Whatcha readin'?

Last fall Andrew was doing some purging and offered up many of his books to his friends and family. He sent around a list of the titles he had available and I picked a few that were of interest. He also decided I could use some other books, many of which I added to my own purge pile and donated to the library.

Well one of the books I chose was The DaVinci Code. In December Chris decided to give it a read and he thoroughly enjoyed it. Now with the movie coming out soon he told me I better hurry up and read it so that we can go see the movie. So last night I started. And I didn’t want to stop. But I made myself close the book and go to bed. Now I’m eagerly awaiting my lunch break so that I can read some more.

I imagine I’ll be done with it relatively soon, so have any other book suggestions?

Tah Dah!

Why is it that when I plan out a layout it seems to take me hours to make it, yet when I don't plan I'm usually done within one hour? Should have cleaned the scanner off better before scanning in my pictures. Many of them have schmutz on them. Oh well.

15 Years of Hair

So when I was getting my haircut on Friday, I was talking with my stylist about some of the styles and colors I’ve had over the years. She requested that I bring pictures the next time I come in. This got my mind thinking that it would make a fun layout. So I started looking through my pictures trying to find good ones and figure out what to include. At first I thought I wanted to start with 1993. I have a picture taken about a week before I dyed my hair for the first time. (For quite some time that was the last picture of me with natural colored hair.) But then I was thinking that “13 Years of Hair” was a really random number. So now I think I’m going to do 15 years, starting with my perm in 8th grade. I was thinking I really wanted to focus on my recent hair (recent being since high school) but I think it will be fine.

Now I’ve got it all planned out. I know what pictures to use. I even sketched out my idea. For some reason lately I’ve been sketching layouts out ahead of time. Maybe it’s my way of working on scrapbooking stuff at work. Plan it all out so that I know what I’m doing when I get home. Now I just need to scan and resize pictures and get it all put together. Maybe I’ll be productive tonight and you’ll be able to see the fruits of my labour!

New Hair

So I had an appointment this morning for a haircut. I went there having no idea what I wanted to do with my hair, but knowing I needed to get it cut. So I left it completely up to my hairdresser as long as it wouldn't take any work. (I'm pretty much a wash and go kind of gal.) Here's what I got.

Recognize Anyone?

My tape on the famous Ali Edwards Christmas Card Layout. Sorry I had to crop out some of your family members. 1 3/8" is really small. And this was after I had scanned in and reduced the pics.

V-Day, Part Two

So Chris gets home from work and I'm just setting out his gift (MacGyver season one) and his card. He says, "Doh, I forgot to get you a card. I promise I'll get you one tomorrow." Nope, sorry. No deal. Go make me one. So I went up to my craft room and set out various valentines/love themed embellishments and even two brand new sheets of paper that I got with mel on Saturday. And this is what he came up with. I like it. And he cut the heart on his first try. I'm impressed with that!

Happy Valentine's Day

I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day. One year I wnet to London with Andrew and we were gone over V-day. It hadn't even occurred to me until I told chris the dates that I would be gone and he was upset. Oh well.

Anyway, like I said, not a huge fan of Valentine's Day. However, I do love the Old Navy holiday tees for only $5! I'm hoping to go tomorrow to see if I can score any other colors on sale.

Music Tag

So I saw this on Tracy's blog and thought it was a fun quiz. Hey Christy, what's she think of people she doesn't know checking out her blog?

Open iTunes/iPod or Windows Media Player to answer the following questions about your music collection.

How many songs? 3323 (8.4 days, 11.21 GB). It's got all of Chris' music but probably only about a third of my CDs. My brother had to buy himself a second hard drive because he has so much music!

Sort by song title:
First Song: 'Cause I Like it That Way- SHe DAISY
Last Song: Zor and Zam- The Monkees

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: Apparently there is a 1 second blank track by the Dixie Chicks, but since I don't think that one really counts, 4 seconds, Low Clouds (2) by James
Longest Song: 18 minutes, 36 seconds- Alice's Restaurant Massacree- Arlo Guthrie

Sort by album:
First Album: 10 Things I hate About You Soundtrack (Love this!!!)
Last Album: Zoot Suit Riot- Cherry Poppin' Daddies

Top Five Most Played Songs: This is only because we had to wipe the computer clean not too long ago, not necessarily because these were really the most played...
The Lucky One- Alison Krauss (4 plays)
I'll Be That Girl- Barenaked Ladies (3 plays)
Way Over Yonder In the Minor Key- Billy Bragg and Wilco (3 plays)
Hold on to Me- John Michael Montgomery (3 plays)
End Credits- Braveheart Soundtrack (3 plays)
The Alison Krauss and the Billy Bragg have multiple plays because Chris was testing them when reloading the music. But like I said earlier, the music is only recently back on the computer so these numbers aren't accurate.


