The "30" List

BFS assignment today was to blog about a goal. 

Right around my 28th birthday I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish before I turned 30 and then created a layout about this list.  I turn 29 on June 16th and here is what I have been able to cross off my list.....

Supplies: Sassafras Paper - Indi Girl Pocahontas & Me (11413), American Crafts Elements - City Park Assort Brads (85517), Remarks - Dear Lizzy Enchanted Phrases (42181)

 The "30" List

1. Meet Scrappy Friends - I have made so many between CCL and Weekend crops at Memory Mania
2. Save $5000
3. Sell My Craft - my feather headbands have been sold at both the dance studio and in my aunt's booth at The Courtyard
4. Read 20 books
5. Take a Road Trip - I've driven to Houston twice this year
6. Learn to sew
7. blog every week
8. have a project published
9. make a design team
10. hold a crop
11. de-clutter my life
12. achieve wellness
13. visit a new place - I  went to Nassau Bahamas earlier this month
14. art journal
15. fall in love
16. attend a crop - I attend CCL in January and I have signed up for it again in July
17. buy a house
18. make 5 new friends
19. travel by train
20. library of memories class
21. learn 3 new things
22. scrapbooking cruise
23. daily album
24. grow out my hair - it is so long now but desperately needs a trim
25. photo shoot
26. go camping
27. get promoted
28. appear on tv - my little buddy and I are in the new Big Buddy Program commerical
29. throw a party - Halloween was celebrated at my house this past October
30. have a true picnic

I know not all of these will be accomplished, its ok.  They will just be carried onto my "35" list.   I do plan to make a layout with mini prints of all of the things that do get done.

One Photo says it all......Friendship!

A Typical Day...

Prompt 4 in "Blogging for Scrapbookers" was to blog about a topic that seems quite ordinary.  So here is a breakdown of a typical thursday in my life. 

AM....

6:30 - first alarm goes off
7:00 - second alarm goes off
7:15 - third alarm goes off
7:30 - fourth alarm goes off...... are we starting to see a pattern, i wait till the very last minute to get up
          finally wake up, shower, get dressed, etc.
8:00 - rush out the door for work
8:15/8:30 - arrive at work, all depends on the traffic/construction/idiot driving situation
9:00 - meeting
10:30 - meeting
11:00/11:30 - lunch at desk, its always a working lunch

PM....

1:30 - meeting, with all these meetings its hard to believe i get any work done, I happen to have 3 scheduled
          today
4:30 - leave work, this is the time i shoot to leave each day but depending on how busy things are or if i
          am at a stopping point, it is usually later
          run errarands/sit in traffic on the way home
7:30 - pick up Isabelle from dance ( i am the driver for the two cousins)
8:00 - drop Isabelle off at home, chat with my family
9:00 - finally get home myself, dinner, laudry, dishes, house stuff etc
11:00 - bedtime!

This is a typical weekday with variations on what times the kids need to be picked up from dance, track, band, karate, rehearsals, etc.  Thursday is typically a lighter day for the driving around!

These are a few of my favorite things.....

Current Faves.....

- dance conventions with my cousin Isabelle

- finishing the 4th twilight book before the movie comes out......i {heart} my kindle

- my new iPad 2

- getting ready to move into my new house
- monthly kits from scrapscription, haven't gotten around to putting together this months kit but i am quite excited.

- making/selling handmade hair accessories
- working from home on Wednesday's
- half days every other Friday
- spring weather in Louisiana
- photographing dance

- blogging for scrapbookers class with shimelle
- Amy Tangerine and Kelly Purkey's blogs

Let's Play Catch Up

Yes my dear blog readers, I have been slacking!  Life's been busy but good, so let me catch you up. (warning long rambling post with numerous pics)

Classes/Crops/Craftiness

- Bind It All 101 came to a closing in the beginning of March.  Although I did not complete the whole class, I did manage to get three mini books made.

- Mouse, Paper, Scissors at jessicasrague.com started toward the ended of February.  I managed to complete most of the observations, along with my observation journal.  I plan on playing catch up this weekend.  Class ends in one week.
-My LSS held part one of their CHA demo day.  Isabelle and I went to participate in three make - n - takes and so i could pick up some crafty goodies i had on order.  Also while i was there I was able to use my store credit and sign up for their July session of Camp Crop A Lot
- Blogging for Scrapbookers at shimell.com started back up on monday with a live run.  I had purchased the class back after the last live run ended but didn't get very far in the prompts.  So excited to dive back in and get the blogging going again.

