confessions of a somewhat domestic, dramatic diva

stunts and ceiling fans

2012-02-09T17:23:00.001-06:00

I have a daredevil on my hands. A crazy, very determined, little man.

Need proof? While I wrote that first line, he climbed the baker's rack and tried to pull the microwave down on his head. Not even kidding.

Every time I turn around, he is climbing something else.

Or playing with something that is definitely not a toy (and how he managed to find it is always beyond me)!

And for some reason, he just can't understand why Daddy and I won't let him pull the ceiling fans down. That would be the most fun thing ever, right? Obviously.

His obsession with ceiling fans is pretty funny. We walk into a room and the first thing he does is point at the lights. Or, if you ask him "Where's the light?" he will immediately point and try to climb up your arms to reach it. Daddy laughed about this when I pointed out the phenomenon. He insists that it's just the asking of a question which prompts the reaction. He demonstrated his point by saying "Lincoln! Where's the beef?!" And that child pointed at the fan, just the same. Whatever. I hold to my belief that he's a genius baby.

But, regardless of all the craziness and no matter how exhausted I am at the end of each day's near-death experiences, it's worth it. I am blessed to be spending my time with this precious child. And I know that someday, I will long for the days when the ceiling fan was the most awesome thing imaginable.

5 days until 4mo. Today.

2011-06-14T19:17:00.000-05:00

Wow. It's been awhile.

I'll post again soon with more updates from the last few months. But for now, I want to share about today.

Lincoln, today...

*you think your Exersaucer is fabulous. You're talking to it, beating on the little rolling wheel, and attacking the sunshiney toy like the world is coming to an end.

*you slept 8 1/2 hours in your crib last night - and you put yourself to sleep. I set you in your crib wide-awake at 10:20pm, thinking I would have to stay up with you for several more hours. But you just rolled right over to your tummy, made some little noises, and went right to sleep. I couldn't believe it. Still can't.

*you're starting to stick your little legs under you and try to shove off the ground when you're on your tummy. I'm not ready for you to crawl yet, kiddo. Not ready at all.

*you have decided that rolling is awesome. Back to front, front to back, round and round. As much as you can, you are rolling. You're trying to roll off my lap and off the changing table, which is a whole different story.

*your bedroom is a mess because I'm in the middle of putting away your 0-3 month clothes and getting out the 3-6 month stuff. How are you so big? I cried a couple nights ago when your Daddy took your 0-3 month jammies out of your drawer.

*you love your binky, but in the past couple of days you have truly discovered your thumb. I think it's rivaling binky for your love.

*you are loving books! We read a couple of stories every night before bed (at the very least) and you chatter at the pictures. Unless you're super hungry.

*you sometimes can't decide if you're laughing or crying. Which means I have no idea, either.

*you love the puppy dog toy that hangs on your carseat. You've started reaching out to grab it.

*you frequently have a moment during your naps where you just SCREAM at the top of your lungs. You're still asleep. But it scares me to death every time.

*you love to go outside. But you sneeze every time we head out into the sunshine. Allergic to the sun? I think your Daddy is, so maybe. :)

*you have a lot of very light hair on the top of your head. If it's brushed sideways you can see it, but otherwise people think you have no hair.

*you love to talk. Loudly. Especially when Mommy and Daddy are trying to watch TV.

*you have a monkey on your bum. And I think it's the cutest thing ever.

I love you, sweet baby!

27 weeks, 5 days.

2010-12-06T18:42:00.002-06:00

I don't blog much anymore. In case you haven't noticed.

I also don't sleep much. Even though I need more sleep.

I also don't craft much. And that makes me sad. :(

But I am done with fall drama classes. I am about half done with Christmas shopping. And I have a relatively free schedule from now until baby...and then three months of maternity leave. So I am hopeful. Someday....someday I will be caught up.

Sad to report that I don't think 2010's 20 batches of cookies resolution is going to happen. I have the recipe for Batch #6 sitting on my kitchen counter. It's been there for weeks. I'm always out of one ingredient or another. Right now it's eggs. Oh well.

McKinley Top 10 Moments of 2010

2010-11-18T00:36:00.000-06:00

Top Ten Moments Christmas Card

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View the entire collection of cards.

19 weeks, 5 days.

2010-10-11T09:23:00.004-05:00

Whoa. The time is flying.

I'm super tired. all the time. There is no apparent end to exhaustion. I'm also sad to report that I'm not one of those women who feels beautiful and "glows" while pregnant. I wish that were the case.

Just under 4 days to our 20-week ultrasound, when we hopefully get to find out if the little person is a prince or a princess. I'm so excited I can't stand it.

Had a massive organizing spree on my house this weekend. Maybe this is a good sign that a part of the real me is still hiding in here somewhere??? It's kind of hard to find her these days. :)

Happy Autumn!

a little something awesome.

2010-09-02T14:14:00.003-05:00

I guess it's good I don't have many faithful blog followers...as I'm not very faithful about updating.

This time, I swear I really do have a good excuse. It's a very small something (right now). It's currently about the size of a lemon. And I don't know much about it - but it has affected my whole life...quite a lot.

Yep. There's a little person in the works. Currently, he/she is eating up about 115% of my energy, causing daily almost-constant nausea (9 weeks of this and going strong), and consuming just about all of my thoughts.

So you might understand why I've been slacking in other areas, like blogging.

The photos are from our ultrasound a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty sure the little tiny kicking feet are the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life. So excited to meet this little person. Expected arrival - late February/early March 2011. Only a few months to go!

yay!

two.

2010-08-03T09:21:00.004-05:00

Busy day yesterday...never quite got to the blog post.

Busy few weeks, actually. Sorry for the lack of communication.

Anyway - my awesome hubby and I celebrated two years of wedded bliss yesterday. I wanted to post some photos of the two of us but have discovered that apparently I never got those shots uploaded and I don't have access to them at the moment. New project!

Thinking about the wedding scrapbook. Thinking. Not actually doing anything. But at least it's in my consciousness...

If I remember, I'll post some pics from our mini-vacation this weekend. Lovely time spent at a quaint little B&B in Parkville, MO.

♥ to Andrew. Happy Anniversary!!

new york city...part 4 (finally)

2010-06-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

Last day of adventure in the city! We started out bright and (somewhat) early on Monday morning.

Edison Hotel Lobby.

We traveled south on the subway to take a peek at the Flatiron Building.

It was neat! Wish it were open for tours or something.

Look what they have in the city - Home Depot! Craziness.

The Arch in Washington Square Park.

Loving all the architecture we saw!

Jefferson Market Branch of the NY Public Library. The building used to be a courthouse in the late 1800's/early 1900's. It was really neat.

But it's still just a normal library, with self-service holds pickup and even an upside-down S on their sign. :)

I love vacation. There's time to smell the flowers. :)

Riding the Miss Liberty ferry to visit the Statue of Liberty!

Lower Manhattan skyline.

Loving every minute!

Lady Liberty. I took about 60 photos of her...giving you just one.

After an arduous climb, we reached the top of the crown! It was a neat experience.

The view looking down the inside of the statue, from the crown.

We walked around the pedestal. It was really windy.

Souvenir coin! I love collecting pressed coins.

Eating hot dogs on the ferry ride back.

Scary storm that attacked us on the way back!

Classic plane ride home photo...after a stressful time of getting back to the hotel (had to run through Times Square), catching our shuttle, and waiting for several hours at the airport.

Goodbye, pretty city. I'm sure we'll meet again someday.

And this, friends, is why I fly Midwest Airlines. Chocolate chip cookies...baked in-flight. Excellent.

Whew. That's it! It was a fantastic trip. After looking at all these photos again, I'm wishing I had time to make this scrapbook! I'm afraid it may be awhile before that happens, though...

Thanks for traveling along with me! New adventures are hopefully coming soon. :)

Books and Movies and.... Tigers? Oh my.

2010-06-09T15:49:00.003-05:00

The library is the place to be during the Summer Reading Program every year. For real. I mean, in addition to getting free books just for reading (which hopefully kids are doing anyway), we have all these awesome programs that enable kids to do things and witness sights that they might not have a chance to do or see often.

Today's example? The Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge paid a visit to us at CR. They brought two tigers - Mack and BB King. They're 2 years old and about 7 feet tall when standing on their back legs).

We had over 300 people in the library today, for the express purpose of visiting the "Big Cats."

Crazy.

fun weekend.

2010-06-01T09:30:00.005-05:00

I love holiday weekends. Really.

We actually worked on Saturday, so it was a split weekend. Having Friday off was super nice, though. Andrew took me to the Plaza for a sweet little date. The rest of the weekend was spent doing projects at home. I crossed about eight things off my to-do list. Excellent.

I'm taking a photography class, so while we were out on the town, I was taking some photos shot entirely in Manual, for this week's assignment. They aren't perfect, but I'm pretty proud of them anyway. :)

This is "our" fountain. On our very first date, we took a photo here. :)

If only every day could be a weekend day....

new york city...part 3

2010-05-30T14:19:00.000-05:00

The morning dawned bright and happy. Times Square had returned to normal. We headed off for our adventures on our third day in the city.

Part of 6th Avenue (maybe all of it?) was closed down for some sort of biking event.

Standing in front of American Girl Place, one of my favorite stores on earth. We had to take this photo 12 times because I couldn't figure out what settings to use to have my face be lit!!

How cute is it to shop in a place like this?

Me with my namesake display. Yes, obviously she is named after me.

And while this one may not be my namesake...she's kind of my trademark. I'm really afraid Molly is going to be retired at the end of this year, so I wanted a pic with her whole display before it's too late. :\

Andrew even let me purchase a couple of outfits that I didn't gain during my childhood, so that my Molly collection can be complete! YAY!

The bakery at AG Place sells "sets" of snacks - one for girl and one for doll. DELIGHTFUL.

This is the Doll Hair Salon. AG Place is coming to Kansas City in the fall - I'm thinking about leaving behind my other career and just playing with dolls all day. I mean, really, what better way to spend my time? :)

My other favorite NYC shopping location - H&M! This is the 3-story shop on 5th Avenue. I never got to Herald Square to visit the other ones...oh well. Hopefully all the cute stuff was here!

The interior of the store. Amazing. The first time I was here was in Summer 2007, when vacationing with Rachel and Laura. Fun, fun, fun!

Apparently stone-wash is back in style. No...I did not add this to my personal wardrobe.

The Lindt Chocolate Shop. Yummy.

FAO Schwartz. I can't wait to take my kids to this store someday. It's amazing.

LOLA! Charlie & Lola is the best kids TV series of the last 10 years.

MAPLE TOWN!!! Okay....so it's really called Country Critters now, but I was obsessed with Maple Town when I was little. Seriously, I have dozens of these creatures and they're amazing.

The Storytime room at FAO.

We find it amusing that NBC gets a huge store at Rockefeller, and CBS is a few blocks away and is basically a closet. But we found a few interesting things....

Next was a visit to Crumbs Bakery, next to the Broadway Theatre where we saw Promises Promises on Friday. Let me tell you...these were some pretty phenomenal cupcakes. I'm now obsessed with cupcakes!

The delightful specimen we shared. It was too rich to eat the whole thing alone!

Waiting by the stage door after The Addams Family at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

Meeting Kevin Chamberlin, who played Horton in Seussical! Gertrude and Horton finally meet...aww.

After the show, my feet had reached the point of extreme pain and I finally caved and wore tennis shoes for an evening. It was almost as painful to wear the ugly shoes as it would have been to deal with the pain from cute shoes. I'm only 23 and don't feel that I should really be required to give up CUTE yet. Right? :\

Shopping at Toys R Us.

As we are trying to be health-conscious and we had already had cupcakes this day, we did not buy the Wonka chocolate. But it looked Scrumdiddliumptious!

Rockefeller Center.

We headed to Grand Central just so I could take some photos. I've been here multiple times, but have never paused to capture the essence of this place. Pretty happy with this shot.

Cedric was irritated that we'd forgotten him for another day, so here's his photo in Grand Central.

Spiderman: Turn off the Dark was the original reason we planned this trip, and wouldn't you know? It hasn't even opened yet. And no one knows when it will open. Oh well.

Hanging out at Planet Hollywood. Definitely dancing.

Possible reason for dancing? Look at this beautiful salad.

Decor at Planet Hollywood. Couldn't resist a photo. ;)

We had ice cream goodness from Coldstone, and then went to the movies. This was taken at the movie theatre on 42nd Street, after seeing Date Night. It was funny! The theatre was practically empty.

And that, friends, is the end of Day 3! Only one day left....coming soon!

cards, cards, cards!

2010-05-27T12:42:00.003-05:00

I've always wanted to be that domestic diva who makes cards for every occasion under the sun and just has them sitting around, waiting to be sent out on a whim.

I may not quite have attained that goal, but I'm making progress. Check out my creativity from just the past two days. Incredible.

I realize that all of these birthday cards have a very similar theme - but hey, it's super easy to make a pile of cards when you have only a handful of supplies in front of you. No big decisions to make. :)

And since it's wedding season, a few cards of that nature...

Loving that I can sometimes find time to craft!! And I knocked a whole bunch of things off the to-do list. It's been a pretty good week so far.

Also I have cute hair. That really helps my outlook on life.

layouts lately!

2010-05-25T12:55:00.007-05:00

I'm at home - feeling pretty crummy - so congrats to any readers out there, it's a post with new scrapbook content! :)

I haven't done a lot of scrapbooking lately. Most of these pages were made in mid-March-April. I actually finished one cute layout last night at Crop Club, but I haven't gotten photos taken yet. So here are my other newest creations! Not going to type long descriptions. :)

First one is a graduation card! Now I just have to find the graduation announcements I've received and see who I'm supposed to be sending this card to!

More NYC coming soon!

new york city...part 2

2010-05-22T14:47:00.000-05:00

We had breakfast Saturday morning with some friends - including our favorite Broadway star, Miss Katherine (center).

Anessa and Ally sat at the grown-up table with us.

I had a cinnamon-raisin NY style bagel with strawberry cream cheese and it was delicious.

After breakfast, we all went for a walk in Central Park.

Swinging, swinging, swinging!

Cedric jumped out of the Epiphanie to demand a photo, since we always forget to take pictures of him even though he goes with us almost everywhere.

Three friends hanging out in Central Park - Eli, Baylor, and Katherine.

The building above this restaurant is Katherine's new NYC apartment!

Lunch with everyone at Blockheads Mexican restaurant.

Definitely some models wandering around the city that weekend...

Junior's sells the most delicious cheesecake!! What I wouldn't give for a slice of this right now.

Our Saturday matinee was Lend Me A Tenor, starring Tony Shalhoub and Justin Bartha. This show was one of the funniest performances we have ever witnessed. We couldn't stop laughing!

Me and Justin Bartha (aka Riley from National Treasure). Hilarious.

Me with Tony Shalhoub, best known for his role as "Mr. Monk."

So I still have tendonitis in my feet. NYC is not the place for this to happen, because I refuse to be practical and wear ugly tennis shoes in the city. So here's what I wear instead...and then I just pay the price of pain.

Riding down from the 14th floor.

Toys R Us on Times Square. We'd never been here before! Lots of cool stuff.

CandyLand! It really exists.

This Toys R Us is so huge that it has a ferris wheel inside the store. It's pretty awesome.

