Monday

When I woke up this morning I found the 1st snow of the season. Ugh. I used to get so excited about snow and winter but I really am starting to hate it now. I never used to get cold, but find myself freezing all the time now. Just ugh.

I finished 3 more presents this weekend. A Tinkerbell dress for the Princess' dress-up clothes, my baby sister's vase and flowers, and a teacup candle for my mother in law. I even wrapped them!

Since this is Xmas on a tight budget year, I have been scouring Ebay and Craigslist for some of the stuff for the kids. I found a kitchen set for the Princess ($100+ new) on CL for $25. A quick wipe down to remove dust and it's as good as new. Munchkin wants Halo and Halo II. They're going on Ebay for a couple of dollars apiece! Much better than the $20+ in a local game store.

Here are some pictures of some of my latest projects:

Fail...sort of

Okay so I obviously didn't post for several days which ruined my 365 days thing, but it wasn't my fault. Honest. The dog ate my internet.

Actually I just didn't have internet access. We got rid of our connection in September (when we thought we'd be moving) and have been using (with their permission) the neighbor's wifi since. The stupid phone company has been out here in our neighborhood for a week now running fiber optic cable and keeps knocking the internet service out. Even when we can connect we can't connect with enough signal to do anything.

I finished two presents last night and have two more almost finished.

And to round out this completely theme-less post: photos of the Princess.

Black Friday

No shopping for me today (being broke sucks) but thanks to Blizzard's anniversary and my sister's internet I will be playing WoW this evening! Hope I remember how.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Nothing exciting

Just a lazy day here again. Munchkin and B played video games all day, The Princess made a mess of the living room, and I worked on Xmas presents. Quiet and boring. I could get used to it.

Xmas present progress

So I've made some progress on the enormous task I gave myself of making Xmas presents for family this year. Here are the things I've been working on:

A year of photos CD with a numbered index and explanations of what each photo is. The CD is in the origami flower.


Felt and button flowers.



Photo coasters.



The beginning of a family scrapbook for my husband's grandma.


And a vase that will hold some of the above flowers.


So, I'm getting there but I still have a long way to go. Sigh.

Auto post

This is a quick post set to post itself. Why? Cause we're actually having friends over! A friend from a long time ago and his girlfriend are coming over to hang out while they're in town for Thanksgiving. They are super awesome people and I can't wait to see them again!

Sunday

B and the Princess watched the Bengals lose while I worked on Xmas presents today. She's so cute yelling at the tv with him. I glued some orange crepe paper to a couple of her plastic bracelet and she jumped around the living room waving her "pom-poms."

Basically a lazy boring Sunday. It was kinda nice. =)

Hopefully I will get some photos tomorrow of the presents I've been working on. Hopefully.

Trying something new

I posted a listing on Craigslist today offering my services as an amateur photographer. Within 15 minutes I had a response! I'm excited. And a little nervous. We'll see how this goes.

Last minute post

It's almost tomorrow, but I have about 15 minutes left before I mess up my 365 thingy on the second day.

It's a kid free night here. Woohoo! The Princess is at grandma's and Munchkin is with his dad. So quiet. Nice.

We've watched Up and Star Trek. Now my choices are late night talk shows (lame) or some learning crap on PBS (ugh!). Some days I miss having cable.

That's about it.

Here's another pretty picture of my baby.

365 Project

So in an effort to update this dusty blog more often, I am going to attempt the 365 Project idea with a blog post every day for a year. Some days (okay lots) it may just be a photo from that day, but I will post something every.single.day. I hope.

And to stop you from laughing at me, here is a picture of my pretty baby from yesterday.

A long, long time ago...

...I started a blog. I had the best intentions of using it as a journal and updating it often. Yeah. Apparently I severely underestimated the levels of procrastinating and lazy to which I can sink. Blah. Now my goal is to post when I happen to remember I have a blog and not feel offended by my husband asking "are you blogging? Wow!"

Two weeks ago I decided that since we are flat broke (and I mean broke like scrounging up $11 in change to buy caffeine and nicotine for my husband before I kill him for being an unbearable ass as he withdraws from his remaining addictions, broke) and have two kids to come up with Christmas presents for, that I would make a bunch of presents this year. At this point you are no doubt remembering my aforementioned lazy procrastination and laughing at me. Don't worry, the husband did the same thing. One week ago he said, "you so aren't going to make presents." The 10 year old boy part of my brain took that as a double-dog dare and decided to prove him wrong.

