Another week means another post about favorites. I have been meaning to post about this website for quite sometime but just keep forgetting. I love nearly everything on here check it out. Their notepads are hilarious! And I especially like the card organizer. Knock Knock.

Well folks, it finally happened. I have been sucked in by the kiddie lit phenomena by the name of Harry Potter. I am nearing the end of book 2 and am looking forward to starting book 3 sometime this weekend. It is still strange for me to think about working in the Big Bookstore's children's department for nearly 2 years and never laying a finger on the Harry Potter books except to reshelve them. I hadn't read a young adult book in quite sometime, I had forgotten how much fun they are. I had been on a quest for a book to keep my interest and I have found them. I think my heart and mind will always love reading books for that age group.

In arty news I will be getting a new studio space at home! Yay! I will be moving into our other spare room which is slightly larger and has 3 big windows as opposed to my 1 little window that I currently have. So tons of light in this room. I get to pick out the paint color too. My currnet studio space I chose a plain and simple beige color b/c I didn't want the color of the walls to effect the way the colors I was working on (artwork) looked. Well I think the lots-o-windows will help minimize that in my new room and frankly I don't care about that as much anymore. So......I am open to anything. I need to take some time to go to the hardware store and look at paint chips but I am currently thinking of possible a light blue color maybe to go with my white desk. And I am hoping to take this room change and an oppertunity to purge things that I don't need because right now my room is completely overflowing with crap! This new room might also require a trip to IKEA for some cute storage. And with all the purging maybe I will have to ship out a couple of packages to people I know would love some craft supplies!

Along the line of changing rooms, our house is going is going through some major changes as well. In about a week we will be getting carpet for our living room and hallway to cover up our hardwood floors. They were nice for a while but after getting Penny we have just gotten sick of having to sweep and vaccuum nearly daily. We are getting a berber carpet that will hopefully hide her hair a bit better and will only require a once a week vaccuumig. We also will be purchasing a new vanity for our bathroom which is currently the ugly dark stained wood of the 1970s. Our new vanity will be white and will have better storage areas. A new vanity also means new paint color for the bathroom. We have picked out a wonderful aqua blue color which along with the white of the vanity will brighten up the room and give it the update that it desperately needs.

Found out that we have been starving our poor dog for about a year. We normally buy her a huge bag of dog food which she was almost out of so we went to buy some more. We decided to try a different brand this time. We get home and mix part of the new with part of the old and she managed to pick out all the new and leave the old. So the next day we gave her the new stuff. The food was barely out of the food scoop and she had snarffed it all down!!!! Right in front of us even!!! All this time we thought she was self concious and wouldn't eat in front of us (sometimes it would take her 2 days to finish 1 bowl of food) when really she hated her food! Poor pup!!!!

This weekend will be full of fun and friends. Tomorrow we will be going to DM to do skywalk mini golf. It's such a fun event and there is always a big group of us that signs up for it every year. They set up 3 different mini golf courses in the skywalk. Each hole is sponsored by a different business that designs their hole and you get a prize from that sponsor if you get a hole-in-one! So that will be a lot of fun. Then on Sunday we will be heading over to K & E's for a Scrappin' Superbowl Party. They will have the superbowl playing on tvs both upstairs and downstairs but downstairs there will also be tables set up so us girls can gab and work on our scrapbooking projects! How fun! So I am sure there will be pictures posted of this weekends fun.

Happy Friday!

Planning a trip to Florida means planning a fun wardrobe too. So far I have spotted these at Payless that I tried on and they are absolutely to die for!!!

I also found these cute cropped pants that I am considering. They seem beach worthy.

Update: My swimsuit top won't be here in time, so I guess that swimsuit will be saved for the honeymoon.

