work. The top picture is the view outside the front door of our office.  The second is the bulletin board behind my office chair.

12:30PM driving back from lunch. The top is the price of my gas. The bottom photo I made larger, so you could see these three guys helping this person push his large truck toward the gas pump. Guys out of nowhere dropped what they were doing to help this guy that had run out of gas. This was my favorite moment of the day and a reminder that kindness always matters.

5:30 fed the dogs. A rare picture of Jack looking directly at the camera. He is the one that is in the picture with my layout in an earlier post from last week.

6:00PM had a snack. Drank some of Sam 's freshly juiced orange juice he made last night.

7:00PM took a picture of my husband in his man cave at the computer. Muhha!

8:00PM settled into a movie called A Better Life. It was up for an Oscar, but I never got to see it. It was a good and touching movie.

Well until tomorrow....hope everyone's  projects are going well.

Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend part 13

Rockin' and Rollin' with Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend...

For challenge #13 we were to use the printables that Shimelle provided us for our layouts. The printables were done by Little Musings. Below is my layout. I went with an 8X8 this time:

First off, I actually journaled! Woah, woah! For this layout, I was trying to see if I could do a girlish layout about a boy. Answer: you can! It works great with Alex's rosy cheeks. (:

Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend part 10

Onward with Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend....
Challenge 10 was to scrap two photos on a bold background. I did three photos I had from Toby's birthday at the Kiddie Park. The background is a bunch of clowns. It's the Graphic 45 circus paper. I love Graphic 45 papers, but I never know exactly how to scrap with them. I mostly like to stare at them. Here is my  take on the challenge:

I am not sure if there are too many colors going on in this layout. I was trying to neutralize it a little with the goldish square paper, but then I found a lot of cool things to add. Anyway, I gave it a try!

Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend part 16

Continuing on with Shimelle's scrappy weekend...For the last challenge #16 we were to use our scraps to make a page. I just dove into my scrap suitcase and found tons of wonderful stuff. I really love how the page turned out. I think I will try scrap diving more often! See my page below:

Shavonne and I got this awesome fortune cookie and we had to take a picture. The fortune says, "Hugs are life's rainbows" Love it!

Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend part 9

Shimelle's scrappy weekend is almost at a close, but I am still rockin' the layouts.
Challenge 9 was to take a challenge that you missed the deadline on and re-open it for the weekend. I chose Shimelle's Starting points. The concept of starting points is to see just the beginning of a page and use it as inspiration to start your page. The next day Shimelle reveals the completed layout. I have been wanting to try it for sometime, so now I got the chance. They are super neat and really jump start your creative thinking. Below is the starting point I chose:



Below is my completed page using the starting point as inspiration:

I have been taking pictures of my layouts on my deck chair because light is perfect now and makes better photographs.
This is a picture of me and the sibs at this cool bar in Houston called The Anvil. It was a really fun evening of eating appetizers and trying the fun drink menu. It was new level of sibs as adults hanging out and well..drinking. The laughs, the wittiness and playing off each others comments was all still there. It was fun. I think this was New Year's Eve Day? Not sure of the year. Maybe 2010.

Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend, part 14

Shimelle's online Scrappy Weekend is coming to a close and today I am concentrating on finishing some of the challenges. I am proud that I have already done quite a few. Overall it was a lot of fun and the challenges helped me think in a different way and I got some great pages out of the process.
For Challenge 14, We were to divide our page into four distinct sections Jen has a video up on the page if you want to take a look. I thought about taking her class at Two Peas. The class combines scrapbooking and stamping. I would like to use my stamps more in my layouts.. Her class is one of the prizes, so I am going to wait and see if I win before signing up. I am really enjoying these internet classes that don't have an ending time. It works great for me.
Here is my scrap page:

I went with a variety of patterned papers. Just to see what would happen. It actually turned out nice. I think the colors orange and blue tied everything together. (:

Shimelle's Scrappy weekend part 8

So Shimelle's Scrappy weekend is coming to a close. So I am just doing what remaining challenges I can and picking them really based on when creativity strikes. I managed two get two layouts done this morning, so that is awesome. There are all sorts of fabulous prizes that go with the weekend. Those will be revealed after the weekend shuts down later today. The prizes will be drawn at random from the folks that posted scrappy links and commented on the various questions throughout the weekend. I am excited to see if I win any thing.
So for Challenge 8, we were to use a stamp on our page that we don't use as often. I chose one of my favorite sayings. I thought it was appropriate for this layout because VOICES was a volunteer club I belonged to in college. It was first being created when I began college. This picture is VOICES' very first executive board or officers as we called them back then. This group had a profound influence on my young life and directly led to the career field I am in today. In fact, after graduate school I got a job as their advisor and worked with VOICES for 7 years! It was pretty awesome to continue that cycle of change and influence over students lives. (: Here is my scrap page:

Shimelle's Scrappy Weekend part 6

ON with Shimelle's weekend challenges! For Challenge 6 we had to take a page that we liked and then make it are own. The change had to be bigger in nature. In the challenge example, Relly changed up a girly page and made it look boyish. I decided to follow that lead. Here is the page I worked from by Wilna:




Here is my boyish version:

I traded stars for hearts and I went with a single photo. I think in the upper right hand corner I will do some journaling, but I am not sure what I will write yet. I could just tuck in journaling underneath the transparency. Yea, I like that idea. We were roomates for five years, so there could be a lot to say once I get journaling. In fact he lived with my husband and I for a while after we were married. It was a regular Three's Company episode! Kidding.

Wait. Did I spell roomates wrong? Are their two Ms? Tear. No spell check stickers.

Shimelle's Scrappy weekend part 5

Last weekend Shimelle had a scrap weekend at her blog. She gave us until the end of this weekend to complete the challenges. I don't think I will finish them all by the deadline, but I will probably still try them out on my own time. I think I can get at least about half done. I am just excited to have scrapped, so much lately. For challenge 5,we are suppose to use the page below from Wilna as inspiration to create our own page. Shimelle talked about inspiration points here and how they help her when creating pages. I thought this was cool, since I had mentioned it in one of the previous posts that I liked the inspiration point idea and thought about using the concept to help with my pages. In fact, I was hoping Shimelle would elaborate a bit more on the idea and lo and behold here we are. Great minds think a like.



Below is the page I created below. I made it x-large so you can see the snow:

So this is more of me at Niagara Falls..in snow.. it does not snow in south Texas...well not like this. Needless to say, I was super excited about the snow when we went to visit. I actually kinda like that picture of me all bundled up. I love to play in snow, but am really glad I don't have to live in it. I get cold pretty fast. Ultimately, I am a sunshine kinda girl. Below are my inspiration points from Wilna's page.

Inspiration Points:

• the fact that its a snow layout using spring type embellishments
• The flow of the layout/butterflies
• butterflies
• clustered embellishments in left hand top corner
• two matching piece on the side of the layout
• washi tape
• snow photos

Shimelle's Scrappy Monday part 4

The weekend is over, but I am continuing to do Shimelle's challenges throughout this week. Here is Challenge number 4:

I like this extra large photo size, so I may just do that from now on. I wanted to make it bigger so ya'll can see the deer in the bottom picture. It looks fake, but it s real. There was a tame deer herd that would come eat out of your hand. This little guy got super up close to the entrance of the B&B. This place was full  of awesome art and sculpture. Our hostess made this bread roll thing in the morning that is one of the best things I have ever tasted. I am not lying. I dream about it. The place is called Little Goose Lake Haus in Canyon Lake, TX. It's awesome. Sam and I try to go some place on every anniversary. Our anniversary is in August. The trips have to be nearby, because I have to be around for freshmen orientation.

The challenge of this layout was to use grey and yellow and one other color. I decided to go for pink. Its simple,yet slightly layered. Of course the new fave of the doily is present along with washi tape!

Inspiration Points

•  color scheme (yellow,pink & gray)
• lace/doilies
• flowers
• washi tape
• butterflies

UPDATE: This is our 5th anniversary, not our 3rd! Hiliarious. It has now been changed. (:

Scrappy Sunday with Shimelle part 3

Over at Shimelle's blog they are having a fiesta of scrap challenges. I decided to follow them this weekend. Challenge 3 is to mix a style you have not tried before with your style. Here are my results:

So my layout is based on a style vs. a person. I have seen this kinda of style on a few blogs, but then when I went back to try and find the blogs I could not find a person with this style to show where I am coming from. Tear. Basically, the style is using smaller pictures with lots of layers kinda right on top of each other and then tons of white/negative space. Sometimes a few paint/mist droplets are thrown in as part of this style.
Generally, I have a fear of white space. It's just empty and out there staring at me. I tend to want to fill my pages up. My style I feel is more linear and simple. So I was trying to be full of free layers here. The paper is cream and there are light blue splatters on the page. (This may be hard to see from this post, so I made the picture bigger.) Usually, with smaller pictures like this I want to scrap on a 8X8 page or even a 6X6 in this case (fear of white space), so putting such a small picture on a 12X12 page was new for me. I enjoyed this challenge. It got me outside the box and in the end I kinda like this page.
The picture is me and my husband when we were first dating. Hey, that should be my journaling! For some reason my journaling comes to me a long time after my pages are done. I find this weird because I like to write. I often fill notebooks with my travels or life observations, so I am not sure why a scrapbook page suddenly intimidates me when it comes to journaling. (perhaps looking back at these notebooks would help)
I like the way Shimelle listed "inspiration points" in Challenge one I think I might start doing that with my pages.

Inspiration Points:

• small pictures
• layers
• paint droplets
• white/negative space
• 12X12 pages
• doilies

Scrappy Sunday with Shimelle part 2

This weekend I am following Shimelle's scrap challenges. Challenge Two consists of using 3 more collections on your page. So here is my take on the challenge with a listing of the collections. Some of this stuff is older, so I can't really link to those products. I will link to the newer stuff.

Again, I am thinking about the journaling and what story I want to tell with this picture. I think this was taken in Kat's apartment many year's ago. We may still have been in college?!

Collections
American Crafts: Thickers: Heart
Die Cuts with a View (DCWV): Taj Mahal Stack
My Mind's Eye: Miss Caroline: Howdy Doody
The washi tapes I got from Freckled Fawn
My Mind's Eye: Breeze "Everywhere" label stickers
Stampin' Up!: Designer Series Paper (DSP): Welcome Neighbor
American Crafts: Dear Lizzy: Frolic stickers

Scrappy Sunday with Shimelle: Part 1

So this weekend over at Shimelle's blog she was a bunch of scrapbooking challenges. I really wanted to do some this weekend. Lo and behold they inspired me and I became creative and super scrappy. This is good because for the past week I was in a creative rut. I would think about ideas in my head and then when I sat down to the kitchen table I could not seem to transfer it to paper. The challenges gave me a direction to go and some cool stuff came out of it. I am still working on them and probably will through out the coming week. I am just excited that I got my scrappyness back!
I am going to post the challenges separately so you can visit Shimelle's site and see how they all relate to her challenges.

For challenge one we were to scrap lift a page. Which basically means copy it, but make it your own. Below is the page from Jamie that we were using to scrap lift from.

Here is my scrap lift:

This picture was taken on my scrap table. (aka the kitchen table)

 Scrapping gone wrong! Kidding. I was trying to experiment on where to take the pictures of my creations I was wondering would the harsher kitchen light be better or the more subtle light over the kitchen table. I took these pictures Friday evening, so there was natural light coming in from the sliding glass door to the kitchen table. I took the picture above on the kitchen floor. As you can see, my blue heeler Jackson wanted to see what was going on. Actually, this is a pretty cool picture of him. Normally he runs in fear of the camera.

So here is the kitchen floor picture, minus my dog. I added  a little journaling spot, but the journaling might expand beyond that. I think I kept a journal during that trip or least wrote some observations down, so I want to take a look at those first. Below are the inspiration points that I took from the original layout:

Inspiration Points:

• general layout of page
• small picture
• washi tape
• 2 elements at the top & bottom
• scattered embellishments (mine turned out more clustered)

Scrap Events I am Thinking of Doing...

http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1434/online-scrapbooking-weekend-coming-soon/

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/shop/two-peas/127505-collect-create-workshop/

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/shop/two-peas/125203-the-hitchhikers-guide-to-scrapbooking-workshop/

http://aliedwards.com/2010/01/week-in-the-life.html

The real question is can I do these simultaneously and not go insane. Some classes are self-paced, so that could work. Some classes involve giveaways, so there is sort of a time limit. What I do know is I have a large stash of scrappy stuff that I need to use more regularly and these events might help with that. I tend to hoard and its out of control, really. I have ink in the printer again, so at least I can print pictures from home. Hmmmm.....