In the last 5 days I have made: a set of photo tile coasters for my mother in law, a bouquet of a felt flowers and a multi-colored vase to keep them in for my sister (I need another set of these for my youngest sister- that's next on the list), a year in pictures CD complete with photo index, date and activity list and a pretty origami CD holder (to be duplicated for multiple faraway relatives), AND I have started on a family scrapbook album for my husband's grandmother.

I will post pictures as soon as I remember to recharge the camera battery...

Here are a couple photos from our fall activities. I made a good portion of the princess costume.

Happy Birthday baby!

The Princess turned two today. Seems like only yesterday I was waiting for her to roll over, and now she's running and dancing. Just a few photos of her over the last two years. The last is from her birthday party on Sunday. Appropriately, it was a Disney princess party.

Suck blogger alert!

Okay....I think the title pretty much says it all. I haven't been here in nearly two months. I wish I could say it was because I have been too busy, but I can't lie to the 2 or 3 people that might actually read this. I have stories and pictures to share of karate achievements, park trips and various other things. Now if only I can find the time to do it...

lol


Be back later, I promise!

Ever have one of these days?

OW!!!!

Kidney stones hurt nearly as much as childbirth and last longer. FYI.

Just another day

The temperature on the thermometer outside my house said -18F when I got up this morning.

I have two flats tires on my car.

Before and after

The mess that was my craft space/ bedroom is no more. Mostly. Here are the before pictures.

The top of the desk covered in piles of photos, tools, and other supplies. ----->





<----The surrounding floor space covered with various crap. The bench I moved up from the basement (okay I supervised the moving, but it's practically the same thing right?) is in the bottom corner packed with more crap.

That white thing under the desk is supposed to have my printer on it, but due to network (ha, network) issues it had to go down stairs near the pcs for a day or two.



Ahh...the after. Pretty self explanatory.

Everything put away. Bench under the window with stuff used infrequently. New rods on the wall to hold themed stickers and other various embellishments. ---->






<---- Just another angle to show all the storage on the walls.

The curtains on the left lead to the baby's "room."
Which reminds me that I never posted the before and after photos of making my walk in/thru closet into a bedroom for her.

Guilt crafting and attempts at cleanliness

I won't pretend that I've been too busy to update this blog cause I haven't. Just too lazy.

We're finally past the holidays (phew!) and I am trying to remember what it was like to have a clean and organized house. Ok, like I ever really knew. I'll settle for cleanish. Anything less than extreme fire hazard will be good. I didn't do the annual pre-Xmas toy purge, so I have that to look forward to soon. It's gonna have to be very soon, cause my spoiled kids have no room for their Xmas loot. I suppose I need to purge their old clothes too. Anyone need any toddler girl or boy's clothes? Looks like a call to the VVA is in order to set up an appointment for pickup.

I didn't get my craft projects finished in time for Xmas. My cards are still in un-assembled pieces on my desk. The mini albums are still in un-assembled pieces (sensing a theme?) on my desk . I'm hoping to get the albums done for Mother's Day.

Speaking of my desk, it is completely trashed. As is the rest of the bedroom (where the craft desk lives) due to my craft supplies being strewn about everywhere. I'm trying to get it under control so I can actually use my desk to make things. And so my husband can quit looking at my mess and shaking his head as he climbs over it to do silly things like get dressed and go to bed. I bought some new drapery rods this morning to hang stuff on (the aforementioned head shaker needs to install these tonight) and moved a storage bench (which was full of additional craft supplies) from my pit of a basement upstairs to put stuff in. I took some before photos just so my after photos will seem so much more impressive.

Also speaking of my desk, it makes me feel guilty about not scrapbooking more. The husband built my desk for me a few years ago. I kept complaining about having to move all my supplies every time someone needed the table for stupid stuff. Like dinner. So he made me a fabulous desk so all my crap could have a permanent home. And then I stopped scrapbooking. I've done exactly 4 pages since he built the desk almost 3 years ago. I suck. So hopefully once I get the mess cleaned up I can actually make something. And in the process feel less guilty.