It seems that my posts lately have been about favorite things. Well to add to that I have fallen in love with Moleskin notebooks! While working at the big bookstore I fell in love with them but couldn't bring myself to actually purchase them. Well Big Bookstore's sister store is going out of business and has them for 50% off so of course I had to go make a purchase. I bought one that is lined, one with graph paper and one that has 6 small pockets for holding things like receipts, tickets, etc. Looking at the website they offer so many different kinds of notebooks, much more than I have seen around here.
Will have to figure out how to get my hands on the Storyboard one, that would be great for doodling at work!

I have decided to give up pop again. I am hoping that by doing this it will be easier for me to shed a few pounds before Florida. Without pop in the afternoon I thought that there was a good possiblity that I might die, or at least be a touch crabby. Well I remembered that I had some Crystal Lite packets left in my desk from the last time I gave up pop. So I mixed some up and holy bovine! I forgot how much I liked the stuff! Though the past couple of days I go through my little tantrum of wanting a pop, then I take a drink of my juice and am fine. My favorite is the Classic Orange.

On a different note Ali Edwards recently talked about creative essentials in her latest issue of AEzine. It made me think about what my necessities to create are.

1. pens

2. photos

3. patterened papers

4. xyron 510

5. my circle punches

6. ruler

7. my purple x-acto knife

I could do a lot with those bare essentials though I love all the extra do-dads too. I am especially loving on anything 7Gypsies right now which is a bit hard to come by in my neck of the woods.

Oh, here are a couple of belated Christmas pictures.

Penny and her huge bandana:

Our family squished into a small part of the full living room pre-tripod:

Out at the farm with my brothers and Liz:

My future looks bright….and sunny that is. I will be heading down to a little island off the gulf coast of Florida for 7 days at the end of March.



I am really excited. I love love love to plan vacations!!! I love finding things to do in unknown territories, though Missy and I will be traveling back to the same spot we went to last year. But that means we get to try all the stuff we didn’t do last time around. I am not sure quite yet what I will plan but I have already been scoping out reviews of some restaurants that we didn’t try last year. Though we are going to make a point to go back to one small café for breakfast again, they have the best whole wheat pancakes and I can order a whole bowl of yummy blueberries!!!
New trips = a new mix cd (or 2). Needless to say, this is one of the most fun parts about planning a trip. I love making a good mix cd that fits the adventure. And with a new trip should come a new wardrobe right? Or at least a new partial wardrobe. I already have my swimsuit picked out:

I also just got word that the house that we stayed in last year was sold but the guy bought a bigger one which we will be staying in!!!!! Bring on the sun and relaxation!!!!

While I was on vacation I rediscovered the most wonderful cheap cleaning product COMET!

Gets those tough stains off the counter and sink! Yeah, I know, if I cleaned up everyday I wouldn't have that problem. I can't believe I just blogged about a household cleaner. Sad.

post #2 for 1-2-07

So being the girly girl that I am these days I quite enjoy Bath & Body Works semi anual sale. Just had a few dollars to spare the other day and bought these shimmer lotions:

Christmas was nice. Quick with the families so that we could get home and just relax together. We scored an eliptical machine from Santa so you know what we hope to be doing on a regular basis. We both have put on some pounds the past couple of months and we sure can tell it by the way our pants fit. I am hoping to use it regularly. It is nice and quiet which makes it easy to use and watch tv at the sametime which also makes time go by while on the machine. I also loaded up Paco (my nano) with some speedy tunes to get my blood pumpin'.

Mike spent his time off working on the house. He painted all of the trim in the living room and kitchen white. It was quite a task since it was stained super dark. Between primer and real paint it took about 6 coats. We then were able to hang up a curtain rods I had but haven't yet bought curtains for the living room, kitchen is all set. He also installed a new back door. Our previous door was actually an inside door meant for bedrooms and such. But now we have a real one.

I spent a lot of my time finishing my uncle's wedding invitations and also am taking on another set of wedding invitations for another wedding, my little side job is slowly getting steadier which is kind of fun.

Back at work after 10 days of vacation. I would rather be at home where I could wear pink slippers all day and not worry about if my shirt is tucked in or not.