More Project 365!

It should be illegal to be up this early in the morning. It's 7AM here and I've been up since 6AM - Heath went in early to do some more manager training. Isaac is thankfully still sleeping so the good news is I have some quiet time. He may sleep for an hour longer or more, he's not feeling very good. I think maybe he has some sinuses or allergies, because he doesn't act like he's sick to his stomach - you can just hear he's very nasal and it sounds like his throat hurts. Poor kid! He took two doses of Motrin last night one around 7PM and another around 11PM before we put him to bed and acted like he felt much better after the first dose, after all he was running around like a mad man lol.

It's been a couple days since I posted again and I have more Project 365 photos to share.

January 16 - It was a typical day, which is why I have no exciting picture. I'm starting to find that most of our days are very typical and boring. It was my dad's birthday, so I texted him to wish him a happy birthday. Heath spent the better part of the entire day over at Josh's house washing some laundry. He was there from about 10AM to after 5PM - Isaac went with him and he played Mario Kart for about 3 hours Heath said lol, then he wanted to watch the Karate Kid. I, however, stayed home to set a new product up in the store - which took FOREVER, because it's a large product with multiple pieces. Then I did some things I'd been needing to do for a long time related to my designing. By the time Heath got home I was practically screaming save me lol.



January 17 - Another typical day, in fact very boring. Heath and I took a quick trip to the store and were back by 11AM. He threw supper in the crock pot and then cleaned the house for me, I worked on some more designing, as if I hadn't had enough the day before lol. I get most of my good work done on the weekends now that Heath is home, because Isaac pretty much dotes on his dad on the weekends. I spend way too much time on my designing and too little time on my house, but my career is really starting to take off and there's so much work that goes into it behind the scenes - advertising, taking part in charity work - like the charity kit that will go on sale in February for Haiti relief that I just finished my portion for, a portion or all of the proceeds will go to Haiti to relief and rescue efforts. That stuff takes so much work and it's such boring work that I hate to do it, I'd much rather be creating stuff. That night after we ate supper, I got pretty sick. I threw up all my supper and felt very achy in my back. I still didn't feel good after a 30-minute nap so we went ahead and went to bed.



January 18 - Still sick. I spent all morning in the position you see in the photo - laying on the couch, with 2 pillows propped up and a blanket, with my computer on my lap. I couldn't do any designing, since my program on my laptop isn't working, and I didn't feel like it to begin with, so I spent all day surfing the web. I'd spent 11PM-4AM sleeping very restlessly, tossing and turning and waking up in intervals because of my sick stomach. At 4AM I threw up again and after that I felt a lot better and slept better, but I still wasn't up to par. Heath brought me some soup and after I ate I seemed to feel much better so I got up to start working on some more stuff. My friend Tiffany and I decided to start a collab kit that we will use to prepare for our upcoming spot in something called the Amazing Digi-Scrap Race - you pair up with a partner and you and your partner complete 2 challenges a week, for a total of 4 layouts a week, racing from store to store in order for a chance to win a grand prize. A lot of people take part and I don't have a clue as to what the prize is, but it's apparently a lot of fun. I'll tell more about that later since I don't know a lot of details yet. That night we went to get groceries and brought home KFC - I didn't eat very well since I was still a little sick to my stomach, and we went to bed kind of early.



January 19 - I woke up feeling much better but like I said, Isaac didn't. The weather is just so sluggish that we feel like doing nothing but staying indoors. This is what we woke up to yesterday morning - frost on the trees and a little bit of snow. You can see it a little on our roof, but the wind was blowing so it's all gone now. I haven't looked outside this morning to see whether the trees are still frosted over but I'm sure they're not. I felt much better so I got around at about 10AM to do a little cleaning. After I cleaned up I felt even better - I think I could have cleaned up on Monday but I was afraid to even get up and do anything too strenuous because I didn't want to get sick again. I think just getting up and doing something and making my house look better improved my mood which improved my health. I don't know, that's just a theory lol. I finished up my portion for the Haiti project and worked on part of the kit that Tiffany and I are doing. That night I had to do some little extras to prepare for the $1 sale that's going on at my store today. That wiped me out, along with keeping Isaac up until 11 so he could take another dose of medicine, so we put him to bed and then we went to bed.

