Saturday, May 27, 2006

New Hair


For the first time I had professional hair color! My hairdresser was so excited when I went in for a trim and told her I was thinking I wanted hilights. She finagled her schedule a bit so that she could fit me in. At first I wasn't super thrilled with the cut, but after she added the color (I had to go back a bit later in the day for that) I was really liking it.
I know it's not the best picture in the world, but self-portraits are tough. I asked Chris to take a try, and his don't really show the color off very well. This is slightly blurry, but it's the best I could do. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get a better picture in natural light.

Friday, May 26, 2006

The new chair

So here's a picture of the chair. It was much more visible in the photo of Chris and I before I started cropping out the extraneous stuff in the background, centering us better, etc. It's the Ektorp chair and it's got a beige courdoroy cover. It's interesting. You buy the chair and then you buy a slipcover. A plain white slip cover is about $30 or 40, and all of the others are $140-160. Nice if you just want something simple and cheap, but not so nice when you stop and think that the fabric quality is no different than some of the other choices.

And I am becoming further addicted to Ikea. :) I had managed to stay away for a while. I'm sure I'll be back though for many other things once we get into the new apartment. I think we may need to get a wardrobe since there really is no coat closet, and of course I'll need to buy curtains and things like that. Chris told me that this weekend they are having a summer sale, so who knows, maybe I'll end up stopping by to check it out.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

3 Years and going...

One of my projects that I'm working on is an anniversary album. It's an 8x8 with a 2 page spread per year- one side photo, the other journaling about the past year. So I wanted to get a picture for that album. And Chris got me Joy. I had seen it in Crate and Barrell months ago and commented that I wanted Joy. Love it/ It's pink. Now it just needs some flowers, but maybe I'll wait until we're all moved in before I get to that.

Oh, and the photo- we're sitting on a new chair. We went to a local furniture store's clearance event this past weekend looking for a chair. Nothing that we liked that would match our couch, so instead we went next door to Ikea and got this chair. We had been going to get it in December/January, but they were sold out of it at the time. I think my pants match the chair too much though. And it was hard to get a good angle without capturing pictures on the wall, tables, the couch, etc. I think next time I'll try to center us on the chair a bit better.

Happy Third Anniversary!


So some of you may not know, but Mel and I share the same anniversary date. We met on a website called The Knot that was for wedding planning. So, since we had the same date, we clicked. But the similarities don't end their. We chose the same color for our attendants, I tried on her wedding dress, we both like lilacs and I think each had some at our weddings, even though we registered for different dishes, they received one that was our pattern... Mel, any more that you can think of?

And you'll get this card eventually. I made it on NSD and meant to mail it earlier this week, but I completely spaced and remembered yesterday that I hadn't sent it. So, it went in the mail today.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

CKC Projects

Both of our classes were two hours long. This was great. 1 hour classes tend to feel very rushed!

This first one was called “Memories Displayed” Oversized Accordion Mantle Book and was sponsored by Junkitz. This is the one that we finished up in class. In fact, we had about 20-30 minutes left at the end. It's designed to hold either 4x6 or 5x7 photos.




This second set of photos is from A Year in the Life sponsored by Rusty Pickle.
Here's the front cover.
And now the back.

Here are some inside shots.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

CKC Report

Really nice projects this year! One finished in class, the other I finished when I got home. I'll post pictures later. And Mel, I now need new Bazzill storage. Between what I bought today and some I got at ACM on Monday, I no longer fit in the paper taker. Do I forsee vertical storage in the new place?

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Why do I do it?

I should know better than to try to accessorize. Whenever I wear a bracelet to work it drives me crazy. Especially my Tiffany's Heart Tag bracelet. All day long it's dragging on the desk being very noisy or else the links of it dig into the underside of my wrist as I try to use my mouse. So then I end up taking it off. Why do I bother? Chris complains that I don't wear it enough, but this is why. I know there are many people who have this bracelet and wear it all the time, but I just don't know how they can do it! So how about you? Have any jewelry that you like, but you just can't wear?

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I'm a working girl again

Well, I survived day one of my new job, and I’m on to day two. It’s always overwhelming when you start at someplace new. There are so many new names and faces, trying to figure out how to get where you need to go, and of course, every company does things differently. So although you should know how to do something simple, it suddenly becomes a very difficult task.

