Cleanse

I actually haven't done much cleaning but have been tidying up like mad for the past few days.

The SO's relatives are coming in this Thursday afternoon and I'm going to still be at work. FMIL is taking a few days off and I was going to do the same until I lost a few days pay due to my recent illnesses.

At least this week also contains a Payday Friday. I'm hoping to get out early that day since it's grading day and there will be no kids to directly care for. Gonna work my butt off to get as much prepared as possible in my classroom.

I don't have too much to do left. Tackling the bathroom, doing some dusting, tidying up the storage area in the garage that we're using, and doing some laundry is pretty much it for me. We'll be mopping but the vacuuming has been done and FMIL has been tackling a lot of the clutter in the living room.

Thursday: Spent much of this day waiting around for Friday. I felt extra guilty for this because I want to adapt the attitude of tackling every day like a challenge, not wasting a moment. Stayed a little late after school to help a few other teachers, Skyped with a friend, and attempted to make a Brownie in a Cup after reading this article: 50 Life Hacks to Simplify your World; #34's fault.

The results were... well, I was sitting there with a cupful of disappointment. The advice I got was to not use olive oil. Plus, I think I nuked it for too long when I thought there was too much moisture in the cup. It ended up caramelizing the sugar halfway through me trying to eat it.

All of my ingredients.

 Sadness.

Friday: Finally have some energy back this weekend and thank goodness because it was a crazy day at school. With state testing this week, we lost a lot of time for our usual academics and didn't think it fair to test them today. Plus, we had a fire drill and bus evacuation drill along with the monthly school assembly. Yeah, it's hard to compete for attention during that kind of day. Plus, it was really windy out as a cold front was coming in and everyone's allergies and sinuses were unhappy.

Right after work, the SO whisked me away to kitty's vet appointment. It was a wellness visit and he was so scared. :( While we were waiting for the doctor to come in, he was trying to melt into his daddy's sweater. Thankfully, he was so good with the vet and assistant when they gave him a rabies and upper respiratory vaccine because he was due.

Afterwards, we dropped him off, spent some time with him, and ran some errands including getting some fish oil to help with his dry skin and some pet grass. He seems to have a bit of cat acne lately for the first time, so we'll ease in the fish oil with his food. 

There was Ladies' Happy Hour at a location we've been to before but had been replaced by a different restaurant. There was a nice turn out and the sweetest waiters. Handsome too, lol. The food was good too.

Got a care package from my best friend today too! We chatted on Skype as I opened it and subsequently freaked out. The three sodas I had at dinner may have had something to do with that. It was just too perfect and so "us".

Look at the cuteness!

There was a gift card to Target and it's one of our favorite stores, a Dove chocolate bunny for Easter (my mom used to get me one every year), a handmade card with the supplies I've been sending her, the funniest squishy blue seal that lights up when you bop it (I cried I was laughing so hard- the SO calls it a "Police Seal" because the lights are red and blue), Pez dispensers of Phineas and Ferb because she knows I love that show, a squishy Valentine's lion-bear-dog and she has the coordinating giraffe, and a glow stick wand. I don't know when I'm going to get a good reason to use it, but I'll make an occasion if I have to! 

Saturday: I spent a lot of my day organizing the majority of my paperwork and files, drawers and cabinets, and art supplies. Doing this helped me clean up a bit of the clutter around the house in preparation for the relatives coming this week. Not too much purging going on, which is something I desperately need to do (as discussed with my resolutions and goals for this year). 

 I've mentioned that I really like office supplies, right?

Tapes, sticky notes, paper clips, and miscellaneous supplies in towards the back, normal pens and pencils are in a mug next to the bajillion staples I have in that silver-pink tube, highlighters and specialty markers are in one half of a checkbook box I turned into a container, colorful pens are in the container next to it, and scissors are next to that because we grab them the most.

This does not include my color pencils, coloring markers, or colorful permanent markers. Those are with my craft supplies. I stored a lot of my paper crafting supplies in the art bin beneath my bed since I've begun to stray away from card-making and paper-crafting towards the digital goodness. Still just as easily accessed so it's all good.

 

Our kitty (and his sister) turned 7 years old today! So big! Even saying that now, I just want to get up and go squish hug him. Love that little boy so much and we are ever grateful that he's pretty healthy. They are now older than their mom was when she passed away from kidney failure. It's probably what's going to do them all in one day, so we're sensitive to that sort of thing.

 Had to deal with this nonsense again. Right when I wanted to relax after organizing so much of my stuff, too. Grr.

Sunday: It's pretty been playing the new SimCity and hanging out with the SO since he was feeling under the weather again.