Today will probably be much the same - I have some more advertising to do then depending upon what I feel like doing I'll either work some more or pick up the rest of the house. Picking up shouldn't take long, maybe about an hour. I cleaned out the litterbox yesterday so Heath gets to do the dishes and clean the tub, that was the deal lol, but sometimes I just get impatient and restless and end up doing stuff myself. I'll be back sometime this weekend (hopefully) to post more pictures and soon I'll have time to catch up on my layouts. I have the pictures at least so I'm doing a good job there.

Week Two - Days 8-14, Day 15

I have a lot of photos today! I haven't posted week two at all, so now that I'm all caught up on photos might as well post!

Friday, January 8 - Isaac and I stayed home basically all day today. Cleaned house and designed, as usual. After Heath got off work, we had to go pay a bill because it was due Monday and we wouldn't be able to on the weekend. So we all went to go pay that bill and then Heath dropped me and Isaac back off at home so he could go do something very secretive for my birthday. That night we just stayed at home and spent time together.



Saturday, January 9 - My birthday! I woke up to lots of hugs, good wishes, emails from scrapbooking message boards that I'm a member of (some of them with birthday scrapbooking goodies, yay!), and even 23 spanks from Heath. Funny, he thinks I'll let him get away with that, but payback is hell and his 24th birthday is in approximately 5 months. I won't forget that lol. I went shopping with my mom all afternoon - she took me out to lunch at Taco Tico, we went to the mall and Hobby Lobby for a little shopping. She bought me a purse I had been eyeing for a while and a necklace, and I bought two pairs of earrings with some birthday money I was given by my grandma. Then we made a quick stop at Walmart to pick up a couple things. Then, home just in time to get ready to drop Isaac off at Josh's then to dinner at Applebee's. They were packed when we got there but after about 15 minutes we got seated. There was a single pink rose and a gift bag from Heath at the table. I ordered myself a strawberry margarita, opened my present and we ordered our food. The fun started after my our drinks got there. Like I said, I didn't have any food in my stomach and the alcohol soaked into my system too quickly, so within about 15 minutes I was buzzed up enough that the room was starting to spin. It was definitely interesting eating. By the time we were done I would say I was officially one step away from drunk, but luckily not enough that I made a fool of myself. Note to self: next time, eat a snack before you go if you know you're going to drink lol! Heath gave me a necklace and pair of earrings, and Wii Fit Plus for my birthday. Most women wouldn't like that, but I did! The picture above was taken earlier in the day, and that's my present from Isaac - my birthday cake! Isn't it sweet?



Sunday, January 10 - Sunday morning we picked Isaac up from Josh's house around 10...he had so much fun that he cried because he didn't want to leave! The rest of the day I worked on my Project 365 kit that I'm planning to sell, Heath did a few dishes and cleaned up a little. I helped pick up the living room but mainly focused on my designing. That night we both just wanted to relax so we put in a movie - this is one of my favorite movies right now, Knocked Up. Heath fell asleep near the end, after Isaac went to bed, and I stayed up for a little longer to just browse the web.



Monday, January 11 - Back to work for Heath again. Normal day for me and Isaac. Worked a little more on my P365 kit, getting closer to being done and ready. After Heath got home we went grocery shopping like every normal Monday. I really enjoy those Mondays because even though I hate grocery shopping, it's nice to get out with Heath and Isaac and have a little fun. On the way home we picked up take-out and a movie. I'd been wanting to see Funny People for quite a while, after I'd seen Knocked Up I figured Seth Rogen would be good in this one as well. We had some popcorn and watched the movie. It was a funny movie, definitely not family-friendly. At one point I told Heath that it would be interesting to go through the entire movie and count how many times the F word was said, that it would probably be in the hundreds. They really loved that word lol. It was definitely a different role for Adam Sandler. It was a good movie, but not one to add to the favorites list. I guess my expectations were different of it, but I wouldn't say it was a bad movie either.