First song that comes up on Shuffle: Galileo by Simmons Sirens- a cappella group

How many songs come up when you search for "sex"?: 1- She Thinks my Tractor's Sexy- Kenny Chesney :)

How many songs come up when you search for "death"?: 1- The Death Of St. Jimmy- Green Day

How many songs come up when you search for "love"?: 196

How many songs come up when you search for "you"?: 436

I refuse to tag anyone, but if you're up for it, play along!

Time to cast your vote

Which one do you like better to go on my scrap shelves?

Branas or
Bastant
They are essentially the same size and they are the same price. Currently I have dark shelves, but I think in the future I want to go with lighter shelves.

Hey

Just wanted to say that yes, I am alive. I know how annoying it is to check other people's blogs hoping that they've updated so that I can read something new and then to be met by the same page you've seen for a week. However, there really is nothing to report. Over the past two weekends I've been to two birthday parties and had a scrapping date with Mel. Other than that, nothing new going on. This is why I at first resisted starting a blog. The feeling of needing to update it, yet nothing to report.
I suppose I could report about my continued addiction in Ikea. We went back there on Saturday. Got an end table and basket for the living room (almost no more room for furniture) but the basket was needed to store the attachments for the new Dyson, which is also in the living room as there is no other place to put it. The old vacuum is still in the closet because I don't want to just throw it away as it is still an ok vacuum. I'm thinking I'll give it to our church rummage sale, but they usually don't start collecting stuff until after Easter. Aaaagh, no storage!
Anyway, I digressed. I also got myself a new bookcase at Ikea for my scraproom. This has then had me thinking about my whole scrapbook storage and now I want three more bookcases with doors. Since I'm lacking the hundreds of dollars this would take, I'll just stick with what I've got for a while. I also need better lighting so I've been poring over the Ikea catalog and online and I think I know what I want to get. Also must get boxes or baskets or something for some organization on the shelves. Perhaps once I actually get the room all tidied and stuff put away, I'll take pictures. However, since moving in I have yet to think that my room is "done". Way too much crap with no place to put it! I suppose more purging is necessary, but that's so much easier said than done.
Anyway, enough rambling for tonight. Hope I've entertained you all sufficiently.

You Know You Are Living In 2006 when...

Liz sent this to me and I thought I would share.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2006 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.
8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20
or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.
11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )
12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

AND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

A stroll down memory lane

So Karen Burniston’s blog has inspired me to share with you a Psycho Kirstin story. When I previously lived in Waltham, Linda and I shared an apartment with a girl name Kirstin. Kirstin was a very strange girl. She had many bizarre quirks. She was normal enough when you first met her (except for lacking a few social graces, but nothing too obvious in a brief encounter). Linda’s and my parents didn’t understand why we didn’t really like her, but they didn’t have to encounter daily floaties, messes in the kitchen, unlocked doors, and all of her other habits.

Anyway, we had a large closet at the end of our hallway. It held coats, cleaning supplies, hardware items, and miscellaneous boxes. One day Linda and I decided to tackle the boxes. As was the case at Karen’s house, none of the boxes had been broken down. Hence the need to clean the closet. So Linda and I set to work breaking down the boxes. We really weren’t discarding any, just making it so that one could actually get to other items in the closet. Kirstin then came home and saw what we were up to. She insisted that we leave her large Dell computer box intact. We weren’t allowed to break it down and save the packing materials. Nope. Had to stay exactly as it was. Why, you ask? Well, she was going to need it for when she moved. (I think this cleaning incident happened after about a year of living together, so she still had two more years to go.) And couldn’t she just tape the box back up again? Apparently not. So we suffered with this huge box taking up half the closet for many more years.

Ok, so Karen tells stories much better than I do, but seeing her boxes reminded me of the Kirstin story. Just be glad I didn’t tell the tale of “Please don’t leave the kids unattended in the pool”.

Shopping Alert

For those of you interested in purchasing Lisa's Favorite Albums from QVC (it's the TSV on the 18th) they are now available online using item number F-00519. I really don't get the whole get the TSV price before the actual day, but who am I to complain. I was able to get it ordered now and then I don't need to stay up until midnight to order.

And another...

