Happy Earth Day!

Check out this video that was created by the BBC. We don’t subscribe to TV service or have an antenna so this is new to me and I LOVE it - just beautiful. Made me all teary. I {HEART} this world.

If you’ve been lurking through my blog you probably know that I am big on living green. I don’t want to repeat myself so I’ll repost a previous digital page that I did. I love this page because the topic is on something that I really care about.

My husband thinks I’m crazy but I told him that the main reason I drive less is not because of the gas price but because I don’t want to use too much gas and to help lessen the amount of things are emitted into the ecosystem. The same for having just one child. Hubby wants another one but I’m having a hard time agreeing because having another one equals to another person using up the world’s resources.

I’m crazy, huh?

So, enjoy this day. Hope it’s beautiful where you’re at. It’s very comfortable here. It just rained very early in the morning. Makes a great day to just curl up and read a book.

A Week at the Gym

Another house — this time on a card {::SMILES}. I used the Love Elsie stamp set that I purchased from SIStv. Love Elsie has some new products and she named them Emma. They’re soooo cute and wouldn’t they look good on some Emma pages? Urgh… it’s crazy but I feel the need to buy and I haven’t even used what I just got except maybe one or two items. Again another different card, more doodles, and just free styling stuff, but every now and then I like to branch out and try something new.

To not bore you, I want to share the below. It’s HILARIOUS!!!! I am the hardest person to amuse, hubby hates it, and I was busting out laughing at this one.

A WOMAN’S WEEK AT THE GYM

This is dedicated to everyone who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine.

Dear Diary,

For my birthday this year, my daughter (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the local health club for me. Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader 43 years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try.

I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer named Belinda, who identified herself as a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear.

My daughter seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started! The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress.
________________________________
MONDAY:
Started my day at 6:00 a.m. Tough to get out of bed, but found it was well worth it when I arrived at the health club to find Belinda waiting for me. She is something of a Greek goddess - with blond hair, dancing eyes and a dazzling white smile. Woo Hoo!!

Belinda gave me a tour and showed me the machines. I enjoyed watching the skillful way in which she conducted her aerobics class after my workout today. Very inspiring!

Belinda was encouraging as I did my sit-ups, although my gut was already aching from holding it in the whole time she was around. This is going to be a FANTASTIC week-!!
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Hawaiian Chair and a Test

I am testing two YouTube plugins for my blog… so bear with me. But do check out the videos. They’re are hilarious! NOT good for scrapbooking or cardmaking that’s for sure!

EDIT: Ok, found the plug-in that shows/can play YouTube videos on RSS readers. If you’re using the installed version of WordPress, go to www.wordpress.org and check out WP YouTube. The updated version is very nice. Ok, enough geek stuff…

Masculine Card

I made this card for my dad. He lives in Indonesia, that’s where all my family are except for my sister and a cousin or two. His birthday is the day after M’s. Actually, if M was born in Indonesia, they’d have the same birth date since Indonesia is 12 hrs ahead of us.

I’m not very good at masculine cards so this is as masculine as I could get. I like the ribbon. It’s brown, so kind of manly, right?

I used my Cuttlebug (I really love using it to emboss) and my old designer paper from SU. The stamp is “Love It” and I think it’s one of last year’s hostess yet. I used my paper piercing tool on the brown cardstock, I love this tool too, and a brown satin ribbon from Joann’s.

I hope my dad likes it. This is the first handmade card I’ve ever made for him. Really bad, huh? I usually just send him a text message and a phone call or a Hallmark card, a text message, and a phone call.

Ok, I got tag’d by KathleenH. She’s one of my blog sisters. It’s five things on different items. If you care to read about, click the link below.

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Happy Holidays!

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday and a great new year to come. Besides the death of my wonderful dog and beloved grandfather, 2007 has been a good year for our family. We couldn’t have asked from more and we feel very blessed. I hope that next year will be the same if not better.