Giant sock monkey! I didn't have room in my suitcase...nor do I have anywhere to put him at home. But he was super cute.

Life-sized Barbie house. I would have died to see this when I was about 7. Coolest thing ever.

M&Ms World is one of my favorite places on Times Square. We usually always go there, even if we don't buy anything.

Walter Kerr Theatre, where Katherine is performing in A Little Night Music (until June 20 - go see her).

Loved seeing her name on the cast list!

Me and the fantastic Miss Katherine. She gave us a backstage tour and it was so much fun to be on a real Broadway stage...even if only for a few minutes!! So many exciting things are ahead for her...I just know it.

The weekend we went happened to be the same weekend that the Times Square Bomb threat happened. This is what Times Square looked like at 11:00pm. Our hotel was about half a block away from here. It was weird and scary to see it emptied out like this!

There wasn't any information posted, or any announcements, so we turned on the TV to find out what was going on. Freaky!

More soon! :)

new york city...part 1

2010-05-17T18:11:00.008-05:00

Finally - here's a little story about a big city. :)

Our flight left at 6:55am...which means we got up at about 4. We sat in the same seats as on our honeymoon flight, but I got far better photos of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island as we headed toward Manhattan!

Flying over Midtown and Central Park. I love that I recognize places from the air now.

La Guardia is quite welcoming.

First view of Times Square, as we rode by in our shuttle to the airport (we were the first stop - woohoo!).

Our closet-sized hotel room at The Edison Hotel on 47th Street. The drawers made a horrendous scraping noise every time you opened them....and we had no choice but to unpack our stuff into them - we didn't want to trip over our luggage all weekend.

Delicious Patsy's Pizzeria. This is one of our favorite stops when we're in the city!

With a Swedish Cottage in Central Park.

Belvedere Castle. I thought this was amazing. I wish it had been less crowded, so I could have run about, throwing my arms in the air and singing like a princess. That's definitely what it called for.

Exploring the castle. Photo by the hubby.

Photography by me.

We swapped camera duty with another couple to get some cute shots atop the castle tower.

Looking at the water throw the design work on the Bow Bridge.

Gorgeous flowers everywhere. Central Park is delightful in spring.

More pretty flowers at Rockefeller!

Andrew at one of our regular stops - Nintendo World!

Me with Carrington - the butler at Jekyll & Hyde Club on 6th Avenue. We actually prefer the small pub version in Greenwich Village, but this was a fun experience too.

Buttercup Bakery served us some amazing treats.

How I wish we had dozens of little places like this hiding somewhere here at home!!

After our first show of the weekend - Promises, Promises - I sort of got to meet Kristin Chenoweth. Check out the sweet photo of us together. Yeah. Excellent, I know.

Love oversized signage!

Times Square. Oh New York...what a great place to be.

At the end of the night, I realized there weren't many photos of the two of us together...so here you go. Two travelers - weary from a day's adventures, but ready to tackle the rest of the weekend with much anticipation!

More soon. For real. :)

wow.

2010-05-17T11:12:00.001-05:00

It's been too long. Definitely.

Expect some new stuff soon. I promise! It's going on the to-do list.

ahhhh!!!

2010-04-29T12:57:00.001-05:00

Hours to NYC: 18.

Items Packed: 1

Amount of Sleep expected: 0.5 hours

no time for more. I think you can see why.

disney cruise in miniature

2010-04-20T17:25:00.001-05:00

I was wowed by this video today. LOVE it. It's like a little mini vacation, at your computer.

This is the exact ship / cruise route we traveled in January. So I love it. :)

Click here to watch!

busy. tired. excuses.

2010-04-15T10:31:00.002-05:00

It's been awhile. Longer than I like. Sorry, blog world.

I have no fun photos to share because I haven't had time to organize anything. I'm slowly getting the house back in order after the performance of Lost and Foundling last weekend (it was fantastic!).

My foot is feeling somewhat better, though not great. I've been wearing Laura's foot brace (aka my "Bella" boot) a lot, and it's helping to keep the foot from impact. I also caved and finally bought some new tennis shoes, as well as a couple pairs of summery supportive shoes. I guess age 23 is when it all starts falling apart and I have to cease being cute. I was so devastated to NOT wear heels for Lost and Foundling last week. :(

Missing DisneyWorld. Wanting to make that album - before we visit again next year (yay!). I'm a little irritated with myself for taking 2000 photos on the trip in January, which now have to be sorted through in order to start the project.

We've decided two things about next week:

It's National TV Turn Off Week, so we're participating. I'm pretty sure we actually do waste a lot of time sitting in front of the television, even if it doesn't seem like it.

It's also Ali Edwards' "Week in the Life" project. Which I'm also going to do. Excited to document a typical crazy busy week in my life. Of course, who knows when I'll have time to make the album. But maybe it will be soon.

That's it for now. Just thought I'd let the world know I'm still here.

Days til NYC: 15!

layouts lately...

2010-04-05T10:08:00.007-05:00

Happy Easter! We had a really busy day yesterday...several different family gatherings to attend. It was kind of a long day for me as I have developed tendonitis in my right foot. Just what I need, right? The doctor at Urgent Care on Saturday said, "oh, well just don't walk for 3 days. You'll be fine." Ha. You can imagine how well that's going. I'm home from work today to try to avoid standing on it most of the day. Still have drama kids coming. But at least that's only a little 3-hour window in my day.

I guess I've reached a point in my scrapping life that I have been waiting for....for years. About a month or two ago, it would take me about a week to finish a layout. It would sit in the basement in front of the TV, and every night I would add a couple of small things to it. I don't know what happened - but now I somehow seem to be putting out a complete layout every time I sit down for 2-3 hours.

This is the best thing that's ever happened to my scrapbook life!! I'm accepting that it's okay if I don't make the perfect page every time. And I'm actually loving my pages more even if I don't think they're perfect - just because they are done. So exciting. I'm hoping this attitude stays around for a long, long time.

Anyway - here are some of the recent quick layouts. All of these have been created since a week before last Saturday, March 27. And they are all based off sketches I have found online, and in Creating Keepsakes magazines. I am loving sketches lately. And I have about 4 more layouts done that weren't "post-worthy."

Love my occasional Archiver's shopping sprees. :)

All the hype in the Creating Keepsakes world (and all over the blogosphere) is to make pages about yourself. Here's one of my first attempts. This one makes me sad today because my foot hurts so much...I have no idea when I'll get to run (or walk) again. :\

Coldstone yumminess at the Lake of the Ozarks after our first Murder Mystery gig last year. Really like these photos. The light is interesting.

Since I made a page about me, I wanted to make a page about Andrew, too. This was one of our set build days for Little Princess / Secret Garden last February. This was about the time I learned about tilting the camera for artistic value.

And apparently I can't take a straight photo. I got this to my computer to crop it and said "seriously? that's the best you can do?" Anyway, this is from the Michael Hogge radio interview for Little Princess / Secret Garden. I invited some of the homeschooled cast members to attend along with us. We all had a great time! Andrew took the "ON AIR" photo for me (he actually said "so you'll have a title for your page!" - awww).

I'm thinking since I'm home today, I may be able to get in a few more pages. And maybe I'll get around to printing off another round of photos. I haven't printed anything later than June 2009. Definitely time for some new material to work with.

Here's hoping the foot has a miraculous recovery today!

epiphanie.

2010-03-31T19:14:00.002-05:00

So most of you (all 4 of you) know how I recently purchased a new SLR camera, and that I am loving it to death! Here's the thing - I have a trip to NYC soon and have been concerned about carrying it around with me because I will look like an unsightly tourist and I like to think that I know the city better than that.

So I've been on the lookout for a better way to carry my camera. and let me tell you - I have found it.

Epiphanie sells these amazing bags that are designed specially for SLR cameras - and fashionistas who want to be stylish without carrying a man-bag to hold their camera.

I've decided upon the blue one. Guess why? It's called "Belle."

So excited. Buying one soon. Can't wait to get it. :)

springtime inspiration

2010-03-26T07:08:00.003-05:00

Last night's project. Actually finished this in less than 2 hours!! :) Based on a sketch I found at Bella Blvd.

Supply List:
Patterned Paper - Dear Lizzy + American Crafts, DCWV
Flair Button - Dear Lizzy + American Crafts
Flowers - Prima
Letter Stickers - Colorbok
Circle Die Cuts - random $1 Store find
Pen - American Crafts

ouch.

2010-03-24T23:30:00.003-05:00

My left foot is really sore today. I have no idea why. But it's now at the point where I'm limping. I'm hoping it goes away overnight. I have too much to do at work to even think about calling in sick.

I was supposed to spend this evening on video edit projects, but had so many things come up that by the time I could have started working...it was 9pm. I knew I wouldn't get much done, so I just decided to wrap up my latest sketch challenge from Studio Calico. Here's the result.

"Crazy Mess"
(documenting the state of our house during Little Princess / Secret Garden at BSCT last year)

The photo is blurry because my foot hurt too much to carry the page and the camera to better lighting. Sorry. :\

Loving that I am consistently making at least 1 scrapbook page each week. It might not seem like much, but it's a huge improvement and the sense of accomplishment (on something other than work, classes, cleaning, boring life stuff) is amazing.

today.

2010-03-21T00:01:00.003-05:00

It's the first day of spring. It snowed. A lot. It's like a winter wonderland outside.

UGH.

We stayed home all day, and I have been doing laundry and crafting. Finished up a couple of scrapbook layouts, and am currently sewing pillows for the living room (finally!).

Here's a glance at my latest scrapbook creation - got it finished just in time to enter the Sunday Sketch challenge on the Studio Calico blog. Woohoo!

Hoping for a heat wave overnight so all the snow will be gone when I wake up... We'll see.

i do believe in faeries...

2010-03-15T22:45:00.005-05:00

Hosting programs at the library sometimes has benefits. Like, when you get free face painting.

And when you've never had your face painted before (because your mom always said no)...it's a pretty amazing event.

Loving my SLR today.

ah, weekend.

2010-03-13T12:52:00.000-06:00

It's a glorious rainy Saturday. And I'm spending it at work. Not quite my ideal day. :\

Working today means I did not have to work yesterday - and it's sometimes equally as nice to have a Friday off work. We spent most of the day working on the disaster area garage. Here's a before photo.

All this stuff has accumulated over the course of the entire 2009 AGDT Season, as well as BSCT's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Pretty much what happens is, at the end of a performance, everything gets thrown in the back of the garage and I just hope it will disappear. Unfortunately, it never seems to get the hint.

Here's what it looked like at the height of the disaster yesterday, after we had pulled everything off the back wall to sort and reorganize.

It's not finished yet, but I'm hoping to wrap the project tomorrow afternoon. I have a huge carload of stuff to take back to my mom's house, another huge load of stuff to take to BSCT, and yet another huge load of TRASH to be dealt with. After I move all of that out, it should be a nice sensible organized space.

Here's my layout for this week's Studio Calico sketch challenge. It took me most of the week - finally finished it last night. I love having a timed challenge to inspire me to get the page done!

This was a fun night of babysitting a little over a year ago. I can't believe how much these kids have grown up since then. Time is just flying by...can't even imagine what it's going to be like when I have my own babies.

Happy Saturday, all!

it was a productive monday.

2010-03-09T18:16:00.000-06:00

Spring is HERE!!

At least, it's consistently been above freezing lately (for three days anyway). This new development is SO exciting. I've had my windows open the past couple days...I'm excited for spring.

On Sunday, I went on a mass organization frenzy and mostly redid the living room and the office. This desk formerly held the top half of a Walmart bookshelf - which was stuffed to overflowing. We condensed the books - excited for garage sale season! - and were able to move the small half-bookshelf to the garage, where it will eventually hold my AGDT library.

I'm excited to have the bulletin board hanging as well. I think I bought it in last year's Lakewood garage sales...so 9 months ago.

The hall coat closet went through a major overhaul as well. The floor was previously covered with tons of bags - plastic, paper, and otherwise - and random cardboard boxes. I think this stuff had been in there since we moved in. I also organized all of the winter accessories on the top shelf - they used to be all shoved in just one basket. Obviously they did not fit and it was very difficult to find anything.

Yesterday I spent part of my last free Monday (AGDT starts next week) at Hobby Lobby. A quick shot of all the goodness waiting to be unloaded at home:

I have been working on a wall art idea for probably 6 months - and I finally decided to make it a reality. Here is the finished product -

It features photos from our shoot with Lindsey at the Plaza last October, and has the lyric from the finale song in Beauty and the Beast - which was our wedding recessional. ♥ it.

While at Hobby Lobby to purchase the supplies for this wall art, I realized that they have coordinating fabrics to the paper I selected!! I immediately decided that new couch pillows were in order, to try to give a cute pop of color to my mostly bland living room. So this is the fabric - will definitely post photos once the project is underway.

Also randomly decided that the house needed some cute floral arrangements. Here is my "test" one - I really love it and am planning to make a few matching ones, to set on top of the piano as well.

Book club at work last night - we made miniature kites. Wow, it's difficult to get 14 little girls to work on a project that involves small pieces and tying knots. But success - everyone went home with a finished product.

All in all? It was a good Monday.

Now, today? It's been okay so far. But check out my to-do list for tonight/the rest of this week:

Yep, that's just half the list. I'm off to cross off one thing...finishing this blog post! Woohoo! :)

one more dancing note.

2010-03-07T16:15:00.000-06:00

We're back from the trip to St. Louis for Grandma's funeral. Andrew's at the theatre today, helping with strike for NigHt of tHe pterodActyls. I'm trying to get the house back in order...after a full week of being off work and feeling too sad and sick (sinus issues) to do anything. Needless to say, the house is pretty much trashed. It's getting better though. I have a Disney soundtrack playing and the windows open. It's the little things.

Anyway - here's a project I made on Wednesday to share with the family at Grandma's funeral service. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The "Forever Dancing" title - I've had a set of rub-ons from Basic Grey for ages and this seemed like a great project to try them out on. I love the result.

I have a half-written supply list, somewhere. Can't find it. And can't remember where all the flowers came from. Oh well.

The funeral was beautiful - perfect for my sweet Grandma. Still very sad that she is no longer here with us...but I know we'll see her again.

Currently facing the thought of going back to work tomorrow. I worked 2 hours last week. Not sure how tomorrow is going to go....

dancing.

2010-03-01T20:25:00.002-06:00

My sweet grandmother, Maxine Codemo, went home to be with Jesus today.

It's been a hard day. I really haven't had a lot of experience with death. But I was able to be at the hospital with her today. And I think it helped.

Today Grandma was surrounded by her six children, who cried and laughed, and sang some good Codemo renditions of When The Roll is Called Up Yonder and some of her other favorite songs.

She went home at 1:19pm.

We are sad. But we know she's in Heaven with Jesus, where she has longed to be her whole life. She's there with Grandpa. She has kids there that she has never met, and grandchildren too. There's definitely a celebration going on up there.

And I think she and Grandpa are dancing. Even though (being the good conservative woman she is!!), she will likely deny it once we all get there to see her again. i just know they're going to be dancing for a long, long time.

We miss you already, Grandma.

i've been saving these pics for years...