I was just reading the comments on my Tag post, and saw that Christy asked about me having lived in England. So, here goes.

When I was in fourth grade (ok, I was technically in third when the process started) my dad decided that he wanted the opportunity to work in another country. So, he applied for a number of positions in various countries. I remember that in the end it came down to England or Singapore. Anyway, he went on sabatical from his job in MA and took a position teaching at the University of Bradford. We all moved over to England for a year, rented a house, went to British schools, and traveled around England a ton!

Unfortunately, since I was only nine at the time, I don't really remember a lot of it. However, ever since then I have loved England. In college I spent Spring semester of my Junior year in England. I spent my weekends re-visiting places as well as checking out some new spots. Then in 2002 I spent a week in London with my brother, and in 2003 Chris and I honeymooned in London and Cornwall. And now I'm itching to go back again.

Most of the pictures from our year there were taken on slide film. Last year I took the slides and scanned them all in. It was great being able to see some of these places again. Some of them were labeled, others I sent to the family in the hopes that they could identify them. In my copious amounts of my spare time (yeah right!) I hope to start doing some layouts about my time there. I really didn't enjoy my childhood, but I loved my year in England.

Year in Review

So this was my layout for the second week of Donna's class. This layout took much much longer than I would have expected, especially since it was already designed for me. I was kind of wishing I had more space to write things on my tags, especially since not all of these pictures will have corresponding layouts in this album. Oh well. I'm pleased with it. And I scrapped, which is always a good thing.

Tag

Mel tagged me, so here it is.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
- Fast Food employee at Wendy's. Even got to dress up as Wendy a couple of times!
- Wal*Mart associate. Lasted only a couple of weeks until a better opportunity came up.
- Costume shop technician. One of my favorite jobs. Great people to work with. Got to sew some fabulous costumes. Learned a ton.
- Executive Assistant. Not the most exciting, but it pays the bills.

Four movies you would watch over and over:
- The Princess Bride
- Clueless
- Labyrinth
- Heavenly Creatures

Four places you have lived:
- Talladega, Alabama
- Grafton, Massachusetts
- Bingley, W. Yorshire, England
- Waltham, Massachusetts

Four TV shows you love to watch:
- Buffy
- CSI
- Lost
- Gilmore Girls

Four places you have been on vacation:
- England
- Spain
- Maine
- Rome

Four websites you visit daily:
- Hotmail
- 2 Peas
- Boston.com
- various blogs

Four of your favorite foods:
- chocolate
- soup on a cold day
- Pizza
- Chicken pad thai

Four places you would rather be right now:
- At home in bed
- At home scrapping
- Doing whatever is on my "to do" list
- Anywhere with friends

Four bloggers you are tagging:
Sorry. Just not going to happen. Besides, I think Mel may have gotten then only other people who read my blog.

More registrations.

Registration for the CK Convention in Manchester opens 1:00 pm EST on Feb 8th. I don't remember registering so early for that one in the past.

PSA of the Day

You may already know this, but I just found out so I thought I would share. Registration for CKU-Boston is May 31st. That's about 20 weeks away. Now I just need to start saving $20 a week so that I can afford registration. I'll also need to save up for an anniversary gift for Chris as that is six days before registration. Chris and I were kidding about chipping in to buy a Dyson vacuum as an anniversary gift. I wonder if he would actually agree to that? Otherwise I don't think I'll ever be getting one.

Scrapping Goals for 2006

I entered these into my planner/notebook that I altered for Donna's class. I also added the question, "By writing these down, do I actually have to commit?"

- Finish 2005 layouts by mid 2006.
- Finish Pre-Wedding 2-up album.
- Finish CKU-MN album before CKU-Boston.
- Sell at least 25 Toolbelts.
- Be no more than 2 months behind on 2006 album.
- Make progress on childhood/Book of Me layouts.
- Better organize supplies.

So I wrote these down last night and looking at them now I'm wondering if perhaps I was being a bit too ambitious. Mel, I may need you to keep me on track with some of these things. I thought about adding a goal of using up lots of my current stash before buying new, but I knew there was no way that I was going to be able to have the self restraint to keep that goal.

Have no fear...

Have no fear, I'm still here. Just seemingly busy? Got back from Georgia very late on Tuesday night. Then Wednesday had a dentist appointment and ran errands with Chris. (And bought two more trees- 7.5' green and 6' pink.) Then Thursday was scrapping with Mel and came home to find out that the computer was on the fritz again. So, no computer at home. I feel lost without it. Back to work today and trying to get back into the swing of things.