Although I have no resolution, I do hope that my crafty side of me will flourish this coming year and that I’ll be able to share my creation with you on a regular basis. I know that the last part will be the hardest for me since I’ll have a lot of work load this next semester. I don’t talk about my work much but I do work full-time and a public university and I also teach 1-2 online classes each semester (my part-time job). This spring I have two courses that I’m in charge of and one of the course is new, so I’ll be quite busy this next month or two. I’m not sure why but I registered for two classes too, a French II course and database management (this one’s work related). The good news: they’re not taken for credit, just for fun. I am also planning a monthly Stampin’ Up! workshop at my home (well, we’ll see if it’ll end up a quarterly deal by April!) so that I can support my addiction to get together and stamp/scrapbook. On top of that I need to take care of my young family, so super, super busy. But I love my busy life and I wouldn’t change it one bit. Actually if I were less busy I’d be volunteering at my husband’s work or taking on a freelance web developing job or two, ha!

Have a great one everybody and I will post again in a few days. Hopefully with some scrapbook pages — that’s this week’s goal for me!

I Am on Dial-Up

Not! But my Internet is sooooooo slow. So, until it gets better, I will not be posting this weekend. I had a hard time just logging in. We are SE of Kansas City and if you’re one who watches the news you probably know that from Tulsa on east, the mid-west got hit pretty good. Luckily we’re on the very tip of it so we did get the ice storm but it only lasted 6 or so hours for us and then it just rained. So no trees or power issues (good thing since we’re all electric here). We were ready for it but like all of you we’d like to avoid all the disaster as much as possible.

Anyway, things have been normal except the Internet. It was fine during the storm but later the next day it just got slower and slower and now it’s just trying very, very hard to even show any sign of high speedness. This is the second time it did this right after an ice storm. It’s so weird! I hate it since I live off this thing. I did get my grading done though so that my students can feel at ease and if any are graduating tomorrow, they can walk in confidence

The good news is that I’ll be off the computer this weekend and I’d be able to focus on making some hot cocoas for Emma’s teachers. I found a recipe from allrecipes.com and instead of a jar I’m just going to use plastic and decorate the tag really well. It’s my first try so if they turn out pretty I’ll take pictures I’m also going to try to make marshmallows. My coworker did it and they’re so yummy.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s snowing outside and we’re suppose to get a few great inches. Ahh…. making a snowman day. I’ll take pictures if we do get a load. It’s our pup’s first real snow too (I don’t think ice counts) so it’ll be fun. Have a great weekend!

Picture Sharing

Well, I did a craft show at my work (I work for a university) Tuesday. How was sales? As expected. I wasn’t there to sell anything really, I was just there to mostly meet people, show them my work, and if I sell some, then great. If not, that’s ok too. So, I did just that… I talked to a lot of people.

It’s amazing, with technology, you hardly ever know who you’re working with anymore. I work with a lot of people, and I do software training too, but most of the time I communicate via email. Even when I’m developing a website, we’d either just meet once, or not meet at all and just work over the phone and email. So this fair was for me, and mostly them, to know who I am and what I love to do on my spare time. It’s also nice to be able to show them my work in person so that if ever they want to come to my workshop or host one, they know my style and that they’re going to end up with something decently nice.

I have no pictures of the craft fair but I do have pictures of our 2nd cousin’s daughter. I took them over Thanksgiving break and this is the first time that I worked with somebody other than my husband and daughter. She was really fun to work with and at 6 years of age, she’s eager and willing to do whatever I asked her to do. The only difficult part with her was that she likes to look straight into the camera and smile really big. Super cute but I am more into the natural poses and the posed and look into the camera deal isn’t my thing. But I did get some good shots, and yes, she was looking straight at me both time but she wasn’t expecting me to push the trigger - ha ha… sneaky sneaky

If any of you are pro photographers, can you suggest an inexpensive light reflector and/or flash so that I can have better lighting. I am thinking of a reflector but I’ve heard and seen people use those flash that bounces off something on top of it. Thanks!