2010-02-23T12:30:00.004-06:00

Inspired by my winnings on Studio Calico's blog last week, I hurried to make up this week's Sunday Sketch. I made the whole thing in under 2 hours at my Crop Club at work last night! Yay!

These pics have been favorites for a long time. I bought the paper probably 8 months ago and have been waiting for inspiration. SC's layout this week had an umbrella as part of the title...it was perfect. :)

Supplies:
Patterned Paper (Autumn Leaves "Wellies and Brellas", Creativity Inc)
Vellum (Hobby Lobby...no idea what brand)
Water Drop Stickers (Joann)
Die Cuts (Ellison)
Silver Glitter Chipboard Letters (K&Company)
Ribbon (Hobby Lobby)
Brads (Spare Parts)
Smooch Accent Ink in Moonlight and Sugarplum
I can't remember where I got the "shopping fun" stickers. actually...maybe the $1 Store.

just some random...

2010-02-22T12:46:00.007-06:00

Pretty excited that I won a challenge based on the layout I posted last week. $5 Studio Calico giftcard - woohoo! Here's my layout featured on SC's blog. This was the very first time I have entered my work in any sort of contest - so that's a pretty nice ego boost (even if it was a random drawing). :)

Today I'm still on that productivity kick. Currently listing some stuff on eBay that's been hanging around for months waiting to be dealt with. Hoping for big profits, but we'll see.

The countdown to callbacks for Beauty and the Beast next Sunday evening is on! I just printed my sheet music. Belle has to learn 3 songs. I'm not too worried - I have them mostly memorized already anyway. Hehe.

I'm wondering - is there ever an end to all the stuff that piles up waiting to be done? Will I ever be able to look around and say "wow...I don't have a desperate responsibility today!"? Probably not. The question is - how to find peace with knowing that it'll probably never happen. That's my new thought for the week.

The view out my back door right now:

I am so done with winter.

vacation - bonus day! - day 9.

2010-02-22T12:34:00.000-06:00

Bonus vacation day (January 22) was really not such a bonus. The night before, we were bused to Country Inn Express near the Atlanta airport. We arrived at about midnight, with no luggage (so no clothing, toiletries, etc). I almost hugged the desk clerk who gave me a disposable razor and shaving cream. For real.

Anyway - the flight to KC was pretty early, so naturally we had to get up after just a few hours of sleep and get back to the airport by about 7:30am. No security hassles - so we spent a lot of time just waiting to board the flight. And I spent a lot of time sleeping in random places in the airport. No so comfy. As you can see, Cedric was bored, too.

Self-portrait attempts when very tired + no coordination = not the best result.

Finally I just gave up and let Andrew take the photo. We look SO exhausted!

FINALLY aboard our plane! Thank goodness.

And, that's the last of the vacation photos. We arrived back in KC to cold and a little remaining snow on the ground. Not so fun.

It was an amazing vacation. We're already plotting how we can get away for another sunny retreat! :)

Thanks for reading along!

today.

2010-02-20T10:41:00.002-06:00

I've made a decision.

Today is going to be productive.

That to-do list is about to be annihilated.

Or at least, I'll make a valiant effort.

vacation - day 8.

2010-02-19T15:11:00.000-06:00

We got up really early on Thursday (January 21), as we had to pack and haul all our luggage to the front of the resort to check our bags in for our flight, which was later that evening. We headed out for Epcot on the Disney bus around 9am.

Arrival at Epcot!

We stopped by the character spot, which had no waiting time at all at 9:30am! This was the perfect "slow" season I had anticipated. We got photos with lots of characters - Mickey, of course -

Pluto!,

Minnie!,

Donald Duck,

and Goofy.

We weren't that impressed with the front half of Epcot. We went to The Seas with Nemo and Friends and I was excited because those gulls were yelping "Mine! Mine! Mine!" repeatedly. I love that movie...but especially the gulls.

Yikes, I've been eaten by a shark!

Cedric found a friend. We would have brought him home, but he was a bit expensive. Also we were out of room in our luggage.

Honey, I Shrunk the Audience 3-D adventure.

When the World Showcase opened, we headed off on a trek around the world. We really didn't have enough time to explore each area in depth - so we just focused on getting a cool photo in each place. First stop was Mexico.

I met a viking in Norway!

Next was China.

When we got to Germany, I pretty much decided that Epcot was a much better place to meet famous characters than Magic Kingdom (where you have to wait in long lines for everyone!). Snow White was just hanging out by the wishing well, and happily posed for a photo with us.

Andrew in the German town square. Germany was his favorite spot.

Biergarten Restaurant, where we had lunch. It is staffed entirely by Germans - really enhances the atmosphere!

The inside of the restaurant! It was cold and felt like an open-air village square.

We sat really close to the stage - but our lunch time did not coincide with a performance. That was a little disappointing. If we had had the whole day, we would have stayed to see it anyway - but since we had to leave the park by about 3pm, we had to move on.

After lunch, we pretty much ran to France because I was determined to find out when I would be able to meet Belle. There was an Aristocat out, but no Beauty...so I asked when Belle would be there and was told to return in about 20 minutes. I was so excited. We wandered around in Britain for a little while, and happened across Mary Poppins on our way back to France! She asked if we were having a jolly holiday, and we assured her that we were.

We were crossing the Parisian bridge on the way back from Britain, and I could see a spot of bright blue in the distance. I was literally bouncing like a 5-year-old. I was SO EXCITED. I mean, I had been dreaming of meeting Belle since I was 6. Who cares if I'm now an "adult?" That's 17 years of waiting for a wish to come true - quite a long time. We got into the line with all of the little 5-year-olds and waited patiently for my turn. Belle pointed at Andrew and asked if he was my prince, and then said she hoped he was behaving well and acting nothing like Gaston, as Gaston can be positively primeval. Granted, she's reciting cheesy lines, but still. Magical. I floated around the rest of the day. Really. Props to my sweet hubby for letting me have my little girl moment and not crushing my fantasy by insisting that she wasn't really Belle.

After we had succeeded in the mission to meet Belle, we went back to Germany and continued the trek around the world. Next stop - Italy!

This reminded me of our fountain at the Plaza, so Italy got to have 2 photos instead of just 1. :)

Andrew, in colonial America!

Next stop: Japan!

Morocco was very pretty. I wish we had had time to go back into the market area you can see behind me.

On our way back through France, we discovered that the Beast had joined Belle. I didn't wait through the line again. Probably should have...but I was content to have just met Belle. :)

Beautiful stained glass window in France.

In the heart of France. I'm wondering if Paris actually has this color scheme. I felt like I was walking around in Anastasia while I was in this little village. Is it just a fairy-tale version? Or does it actually feel this magical in real life? Guess I'll have to visit to find out, one of these days...

Sleeping Beauty's line was closed, and they wouldn't let me get in it even though I told them I'd be gone by the time she came back. :( Sad day. But at least I got to see her!

Still hanging out in Paris. Love all the Disney photo opportunities!

Yep. This could be where I belong.

Next stop - Britain. I was happy we had visited earlier, because there was no sign of Mary Poppins this time around! Great phone booths, though.

Here's one with an actual phone inside. :)

O Canada!!!!

Found a random passerby to take a photo of us in Canada. We have a heart for Canada at the moment since it is the heritage of one of our favorite people on How I Met Your Mother. There were some fabulous Canadian gifts and souvenirs in the gift shop (like maple syrup), but we didn't buy anything. Trying to squelch my spending habits while on vacation is not entirely fun...but the credit card statement is certainly grateful.

Mickey is evident everywhere in Disney, not just obvious locations. :)

Back to our hotel. I'm pretty sure we were the only people on the Disney bus.

I hate waiting for travel that I can't control. You have to arrive super early, and you waste valuable vacation hours. :( Here, we're hanging out in front of the Music Resort, waiting for the Disney's Magical Express bus to pick us up.

And hey - I just noticed! You can see the leftovers (on my thumb) of my manicure from the Vista Salon and Spa on board the Disney Wonder, earlier in the week. I wanted French tips, but Rebecca (the Canadian employee who did my nails) said she could not do them. Boo.

Ha. THIS photo occurred at about 11:30pm Atlanta time. We got to Orlando on time, just as it started pouring rain. We boarded our flight on time, we headed off toward the runway...and we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And...wait for it....waited some more. After about 2 1/2 or 3 hours sitting in the plane in Orlando, we finally were able to take off. Our flight, which was supposed to be 1 hour and 10 minutes long took us almost 5 hours. So - obviously by the time we arrived in Atlanta, not only had our connecting flight long since left, but every flight to KC (and most other places) was gone. So this is the delightful line of people from our flight, waiting in line to make new travel arrangements.

You can see Andrew...tall guy in a blue shirt, near the middle of the line. Yep. What a night.

We were given a discount voucher for a hotel near the airport. It was close to midnight and I wasn't thrilled that we were footing the bill for another night we had not planned on. Thought about sleeping at the airport, but after about 5 minutes like this, with really loud televisions playing sports, we decided to just go to the hotel. Andrew called and made the arrangements while I hung out like this.

So - due to this mess, we got to add an extra day to our vacation. It was certainly an adventure - that's for sure. And oh, yes - I completely wore my Minnie ears the entire night. And oh, yes - I absolutely got some weird looks from the folks in Atlanta. :)

Coming soon - a few photos from Day 9, the unexpected bonus day! And then I will have finished this vacation series!! Woohoo!

vacation - day 7.

2010-02-17T19:56:00.000-06:00

TONS of photos in this one...I just couldn't decide what to cut. Enjoy! :)

Wednesday (January 20) was the day I had been looking forward to most for quite some time. Childhood fantasies were destined to come true on this day. I was so excited as we headed out on the Disney bus to the Magic Kingdom!

Here we are just inside the front gates - getting a first glimpse of Cinderella's castle!

Beautiful window displays on Main Street depict all of the princesses. What magic!

Who couldn't love a place where a trolley filled with happy singing, dancing people runs up and down the street all day long?

Famous statue. It's hard to get decent photos; there are so many people everywhere! And our visit was during one of the two historically SLOWEST weeks in Disney World. Yikes.

Oh yes. I'm a fairy-tale princess. And in my fairy-tale world, I have a castle like this. Absolutely.

The first characters we happened across were the Evil Stepmother, Anastasia, and Drusilla. Dru definitely tried to steal my necklace and then got fed up with me for saying "oh no, that's mine."

Riding the famous Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter teacup ride (yeah, I can't remember what it's called, so I included every possible name).

LOVE these spinning photos! My Canon SD1100 is amazing.

It's true. Your life is incomplete until you experience ten minutes of slightly crazed, creepy puppet dolls singing It's a Small World at you in several different languages. Including several photos for those of you who may not have been there. It's quite the ride.

This was about the time we ran into the 8 other boats on the track ahead of us and just kind of sloshed our way to the end. Oh - we had absolutely no wait to get on, and we were the only 2 people in the entire boat. How crazy is that!

We had lunch at Tony's, which is near the front of the park. It's based on the restaurant in Lady and the Tramp. Aww.

Adding to the old-time feel were these guys, who wandered the area singing beautiful harmonies. Inside Tony's, they sang Bella Notte - of course.

The Lady and the Tramp fountain, near where we sat (we were in the booth just behind and to the left - you can just see the front corner of the bench).

Mailing the pathetic few postcards I had managed to write by this point in the vacation.

Waiting in the "loading area" for Space Mountain. There are fun games on the wall to entertain you.

Back to the Castle after a brief visit in Futureland. One of Disney's photographers took this. Those people are so nice!

Classic ride! We didn't actually ride it...the wait time was never convenient. But they thoughtfully provide this nice photo op anyway.

Me at Minnie's house.

Minnie is crafty, just like me! She just has a craft room. No bedroom. No bathroom. Living room, craft room, kitchen. Craft all day long! :)

Minnie's backyard gazebo. Why don't I have a pink and purple backyard gazebo?

Andrew at Mickey's house. Mickey and Minnie conveniently live right next door to each other. Aww!

Mickey's kitchen is in a state of disrepair!

Mickey grows personalized produce in his backyard.

This really made me laugh. My kind of supply kit!

Cinderella's fountain, in Fantasyland behind the castle. I made a wish. It hasn't come true yet. But we'll see.

I decided that no trip to Disney World was complete without eating Mickey ice cream bars. :)

We hadn't planned to watch the parade, but happened across it while it was in progress. I got to see all the princesses!! It was magical. Celebrate a dream come true... That's the only part of the song I remember. I should have taken a video.

Off to another classic ride - Pirates! Argghhhh! This ride was interesting. On the one hand, you had the kind of creepy animatrix puppets that were singing and running about. But when they added in the Jack Sparrow character, they didn't make him in the old style like the other puppets. He looks real. And sounds real. And it's a little bit frightening!

Riding The Magic Carpets of Aladdin in the Agrabah marketplace.

They wouldn't let me get in line to meet Aladdin and Jasmine. :( I was a disappointed princess.

Hanging out in the Swiss Family Treehouse. I personally think the treehouse at Silver Dollar City was more fun. I really wish that house were still there! It was amazing.

Riding Thunder Mountain! It was a little surreal to ride all these things I have known about my whole life. I used to have this great sing-a-long video where they went to Disney World and saw all the famous sites. It was like childhood coming to life again! Pretty magical.

Beautiful castle. I took a lot of photos of this magical sight.

We walked by the Fairytale Garden and saw the tail end of Storytime with Belle. Naturally we weren't actually allowed to get in line to meet her. Again, I was a disappointed princess. Disney World is all about meeting Belle. Seriously, don't they realize this?

Our amazing (expensive) dinner - at Cinderella's Royal Table, which is actually located inside the castle. *pause while everyone shrieks with childish delight* I thought so too. I actually made reservations for this meal 90 days in advance.

Waiting inside the beautiful castle.

The price of dinner included a photo shoot with Cinderella. They brought an 8x10 of a similar shot of this to our table, as well as an 8x10 of the Castle itself. Considering that most photos throughout Disney are about $25, that's a pretty good bargain on top of the meal experience.

Gorgeous. I want to live here.

Inside the restaurant. It looks out over Fantasyland.

Our waitress addressed us as "My Prince" and "My Princess" all evening. She also brought us a sword and a wand - which apparently usually only small children receive. Dunno why she thought we needed them - but I'm not about to say I wasn't pleased.

The Fairy Godmother came out and sang a song. We didn't catch it because she was moving so quickly, but while she was saying something about Dreams Coming True, she reached out and touched my face in a very I'm-magical-and-you-are-magical-and-the-world-is-a-wonderful-place sort of gesture. Yeah, I eat up attention.

We were also visited by Cinderella's mice friends!

The castle at night, up close! When we left the restaurant, we got to go under the castle and out to Main Street - it's not open to the public, you have to eat at the restaurant to get this chance. It was a bonus I had not expected!

So much magic in one day. It was amazing.

Me and my prince.

Beautiful. Right after this photo, a NOT-so-nice Disney employee told us we had to leave the special area and join the throng of tourists. We did as she said...but the rest of the people weren't forced to leave until a good 15 minutes later. I was bummed and angry and sad. :(

Evening parade!

The fireworks show at park closing, Wishes, was magnificent. Magic Kingdom was the only fireworks show we were able to see - and it was a good one. Also I'm very pleased with the results of both the SLR and the Powershot. Great photos! (I have about 100 fireworks photos alone. crazy.)