 This was a beautiful sunset. I don't remember seeing the mountains get this red and bright before.

I also got to playing with some of my older crafting supplies too. I made these metallic and holographic lucky stars after dragging out my origami collection to show the students (we didn't get a chance to on Friday but I'll try again this week). They have been really wanting to see it after having a brief unit on Asian cultures.

I'll show more of my crafting supplies soon since they're even easier to get at now.

Appreciating Friendships

So.

I'm the butthead that just checked out yesterday from the moment that I woke up and for twenty-four hours after.

Yesterday was Pajama Day at school and that's one of my favorite days of the year and I completely forgot. I was even gushing about it the evening before and still blanked out when I picked out my clothes for the morning. Sigh. So many kids participated and it was adorable. We tied it into the "Love of Reading" week by inviting family members to come in and read with their students in the afternoon all snuggled up with small stuffed animals and their pj's.

Uh, the Pope retired. Didn't know that that was a thing. A state of emergency was declared in Mississippi after huge tornado ripped through and that is so tragic. Closer to home, we have some good news: it's about one month until I get to meet the SO's grandmother and some of this other relatives- in person! There are so many italics going on in this post. There's going to be a lot of media too. I'm trying to make up for yesterday.

Happy Valentine's Day, by the way. Here are two related and sweet pictures:

 

This is a big red velvet cupcake that FMIL got for me. Not the best picture of it, but I'm saving it for the end of the work week tomorrow. There is fine edible glitter sprinkled on top. Yep, it's that pretty.

 This is such a sweet story I saw on FB and shared. Made me tear up and a few of my guy friends too because I have some of the greatest friends.

- - - - -

Part II of this post is showing you what previous hobby I'm starting to delve into again- friendship bracelets. Yeah, it's been about what... two years now? I brought my collection in for my friends at work to choose from. Nothing like a friendship bracelet to show that I appreciate their friendships on Valentine's Day! :D Well, that was my line of thinking anyways. I have so many crafting hobbies, my coworkers have trouble keeping up.

I want to share my crafty collections on the blog, so here's the first installment! I realized that I never showed how I ended up reorganizing my strings after talking about hunting down the "perfect" storage solution. Cue the V8 smack to the forehead.

 Found this stackable and lockable container at a big box craft store. Was looking for one of those clear tall pails but this has worked out so well for me.

I sort many things by color and stocked up on the floss holders which have been so good to me. There are a ton of pinks because of my Breast Cancer Awareness promotion-line.

 I used to keep a cheat sheet note card in an envelope for each pattern I used to sell in my old Etsy shop.

 I have a bunch of bracelets that I deemed "Unusable" set aside for ones that were an odd length or from when I was figuring out what was the best way to fasten the bracelets.

  Sometimes, I'm determined to break out of a color rut and blindly grab the needed number to see what comes out. Often, it's not my cup of tea, but a customer would just fall in love with the hues.

 I have so many of these because I made a ton as part of a promotion-campaign thing for a previous Valentine's Day. Kind of a pain to make, but they always look so sweet.

One of the newer patterns that I incorporated into my main line.

 This is my favorite pattern. It looks so good from the front and the back.

 I ended up making one for myself using colors that would remind me of the lessons I should focusing on learning this year. I don't know if this was the right color scheme, but am wearing it on my ankle now. The orange and white are my favorite part because it looks like a fox tail. More about that at a later date.

 

Not quite macrame, but I like to use my scraps to make these.

 My two latest additions to the main line. I call the first one Waterfall and the latter Blaze. They require much more forethought and attention to get into the rhythm of making.

 My Awareness Ribbon pattern that included a donation to related causes. *Note* I do not claim that any of these patterns are my own.

This is one of most popular patterns, especially once people see it in person. I've made and remade (once they have fallen off and been lost) so many of these.

 

These are a few patterns that I was testing out. That middle lime one is an outline of a butterfly.

 Older patterns that I had completed from a book but decided not to sell. I'll make them if someone really loves them.

 More patterns that I had considered selling once I stocked up a few.

This is the collection of it all after sorting out the jumbled mess I had ended up with when I shut down my store.

Right after taking that last picture, I sought a better way of keeping the finished bracelets organized. Now, they are all on their respective paper clip and the clips are on a d-ring. Hopefully, it made it easier for the ladies to sort through them all to find one that they liked today.

I can show my colors of embroidery floss in another post, but that collection of colors changes so often. I seek certain shades when requested, but I often just oogle the selection and grab colors that I find are gorgeous at the time. I started getting into seasonal collections and that was tons of fun to shop for. I would love some outside inspiration for new color combinations now that I'm dabbling in this again.