Tuesday, January 12 - Starting Tuesday I started missing a few days of photos because I got really busy trying to keep the house up and working on my designs. So I took the prompts that were posted at GottaPixel's forum for their 365 Challenge. Today's prompt was What a Treat - Take a photo of something that is a treat for you. There's a long explanation as to why this is a treat but the jist of it is that after I had Isaac, and even before all the way back to high school, I was suffering from serious depression. Some days I didn't have the motivation to even get dressed. I loved my family and loved being married, but I just felt like something was missing. It just got so bad that I stopped taking care of myself and doing things for me, I was too busy focusing on taking care of everyone else because that was all I had the motivation to do. I don't know what happened, but after we moved and I got back into digital scrapping and discovered designing, my depression started to get better. Now I'm not fully recovered - there are still days where I get very emotional and moody, and some days I start crying for no apparent reason. But I don't feel unmotivated to do anything anymore. Sometimes I don't have motivation to do the things I need to do, like clean house and cook supper, but who doesn't have those days? The fact that I have motivation to do something other than sit at the TV all day is a victory in itself. Now it's sitting at the computer all day designing, lol, but at least it's constructive. It makes me happy, it boosts my confidence, and I'm making a little extra money off it. And I'm getting more successful all the time, my sales are picking up and my name is getting out there, so maybe one day it'll lead to big things for me. Anyway, the treat for me in the Wii Fit is the way I feel when I accomplish that. Sometimes I miss a day (or a few...ahem, I haven't gotten on it in a week lol) but it makes me feel good when I do get on and I accomplish a work out. It makes me feel good that I've done something for myself that is good for me.



Wednesday, January 13 - We had gone out both Monday and Tuesday nights, just window shopping and stuff, so I figured when Heath got home Wednesday he would want to stay in. To my surprise, the minute he walked through the door he said "Let's take Isaac to the park, it's a beautiful day." So I finished up what I was doing, got Isaac dressed and we headed to the park. It was in the 50's or 60's so still a bit chilly, but much better than the 20's and 30's we'd had all the first part of the year. I don't like parks most of the time because we always find one that is full of rambunctious kids. This time wasn't any different. There were two teenagers there who were apparently babysitting their siblings or something, and they were brats. First they kicked their ball under our car and I had to retrieve that. Then they kept asking me to give them their ball. The two teenagers were not watching them at all. At one point, the pair walked away (and they were boyfriend and girlfriend, if that gives you a clue) and the kids wandered off the other direction. When they finally discovered the kids had walked away, they yelled at them then gave me a look like "Why weren't you watching them?" I won't get into that though. The important thing was that Isaac had a ton of fun, and I got some new pictures to scrap so I'll post layouts of that soon, when I get them done. We finally had to leave because some more people walked up with a big dog, and I didn't feel comfortable. It was starting to get chilly too, I had to put my gloves on because my hands were freezing. But Isaac had a ton of fun.



Thursday, January 14 - I missed this day too so I followed the prompt Treasured Junk - Take a photo of your "junk" that is something you treasure or have been meaning to get fixed. This is my treasured junk - my old paper scrap stuff. Since this summer it's been packed away on my front porch. It's probably thousands of dollars of stuff collected over the entire ten years that I paper scrapped. I never spent that much in one shopping trip, usually just $10 here or $5 there, but my desk was bought with an income tax return and was about $600, and there were hundreds of dollars worth of tools that were given to me as birthday and Christmas gifts, or just because from my mother. I feel awful that I haven't put this stuff to use, that it's just sitting on our front porch, but I just can't bring myself to give it away. I find myself sometimes wanting to pull out my paper scrapping supplies, but I just know that I will get tired of it 15 minutes into trying. I love digital scrapbooking because it's cleaner, cheaper, and more economical. But I hate to give away those tools and items because I love them. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out a way to put them to good use.



Friday, January 15 - I'm determined not to miss the photo for today, so I'm using today's prompt I Feel Pretty - Take a photo of something that makes you feel pretty. Being a stay at home mom, there's just no reason to get all dolled up during the day. It takes me at least an hour to get ready, so why spend that time doing that when I could be doing the dishes or working on my designs? When I know I'm going to go somewhere, like on the weekends or on Mondays, I do get myself dressed, put on makeup, and the final touch - my jewelry. My mom actually got me into wearing jewelry. I very rarely wore jewelry, in fact whenever I did wear jewelry it would start bugging me and I took it off. My mom bought me a few pieces of jewelry a while back - you know, just cheap costume jewelry, but it made me feel good about myself. Since then, I've really enjoyed wearing my jewelry and I keep buying jewelry like it. I like diamonds and silver and all, but I also like costume jewelry. For some reason it makes me feel good. Sometimes, the gaudier the better lol. I used to not like jewelry like this but I guess times have changed. Anyway, that's what makes me feel pretty - the makeup and nice clothes are okay, but the finishing touch is always what jewelry I choose to wear that day.