Main Street on the way to the exit. Crazy swarms of people. I still can't believe this was the "slow" season!

Alas, we didn't have time to swim while at our resort (even though the pool was heated!). This is the Calypso Pool. It's shaped like a giant guitar.

And this one - the Piano Pool, shaped like a baby grand. :)

It was possibly the most magical day of my life, right up there with my real-life fairy-tale wedding. We've already decided to start saving so we can take our kids to Disney before they're too old to be swept away by the magic. Of course...for some of us, there's no problem getting caught up in the moment, even when your first Disney visit is at age 23. ;)

Day 8 - Epcot - coming soon!

i have the best hubby.

2010-02-17T00:28:00.005-06:00

I told Andrew I wanted some Dear Lizzy product for Valentine's Day. Instead of trying to find this himself - he gave me some cash from a secret stash and took me to Archiver's for a spending spree! I was pretty excited. I've been waiting to see the Dear Lizzy line for quite some time...not to mention I hadn't been to Archiver's in months, so this was amazing!!!

Here's a shot of all of my loot, after the adventure. I only went $12 over my budget. I think that's pretty good. And really, for how much I spent...I got a lot of fantastic stuff. I can't wait to use it all! :)

Especially excited about my new SMOOCH colors, and my very first bottle of Glimmer Mist!

♥ scrapbooking. so much.

scrapbook love.

2010-02-16T16:27:00.006-06:00

Latest project.

I have been making pages lately. Not a whole lot. But usually about one per week. And for me - that's a great amount of progress.

This was a Sketch challenge from Studio Calico this week. The challenge was posted on Sunday. I finished this page on Monday. Talk about incredible, considering my normal idea-to-finished-page process!

This page documents the very very first scrapbooks I ever had - a couple of old magnetic photo albums given to me by my Aunt Lisa back when I was about 13 (so...probably sometime in the year 2000). I realized last spring that they were ruining my first cheesy scrapbook pages and had to remove the pages to put them in an archival-quality album and it wasn't practical to keep these. But I don't want to forget them! I poured my heart and soul into those early scrapbook pages...even if they were just white computer paper and glue and Lisa Frank stickers. :)

Hopefully I'll have more to share soon. yay!

PARKOUR!

2010-02-12T17:56:00.006-06:00

This is why I love to edit video.

Now, to get to all those wedding videos. I have some really patient friends. They have no idea how grateful I am that they don't call me every two days and say "where is my wedding video?!" It is on my to-do list. I am working on it. It will get done. And it will be before 2011. Absolutely.

vacation - day 6.

2010-02-11T10:52:00.000-06:00

Tuesday (January 19), our first full day at Disney, was sunny and delightful - though a little chilly at times. It was dark the night before when we arrived at our hotel building (one of eight in the Music resort complex), and we went in through a back entrance...so I was pretty excited when we left through the front and discovered what was decorating our residence. :)

Sarah came to Hollywood Studios with us, and she picked us up so that we did not have to deal with the bus system! Her friend Keil (who works at the park) was waiting for us at the gate - with free tickets for us! Talk about amazing. Here is the sign next to our parking space.

Sarah got a ticket for having her sunglasses "not in regulation." It was hilarious! I can't remember what the ticket said...but it was great.

Riding through the Star Wars forest. Excellent fun (if only it actually moved).

Studio Backlot Tour. We got to see lots of props and set pieces from famous movies. As well as lots of topiary Mickeys.

Costume shop. I don't remember if this is just the Disney Hollywood Studios shop, or the DisneyWorld shop, or the Disney-in-general shop. Probably DisneyWorld. Either way, it was huge and really cool. I would like to make pretty Disney costumes for a living. :)

The top thing on my list of things to do at Hollywood Studios? Experience Beauty and the Beast live. Let's just say...it wasn't quite what I expected. Beauty and the Beast gets severely shortened when you only have 30 minutes in which to tell the tale. It started off normal...with "Belle," which morphed strangely into "Gaston" after most of the song.

Then we were told that "by a strange and unusual set of circumstances, Belle ends up in an enchanted castle!" They entirely cut Maurice, Lefou, and skipped everything from the end of the opening scene to "Be Our Guest."

Lots of singing and dancing and grand commotion! I feel badly for the guys in the life-size enchanted object costumes.

Yeah, then suddenly there was a transformation! (okay, they gave a little more plot than that.)

Lots of pretty dancing.

After Beauty, we headed to the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, where Sarah's friend Keil works as a stunt guy. He was not performing that day, so he went in to watch the show with us and got us seats in the VIP section. He also knows the girl who recruits volunteers from the audience to be a part of the show...so guess who she just so happened to pick?

That's me, in the center, above. I am screaming "as though the trap door on which you're standing has just opened." My throat was actually sore for 2 days. I got whisked off to get put in a costume, and meanwhile the show began.

Indiana Jones recreates the classic opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Crazy stuff!!

All the audience extras, back from wardrobe. We also had to sign a waiver that said something about how we wouldn't sue if we were injured or killed, etc. I'm third from left, in the pink robe and head scarf.

We met Indiana Jones and Marian. Well, we shook the hands of the actors portraying them. That counts, right?

The huge set from the first scene rolled out, revealing this street scene behind it. I am in the front right of the photo, one of the girls haggling rug prices.

There were a lot of cool fights and spectacular stunts going on, but since I was part of the scene, I actually missed most of them. We were given directions as to when to run, when to scream, etc - so we were apparently adding to the look of the scene.

Running away from explosions and chaos!

After the show. It was such a fun experience! I loved being part of the action, instead of just sitting there watching what was going on. The guy behind me (right corner of the photo) is Keil, who suggested I be in the show. Great idea! We met some of the crew after the show - and found out that one of the girls who works this show is Sarah Michelle Gellar's stunt double. We were excited. We ♥ Buffy.

We had lunch and Keil left, then we went on to explore more of the park. Next thing we did was The Voyage of the Little Mermaid. We thought Beauty and the Beast in 30 minutes was a stretch...try Little Mermaid in 17. Wow. There was a giant scary Ursula puppet creature...freaky. I would have been terrified as a child.

Mickey topiaries. I've never seen The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It was, of course, evil since it is about sorcery. :)

On our way to the Tower of Terror, we stopped by the Beauty and the Beast theatre again to take some photos.

Inside the Hollywood Hotel, waiting in the incredibly slow line for the Tower of Terror. We stood in this little room for at least 30 minutes. Andrew thought the ride was boring, Sarah enjoyed it, and I thought it was awful. Not so much scary. Just...lurching up and down randomly is not a pleasant thing. I'm not sure why we seem to think it's so fabulous.

Photo op!

With Sarah. I'm sad I didn't get more photos with her. Photographer skills that day - fail.

In the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. Andrew has pictures here from when he was a kid. How fun is that?

Andrew's collection, in progress. Cedric, of course, traveled with us, but Jack Sparrow Mickey was added on the cruise, and Luke Skywalker Mickey joined us at Hollywood Studios. They pose here with an appropriate backdrop.

At the Lego store in Downtown Disney - it's Indiana Jones! I love giant Lego statues. I also who has time to design these things, and WOW, what a job to have!

Yeah, this is the biggest Lego figure I have ever seen. I wonder how deep it's in the water.

With Cinderella at World of Disney, the massive souvenir store!

Belle, inside World of Disney.

Yummy, yummy, yummy Ghiradelli brownie sundae. Deliciousness. It was a good way to end the day. Actually, we had the sundae before dinner at Captain Jack's (which was not at all pirate-y, like one might imagine). But it was the highlight of the evening. So it gets the honor of last photo of the day. :)

Hopefully it won't take me so long to post the next day in the saga...however, the next post is the Magic Kingdom, where I took about 500 photos. So we'll just have to see. ;)

stress.

2010-02-06T21:11:00.001-06:00

Resolving to say no is great in theory, until you actually have to say it. I hate feeling like I am letting people down. It's an awful feeling. Right up there with the way I feel when I've said yes and am then overwhelmed by the project I've taken on.

There's just no way to win. :(

Stress = not my friend.

my love.

2010-02-02T12:28:00.006-06:00

You make me smile like the sun,

Fall out of bed, sing like a bird
Dizzy in my head -
Spin like a record crazy on a Sunday night.

You make me dance like a fool,
Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold, buzz like a bee.

Just the thought of you can drive me wild.

Ohh you make me smile.

Love you baby. Thanks for always making sure that I'm smiling. :)

vacation - day 5.

2010-02-01T13:40:00.000-06:00

Tuesday morning (January 18), we packed up all our luggage (again...we did that a lot on this trip) and once again had the hotel staff store it for us in their back room. Then we walked to Universal again! We went to the other park - Universal Studios.

Universal Studios is fun because they have different "worlds" as well - but they're real places, like New York City, Hollywood, San Francisco, etc. They had some fun New York stuff. :)

We rode the Mummy roller coaster experience. It's an indoor coaster that goes forwards, backwards, sideways, and spins. And at the end, there's a video of Brendan Fraser and it pretty much looks like he finally gets eaten by a mummy (what a shame). Anyway, I thought this headdress was cool but I couldn't even think of a theatre reason that I would need it anytime in the next 10 years, so...we didn't buy it.

I am obsessed with smashed pennies (and pretty much always have been). I believe I smashed 17 pennies and 2 quarters on this vacation, total. Great fun. :)

I was eaten by Jaws.

Andrew with the car from Back to the Future. (yes, the actual car) I don't remember what it is called.

They had a fantastic area of buildings with cool architecture, and we took full advantage of the coolness of this.

We decided this would be an awesome place to do engagement/wedding/family/really any sort of photos. Maybe next time we will go, I will plan to take some cool vintage clothing and do a photo shoot. I need a 1930's costume here, don't you think?

This is one of my favorites. I love my Joby tripod, which was wrapped on the black rail you see at the bottom of this photo.

This staircase reminded us of the apartment in How I Met Your Mother. We were excited. :)

It even has the little bar next door in the basement. Ha! I want to live in a world that is this pretty. Really.

We went to see Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue. While the singers were not fabulous, we gave them a few extra points because they were dressed as Frankenstein, Dracula, and the like.

We visited the larger-than-life Fievel playground, fulfilling a childhood dream I would have had if I had known that this place existed. I was a little bit bummed, though, because everything in the playground was from Fievel Goes West...nothing from An American Tale, which is by far superior. Oh well.

Lon Chaney - original Phantom of the Opera.

I met Donkey. When I told him I was from Missouri, he said, "Ah, the Show-Me State! What're you going to show me?" Yes. I was hit on by a donkey. Fabulous day. Sadly I missed meeting Shrek and Fiona, but we did see them at some point.

Scooby and Shaggy and the gang went cruising by. Actually, it was probably just Scooby and Shaggy. I chased after them to get a better photo, but no luck.

Shrek 4-D was kind of silly, but entertaining.

After we left the park, we headed back to the hotel, where we met my friends Sarah, Christine, and Rebecca. They took us on an adventure to visit IKEA at the Millenia Mall. We were all overwhelmed; there was SO much stuff and not enough time to look at it, and I had no space in my luggage to take home a new couch. Sad day.

We then went to Giordano's, because Andrew had eaten there in Chicago and wanted some delicious Chicago-style pizza. Chicago-style pizza, I have decided, is basically cheese with a little bit of crust and sauce. It was delicious, but I shudder to think how many calories are in just one little slice.

With Sarah, Rebecca, and Christine once we got to the All-Star Music Resort at Disney, where Andrew and I were staying for the next 3 nights. We had quite the adventure trying to find the hotel... :)

I love Disney. Things like this greet you when you walk in the door. How fun is that? :)

By the time we got to the hotel...we were exhausted and completely crashed. Because the magic was only about to begin!

Day 6 - first day at Disney World - coming soon!

vacation - day 4.

2010-01-31T16:46:00.001-06:00

The final morning of the cruise (Sunday, January 17), we had to be off the ship by 9am. So much for sleeping in (like you're supposed to do on vacation, right?!)... Mickey wished us well as we headed off.

Last view of our ship. Until next time, Disney Cruise Line!

We spent $150 (+tip) on a taxi ride from the port to our hotel in Orlando. We have since decided that next time we visit the area, we will be taking our own vehicle.

We arrived at our hotel and learned that the shuttle that we thought could take us to Universal Studios...only ran once a day. So, we walked the .97 mile to get there.

We started off at Universal's Islands of Adventure. They had several different "worlds" to visit, with appropriate epic music playing in each land. It put our own KC Worlds of Fun to shame.

Possibly the coolest ride ever, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-man is a 3D experience type ride that makes you feel as though you are careening down the city streets, being tossed around by some major villains, and getting swung through the skyscrapers on Spidey's web. It was awesome. We rode it twice.

Character photo opportunities abound, and we stopped by to visit Popeye and Olive Oyl.

Ominous clouds hang over the Dudley Do-Right Falls. We skipped over this ride at first, but came back to it later.

The next world we encountered was Jurassic Park. There are a lot of these photo spots in this area! Look at my sweet hubby toting around the camera bag for me. :)

This is what you look like after taking a trip on the Jurassic Park raft ride AND the Dudley Do-Right Falls. It was only about 65-70 degrees...so we were pretty cold!

Sad, sad, sad day. The Harry Potter world is in the process of being created. Here's what we could see of Hogsmeade. This world opens in May - just a few months from now. We were pretty bummed that we were so close, yet we didn't get to visit the world.

Here, we illustrate our disappointment.

In Seuss Landing, I got to meet lots of favorite old friends!! They were everywhere...we just had to wait in some short lines to get photos with them all.

The Grinch.

Sam I Am had no one in his line. I felt badly for the guy. I mean, really, without him, what use have we for Green Eggs and Ham?!

Thing 2 definitely stole my sunglasses off my face. They're balanced on his nose. Those crazy Things...

The Caro-Seuss-el was topped with Horton and surrounded by Truffula Trees.

The Circus McGurkus Cafe. We didn't eat here, as it was just amusement park food, but it looked really cool - inside and out!

Having fun. :)

We actually left the park for lunch...we went out into Universal's Citywalk area and had Moe's - Andrew's favorite.

When we got back to the park, we went back to the fantastic Seuss world to ride The Cat in the Hat, see McElligot's Pool, and more.

It's my store!! I was pretty disappointed, though. I asked the lady inside the store if they had any Gertrude McFuzz merchandise - and she said they did not have anything that even mentioned poor Miss McFuzz. Seriously. Gertrude is so overlooked. It's a tragedy.

We were able to catch a glimpse of Harry Potter's world through a knothole in a giant fence. I'm so excited about this place. We're hoping to go back sometime to visit once it's open...but who knows how long it might be until that happens.

Hogwarts from afar.

Modified teacup ride - superhero style!

To make a really long horrible transportation story short, we never found the shuttle back to the hotel and after walking there, ended up waiting another hour for a trolley that was supposed to run continuously to take us to dinner. Cedric wanted a photo. It was cold and I was wearing flip-flops, because, hello, it's Florida! The trolley eventually came...at which point we actually had to chase it down. Yeah.

We had dinner at Bahama Breeze. I'm not sure it was quite worth the effort we put forth to get there...but it was nice. After dinner, we again had to flag down the trolley to get back to the hotel. And then we had neighbors who spoke loudly in Chinese until about 2am. What a fantastic night!