Dance
-  Isabelle auditioned for Debbie Allen's summer production and made the company.  Rehearsals start in April.
-iHollywood dance convention was Feb 19-20th.  This was the first time iHollywood held a convention in Baton Rouge but it was a great one.  No competiting this time, just a weekend of dance class concluding with Isabelle becoming a Junior A-Lister Runner-up.  You go girl, that is her second scholarship this year.

-Its that time again for pictures at the dance studio.  I spent 4 days taking isabelle to the studio.  9 costumes total and the cutest headshot.
- March 18th brought on our second trip to houston this competition season.  Back at the Westin Galleria, Isabelle attended NUVO and had a blast.  The studio came back with a ton of awards, many top awards. 


Big Buddy Program
- Ashley and I brought our little buddies to the Louisiana State University Museum of Art with rest of the mentors/mentees for a saturday filled with art, bingo, a game of twister and subway for lunch.

Family
- My dad's birthday came and went(2/17). Since it fell during the week and the night we had tickets to "All Shook Up" we celebrated with dinner on saturday night.
- Innerwheels trash to treasure sale was amazing.  Found plenty of goodies for the new house!
-March started off great with a family cruise to the Bahamas on Disney's new ship "Dream".  We had an excellent time just the four of us (my mom, dad, sister, and myself) adults.  It was a relaxing week and well needed vacation.

- After getting back from the cruise we attended my cousin's briday shower.  My gift was a pre-made album to document her engagement, showers and the wedding itself.   Would you believe I spent months putting it together and did not take a single picture of the album.  Well the second part to my gift was i promised after they got back from honeymoon I would help complete the album with pictures and journaling.  So I promised to take pictures then and posts in the quite near future (wedding is the beginning of june)

Misc....but oh so important
-  iPad2 Friday was March 11, 2011.....more on this in the previous post


Upcoming/Future Fun....

- last dance convention of the season is this weekend.  Isabelle will be attending VIP!
- Big Buddy Kiwanas Fishing trip is coming up
- My aunt is having a fabric sale to clean out the shop so i can move in next month.  If you happen to live in the baton rouge area, let me know and i can get you details for the sale.
-studio calico kits for april go on sale on the 27th, so excited.
- april means its time for the window to sign up for stacey julian's Library of Memories class at BPC to open up.  Class will run in July!
- Bachelorette/Lingerie Party for my cousin is in the near future.  I asked to be in charge of the decorations, so look to the blog for plenty of crafty pictures.
- Dance Recital is in mid April
- Isabelle's performance in Debbie Allen's Dreams is the end of April.  So excited for her, how many kids can say they got to perform with the one and only Debbie Allen.
- May will start out with a well needed beach trip!

Wow looking at this list I have a busy couple of weeks coming up!  I hoped you enjoyed my catch up rambling.  I am hoping to get more smaller posts in so there is no need for this large catch up mess.

An Amazing Day!

bFollowing along with prompts for shimelle's "Blogging for Scrapbookers" class, today's assignment was remember an amazing day.  Since there has been way too many in my lifetime that have all been already blogged or documented in some way, I decided to spin the topic around to another type of amazing day. Plus one of my intentions in this class was to document the everyday happenings in life.

I been wanting to document this particular day since it happened.  It doesn't include a wedding, meeting that perfect person or a birth of child but instead a fun exciting day I have been looking forward to for about a year now.

Let me take you back two weeks ago.  My family(mom, dad, sister and I) went on a Disney cruise to the Bahamas.  It was a grand vacation.  Since my Disney cruise had me taking Mon - Thurs off of work I decided to add Friday as a vacation day also, you know to catch up on laundry and house stuff.  Plus you always need a vacation from your vacation.   And so glad I did cause guess what Friday March 11, 2011 was? That's right "iPAD 2 Friday"!

For those of you who are new to my blog, I am the biggest APPLE fan. At work, I am referred to the "Apple Queen". Now I work in IT so i take that as a great compliment.  As a technical person I have to keep up with new technology to be competitive in my job.  I use this as excuses to purchase the latest and greatest electronics.

