Happy Birthday, Mr. Love

Randy's birthday is today. We went out for a nice dinner and then came home for presents and pie. I think I'll just let the pictures tell the story....

(card plays the "Lost In Space" theme song)

And all of this storage stuff is to organize the maintenance area of the basement.

Do you think it needs it?????!!!

Happy Birthday to Us

We spent the day at Mom & Dad's, who wanted to celebrate our birthdays. Mom made the BEST meal of ham and scalloped potatos, and of course we had birthday cake and ice cream. Along with that, she made a cherry pie. Little did she kenow that Randy had told me already that he didn't want cake this year.... he wanted cherry pie! Talk about perfect.

Since it was a cake for both of us, mom put a "4" in the middle and then 5 candles on one side for me and 7 on the other side for Randy. Very clever.

Mom wanted a picture of us with the cake....

And dad being dad, he wanted in, too..... he cracked us up by jumping in the picture....

Great food, great fun, and a great day. Thanks, Mom & Dad!!

Lookie What We Did Today!

The first picture is obviously the two of us, and the second one is me and our new friend Jeff, who helped us get our brand new Saturn Vue!

My Equinox lease was about up, so we drove a Vue the other night and really liked it. Jeff came through for us, and we picked it up today. Finally a car that I can plug my IPOD into! YAY! With all the scrapbook trips I take, having lots of room and the ability to play an IPOD are important considerations.

Another TV Room Wall Craft

I've been working on this most of the week, trying to get it just the way I wanted it. I think it turned out pretty nice. The pictures were taken of us last June when we were in St. Joe, sitting on the beautiful Lake Michigan beach. I took a 16 x 20 plain canvas and painted it blue but left some of the white showing through. The bigger picture is 8x10 and is mounted on a piece of solid wood painted black. The sides of the wood taper down, so it has some dimension to it. The picture is black and white, mounted on sand colored paper. The "W" is painted the same color as the sand colored paper. The bottom picture is 4x6 and is in a plain wooden frame I painted black. I removed the glass, so it's just the picture in the frame.

TV Room Projects

When we remodeled the basement, I envisioned an east coast beach feeling....whitewashed walls, faded blues......

Randy wanted no part of that. It was "THE MAN CAVE," and it was going to look like it. We went round and round and ended up with a MAN CAVE we can both live with, but it's not my beach retreat.

Last year we transformed our den into a TV room, and we picked up some furniture from my parents that have that beach feeling I was looking for. I'm just now getting around to decorating the walls in the room, and here's what I've come up with so far:

It's a shadow box that doesn't have a glass front. It's 12x12, the perfect scrapbook size. The picture was taken two years ago in Arcadia at sunset. That's Lake Michigan in the background. I've always liked that picture of us.

And here's a clock I decorated, to match the scrapbook page:

So, the room is headed in the New England beach direction with these colors. I've got a few more ideas of things I want to do to complete the look, so stay tuned.

It's a Holiday!

I can't believe I'm home, enjoying my second "holiday" of the year. I love LandAmerica's holiday schedule! I've never had two holidays so early in the year. It's great.

My wonderful husband surprised me with roses for Valentine's Day...



He's the best! He also gave me a beautiful card that made me cry. We went out for dinner to a place called the Dispatch. It's a dive bar on the west side of Lansing. When we tell people we went there for Valentine's Day, they give us the strangest look. But the reality is that the food is amazing at that place. We've only been there a few times, but every time we go, we can't believe how good - and inexpensive - it is.


My SPHR certificate and official test results arrived.

I feel like I should put this on a chain around my neck like Flava Flav's clock.

Death of Numb Butt

Had my follow-up doctor's appointment today, and she declared the shingles emergency has been resolved. Yay! Based upon my age and the fact that we got me on the drugs so fast, I never really got the bad shingles that everyone talks about. Mine are 75% gone, and I really didn't have much to begin with. So, I dodged that bullet and am very happy about that!

But, I do feel the need to confess something. I've become Zsa Zsa's long-lost sister.....

Could ANYONE say this is a good look? Here's what happened..... as the weather turned cold, I decided I should carry a hat in my car, just in case I have car trouble or something. I saw this hat, and I saw that it was the same color as my coat. Truthfully, I didn't pay a bit of attention to what the hat really looked like; I just saw the color. I bought it. I threw it in the car, and it stayed there until last Sunday. You remember last Sunday.....I was scrapbooking and it was a wind chill of 20 below.

So, after Randy packed up my junk in my car, I put on my hat and sunglasses for the drive home. On the way out of the hotel, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the hotel hallway. I stopped in my tracks and about died laughing. I could not believe that I had put this all on and didn't realize I was looking like a long-lost Gabor sister. All I needed was red lipstick smeared all outside of my lip line, and I'd be good to go.

So, the hat is being retired....the glasses are staying. I've always known they look dorky but don't care. I keep imagining that someone will mistake me for one of the Hilton sisters.

A girl's gotta dream.

Weekend Thoughts

Everyone knows I have the world's best husband, right??? Well, here's one reason why....

Yesterday was the last day of the scrapbook crop. It was scheduled to end at 5:00 PM. The weather yesterday was unbelievable. It was about zero degrees with a wind chill of about 20 below. I went outside to put a couple of things in the car around noon, and it actually hurt to be outside, even for a few seconds.

As the day went on, I dreaded more and more the thought of having to haul all that stuff out to my car. Around 4:15, I turned around, and there was Randy. He came over to pack me up and load my car. I couldn't believe it. My knight in shining armour! He loaded everything for me, and all I had to do was walk out to my warm car and drive home. And, of course, once we got home, he unloaded everything for me. Can you believe what a great guy he is???!?!?