All in all, the lesson we learned? Just take a car. Really.

Day 5 coming soon!

vacation - day 3.

2010-01-30T09:56:00.001-06:00

Saturday (January 16) dawned beautiful and balmy. We had already docked at Disney's Castaway Cay when we woke up. Talk about an island paradise!

After breakfast at Parrot Cay restauarant, we headed out to explore the island. Stopped for a photo with the Flying Dutchman in the background. Apparently sometimes Jack Sparrow wanders the ship, but we were never around when this happened.

We walked a really really really long way to the adults-only beach, Serenity Bay. The ocean was really cold at 10am, so we mostly just hung out in the beach chairs and soaked up some sun. I've never been one to just lie in the sun (mostly because, hello, when is there time for something like this??), but hey. If I lived in the Bahamas, I think it could become a serious addiction.

Pretty island flowers. I miss spring and summer.

We left Serenity Bay because we realized we'd forgotten to bring along our excursion tickets, so we had to go all the way back to the ship. We took the tram instead of walking. :) After retrieving the tickets, we headed back to the island and came across this epic Crab Race. It was about as exciting as you can imagine 4 crabs crawling toward opposite corners of a circle might be.

Since we had our tickets, we got to rent inner tubes and float around for awhile - not as fun as it might have been since we were too lazy to walk all the way back out to Serenity Bay and we ended up on the normal beach with tons of other people. And it was windy, so we kept getting blown into the rope barriers, or the beach.

Anyway, after we'd had our fun with the tubes, we moved on to Disney's snorkel lagoon. Once you got out past where the kids had been kicking up all the sand, it was fun! Disney made it kind of like a scavenger hunt by sinking some ships and other things in the water for you to find while snorkeling.

It was like a treasure hunt. :)

All the fish seemed to be swarming around Mickey.

The snorkel lagoon was huge. This is the view looking back at the beach, after we swam almost to the edge of the lagoon.

After snorkeling, we were pretty tired so we found a nice hammock and just relaxed in the sun for just a little while, before we had to head back to the ship.

Our good friend Cedric was also in the Bahamas, and he was a bit miffed at us for not taking any pictures prior to now.

Sunset over the ocean, back onboard the Wonder.

There's always a random friendly passerby to take your photo when you cruise with Disney. :)

Me in a fabulous SUMMER dress in January. ha!

What Disney trip would be complete without a photo with these guys?

The evening show was called Disney Dreams and it's an award-winning show (best cruise entertainment or something like that). It's the story of a little girl who has to believe in her dreams, or she'll grow up. Or something like that. Anyway, you can guess who comes to visit her - Peter Pan!

While she's learning to believe, lots of friends show up. Like Aladdin and his grand parade.

And Cinderella. The set was really cool, since it could accomodate so many different stories and still look magical and perfect.

Grand finale picture. Beauty and the Beast was also featured in this show - beautiful - but was followed by Hakuna Matata. Really? I think that was a poor choice on someone's part. Oh well.

We found these glasses in the gift shop - they match the plain set I have in my kitchen cabinet, but I couldn't justify $10 a glass when I wanted scrapbooks and other souvenirs too. So a photo will have to suffice.

We met the ship's Captain Gus and he signed an ornament that we purchased. Not sure who was driving the ship while he was hanging out in the gift shop. :)

A photo enthusiast noticed us taking photos in one of these windows and insisted on taking the camera and experimenting until she got this really cool shot. I love people like that.

This is painted on the wall behind the clear elevators so you can see it on your way up. I was definitely lying on the floor to get this shot. Does that mean I'm a real photographer now? :p

Day 4 coming soon!

discovery club.

2010-01-29T13:37:00.004-06:00

Taking a break from the vacation series (partially because of time, but mainly because my neighbor's internet connection seems to die every single time I have almost succeeded in uploading photos) to talk about my new endeavor at work - Discovery Club!

DC is an enrichment program for homeschoolers hosted at most of the area library branches. It's been around for a long time - I used to attend when I was a homeschooled kid. Anyway, my branch has not had one in a long time because no one felt motivated to take on the project. Enter: me, the former homeschooler. I believe all homeschool kids should have fantastic opportunities, so I volunteered to start up the program at Colbern Road.

And WHOA! My first program, "Mad Science Presents Fire and Ice" was yesterday afternoon and it was a flyaway success! We had 88 people in attendance - that's crazy unheard of, for a first program. I was pretty excited.

Here are a few pics... Mad Science was a great program - I'll be asking them back to do more shows, and definitely will make sure my own homeschooled munchkins go to a fair share of their programs. ;)

The photos aren't great...sorry. They were taken with the library camera. Next time I'll use my own!

vacation - day 2.

2010-01-27T18:23:00.001-06:00

Day 2 (Friday, January 15) began as we docked in Nassau, Bahamas. We woke up late and were rushed, so we didn't have much time to explore the city in the morning. However, we got in a few stops at some souvenir shops - like this one, where we met a pirate. Arrghh.

Here's part of our ship!

We went on an excursion to a coral reef, where we snorkeled for an hour. Andrew bought me a sweet underwater camera case for Christmas, so we used it to take these neat shots. No, it did not leak and yes, the camera survived. :) Great little toy to have!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming....

Back on the tour boat, taking pictures of the coast with the new camera.

Also pictures of the water. Love my new camera!

The street market we visited on our way back to the ship. I had wanted to go here earlier, but had forgotten to bring cash off the ship... So this time I was prepared for some serious fast bargain shopping.

Friday night was Pirates IN the Caribbean Night onboard the ship. I had heard of this party, and brought some appropriate Pirate attire (arrrghh!), so that unlike everyone else on the ship, we did not have to go purchase Pirate wear at the gift shop - AND we looked unique. Oh yeah. Here we are with Captain Jack Sparrow himself.

The show of the evening was Toy Story the Musical. We prefer EPIC musicals, but as far as cute kid shows go, this was fun. Lots of giant costumes and sets to give the idea that the actors were really toys.

Our restaurant that evening, Animator's Palate, had some beautiful photos on the wall like this one. They faded in and out of color throughout the night. The restaurant started out all black and white and at the end of the night had a very colorful scheme. It was cool.

Fireworks off the deck at the Pirates party! Argghh!

The deck party was loud and crazy. But we're in the middle of the ocean. So who cares, right?

Ahoy, mateys! Day three be comin' soon!

vacation - day 1.

2010-01-24T16:14:00.000-06:00

The beautiful, delightful, wonderful vacation...is over.

Altogether, we spent 8 days away from home. I was thinking of just putting up one post for the whole trip...but there are far too many cool photos for that. I took about 1800 shots on this trip. Yeah. Crazy. And I have to pick just one for each day, for Project Life. That ought to be fun!

So anyway - this post documents some highlights of Day 1 (Thursday, January 14).

We got up at 3:30am because we had to be to the airport by 5:15. Our flight was filled with lots of teenaged cheerleaders/dance teams and they were noisy, especially at 5:30am. They were with us all the way to Orlando - thankfully we did not run into their group at Disney World.

Anyway, we got to Orlando and took the Disney Cruise Line motorcoach to Cape Canaveral, where we were to set sail.

Once we were checked in, we headed to the giant Mickey ears, which led the way to the ship. The Disney employees were all really nice about taking photos of us whenever we asked. That's a nice change from our normal NYC vacation spot.

We crossed the gangway and welcomed to the Disney Wonder by the cruise staff in the main atrium. We were given directions to our room, and we headed there first thing.

We had a Navigator's Verandah in our room - this photo is of our first view of the ocean from our stateroom. We didn't hang around the room long - we were hungry, so we went upstairs to the Beach Blanket Buffet.

After the meal, we wandered the ship a little and eventually ended up on the 10th deck to watch the Sailing Away party. The Entertainment host was a guy alled Pikey (from Australia) and he was definitely filled with energy!! The whole Disney gang came out during the party to help us on our way. The theme for the cruise was "Adventures Away" - and they sang us a song by that name at least twice a day.

We wandered around the ship a little bit after the party was done and we were officially on our way. I was snapping constant pictures, enjoying the new Nikon D3000. Here's Goofy's Pool, which has a super cool water slide. We never quite got to any of the 3 swimming pools onboard...too many other things to do. But they look cool!

We headed up to the front of the ship so we could get a photo as we sailed off into the distance.

Here's Andrew, as we sailed away.

Disney had some great entertainment on the ship. Each night there was a different show in the Walt Disney Theatre. The first night, we saw The Golden Mickeys, an award-show style compilation of lots of favorite Disney moments - Tarzan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Cruella, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas, Toy Story, The Lion King (featured here), and more.

Finale pose. I was suprised at the great quality photos I got with no flash!!

Each night, our stateroom hostess left us some chocolate and a cute little towel animal. Fun!

Here's a view of the main lobby from above (the 5th floor, I think). Notice Captain Mickey having a Meet-and-Greet session with some kids at the bottom of the staircase!

We had dinner at Triton's - a French-style restaurant. We were not thrilled with the food - if you know us at all, you know how picky we are! Andrew had Lobster Macaroni & Cheese. I had some sort of chicken, which was unmemorable. By this time, though, I was starting to feel a little seasick. First time on a ship...I hadn't know what to expect. I was pretty miserable by the end of dinner, even after taking some complimentary seasickness medicine that Guest Services gave me. Since I wasn't feeling great, after dinner we just went back to the stateroom, where I pretty much crashed. Thankfully by the next morning, I was feeling just fine. Overall...the first day was long and busy, but very fun. But the adventures had just begun!

More soon!

8 hours and counting...

2010-01-13T22:06:00.002-06:00

Well, I had pretty spectacular plans to have my entire mess of luggage packed by now. I planned to have gone for a nice run, showered, braided my hair, and......I had hoped to be in bed by 9pm. Obviously that has not worked out.

I still have to finish packing, I've given up on running, debating the shower/hair, and also have to enter a mystery shop report. Yeah, I'm not sleeping tonight. How fabulous is that?

But on a good note - tomorrow at this time, I will be sailing on the Atlantic. I guess I won't complain. ;)

cookie update!

2010-01-08T12:02:00.000-06:00

Remember my random New Year's resolution to bake at least 20 batches of cookies this year? Here's a status report.

Batch 1 - in progress!

Batch 1 - Banana-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Kind of like banana bread with chocolate mixed in. They are very soft and chewy!

Batch 2 - Chock-Full of Chocolate Chip Cookies. The recipe states that there are over 50 chocolate chips in each of these cookies, and I believe it. They are so delicious. Chocolate overload, here I come!!

Both recipes are from the delightful Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook, which I just discovered I can buy for just $6.78. It's absolutely worth it. I've loved everything I've made out of this book (naturally I'm using a library copy!).

I feel like such a domestic goddess, having homeade cookies in my house all the time!! What a wonderful feeling. :)

2010-01-04T13:48:00.005-06:00

So, it's been snowing lately. A lot. Check out the view through my back door.

In these photos, it just looks beautiful and wintery, but when you have to drive on roads that looked like this until the snow ploughs and foolish drivers hit them...well, it's just not pleasant. Also it's approximately 2 degrees outside today (for real) and I'm so cold I think I might be losing fingers and toes soon!!

In exciting photography news, the first (and last) huge splurge of 2010 can be seen here:

Now if only I had time to figure out how to use it. :) I've been wanting an SLR for a really long time and we decided to go ahead and get it before our vacation, so that we'll have not just amazing photos, but amazing photos. I'm so grateful that Andrew at least pretends to understand the importance of amazing photos.

Speaking of Andrew - drastic update for him yesterday! Check out the before and after -

Here he is before, with long flowing locks and lots of facial hair.

And after. Quite a change, isn't it? I think he's super hot. ;)

So far, so good on the CALM front this year. Granted, we're only 4 days in...but I made myself a nice little reminder that hangs on the wall in my bedroom and is one of the first things I see every morning. I made the word art for free at http://www.wordle.net/! Fantastic site, check it out and make your own super cool word collages. :)

Off to accomplish many things before I head back to work at 5!

PS - 10 days until VACATION!!!! :)

Welcome 2010!

2010-01-01T15:47:00.002-06:00

I've never been much for resolutions.

I have a list on my refrigerator from this day last year. It has my list of 2009 resolutions. It only had 10 things on it, but do you know how many I actually accomplished? Zip. Nada. Zilch.
Sure, I put up a fighting effort on some - like "Get up earlier - by 6:45 at the latest." I had a streak for probably half the year when I got up early to do laundry and accomplish projects before work. By far, they were the best days, because I had more energy and felt like I had done something productive. But by no means did I manage to meet this goal every day.

I would love to say that I actually made myself "Exercise at least 3x a week." I think I averaged once per week for the whole year. But hey - once a week is better than not at all, right?

Then there are the others, like making a new dinner every week, swiffering the kitchen weekly, taking vitamins regularly, and making breakfast smoothies and keeping them in the freezer - which really didn't take off at all.

So now it's 2010. I'm going to give it another shot. I think I've gained a lot of perspective about how I handle life in the past year. And I'm going to make my new resolutions reflect that as much as I can.

My overall goal for 2010, as mentioned in my previous post, is CALM. I want to slow things down, have time to breathe, and give myself a chance to do the things I care most about. I'm thinking about some creative ways to remind myself of this word when things get crazy.

In the spirit of CALM, here are my other goals for 2010:

SAY NO. This will be the biggest change, and the hardest to implement. I'm realizing that I cannot do everything. So SAY NO. The world won't end, and I won't be stuck in situations I don't have time for, or can't stand, or whatever.

Make meal planning less stressful. Plan weekly? monthly? whatever it takes.

Exercise to get back to wedding-status! Mix it up so it doesn't become a chore.

Continue to get up by at least 6:45am - try to push this to 6:30. Go to bed early!!

Make a cleaning strategy and don't let everything pile up until state of disaster becomes reality.

Really, actually, start taking vitamins.

Don't drink soda. At all. Really, what possible excuse is a good one?

Get back to daily devotions. I'm sure this is one of the best ways to promote CALM.

Keep up with Project Life. Don't fall behind even one day, or that one day may become two, then three, then twenty...

Finish 2010 with NO outstanding video projects. This first day of 2010, I have 7 projects that people are waiting to see, not counting things I've filmed just for my own benefit. This pressure causes a lot of my stress.

Play the piano for fun, and enjoy it. This means yes, call the piano tuner, already!

Pay down the mortgage principle so that we can refinance.

Take dance classes.

Make someone's day brighter and send birthday cards through the mail. Or anniversary cards. Or random no-purpose cards. Or cookies!

And one just for fun...

Bake at least 20 batches of cookies by December 31, 2010!

Whew. That's quite a few things. But right now - I am determined that they are possible. And by this time next year, I will be happier, healthier, and feel so much more CALM that I will hopefully only have a handful of goals for 2011.

it's the start of another 3-day work week...