There's the end of that novel for the week lol. I need to start staying caught up on my photos and posts so that I don't have to write novels like that every weekend. Anyway, I'll be back soon with Week 2's Layout, more Photos a Day, and hopefully some other layouts!

Days 6 & 7, Week One Layout

I may not have been here posting, but I was keeping up! Here are Days 6 & 7 in my Project 365:

Day 6 - Wednesday Isaac and I did more cleaning - same routine, I cleaned while he made more messes. I guess I'm used to that huh? lol I succeeded in getting in 32 minutes of Wii Fit - 10 minutes of yoga (and I'm still feeling it two days later!), a 5 or 6 minute run, and the other half was just aerobics exercise. I started on some laundry - a daunting task, considering our dryer isn't working. The heating element is dead so it's not heating, and our laundry is piling up pretty quickly. We don't have a clothesline (and I don't keep clothespins around the house anyway) so I've had to wash small loads of clothes and hang them up on our shower curtain or lay them out on our countertop. I'm prepared to get in there more today and knock out some more clothes. That night Heath and Josh went out on a secret excursion - they said they were going furniture shopping, but I know better. They brought home food and after we ate they rocked out on Guitar Hero for a while, while I attempted to design. I'm at that point in a kit that I hate where I've got no idea what else to include but I don't have enough to actually be able to call it a kit. Anyway after Josh left I abandoned the designing for a while and Heath and I got on Guitar Hero for a little while - I sang while Heath played Guitar Hero, then I got tired of that and we switched. I think I prefer playing the guitar over the singing, because the songs are not songs that really fit my style that I like to sing.



Day 7 -Thursday was just pretty uneventful. In fact, it was downright boring. Woke up, coffee, computer, email, cleaning, TV, lunch, the normal thing. The last couple days, we've woken up around 4AM to find Isaac in the living room playing video games. We've stripped the video games away from him so he finds other ways of playing them, thinking we're not noticing. So during the day he's not allowed to play video games. Because he's been waking up earlier, he's actually been taking naps during the day. Don't get me wrong, I love the naps during the day. But I would rather him stay in bed until we wake up than wake up at 4AM and take a super-long nap around 1PM. So anyway, around 1PM I told him to lay down and take a nap, and after a few tears and fits, he did. Around 3, this is what I looked over to see. I just knew this was a perfect picture for the day. The rest of the night was exactly like the day - boring, uneventful. I worked on trying to draw some things with my Wacom, but it's still going to take some getting used to. Hopefully I'll be able to create something for what I'm working on now though.

After I got that picture taken for yesterday, I decided to hang up my designer hat for the night and scrapbook the page for it. I'm really happy with the result, and surprised I fit so much journaling on the page! Hopefully I can keep it up like that!



I used a mix of kits for this layout, all from a designer competition called So You Think You Can Design that took place around July 2009. A bunch of designers created kits around a certain theme or color scheme each week and gave the result away for free. After all submissions were entered they were judged and some designers were eliminated each week. These two kits were from the Project 365 theme from week 2 or 3 I think. One is by Jady Day Studio, called Love All Year Long. The other is by Graham Like The Cracker, called Everyday Adventures. The template used is by ChrissyW from her Photo A Day collection. I used a mix of photo actions to edit the photos.

Speaking of photos, I realized why my photos from Days 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were turning out so awful and speckled. My lighting was the problem. Day 6 I took my picture during the afternoon where the light was shining through my window, but dull enough that it wasn't too harsh. Day 7, I pulled the curtains back to let all the light shine through on Isaac and Sassy. From now on, I'm going to try to focus on the natural light rather than the flash, because my photos turned out much better.

I'll be back tonight hopefully with Day 8, and maybe some more layouts from today.

Day 5

Day 5 in Project 365. I'm going good and going strong, and love every bit of it, except having to remember to upload the photo and edit it before bed. It's really eating into my designing/scrapping time lol.