I did not purchase the first iPad cause apple was very disappointing in not including basic things like a camera, multitasking, and an option to extend hardrive space. I was waiting for the second edition to come out. I will admit apple got 2 out of the 3 fixed for me. The fact that apple doesn't allow you to connect an external hardrive was smart on their part but kinds sucks for a user like myself who's music/movie/photo library extends across 3 500G hardrives.   Apple just figured I would buy their biggest one available, the 64 G but funds are tight at the moment and this was not practical.

So one might ask, "If funds are tight, why would you spend $600 on an ipad when you have a perfectly working macbook at home?"  Well here you go....

For me to make big expensive purchases like this, I normally put a little bit of my paycheck aside each week.  Currently I am doing this to have a down payment for a house.   So the money had to come from somewhere else.  Last year, feather headbands and hair accessories became really popular but where very expensive in stores.  I refused to pay $40/$50 for something i might wear once or twice.  The craftiness in me decided i could just make myself one.  So after a trip to hobby lobby for feathers, i came home with a bag full and ended up making 5 separate pieces.  I started wearing them to work, when i was out and about shopping and at the dance studio.  I received so many compliments.  Finally one of the girls at the studio asked if i would make her one and what the costs would be.  That got me thinking I could make a couple more with the leftover supplies i had, sell them in the studio (there is a small boutique) and make back the money i spent on supplies.  I made 5 more and within the hour i was at the studio they were all sold.  So to make this long story short, my aunt was able to get me bulk supplies at wholesale pricing and around 150 feather accessories later I was able to come up with enough money to purchase an ipad.  They are still flying like hotcakes at the studio and i also have them in a local boutique to get more traffic outside of the dance world.

So Friday rolled around and it was time to make my purchase. I had every intention of getting up at 3:00 am to order the ipad 2 online but managed to subconsciously turn my alarm off and roll back to sleep.(remember i had just gotten back from a 5 day cruise, i was exhausted)  EEK! when i woke the next morning I realized I missed it and got on apple's website to order the and processing time was 3-4 wks. I was not waiting that long. Knowing that the ipad went on sale in stores at 5 PM, I debated as to what time to go stand in line. I decided on after lunch and showed up at my local apple store at 2 pm. I was # 57 in line! not too bad. I chatted with fellow apple freaks for the remainder of the wait.

Funny side note store:

As we were sitting/standing in the long line, everyone who walked by wanted to know what the line was for and would laugh when we told them it was for the ipad 2.  Its OK only true apple obsessed fans stand in line .  A group of young girls, maybe 12-14 yrs old asked the same question.  The guy behind me jokingly told them we were in line for Justin Beiber tickets.  HAHA!  The girls started to freak and wanted to know if they had sold out yet.

Back to the original story....

 4:45 rolled around and apple sent out an employee and two armed guards with a box of tickets for each type of ipad they had in stock. 5 minutes later they had gotten to me and I was able to get the exact one i wanted. Doors opened to the store at 5:00 on the dot and by 5:15 I was in my car on my way home to play with my new toy.

I am now the proud owner of a 32G WiFi White ipad 2 and I LOVE IT!

This may not seem like an amazing day to most people but hey it was one amazing day out of my life.

Below is a layout i did a while back after i had gotten the iphone 4.

Blogging For Scrapbookers

Last year at some point I came across Shimelle's "Blogging for Scrapbookers" class.  Although the live version of the class had already ended I was able to jump right into the material.  I will admit that life got a little busy and I did not manage to get through very many of the prompts.  Well Shimelle is offering a second live run of the class right now.  You can get to the info here: http://www.shimelle.com/classes/953/online-scrapbooking-classes-blogging-for-scrapbookers-1-2/  She will also be offfering a followup more advanced blogging class after the end of the first.

So here we got with prompt one.....

First off I would like to start with a big hello to my fellow classmates!  Glad you decided to visit my blog.

My Intentions for the class:

- get into the habit of blogging more often, not necassirly once a day but a couple of times a week seems like a good start.
- use my blog to document everyday happenings so they can later be made into a layout
- find some more scrappy blogging friends to share inspiration with
- actually fully complete an online scrap course.  I tend to slack off in the end!  I am the queen of unfinished projects!

Here is my scraproom right after the complete re-org/makeover a couple of months back.  I will admit it no longer looks like this as everything is in boxes for the move to the new house next month.  For this reason there will not be much scrapping going on till the move is complete and I decided on how i would like to arrange the new room (it is quite smaller than the last).