2009-12-28T11:27:00.005-06:00

...and wow, has it been quite the start. I arrived at work this morning to find that the library was closed on Saturday due to the ongoing blizzard in our town, so all of the books from the drop box (basically all returns since last Wednesday) had to be checked in, as well as the 22-page pick list, and all the other normal crazy Monday morning stuff. And there is hardly anyone working today!! I was the third highest in command...and people kept asking me questions! It was weird. But kind of nice. :)

I've been inspired today by what I read on Ali Edwards' blog. She's made a challenge to pick one little word for 2010 and let it make an impact on your life in the next year. I'm still debating my word choice, but right now...I think it may be CALM. We live life at such a harried pace right now, and I think it stresses me out more than I realize. We've already talked about slowing down in 2010 as we're going to have some new things in our life...grad school being one of the big ones. So I am hoping that the new year will bring me some time to reflect, relax, finish the projects, and realize that it's really okay to say no when I'm asked to do something new.

We had a pretty great Christmas. It was absolutely wonderful to have so many days off in a row. It was like a little vacation - and we get to do it all over again this coming weekend (though without a major holiday to add tons of insanity to our plans!). We are going to see A Christmas Story at the KC Rep on Thursday afternoon - Andrew got me tickets for Christmas. I'm super excited!

On top of that joy, it's only 17 days until our delightful vacation. Still haven't tried on any of that swimwear, though it's been in my house for probably a week. Hoping to get to that today! :)

Another favorite gift (also from Andrew)? Project Life. It has not arrived yet, but it should be here very soon. And I am very excited. It's going to be a beautiful way to document 2010...so whether or not I ever finish my scrapbooks, at least I will have something. :)

I'm working on the AGDT scrapbook again. I'm caught up to the Summer 2009 performance (haven't printed Fall 09 pics yet, but I'm working on weeding them so that I can!). So I've started putting together the TEEN scrapbook - starting with pictures from our first teen production, Little Women, in 2007. I have so many photos and I just can't bear to not include them all...so it's going to be quite the scrapbook!! It may have to be just one album for each production. We'll see...

updates.

2009-12-21T19:19:00.005-06:00

The Honeymoon Scrapbook. It's done, folks. Completely, 100%, there's-a-title-in-the-front-cover DONE. And it's beautiful. :)

The Vacation. 24 days and counting until beautiful Bahamas. I'm waiting for my massive swimwear order to arrive. I'm hoping that out of the 7 or 8 ensembles I ordered, at least 1 or 2 of them will be worth wearing.

The Other Vacation. Oh by the way, we're going back to my favorite place - NYC - in the spring. We'll be visiting from April 30 - May 3 and I am so excited. We already have tickets for 3 shows, starring famous people such as Nathan Lane, Abigail Breslin, and KRISTIN CHENOWETH!!!! Not quite as excited as I was to meet Sutton - but hey. This is a big deal.

The Current Generational Fad. I really like the phrase.... "it will be epic!" But I'm afraid that I'm too old to use it. Sad day. :(

The Christmas Tree. It's ghetto. No lights, no tinsel, no tree skirt, 4 ornaments and a small stuffed ginger-person stuck inside the branches. It does have a topper.

The Christmas Shopping. Andrew - done. My family - done. Andrew's family - barely started, but I'm giving that responsibility over to him. I'll bet you're wondering how I managed to make so much progress in so little time. Well, let me just tell you - it's a gift card extravaganza for the McKinley/South relatives this year.

The Christmas Wrapping. Almost finished with this! I was blessed with an extra hour at home today (due to running a work-related errand on my own time), and it gave me enough time to clean the bedroom, start working on laundry, and sit with my wrapping supplies and Grey's (watching Season 1 again since I still haven't seen 3-5 and am not content to just move on to another show) for a couple hours. Thank heaven for gift bags. Whoever invented them should be made a saint.

The Christmas Baking. The what?

The Workplace. The crazies have been out in full force the past few days. I'm so thankful for a 3-day work week followed by a 4-day weekend followed by a 3-day work week followed by - gasp - another glorious 4-day weekend. It will be epi-----incredible.

The Television Series Status. If you didn't know, in our "free time" we watch DVDs of long-running TV shows. We've covered Buffy (7 seasons), Angel (5 seasons), and we're currently on Smallville (which is in its 9th season...we're on the 8th and striving to catch up before Season 10).

The Local Theatre Scene. Fantastical news concerning Starlight's 2010 season. It opens with Little House on the Prairie: The Musical which I have been dying to see a) because um, hello, my alter ego for about 8 years was Laura Ingalls, and b) Melissa Gilbert (who was actually Laura Ingalls) is playing Ma in the show!! Starlight is not a good venue at which to meet stars...but it's okay. I'm sure it'll still be a great experience! Starlight is also doing Beauty and the Beast, which irritates me because now my theatre will have to compete with Starlight. But hey - it's not like I'll be missing it. :) Also a local theatre is doing Little Women the Musical - and I'm irritated that I never heard anything about auditions. It's not a professional show, so it could have been a chance for me to have a Sutton role. UGH! I don't understand why people don't contact me before planning their theatre schedules....

The Schedule. It's calmed down. I actually feel somewhat awake today. It's a shock to not be 100% sleep deprived. We'll see how long we can keep this up.

Christmastime is here......wait, what?!!!?!

2009-12-16T15:17:00.010-06:00

Well, the show is done. It was a great success, with crowds who seemed to enjoy the magic we created on stage. What more could we ask for?

This leaves me with the realization that it's just 8 days until Christmas...and I haven't really purchased any gifts. This is indeed, a bit frightening!! I'm trying to do some online shopping, but I haven't even had time to think about what to get for anyone...so I don't know what to do. I'm hoping inspiration will dawn before it is too late.

You really haven't lived until you've volunteered to play the Storytime Christmas Elf at the library the week before Christmas. I have done 5 appearances as this happy character, with 2 more planned by Friday's end. I also organized for Santa Claus himself (who happens to have been the star of our Christmas production and also happens to already work for MCPL) to make an appearance. Most of the very small children were terrified, but a few were brave enough to pose for a photo.

Note: it's not a good idea to buy elf shoes on eBay. You'll wear them for about 5 minutes, they will suddenly have massive holes and you won't be able to keep them on your feet...and then you'll have to spend your free time at home making a new pair for the rest of the week. Just make sure you've had lots of practice making Knook shoes (like....10 pairs) for a community theatre show. Then you'll be done in a snap!

And on that happy note, I'm back to online Christmas gift browsing...

well, it's been awhile (again).

2009-12-07T17:43:00.006-06:00

I dislike winter weather. Really. What fun is a winter wonderland when you have to get out and drive in it every day? There are too many lunatics on the road. It's not fair that some people actually get to stay inside by their cozy fires while the rest of us brave the madness just so the general public can come check out library books. Really, people? This is why we have personal book collections.

No, it hasn't snowed yet, but there is talk of a coming storm. The library is remarkably quiet this evening. Usually in a case like this, there would be 3,000 people in here trying to stock up before the storm.

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus at BSCT has lived through its first weekend!! It was definitely Friday night - the first performance - when I actually saw every single child wearing every single costume piece (STRESS!!!!!!!!!), but they all really do look pretty nice. And while I never want to design a fantasy costume scheme again...it was actually pretty fun. I enjoy sewing. I wish I had time to keep that up as another hobby. Unfortunately I can't even stay on top of all the other hobbies...

It's hard to believe that Christmas is fast approaching. I only have a few weeks, and I haven't even given the most basic consideration to Christmas gifts or plans. I have no idea what we're getting anyone. Nor do I know what to get Andrew. It may be a small Christmas in the McKinley household anyway, after the rest of the expenses that have been dumped on us recently. Honestly - why don't people tell you about horrible things like tax bills that you have to pay in December? It kind of seems like I wrote all of this in my last post. Obviously I am still unhappy to be dealing with these things.

We went to the new Target in Blue Springs last night - between the show and a theatre meeting. I was thrilled to actually be in a store with TIME and I found some cute new shirts. It was a good day. I have a very limited winter wardrobe, so it was a much needed expansion. However, the Starbucks in Target did not have any peppermint and I did not get my peppermint mocha. THAT was sad.

I had 5 hours off work today and I spent most of it organizing and cleaning the house, and doing laundry, and really just trying to find the floor in the basement. It had been lost for quite some time. I also found a sweet Dancing With the Stars workout video from work in my movie stack and did part of it and it was pretty sweet. So maybe there is a fun way to weight loss after all...

I wish I had the time to be a domestic diva. Really. I want to bake yummy deliciousness. sigh.

Sad day: I am not putting up any Christmas decorations. I won't have time until the weekend after the show -- and at that point, it would be December 19. What's the point? :(

38 days and we will be in sunny Florida, followed shortly by the BAHAMAS. Believe me, I could not be more excited!!! Oh speaking of this, I definitely need a new swimsuit...hm...

two posts in a day? whoa.

2009-11-24T15:23:00.001-06:00

I normally wouldn't post again. But I just found a mystery shop for the Thriftway in Forks, WA - which is where Bella gets her photos developed in the book version of New Moon!!!!!!

Perhaps I'm ridiculous for knowing this.

Perhaps I'm ridiculous for being excited.

But it's okay. I don't mind if you call me crazy. ;)

and time just flies...

2009-11-24T10:02:00.003-06:00

I don't know where November has gone. Seriously. It's the 24th. Thanksgiving is in two days. I am wrapped up in a whirlwind of crazy! I think life is going to continue at this pace until after Christmas. If I can survive that long.

So I'm designing costumes for The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. I spent most of last week making 8 fairy dresses. That's a whole lot of fairies. Next up I'm sewing five multi-colored little dresses that look like flowers. And half of them have to be cut bigger than the pattern. And naturally I haven't a clue how to do that. My official costume deadline is next Monday. Costumes were supposed to be finished by November 18. ha! I spent my 5-hour break between work shifts scavenging at thrift stores, hoping to find some costume treasures. Thankfully - I found a corduroy skirt, which I needed!!! It only took 4 stores to find it...

While at the thrift stores, I also found some really cute sun dresses which I can take on our cruise/Disney trip in January. I was afraid I'd have to go out and spent hundreds of dollars on new clothes, and I got these three dresses for $15.00!!! I was pretty excited. They are super cute, and super stylish, and wonderful. It's been awhile since I bought clothes for myself at thrift stores...maybe I'll have to give this plan another chance.

I had my Crop Club meeting at work last night. I only have about 3 people who show up regularly. I'm wishing there were more, but I don't know how to advertise it!!! Anyway, I got all my Christmas cards (purchased from Shutterfly) stuffed into envelopes, and then made my very first all-about-me-random-everyday-life page. I'm pretty proud of it. Even if I ran out of letter stickers and had to use an inverted "3" as an "e", and a "w" as an "m." But I suppose that gives it character. ;)

Did I ever update about the honeymoon scrapbook?? I can't remember. There is good news - it is DONE!!! Well, almost. I finished the last page at last month's crop club meeting - but I still need to do the small album cover title. I've been so consumed by all these other projects (costuming)!!! I didn't have time to grab the NYC stuff before last night's meeting, so I didn't work on it then. Maybe I will get to it after the show is done.

New Moon is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! I went to the midnight show with Andrew and Sara (who was kind enough to hold seats for us at the 9pm Twilight), dressed in my Bella ensemble. I got a few weird looks, but also a lot of 14-year-olds who said "OMG you look soooooo amazing!!!" One of them even insisted on taking my photo. I can deal with being a mini celebrity. ;) Andrew bought me a commemorative plastic New Moon cup, which I will proudly display in my scrapbook room. If I can ever get my sewing disaster cleared out of the basement...

Oh speaking of sewing, I finally bought the sewing machine that I was given money for at my birthday. It's pretty nice so far. And it's already been through a lot - getting hauled back and forth to the theatre every day, and sewing many many costumes for me. If it just makes it through this show, I think it will have already earned its keep.

So last night I started doing laundry (finally) and washed all the blue clothes. This morning I got up at 6:30 to put them in the dryer, assuming that my jeans would be dry by 7:50, when I leave for work. Not so. I ran the dryer twice and they were still dripping wet. AARRRGHHH! I was late for work because I had to find alternate clothes. Now I'm wearing my brown paid Gap chino pants, and purple AE sweater, and I feel like I look ridiculous. I'm hoping my jeans are dry when I go home for lunch...

I'm not thrilled that I'm apparently now a responsible adult and am expected to pay $200 in personal property taxes for our two hunks of junk. Being an adult is horrible and I'm not sure why no one ever tells you this while you are young. Or maybe they do, and you just tune it out. That's a possibility.

In other news, I haven't even begun to deal with Christmas yet. I haven't picked out any gifts...nor do I have any idea how I will pay for any gifts that I do select. ugh. Why is Christmas at the most expensive time of the year? Really? Poor planning there...

eek. eek. and more and more eek.

2009-11-12T11:10:00.001-06:00

So, I'm not really a costume designer. But apparently "Assistant Director" has taken on a whole new meaning.

I think my mind is going to explode.

Back to comparing colors and fabrics and sizes...all via the internet, of course, since I don't have any time to go to real stores.....

i know i promised photos BUT...

2009-11-09T09:15:00.005-06:00

Really, most people just don't understand what I mean when I say I am too busy to do anything. They assume I'm making excuses. Or I'm just lazy. But really - really - I am that busy.

I'm reading this book right now (in 2-minute snippets). The chapter I read last night said that I need to determine what I want to do more than anything else in the world...and stop saying "yes" to anything that does not support accomplishing those things. So, you might ask, what do I want? That's kind of the problem. I want a lot of things. I want to have a beautiful, happy family, and be an uber-cool, all-the-neighbor-kids-love-me, Godly mommy. I want to throw all this midwest nonsense out the window and live in a tiny little 10th floor apartment in NYC and sing on Broadway for a few years. I want to work out more than once a week (my sad average so far this year) and actually feel like I am in shape. I want to write a book...or 20! I want to continue AGDT and have it grow to the point of actually needing a studio. I want to be caught up (or at least have a fighting chance at being caught up) in my scrapbooking endeavors - and I want to think up new and interesting techniques and submit them to CK and see my layouts published in their articles. I would even love to be on the Dream Team, or work as a contributing editor! How cool would that be? I would also really like to just be able to think of a different meal to cook every single weeknight...and have it on the table when the hubby gets home from work.

So those are my biggest goals in life. They're so varied, it's pretty difficult to imagine all of them coming true. But I can try. I'm setting my New Year's 2010 Goals a bit early this year. Maybe if I have time to meditate on them before the year actually arrives, I'll be able to get a better handle on them. The 2009 resolution list is looking pretty sad and neglected at this point. But - the new year is on the way. And I am hopeful.

In other news, the Twilight Ball was an amazing success!! We had 90 people attend the program - probably more than at any program hosted at this library other than a summer children's event.

AGDT's fall performance was a couple days ago. The kids were awesome, as usual. Kayte came to do everyone's hair even while she was not feeling spectacular - what an amazing friend she is!! While I love teaching, and love watching those girls perform, and just generally love spending time with them - I am not sad that I have a 3-month break before a new set of drama classes begin. I realized yesterday that I did 4 semesters in a row this year - Winter was Little Princess / Secret Garden at BSCT, then Spring, Summer, and Fall were AGDT. I have directed 10 plays this year. My little dramatic mind needs a break!! I am going to offer a Christmas Crafts Club to the AGDT girls - but it will just be crafts. No drama. No props. No costumes. No set pieces. No crazy performance day. 4 weeks of crafting fun. I think I can handle that. ;)

My hubby fixed the toilet in the master bathroom yesterday. You have no idea the joy this puts in my mind. That toilet has been broken for like 3 months. At least. I can't even remember!