Not much to blog about today. Isaac and I cleaned today - well, I cleaned and he made more messes for me to clean up again. I worked way too hard, and the sad part is that I'm not done! It started out with me just putting away the Christmas decorations. That's all I was going to do, plus a little bit of tidying. So I got the decorations all taken down, including the tree which I had done yesterday, and put away in boxes and put out on the porch. I would have put them away, but this summer (when it's warmer out there) we really need to get that organized. Anyway, then I realized that I needed to move my wicker bookshelf that holds all my scrapbooks and magazines. It was totally in the way and covering up our thermostat. So since my scrapbooks are really heavy, I had to remove all those, then move the bookshelf. So I did all that, and I thought since I had it all empty that I might as well organize it...well, before I even got there, I realized I didn't like it where I had put it, so I put it somewhere else. That required me to move the other bookshelf...and repeat the removing of the books. So, you guessed it, why not organize that too? So I organized that bookshelf first - packed away some books we hadn't touched in years and made room for more books - Isaac just loves reading books. I got that all organized, and tidied up around that area until I was satisfied, then moved on to the wicker bookshelf again. I organized all the scrapbooks and got rid of some that were empty and falling apart. It looks so much better!

That left me a big empty space near my computer desk, so while I was at it, I reorganized that! (By now, I'm thinking to myself, when will my energy run out?) I took an old end table we hadn't used in a while and put my scanner on it, which left TONS more room on my computer desk. I finally feel like I'm not being enclosed in when I'm at my desk! After that, I realized I had basically organized everything in the living room, but I still had a mess. So I cleaned that up. I took down our curtains, Sassy broke yet another plain curtain rod the other day so I took those down until we could go get another rod tonight. We got a much more stable rod this time...hopefully she keeps her grubby little claws out of the curtains and stops climbing them!

Then I realized I had printed pictures out on the front porch in a box from my paper scrapping days that were sitting out in the cold. Since our front porch isn't well insulated, it gets really cold out there in the winter and steaming hot in the summer. I didn't want them to get ruined so I brought them in, and organized them into empty photo albums. I started all of this organizing stuff at 11AM and finally finished around 4:30PM when Heath got home. He was so happy with the way things looked, our living room looks much nicer now. It wasn't until tonight that I realized, I'm already off to a good start on some of my New Year's resolutions - keep the house cleaner (I'd say today counts for something - just don't look in my bedroom! lol), and get on the Wii Fit at least twice a week (got on it for twenty minutes tonight, just for a little warm-up...I'll start back on my yoga and running tomorrow). Considering that I didn't decide until the 31st to do all this, go me!

I made up a layout using one of Tiffany's and my good friend Jaya's new kits Midnight Resolutions to remind me of all these resolutions that I need to stick to. You can find it here, if you're interested. Hopefully it will keep me motivated, because I seem to be off to a good start.

Tomorrow morning - back to the Wii Fit for some good exercise and I have to get into my bedroom, Isaac's room and the bathroom and really get cracking. Maybe I can make some headway in there!

Day 4, New Layouts!

I'm back with Day 4 of the Project 365!

January 4 - Today was basically any other day. Heath headed back to work. I woke up, Isaac was already up with Heath. He was getting in trouble already. :/

Heath left a little bit early for work, about 15 minutes, I had my coffee and started my morning. Fixed some eggs for Isaac and after I got that done, I started doing a little scrapbooking. I realized today that I'm not half as "caught up" (if there ever is such a thing) on my pages as I thought I was. I also went through and deleted some of the pages that I realized I just don't like anymore, and decided to redo those. I got quite a few done and I'll share those a bit later.

Isaac and I got in quite a few arguments this morning/afternoon. We had a little "discussion" around 11:30AM about behavior and attitude (which he has quite a bit of lately). I told him that I was going to fix his lunch, he was going to eat it, then he was going to lay down and take a nap. I was extremely surprised - he did just that. :O I figured that after he woke up maybe things would be better...of course, I couldn't be that lucky. He went back into the same routine. Sigh, boys.