The Holiday Season

I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was quite nice: fun and relaxing with the family.

Now our favorite holiday is coming up, Christmas. It’s not all about the presents but it’s all about the atmosphere and that during this time, we somehow think less of us and more of others that we love. This year we decided to buy less but do more and even our little girl was on the same wave length as us. Here’s what we asked Emma, she’ll be 4 in February:

Mom: What do you want from Santa, Emma?
Emma: A pink sleeping bag, a pink cash register, and a pink laptop
M: Is that it?
E: Yes, I need to share with the other kids
M: That’s nice Emma, it’s nice for you to share and not want everything
E: Uh uh
M: What do you want from mom and dad?
E: I want mommy and daddy to buy something for another little girl that has no toys

Ok, how can you beat that? We’ve asked her over and over again the last few weeks and it’s the same answer. Now ever year, ever since I had my first real job actually, I have a habit of picking a child off the angel tree. One year I didn’t because my work decided to adopt a family and I took responsibility for the gift of one of the child, but besides that, it’s a habit I’ve always had. This year was different though, Emma was really into picking out the little tag, asking me who the child was and what he/she wanted, and deciding on one. So this year we’re going to shop together for a nice package for this 18-mo-old that we picked out.

We’ve done all sort of different things throughout the year to help others. We don’t do yard sales, we’d donate our clothes and toys to either the church or the Big Brothers Big Sisters. Even Emma will go through her toys and clothes and she’ll put a bag together herself. The same with furniture, we’d take them to the Salvation Army. We donate dry goods to the local food pantry and help the United Way or Children’s Miracle Network. This year we found some other ways of helping, and spreading the ways we donate, and you can see that in our Charities link.

I know that we’ve had one year where we spent thousands of dollars on presents, I know one year at 7 mo pregnant I was pushing a 6 speaker system Onkyo system into the house, but those were the days. Christmas isn’t about how much we buy but it’s about Jesus’s birth. This is something that we need to work on with Emma since Jesus is not at all in the picture, it’s just Santa and gifts right now. But at least she’s got the giving idea right.

Hope you can share your blessings and joy with others who are less fortunate. I don’t need that extra stamp set, the $25 can go to Kiva.org

Happy Friday!

It’s Friday, yay!!! So many things I want to do and need to do this weekend. First, my very good friend’s baby will be baptized tomorrow morning and she asked me to take the photos. I’m no professional photographer but I love taking photos and I’m not too bad - at least they’re clear and I’ve got Photoshop for other stuff. Then there’s a luncheon afterwards and that evening we have an event on campus, International Night, where students from different countries cook and it’s open to the community. For $5/person, it’s pretty good, plus our little Emma eats free.

Third, I want to make a card. I want to try one of the challenges at SCS. Not sure how great it’ll turn out to be but hey, it’s a start. Maybe it’ll help me get my creative juices out. Maybe if this is successful, I’d be able to make more Christmas cards and other cards that I need. Fourth… clean the house! Yes, our house is dirty. I say dirty because, thanks to my husband, we tidy up everyday. But with two dogs, the outside being moist each morning, and engineered flooring, you see dirty marks all over the place. So this weekend I plan on a good floor polishing job and just sweeping and dusting in general upstairs. I also need to tidy up my craft room. It’s got clutters of mail, stuff from our trip, etc. I guess each house needs a junk drawer and a junk room, huh?

Last but not least, I want to play the Sims 2 game. My husband just bought me the pet expansion and I want to play it. I’m off and on this this game, I’ll play it for a week or two and then I’ll not touch it for a few months. So I want to try to squeeze in some time for this, maybe before bedtime as usual, but longer time to play.

Today, I also want to share a photo of a lady that I took at an Indonesian market. She’s very old and and still working hard to survive. Is she happy, is she not? You can’t really tell. But in her old age she still needs to work to make a dollar a day. Each time I look or think of this photo I am in awe with the world and the different lives that we all live in. Good or bad, rich or poor, sick or in health, we’re all here to live and learn.