Yesterday I wanted to get going on some work, but first I needed to figure out where the printer was, get access to my boss’s calendar, etc. I’m trying to be more conscientious about making a list of what needs to be done, not putting things off etc, but at this point there isn’t a ton for me to do. In some ways this is good (gives me a chance to get settled) but in others I would rather just dive right in and feel busy and like I’m getting a lot accomplished. To make life even more interesting, my boss was in yesterday, but then she’ll be traveling the rest of the week. She’s emailed me a couple of things to do, so that’s good, but it’s still pretty slow for me at the moment.

I must say, I was slightly disappointed yesterday. No one offered to have lunch with me. You would think that someone would make a point of reaching out to me on my first day. Oh well. I guess it’s not a very social bunch of people. Not that I’m exactly a social butterfly, but being the new person is so awkward.

I must say though, I love the last few sentences of this introductory email sent out to the company.
“We also have a new team member in Marketing, Chris Breecher. Chris joins Unica as my executive assistant. Chris will be responsible for assisting me across a number of areas, including candidate interview support and scheduling. Chris joins us from Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research and Polaris Venture Partners. In addition to being highly organized and efficient, Chris has a strong creative streak. She has worked as a costume designer and has invented successful products for scrapbookers.”

Friday, May 12, 2006

Productive couple of days!

Wow- I feel like I've gotten a lot done in the past couple of days! 6 cards and 3 layouts. Now if only tomorrow continues to be productive. Only 16-18 (still deciding) layouts left for 2005. Ugh, will I ever finish? But I did do my cover page for 2006 and this makes me very happy! So glad to get that done early in the year. Before I've even done anything else for that album. So here's a look at some of the fruits of my labour.





Sunday, May 07, 2006

NSD- Playing with new Quickutz Dies

Got to use two of the swirls from my new Accent Die Set and my new Flower. Using new goodies is a lot of fun! I meant to get this card done last week as the recipients birthday is Monday, but getting a belated birthday card is just as nice, right? The beginning of May crept up on me rather quickly.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

I feel like it needs something...


Second recipe for the swap. I figured that since next month I'll be busy packing/ moving/ unpacking and may not have an operational scrap room, it would probably be wise to get a jump on my June page. Or maybe things won't be so bad and then you'll get an extra page from me. Who knows.
Anyway, I put this together tonight. I feel like it still needs something, but I have no idea what that would be. Any thoughts? (Oh, and punching out 10 titles is going to take me forever. Great TV project!)

A Preview


So this was just the prototype. I made a few changes, all relatively minor. Just haven't scanned the new version. I'll get them out to you in the mail today or Monday.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Felicitaciones al cinco de Mayo!

Ok, so I think I got my Spanish right there. Today was an absolutely gorgeous. According to my Weatherbug, it got up to 79 degrees here. Personally I think it was a bit warmer. Or at least it felt that way as I was driving around doing some errands.

Got my first bunch of recipe cards done. Great sense of accomplishment to get them done. Christy, do you want me to send you all 10 or keep one for myself and send you 9? And if you're curious, I can post it here.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

6x6 is so small!

Started working on a page for the recipe swap this evening. Not the one I had originally been planning on doing (will do that one later maybe, or hold on to this one for later) and realizing that 6x6 is tiny! It's a nice size because you can get 4 pages from one piece of paper, but so much info to put on the page and very little room for anything else. Glad I didn't have any pictures I wanted to put on this one- just a cute title accent. (Get to use my QK Bunny!) Can't wait to see what everyone else is coming up with for pages.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Job hunting sucks!

Here I was thinking things were going great. I had two companies that loved me. They both gave me offers. And yesterday I also got a voicemail from the people I would be working for at that company telling me how they loved me, I was their number one choice, and they would be getting an offer out to me, etc. So anyway, this morning I called the agency I’m working with and accepted the offer. I then found out that it was pending reference checks. (Why make an offer before doing all your checks?!) So ok, whatever. I figured my references were good. And then at 5:30 I get a call back from the agency saying that the company was rescinding its offer. WTF! The woman that I spoke with from the agency had no idea why they did this. I have no idea why they did this. What made them change their minds? Yes I’ve had some work problems in the past, but I am determined to make an effort to change. I have a guess of who they might have talked to who would make them change their minds, but I’m not so sure. Good thing I still have that second offer, right? Let’s hope I don’t encounter any further problems. And with the second offer, the base salary is slightly more than first offer, but the benefits aren’t nearly as good. Job might actually be slightly better, but I’m not 100% thrilled by the work environment. Oh well. Guess I’ll learn to like it, right?