After Heath got home we went to do our grocery shopping, like we do every Monday. He wasn't feeling very good, so we got our stuff done quickly. While at the store, I got a text message from my dad saying my birthday present was there and to come pick it up. It's that beautiful Wacom graphic tablet in my picture above. I took a picture of that instead of anything else today because it was so exciting for me, I had to share it somehow. I have been wanting a Wacom forever, I can do so much stuff with it scrapping-wise and can even do some designing with it. I still have a bit to learn but I'm going to play a little after I post this and see if I can create anything.

Heath must be getting sick. He's got a slight fever and has body aches and he's dizzy. He took some medicine and some vitamin C, took a bath, ate some soup, and he's asleep on the couch now. Poor baby. :(

That was our day in a nutshell. I'm typing this and watching a little TV now. Just put Isaac to bed.

I have a few layouts to share, some created last night after my blog post and some others this morning. I may have a few more tomorrow. :)



From top left to bottom right: Isaac blowing bubbles Spring 2009, Isaac at the carnival July 2009, Christmas 2009 at Josh's house, Shiloh as a baby February 2009, Shiloh summer 2009, Isaac being really goofy Spring 2009.

I'm catching up on all my 2009 photos then moving backwards through other years. :)

That'll be all from me today. I'll be back tomorrow with Day 5 of P365 and hopefully some new creations!

Project 365 and Christmas Photos

Already off to a bad start. Story of my life lol.

So...I've started this thing called Project 365. I'm sure that either you're familiar with it or can figure out the concept. It has different variations...Project 365, Project 52, Project 12 (which I was never familiar with until today). Basically...you take a photo every day. Then you either scrapbook a layout every day, every week, or every month for an entire year, and that layout is supposed to sum up your day, week, or month. I'm already off to a good start...I have all 3 of my photos taken for each of the 3 days of January. I've decided to do the "layout a week" option (it's much more manageable), but I've already got a layout started and 2 photos put onto it and saved as a layered document so I can add to it later. It should be pretty easy to continue this all year long. I've really enjoyed playing photographer each day and trying to get the best shot I can to sum up our entire day.

These are the photos I've gotten so far, and a little description of our days.

January 1st, 2010 - Heath was at work, and Isaac had pretty much occupied himself with some cartoons, so I decided to sit down and get a little work done on my designing. Isaac had other plans - he was loud, obnoxious, wouldn't sit down, wouldn't stay in one spot, and when he wouldn't get his way he started to cry. Basically, a typical day lol. Finally he calmed down and I got quite a bit accomplished. That night we went to eat at the Golden Pancake House, a rare treat for us.



January 2, 2010 - Heath got up early to go to the store and brought us back donuts and coffee. Isaac enjoyed them and ate way too many. Heath played games for a while, Isaac went to play and I took the opportunity to try to finish some more work. I didn't get much done, though. Later that afternoon Heath went to see Avatar with Jarrod. Other than that, we all stayed home.



January 3, 2010 - It was a really lazy Sunday for all of us. Heath and I woke up, went about our normal business for a while. Then we got up and cleaned up the house. After that, we popped in a movie for Isaac while I attempted to get some more designing time in. He's sitting down right now watching Disney's "Up"... he's enjoying it so far, let's hope it stays that way lol. About an hour ago I took the opportunity to get some pictures for the day while he reigned total chaos on the inflatable chair that Grandma gave him for Christmas, using a plastic sword from our trip to the Kansas Cosmosphere. This is only one photo and contains much less action than the rest, but you'll see them in a layout soon. I may work on them tonight. Total chaos, I'm telling you.

Back to work for Heath tomorrow, which means I'll have to figure out something interesting to take a picture of tomorrow. I'll try to update daily with my photos and keep weekly updates of my P365 weekly layouts.

Now onto Christmas photos. And BOY, do we have a ton. All photos are unedited, some are pretty dark. Isaac is in his underwear in some, lol. It's hard to keep the boy in a good pair of clean clothes, with a clean face. Take my Day 3 photo above - chocolate face in only his underwear.

There were just so many photos I knew I couldn't post them all here, so I made up a slideshow of them.

Hope that works!

In the next few days, you'll probably be seeing some layouts from me. I'm about ready to take a couple days break from designing for a while, starting to get a little burnt out. I think I'm going to start now. Enjoy the pictures and I'll try to come back tomorrow with Day 4.