Next big project on the list is the MCPL Homeschool Expo on Wednesday this week. I am dressing in full Civil War attire (chemise, corset, and the works) and doing a demo on women's fashion in the 1860's. Basically - I'm letting an army of little girls try on some hoop skirts. Hopefully they'll think it's cool! The good news is, the Expo is at the MGC, where Andrew works, so I will get to spend at least the morning/lunch with him. :)

That's all the news of the day. Someday I'll have time to actually post pictures of things. Really. Maybe when people start reading the blog I'll make more of an effort.....

today is a Forks day.

2009-10-22T10:40:00.003-05:00

I am SO excited about the weather today. You have NO idea! It's a gloomy, windy, rainy, beautiful glorious Forks day. Ah I love Forks days. :)

But it is especially appropriate, because today I am hosting the Twilight Ball at my library. There are 3 of these balls scheduled for MCPL - one in each county - and we were the lucky branch selected for Jackson county. I have had SO much fun with this. SO much fun. I have spent most of the past couple days stringing up lights to make a scene that looks like Edward and Bella's prom dance, and we covered a wall in black paper and are hanging posters and favorite quotes from the books all over the wall. Let's just suffice it to say that the children's area has had a significant makeover!! Personally I think it looks much better this way and I would prefer to leave the lights up all the time.

One of my coworkers brought in some speakers and a subwoofer, as we're playing the movie on our projector screen and the sound quality it has is pretty terrible. But now, with our speaker setup, we're going to have some pretty sweet awesome sound, and I think we all might just forget that we're in a library. It's a real shame we don't have a separate room for this occasion - I kind of feel badly for the normal library patrons who might be in tonight. But oh well.

So remember how I was supposed to have finished the honeymoon scrapbook by now? Well...it's almost done. I have ONE page left. But I've been temporarily neglecting the project in favor of another. I'm making a sweater that looks like Bella's prom sweater. Pretty much that equals I bought a plain, boring white sweater...and am sewing on all kinds of appliques and beads and stuff and making it personalized! I doubt I'll ever wear it, aside from when I'm dressing up as Bella. But that's definitely not the point. Did I mention tonight is a costume party??

Photos coming soon... I promise!

♥
Bella

it's almost done!!

2009-10-13T09:38:00.003-05:00

Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm pretty excited. I only have FIVE (count them - one, two, three, four, five!) pages left to create in my honeymoon album! This project has been so consuming of my free time for the past few months, I can hardly even imagine moving on to something else - but soon, I will be doing just that!! Come to my house and I will show you my beautiful glorious album. I am perhaps a little too proud of this book. But I just can't help it. ;)

Other news -

Planning a Twilight Ball at work. I am getting paid to make dozens of Team Edward / Team Jacob buttons, and for the actual ball, I get to dress like Bella, eat food, and watch the movie. It's gonna be fabulous.
Audition week is done. We're currently trying to find a Santa Claus for our production. Sadly, if we don't find one by next week, we're going to have to cancel the show. :( I'm messaging everyone I can think of.
AGDT is currently in the 5th week of practice. That means I have 3 weeks left. That means I seriously need to get some costume and prop work done. I have done practically nothing for these plays. Yikes.
People are starting to think I will never finish the AGDT Spring and Summer DVDs. Hey, I'm starting to think I'll never finish them!! I have a day off next Saturday when I will be home by myself all day. I'm thinking...I should probably have a video edit marathon.

That's about it. Hopefully next time I update...the honeymoon book will be done! :)

life just never stops, does it?

2009-10-07T14:58:00.002-05:00

I think last time I stopped by this blog I made myself a promise that I would update regularly. Well, so much for that.

We had the first night of auditions yesterday for The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, our newest BSCT adventure. Andrew is directing this one, and I am the AD. I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust back to the theatre lifestyle after having several months off. I'm not sure it's going to be a pleasant transition... Anyway, more auditions tonight and callbacks tomorrow. We're hoping for a lot of adults to show up tonight, as we only had about 3 yesterday - and we definitely need more than that!!

I have made a decision. It is a pretty sad decision, and one of which I am not truly proud. But it must be so. I am going to purchase our Christmas cards this year. I had already gotten the supplies to make a sample card, but I've had those for about 3 weeks and have yet to pick them up - so I'm thinking, now that my free time has gone from little to absolutely none, when in the world am I going to make 150+ Christmas cards? Yes, never. So...sadly...it's going to be Shutterfly cards this year. Oh well. I hope to return to making beautiful cards next year - and maybe everyone will understand. Still have to get that perfect Christmas card PHOTO, though. ;)

I currently have an awful paper cut on my middle left finger. I sliced it open on a p-slip at work yesterday. It hurts to touch things, wash my hands, etc. Not pleasant at all, but I (of course) failed to bring band-aids, so I'm suffering through until 5.

Old news now...but new to you! The honeymoon scrapbook has made much progress!! I believe I have 13 pages remaining until it is complete! This is so exciting for me - as I don't actually have a completed album in my possession, except for the basic 6x6 I made for Andrew the Christmas we got engaged. I cannot wait to have a finished, beautiful, wonderful album that I can hold anytime I want. So exciting!! :)

The Crop Club also went very, very well...I think that is going to be a fun little diversion from "real work" once a month. heehee.

And that is all I have time for. Sorry it may not be complete. Sorry it may not be logical. I must return to all those other things...!

it's a rainy monday.

2009-09-21T11:21:00.002-05:00

Apologies for my absence. I would like to be one of those bloggers who writes about fascinating things on a daily basis, but I don't have that many amazing things happen - and when they do, the last thing I have time for is to write about them!!

I spent most of last week suffering through a horrible allergy/cold/sinus mess. I finally caved and went to the doctor on Thursday (symptoms started on Sunday), and she said it was entirely allergy related. I'm just not sure, because it was pretty awful. Anyway, it ended up as a sinus infection and thank goodness I got meds when I did, because there were a couple NOT pretty days over the weekend. Yuck.

It's my birthday week!! I get pretty excited about a week before my birthday, because I get email coupons from Zio's, Red Robin, Moe's, Coldstone, Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, Texas Roadhouse, Famous Dave's, V's, Red Lobster, and Buca di Beppo saying "we love you SO much, we want to give you FREE FOOD!!" Granted, I don't need that much food in one week...but it's nice to be loved. :) So far, I have just used the Moe's. Hoping for Zio's, Red Robin, and of course all the ice cream!!!

People think my job is easy. They don't realize that sometimes, I spend hours searching for books on the "Origins of Agriculture" for 3-year-olds at the Ivy League preschool. Apparently we're trying to create some little geniuses, but I'm pretty sure they will find a lot more interest in "My First Big Farm Book" than anything that has a serious historical content.

Happy library tidings, the scrapbooking club at work is beginning this month! We had our first scrapbooking class last week - and I honestly will say I was not impressed with the style of scrapbooking used by the presenter of the class. She covered the basics pretty well, though. She will be at tonight's class, and next week's class - which is doubling as our first official "Crop Club" meeting. After that --- it's all me. Woohoo! I would love to work for a scrapbook magazine or company, but I guess this is a decent first step. Hopefully it will be so popular that I will be "forced" to expand it into multiple nights every month. Heh. ;)

On the scrapbooking note, more happy tidings! I finished 4 pages in the honeymoon album last night!! The poor book has been sitting there, just looking at me and haunting me all week - as I spent most of my time at home curled up on the couch wishing my head would just go on and explode! - and finally - finally I was able to work on it yesterday. I wrapped up the entire American Museum of Natural History 4-page spread, and there was much joy in my house!! I have about 23 pages left to complete. I can't remember how many pages there are in total...but I think I'm over halfway done!! yay! (so much for having it done by the end of June...remember that goal?! ha!)

Andrew and I spent a few hours last night cleaning out the garage. Wow, it's amazing how much junk can accumulate in the course of just a few weeks! We had not yet put away anything from the Summer AGDT performance...that was most of the problem. Thankfully, the space is now functional - just in time for the Fall AGDT class that will be rehearsing there today. I believe strongly in procrastination!!

In other news, we finally hung up some wall stuff in our bedroom this weekend. I bought a shelf set approximately 6 months ago, and it's been sitting on the bedroom floor ever since. We picked out a great giant wall frame with a quote - "Life is not measured by how many breaths you take, but by how many moments take your breath away." - or something to that effect. Anyway, we got that and the shelves hung and I'm super excited! I think I want to paint something soon. Most of the walls in my house have specks and scratches and holes and dirt and general yuck covering them. So it's time for a little revamping. Naturally I decide this a couple weeks before we start another BSCT production - when my life will descend into utter chaos and I will lose all sanity and lack of ability to accomplish anything from my to-do list. Oh well. :)

And those are my random thoughts for the day. Sometimes I wish there were a cohesive thought to the way I write...but then, this style pretty much describes my life right now, so I guess it's all right. Here's hoping I don't wait weeks to post again!

To do and NOT to do...

2009-09-11T12:52:00.002-05:00

I had quite a to-do list last night. A few things included on that list were -

make photo DVDs from LPSG
get the DVDs ready to mail
make a New Baby card for a friend
get package to said friend ready to mail
clean the kitchen
clean the master bathroom
hang some shelves
work out (!)
cook dinner
organize checks from AGDT, LPSG DVDs, etc

Here are some things NOT included on my to-do list -

trip on a ripped slipper
fall halfway down a staircase with a plate full of spaghetti, chicken, broccoli, and bread
have said food land upon leg and scald you
completely stain clothing
run emergency load of laundry
have emotional breakdown
eat half of husband's dinner since own food is now gone
fall into bed at 8:30 and accomplish nothing

I'll let you decide which of the two lists I decided to go with.

will it never end?

2009-08-31T11:14:00.000-05:00

The video project goes on. and on. and on. The weekend was definitely productive as far as the project goes...no surprise, considering I put in probably 15 solid hours of work. My best guess is that I have another 5-6 hours of icky sound check and menu creation before rendering. I'm hoping to get it done in less time than that, so that it can be done TODAY. I doubt things will go quite that smoothly, but I can always dream.

Who would've guessed that I would still be dealing with Little Princess / Secret Garden in SEPTEMBER? Wow...we're coming up on a year of work on this project. Pretty sad.

I hate insurance!!!

2009-08-28T17:19:00.002-05:00

I ran out of contacts yesterday. Frantic, I tried to order more. Of course I couldn't, because of course it's been far longer than a year since I've had an eye exam. So I scheduled one, at the first place I called, because I don't have vision insurance, and who cares, right?

Ha. So the new eye doctor tells me the brand of contacts I've been wearing for 7 years are only supposed to be 2-week contacts (I've always been told they were for a month's wear - and I never actually abide by THAT), and gives me new, stronger ones that a) hurt my eyes, b) give me a nice little headache and c) are actually -.25 stronger than what he prescribed, so I'm wondering how my poor eyes are feeling about that. All of this nonsense for the low, low price of $95! yay!

Then I get back to work and discover - oh, guess what - I actually DO have vision insurance, and of course I didn't pick a doctor on the plan, so YES, I will be paying for the full visit when I could have just paid the $20 copay. And I will be buying contacts on top of that as well. Can you tell that I am thrilled.

I shudder to think of how much time I will spend in my future trying to understand this insurance nonsense. I can't even process insurance information correctly for myself. What in the world will I do when I have kids?!!

I just want new contacts. Someone help me, please.

there are some things...

2009-08-24T18:11:00.003-05:00

...that I truly enjoy.

...the 5 hours I spend off work on Monday afternoons (during the very short break between AGDT classes - this semester it's 4 weeks, 2 of which are now gone, and 1 of which is Labor Day and doesn't really count). It's the one time of the week when I feel that my house is not a lost cause, I might eventually catch up on the laundry, and there is hope for all of the never-ending projects.
...finding that there is a new specialty scrapbooking store in downtown Lees Summit, less than 5 miles from my house. It was especially nice to find that they carry a lot of specialty papers that I previously had to drive to Archiver's to acquire. I hope that someday I can have my own little business in a quaint little shop on a downtown street. Such fun!
...Date Night with Andrew. Sure, I might accidentally leave my delicious leftover Zio's on the table (along with the picture that he drew me with crayons on the tablecloth), and I might be horrified that some Hollywood genius picked Eric Bana to play Henry de Tamble in The Time Traveler's Wife movie adaptation, but... Gap's 40th birthday party meant piano music, free cake, bottled water, and M&M's at the checkout counter, PLUS $20 off delightful new jeans and an additional 15% off my total purchase. Eric Bana may be a crummy actor, but the story was still beautiful and I cried through the last half hour of the movie. Plus I spent time with my amazing man, without worrying about any of the silly projects waiting in my house. Yes, date night is a good thing.
...the feeling of accomplishment when I finally finish - or even start - a project. I put together the preliminary stuff on the AGDT Spring 09 DVD today in about an hour. That's a really good feeling.
...having my iPod at work. Really, what's better than being able to tune out the world around you and surround yourself in Josh Groban, fantastic Broadway (Little Mermaid, Shrek, Young Frankenstein and more), Coldplay, Owl City, and random old favorites from Straylight Run, Snow Patrol, Augustana, and Sarah Brightman. It really makes life much more bearable.
...eBay. There's something remarkable about online shopping, but eBay really takes the cake. I mean, you can find some amazing deals, interesting and exciting things that are either not available in America or out of print altogether, or just about anything. There's really nothing quite like the thrill of winning an auction in the last 5 seconds of bidding. And on top of all these good things, when it's all said and done, you get a surprise package in your mailbox containing these amazing purchases a few days later! It's all around just a good thing. And hey, if you have time and inclination, you can even make money selling things on eBay too. :)

That's it for now. What do YOU truly enjoy? Make time for one of those things...it's always worth it.

a true dining "experience"...

2009-08-24T17:40:00.003-05:00

These days, it seems all of the businesses in the world are trying to make sure that when you visit them, you don't just buy something, or browse, or simply eat your food quickly and then leave. No, they want you to have a complete experience. (This is a huge push at the library right now...which is why I get to host a scrapbook club on work time starting in September. HA!)

So, our latest "experience" took place yesterday afternoon at 54th Street Bar and Grill. We met Andrew's parents there for lunch after church. Our server brought us drinks quickly, and we decided what to eat.

The waiter came back to take our order and we asked if we could use 2 different coupons (a free appetizer with entree purchase; and a free entree from the 54th punch card). He said no - if everything was on one ticket. So we asked him to split the ticket so that each couple could use a coupon. He said that was fine.

Now, those of you who know us, know that Andrew and I are incredibly picky eaters. It's very rare that we go somewhere and can order food without making exceptions such as "no tomatoes, no onions, no peppers, and the sauce on the side." So Andrew's order went something like this --

"We want an appetizer - potato skins, but we don't want the ranch dressing ON the skins, we'd like it on the side. And the 7-oz Sirloin, Medium-rare (...."um sir, we can't do medium-rare, just medium...") - okay, Medium is fine. And the fresh vegetables for the side instead of potatoes."

Well, the poor waiter was just SO confused about this. It took him about 2 minutes to write it down. Then I ordered my Blackened Chicken Caesar Salad. He paused, then asked me... "and what kind of dressing?" I blinked, thought "um..." and said "well, Caesar." He goes, "oh, okay!" and off he goes.