Sigh, someone needs to take some of these off of my hands, lol. As long as they go do a decent home, I don't mind it at all.

Minor Recovery

Oh yeah! I have some pictures from the garden before I left it on Wednesday. I'm thinking it's all kaput.

 Oy.

 At least the thinned out seedlings are doing okay. I'm not convinced I'm going to use any of them this year. They're not sturdy enough with the lack of light.

I was able to go back to work on Thursday.

Guess I should have felt a bit better about having an involuntary two-day work week but I was just filled with guilt and exhaustion with an undercurrent of anger. It happened to be the 100th day of school! That means just 80 more to go. Wow.

After my usual day of scrambling to figure out where to pick up with my usual students (the school doesn't get substitutes for consensus aides like me >_<), I went to help out with the kinders. I made a 100th day crown and had some delicious "Gorp".

It's a mixture of 100 pieces of this and that, pretty much the most unhealthy trail mix ever thanks to some nut allergies in the classroom, from each of the students and their families. Many of the families sent the rest of the snack after counting out the designated pieces, so there was plenty of Gorp to go around all week.

Mom sent another care package for me on Friday. The amount of them has tripled in the past two months. I guess the holidays were more difficult than I realized. Well, looking back on how I felt at the time, I felt every bit of that angst, but that superficial frustration had died down to reveal the deeper stuff.

The package included two super fluffy and long robes. Just what I could use/ wanted in the time of this prolonged freeze. I wear them over my pajamas and over my regular clothes whenever I'm at home. Brings me comfort on multiple levels. I'm grateful for the mother-daughter bond we have.

My dad's back at home now and they are starting to receive visitors who were late to the bandwagon-party. At least my mom got the week off to rest at home too.

I've spent the rest of the weekend trying to relax and take care of my boys while recovering myself. Not my idea of a good time over a long weekend, but we're trying to make the best of it. I've been helping out with cleaning around SIL's house, spending time with my kitty-nieces, playing Pokemon Black again, watching various Star Trek episodes, and going to bed early. Slowly but surely, we're getting accustomed to a somewhat quiet life again.

Our kitty (on the bed) seeing his sister (outside on the window). The reunion has been bittersweet. :P

2012: Year In Review

It's finally here. The end of 2012, when the world was supposed to end about half a dozen times. We're battered and weary but still here!

Here is what I had to say and share at the ends of 2010 and 2011.

I wanted to focus on, well, focusing and just doing. Big ole flop due to unforeseen bouts of absolute rage. I have been very blessed by karma and good fortune out of many a rough spot this year too. However, resolutions and whatnot will come tomorrow. Time for the nostalgia!


Here is Pantone's page about the Color of the Year: Emerald and here's the press release page about it.

DJ Earworm has cranked out this mash-up of the top songs of 2012- "Shine Brighter":

JibJab's Look Back on 2012:

 YouTube's Top Videos of 2012:

Also, two articles: New species of animals discovered in 2012 and Weird News from my home state of Florida. Cannot say that I'm terribly proud of the hot mess-ery.

I commend you for carrying on after this point as it's time for my monthly reviews! These are in no particular order and obviously vary in importance and meaning. Looking back on a lot of this there were time that I didn't document exactly what was going on in my life, but it reminded me of what was happening. It made me much more determined to document the realities with my scrapbooking while I cut back on putting up a sugar-coated front.

January: 

I took down my cherry tomatoes, perfected my cake pop- Oreo truffles techniques, and tried to make some resolutions about limited myself to strict time periods (what a laugh). I worried about how to streamline every aspect of my life, was still working for Stampin' Up! for a few more months, and started delving into my family's vacation scrapbook in earnest.

I discovered my blog's issues with Picasa's photo storage that took weeks to sort through and fix, harvested my herbs that were going wild while starting off some new seeds, planned my own Lunar New Year of the Dragon dinner, and did cultural presentations in each of the classrooms.

I also started working on classroom websites and now am the school's webmaster, began a mild obsession with beauty products and YouTube beauty gurus, and I created a system of organizing and keeping receipts this year.

During a brunch with a dear friend, I pulled three Angel Cards to reflect upon for the year: "Exploration" - "Balance" - "Forgiveness". While I kept that in mind for a few weeks, I totally lost track of that later on in the year, and looking back now- It was incredibly relevant and poignant. 

February: 
I was immersed in the BoardMaker program at school making communication schedule booklets for several students, worked my butt off helping out with the annual spaghetti fundraiser, learned about Project Life, vaguely watched the Superbowl while playing Mario Party (as per tradition), and started crocheting food-themed treats and made candy-treats for the staff for the snowy Valentine's Day we had. That was also Arizona's 100th birthday.