Now, one thought I want to share about the Holiday Inn in Okemos. It was truly a great place to stay, not at all a traditional Holiday Inn. That being said, I did notice one really odd thing. In the room was a sign that said, "For the convenience of our guests, this room has been designated as non-smoking."

"convenience?"

It may be at the request of guests, or for the health and well being of guests, but I don't see how making a room non-smoking is convenient. Odd choice of words, and truthfully I'm probably the only person in the world who would even take the time to notice it.

She Did It!

It took 20 work hours, but Deb finally completed her first layout of the weekend. Like I predicted yesterday, she stuck to it until she was able to print what she wanted. It's gorgeous layout with background print she made herself. It's quite a feat to be able to do that, at least it is in the scrapbook world. Here she is, celebrating ...

I can't wait to see what she does next!

As for me, I've been working along pretty steadily. I've gotten a lot done, but I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be at this point in the weekend. Oh, well...that just means there's more to do next time.

Still At It

Well, it's going on 10:00, and we're still at it here in scrapbook land. I thought I'd post a few more pictures of what it looks like here.

What's that in my hand? Yes, it's an iron. I won't iron anything at home (I'd rather have the dry cleaner do it), but I'll sit here and iron letters on my paper. I guess it doesn't have to make sense.

My friend Deb has spent the entire day working on her laptop, determined to find a way to print her own scrapbook paper. It's not going well. Randy stopped by for a while this evening, and even he wasn't able to get it to work for her. But, Deb's determined, and if anyone can get it to work, she can....

Out of the House - FINALLY

As I type this, I'm sitting in the Holiday Inn in Okemos, just about 7 miles from home. I'm here with 41 other scrapbookers, and we're taking over one of their meeting rooms for the weekend. My friend Deb and I have booked a room so we don't even have to drive home. We got here around 10:00 this morning, and we'll be here until 5:00 Sunday evening.

When I first started scrapbooking, my sister-in-law Tammi invited me to go to a scrapbook expo where she lives, outside of Chicago. It was a great day. As we were leaving, we saw a line of women coming in. They were bringing their scrapbook items in to spend the evening scrapbooking at the expo. While most of the women had one rolling tote of things, one woman had two rolling totes. Oh, how I made fun of her. I couldn't believe someone would haul that much stuff to a scrapbooking event.

Here's what I brought this morning:

Seven rolling totes

Three plastic suitcase-like containers

One large pink scrapper's bag

One lunchbox-type tote

Two large, heavy, full to the brim plastic containers with handles that only my husand can lift (full of paper)

One laptop case

Six scrapbooks, some empty, some full

One light

One mat

One suitcase

So, my lesson learned is that it seems every time I shoot my mouth off and make fun of someone, I find that eventually I become that exact person...... or worse. Right now, I can't imagine only bringing two totes to a crop. I may have brought too much, but I'll use it, and I'll be glad it's here.

Later I'll post more pictures of the room, once everyone gets off work and gets here. This is going to be a blast!

Happy Birthday To Me!!

Randy went all out for my birthday tonight. He's so wonderful! He picked out the cake to show that even though I'm 45, I'm still a kid at heart. The candles were so cool. They look like crayons. They have some sort of colored oil in them and burn different colors. Very fun.

His presents for me were a crafting mat, since I destroyed the one I have by putting my laptop on it. Who knew laptops got so hot underneath! Now it's warped beyond repair. So, just in time for my first 3-day crop of the year, I have a new mat. He also found this awesome ribbon container. It has tons of little holes in it. You put your ribbon inside and then pull the end of the ribbon out the hole. It holds a ton of ribbon and keeps it all organized because they each go out their own hole. Again, perfect to take on my crop this weekend.

Didn't he do a great job decorating and wrapping??!?! He's a keeper!

So, I'm 45. Hard to believe. I still feel like I'm in my 20's, but boy I wouldn't want to go back to those years for anything. Life just keeps getting better....and I have no doubt that this year will be full of great things as well.

Numb Butt!

This is my doctor.

This is my doctor's office.

Today is the day I was diagnosed with shingles. Oh, joy.

When I got home from work yesterday, I discovered that I had a swollen area right where my butt meets my leg. It was about the width of two fists, and it was totally numb. It was so weird. It didn't hurt, but it was pretty swollen. As the night went on, it started to get hot, but still numb. I decided to have my friendly doctor check it out, and I was surprised to hear it was shingles. I guess during periods of stress (can you say "SPHR test??!?!"), your body can revolt by providing you with shingles. I caught it really early, so hopefully it won't be that bad. I have horse pills to take for a week, and I have to stay home the next couple of days. Once again I'm so thankful I have a job I can do from home so I don't have to waste vacation or sick days.

You know, we've had a lot of stress and drama so far this year, but when I look around, I'm still so grateful for all we have. There are certainly worse things in life, and this will pass. So far the worst thing about this was having to bare my backside for the exam. What fun that was!

I just have to say, thank goodness I passed that test. If I'm going to go through this much for it, at least I have the test results to tell me it's worth it!

Grandma's Birthday

Today Randy and I went to Weberville to visit my grandparents. My Grandma's birthday was yesterday, so we wanted to take her a little something and see how they both are doing. They live in a foster care home for the elderly, and it's really a great place for them. They both are advancing in years and need someone around the clock, and this gives all of us in the family peace of mind that someone is watching over them.

One thing my Grandma is known for is that she never can take a good picture. The picture above is truly the only picture I have of her where she isn't doing something goofy. It was taken three years ago when we got together to celebrate February/March birthdays. Below are some of the other pictures we took that day. I can't help but laugh every time I see them, especially the one of all of us by the cake where she's looking off in space. She's such a good sport about it - she knows she just can't take a decent picture. Enjoy....