After about 15 minutes, we realize that a) we do not have our appetizer and b) we also have not been given any bread. He finally comes back to refill our drinks and we ask about this. He assures us everything is on the way.

The appetizer arrived, finally (5 small potato skins. Literally 5. It was over $1 per skin), and we ate it pretty quickly. The waiter came back and took our appetizer plates, though we still had not been given any bread. When the bread finally came, he had to get more plates, and then had to get regular butter as some of our party didn't like the honey butter. We devoured the bread in about 3 minutes. Then we waited again. We finally asked him where our salads were, and he rushed off, supposedly to get them. He came back sheepishly after a few minutes and said "um...I'm really sorry, but I just put in your order. I forgot to do it before. So, we'll get it out really soon."

Then we waited...and waited...and waited...and realized after awhile that we had been sitting at the table for close to an hour with no sign of our meal. Eventually (!) a team of people brought out some plates of food for us - a steak for Andrew's dad, a salad for his mom. Their orders were correct. Andrew was given a small side dish of steamed veggies. I was offered a regular chicken salad (way different than Caesar - it contains lots of icky things I won't eat!), with a small dish of Caesar dressing to put on it. I said, "I ordered the Caesar salad." He said, "oh - I thought you wanted this?" I said, "no." So they took the salad away and I was left without food.

It's always amusing to see how quickly food can actually be put together in a restaurant. I had my new (correct) salad within about 5 minutes. However, Andrew still had only a dish of vegetables. About this time, the manager came out to console us - though we had not really caused a fuss. He asked what was going on and when he heard about the missing steak, he said he would get it out immediately and would also remove it from our bill.

The steak finally arrived, on a plate with another set of steaming veggies. Andrew's salad also arrived about this time, with blue cheese dressing instead of ranch. We ended up boxing it and taking it home, as we were all pretty amazed at how poorly our meal had been handled!

The icing on the cake, of course, was when we had to settle up. The waiter had forgotten that we were supposed to have two separate checks, so he had to go back and have the manager take care of that. The receipt was confusing, but we ended up paying for 2 entrees, Andrew's parent's coffees.........and a $1.99 side of steamed veggies - the original "meal" they delivered to Andrew. His mom just paid for it. Who knows what would have happened if we had asked for yet more service.

We're pretty sure the waiter was new. At least...that's what we're hoping. :)

whew

2009-08-19T23:56:00.001-05:00

So, in the last couple of weeks, life has been a combination of blurred, insane, ludicrous, and exhausting. Apologies for the lack of posting, but 1) no one reads this and 2) I have so many things to do, I'm actually starting to forget things and make mistakes. This doesn't happen with me, so I'm pretty upset. I've started using my Outlook calendar at work, but all that's doing is giving me angry messages when something is overdue. :(

Sometimes I think to myself, I really need to start saying "no" to every new idea. I really need to reduce the level of stress in my life. I really need to remove some of the projects I have taken on so that I have time to stop and enjoy life, rather than rushing through it at the speed of light. Unfortunately, of all my various activities, the only one I'm willing to give up (at least part time) is work, and more unfortunately, that's the one I have to keep because it pays the most. *sigh*

Lousiana was hot and humid, and it took us most of forever to get there and back...but it was lots of fun. We stayed in a sweet little bed and breakfast called Susan's Cottages and it was very nice. I'll try to post pictures sometime. We attended the wedding of Andrew's college roommate and helped to fill the getaway car with balloons and streamers. The drive home was remarkably long, and our GPS friend Jane took us a ways out of the way. But eventually we returned to Missouri and when we finally got home around midnight, I discovered a beautiful PIANO waiting for me!!! It needs to be tuned, but it's wonderful. My husband is amazing. Happy Anniversary to us! :)

The following weekend (Aug 6-8) we traveled to Jefferson City, MO so that Andrew could attend the Missouri State Genealogy Association Conference. We stayed in the hotel where the conference was being held, ate some pretty bad hotel restaurant food, and went on a pretty boring tour of the Missouri State Archives. I also managed to forget my toothbrush, toothpaste, snacks, and tweezers, so I journeyed out to Walgreens to save myself from certain doom during the trip. I found a Goodwill store and had fun just browsing for a little while...the problem with my life right now is that I never get to just BROWSE! :) The rest of my time was spent in our hotel room, where I set up a mini scrapbooking studio and watched the entire first season of Grey's Anatomy on DVD. Creative freedom + Dr. McDreamy = a very good weekend. :)

When we returned on Saturday, we had to rush to Blue Springs for the first annual BSCT picnic! Sadly, only about a quarter of those who RSVP'd showed up, but hey, we had some fun times.

The following week was wild and crazy, as I spent every evening trying to prepare for the AGDT performance, which was on August 15. I got the AGDT scrapbook completely caught up (aside from Little Women and Ms. Scrooge, which are going in a separate TEEN book), the night before the play. So yes. It was up to date for less than a day. Oh well. I'm determined to stay on top of it so that it can't take me 2 years to complete again. And maybe now that that's out of the way, I'll have time to actually finish my honeymoon book! *fingers crossed*

Anyway, the AGDT performance was great! I have to admit, the classes drain me, but when we get to that performance and I see all those little girls beaming at curtain call, it's all worth it and I want to do it all over again. I love teaching.

And...that's about it. I've spent a good majority of my time since Saturday sleeping, watching TV with my hubby, and feeling guilty because I'm too exhausted to clean my house. But oh well. The house is getting there. Sorta.

Less than 4 weeks until fall classes start, so I'm trying to coordinate all of that. Fun times will be had by all!...if I can get the schedule worked out and fill up the classes. Of course I do all of this by email on my work time. Someday I will have more time. I know this is true. I know it, I know it, I know it.

Oh, random call from the Murder Mystery folks means a quick job this Friday evening, plus a weekend later in September! Yay for getting paid for something I actually enjoy - PLUS a completely free weekend getaway! :)

Well, there's a brief wrap on my life the past month or so. I'm off to accomplish more things. Date night tomorrow! I'm excited. :)

another monday...

2009-07-27T20:15:00.005-05:00

Why do I always seem to write updates on Mondays? Is it just because Monday is the longest day in the history of the universe and it knows how much I hate it and it seeks to destroy me? That seems likely.

2 more weeks remain of AGDT classes. I have gathered very few props, but most of the costumes are done. Everyone has at least SOMETHING to wear. Thank goodness! I am counting down the days to when AGDT will be my only "full-time" job. It was so sad; my public school student asked me today what the fall classes would be...and I didn't have the heart to tell her there won't be one for her age group in a time slot that falls after school. Poor kid. I want to give these little girls the opportunities they can't find elsewhere! I haven't decided about summer classes for next year because I will (hopefully) be entirely too busy being onstage in Beauty and the Beast. :D

Finished up with Harry Potter last night - WOW, I forgot a lot of things!! I think I only read book 7 once and it was probably in about 12 hours, so I didn't really absorb much. Anyway - excited for the new movies but am speculating on how destroyed they will likely be. But now that I've left Hogwarts for awhile, I've moved back into my current favorite chick lit, Sophie Kinsella. (no Hogwarts...but still in Britain!) I've knocked out the Shopaholic series and am now reading Remember Me? which is good so far (chapter 6). There are too many treasures out there waiting to be read; there just aren't enough hours in my day. Oh for the summers I spent doing NOTHING but reading up a complete storm in order to win every local reading contest.

Footloose at BSCT wrapped yesterday. It was supposed to be a pretty simple strike - and I suppose it was - but by the time it was all said and done, we were exhausted! We had to go with the group over to the Civic Center to make sure everything was put back where it belonged. Not a fun task, since there are construction trailers surrounding the building and getting into our prop room is like going on a wild adventure to nowhere. But, all was completed, and there will be no more cutting footloose in Blue Springs for awhile.

The honeymoon scrapbook, which has been sadly not mentioned in quite some time, has even more sadly not made much progression. I believe we are currently at 17 completed pages; I'm in the midst of a 4-page spread on Madame Tussaud's. AGDT and BSCT have been consuming all hints of "free moments" so I usually work on the scrapbook in 5-minute segments, after I eat dinner, or while waiting for the laundry to finish in the morning. Oh well. My goal was to have it done before a year had passed, but hey - at least it is UNDERWAY. Most of my projects don't get CLOSE to that!

We leave town on Thursday night to head to Louisiana for one of Andrew's college roommates' wedding. I can't say I'm overjoyed that we'll be spending roughly 13 hours in the car on our 1-year wedding anniversary, but it's okay. I'm sure we'll survive and it might even be fun! Andrew found a really cute little bed and breakfast where we'll stay while we're down there. Hopefully we won't get attacked by an alligator. :)

sick days are no fun.

2009-07-21T12:47:00.004-05:00

The plus to a sick day is that I get to stay home, sleep, be productive, and do things I normally can't even dream of doing (scrapbooking, watching chick flicks). The downside is that, well, I feel awful. I guess it's the price we have to pay.

I'm plodding away at this LPSG DVD. Roughly 18 minutes of footage is done. It's going a little faster today, but my eyes are starting to hurt, so I'll probably take a break soon.

Saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the crazy busy midnight opening! I have heard a lot of mixed reviews, but I thought it was one of the best as far as adaptation. I'm now reading book 7 for what I think is just the second time. The book was released back in 2007, about a month before I met Andrew and became really busy falling in love. :)

Yesterday I had a really bad craving for cupcakes. Someone brought delicious chocolate ones to work, but I ended up leaving work early and so only had one. When I came home and was wearing pajamas, I felt inspired to cook the one remaining cake mix in my home into red velvet mini cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I'm now living entirely on those. We have no groceries whatsoever. It's pretty sad. But I don't feel well enough to put on makeup and brave the grocery store. My wonderful husband has volunteered to do the shopping tonight while I am teaching my AGDT class.

I know no one reads this, but come see FOOTLOOSE next week at BSCT!! I'm dressing up in crazy 80's fashions just to sell concessions and tickets and StarGrams, and it'd be a real shame for you to miss seeing me with a scrunchie-bound side ponytail. It's pretty fantastic. And the show's good, too!

That's about it for today. Sorry I'm a bore. But wait - no one actually sees these posts! I guess we're okay then. ;)

triumph!

2009-07-14T11:34:00.002-05:00

ha! There have been many naysayers, but I told you I would finish the Harry Potter books before the movie! I have just finished reading Half-Blood Prince - which, granted, is not the final book, but IS the movie that debuts this evening at midnight. I have not yet decided if we're going to the midnight show, as it will make for a very long night - and we have a VERY long day ahead of us tomorrow. Not sure the complete lack of sleep is best for our health. Also my leg is cramping - rather like it has lost circulation, so sitting in a really crowded theatre at 1am is not sounding like the most fun option.

Anyway. Just wanted to brag that I DID IT! :)

weekends are just not long enough!!

2009-07-06T09:48:00.001-05:00

I could use another 2 days of rest, as my weekend was really not that relaxing and I accomplished practically nothing on the never-ending to-do list. It seems far too soon to be back at work starting another week. *sigh*

It was a fun weekend nonetheless, with a 4th of July wedding and spending time with some friends who were visiting from out of town.

CONGRATULATIONS to Eddie, Christi, and Peter Parker on the birth of baby Liberty last Wednesday!! She is beautiful and Auntie Jewels is really excited to meet her. I don't know when this will take place...but hopefully soon. :)

Harry Potter update... I'm about 450 pages into Order of the Phoenix. I've started having treadmill/reading marathons in an attempt to get the books done in time. I think I can make it. Unless something drastic happens.

I've been working on the BSCT Little Princess / Secret Garden DVD project. I'd forgotten that it's a lot more difficult to edit a video with 3 takes than it is with just 1. I have promised so many people I would have this project done by now...I feel guilty, but even my guilt does not provide enough time to get the project under control. I'm averaging 3 hours editing 10 minutes of footage. At that speed, for two hour-long shows, you can imagine the dark scary path that lies before me. ugh. Editing is a full time job and I don't have that many hours left in my life!!

So far most of my flowers are still alive. My thumb may not be completely green, but at least it has a hint of color in there somewhere. :) The roses, unfortunately, seem to be the choice snack food of some pest living in my yard. We've talked about working on a solution, yet haven't had time to go to the store to search for something yet.

And that's about it. Hard to believe summer is half over already...it feels like I should have a nice big vacation here sometime soon. Oh well...

rescued from dark despair!

2009-06-30T13:29:00.001-05:00

One of my AGDT students arrived practically in tears at my 2:30 class yesterday. When asked what was wrong, she explained that her miniature "Nellie" doll had just accidentally rolled down the drain in front of my house. Poor thing, she was trying so hard to not be completely devastated, but having been an American-Girl-obsessed-8-year-old in my lifetime, I understood what she was going through. We decided to get through class and then see if we might be able to get the doll back.

Class ended a few minutes early, so the girls and I headed out to the drain. We tried flashlights and I was lying on the concrete slab trying to see inside, but the angle was such that all I could see was the little ladder inside the manhole. This gave me inspiration and I ran back to the garage to get the best tools I could find...a hammer and a screwdriver. The screwdriver proved ineffective, but the hammer was very useful in prying the manhole cover partially off the hole. WOW, those covers are incredibly heavy!!! By the time I had gotten a corner lifted, one of the moms had arrived and came over to help me drag it off. I was pretty afraid someone was going to lose a toe, but thankfully we were okay. Once the cover was off, we could look down inside the hole - and great joy! There was Miss Nellie O'Malley, resting facedown on the ground far below us. The girls were so thrilled to at least see her, but I still had to get her out.

(Nellie is the little spot of blue on the left side of the photo).

I ran into the house to get tennis shoes and then carefully lowered myself into the hole.

Nellie was unscathed aside from a bit of grass debris in her hair and on her dress.

I brushed her off and handed her up! Getting out of the hole was a little more difficult than getting in, but it was definitely worth it when I heard the cheers and saw the look on Holli's face when her doll was saved.

So the adventure ended. Crazy thing - I'm dying to go back down in that hole and explore. It's creepy...but definitely cool.

2009-06-22T18:47:00.003-05:00

AGDT summer classes are here. Back when I was planning them, it seemed like they were so far away. Well, they're here! yay. The kids are fun, as always. But the exhaustion and lack of time are here, too. Oh well. Someday I will catch up on everything. At least, that's what I will tell myself forever.

My sparkly Times Square page is giving me fits. The sparkly paper will not accept my normal adhesive, so I bought a liquid glue today. Hopefully this will force it into submission.

Hobby Lobby has scrapbook paper and wall art on sale this week, so I also bought almost all of the supplies for my scrapbook room wall words project. I'll post pics once it's done.

Last Friday, we spent the day working in the yard - ripping up the old, dead shrubs in the front yard, and replacing them with new beautiful shrubs and flowers. It was a long, tiring day, and both Andrew and I were rather sunburned, but the result was worth it. I now have such pretty flowers! I don't remember what they're all called, but they are purple and pink and gorgeous! I even got a little "Knockout Rose" bush. It's adorable and I ♥ it!!

I have progressed to page 134 of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 23 days and 2 and 3/4 books to go. There is hope yet.