While working in the garden, I discovered two types of bug eggs popping up underneath the leaves of my plants, and started planting beans and peas. My best friend, baby brother, and I started getting back into an old favorite game of ours- Maple Story. My brother turned twenty and I flipped out just a little and I became mildly obsessed with RuPaul's Drag Race. Our cat's grass obsession reached an all-time high and there was a leap year.

My family's dog was lost but found and rescued after a week-long of turmoil. She is with a great new family now that loves here very much.

March: 
I made Simply Adorned inserts for a friend and was super grateful for random acts of kindness at work. There was the anniversary of two years of blogging around which I reorganized the tabs and features, spring had sprung in the garden while the lettuce was ravaged by some critter, and we added strawberries to the mix.

The SO's bike was made road-ready again, we worked on various plumbing and other household repairs, there were tornadoes across the middle of the country, and the NCAA tournament was lackluster when our home team was knocked out of the running very early on. We also splurged on updating some computer parts and I got a graphics tablet.

Seed catalogs rekindled my hope in the garden followed by flowers appearing, we took care of a pesky wisdom toothache, I went to zoo on a field trip with the kids, and I crocheted armies of cupcakes with my best friend when we started the battle of the care packages.

April: 
We were obsessed with Sims3 and some expansions, our kitty's sister got into a fight with a feral cat, the peppers were being eaten from my garden, the herbs flourished, the lettuce was thinned out, started garden vlogging, and celebrated Easter with my sister-in-law with some deviled eggs shaped like baby chicks. I was itching to reorganize my room (amongst other things) and celebrated four years of dating with the SO at a fifties diner

I started working and volunteering more at school, becoming the guard of the laminator, made a Flat Stanley display about plants and cultivated a front display all about the beloved book character at school, it reached 100 degrees, there was a volunteer breakfast, and we treated ourselves to luxurious haircuts.

There was a mini garden haul, an attempt to reseed a few old favorites, and while planning out my trip to Florida and FMIL's birthday celebrations, I was reprioritizing my life yet again.

May: 
I tried to make my first crochet project from scratch- a hooded kitty scarf, finished up some classes, vlogged a little bit with our kitty, and took FMIL to Kartchner Caverns.

Then, I headed to Florida for the majority of the month during which I took off to Cape Canaveral the next day, then to Tallahassee where I attended the wedding of two friends from childhood, the drama of someone else's family showed up on our doorstep, my brother and I took field trips around our neighborhood, had a reunion ten years in the making with middle school friends, went on a road trip with my brother to visit friends around the central part of the state, and then headed back to Tucson.

June: 
Switched around my wardrobe, we became obsessed with Diablo 3, reorganized my beauty storage, had a few wolf spider visits, replenished my card stash with newly released color products while planning out this year's Christmas cards in earnest, and we prayed for those affected by the wildfires in New Mexico and the flooding in Florida. 

We played a lot of Mario Party, got up to 110 degrees, cat-sat for our sister-in-law while she was away, and nearly blew a gasket over our internet issues. I thought out my collection of earring storage, learned about my one of five love languages, the garden was picked on by quails, realized that pain was a big part of adulthood, started making clothing accessories out of yarn, and helped a friend reorganize her office.

I also kept plugging away at that family scrapbook, FMIL went to visit family, and we Skyped with them. All of us kept the victims of the Colorado wildfires in our thoughts.

July: 
I began a obsession with crochet oceanic creatures, started playing with my Nintendo DS again, and freaked out when my brother had car issues while my folks away on their first cruise. Our Independence Day was the coldest we've had in a while, we found a snake or two in the yards, I made a file of my friends' favorites, we discovered Twitch TV for online game streaming, and had a fun discussion with my sister-in-law about rock-climbing.

We also found a bunch of bugs inside and ended up taking care of that, harvested peppers as they ripened, became obsessed with Terraria, and the monsoons started. I embarked upon organizing the family recipes here, there was tarantula that kept coming back, and a new classroom fish and kitten were introduced.

Our hearts dropped when we heard about the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

August:
The pets were introduced to each other, the garden began to recover with the monsoon rains, our internet issues continued as we said goodbye to one of our new friends, I was obsessed with learning about the Vlogbrothers, and we watched the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, land on the red planet.

I started subbing again at school, we got ringworm, the garden began wilting in the heat, was sick during my birthday, digi-scrapped a whole bunch, moderated stream chats, and I was hired on regularly has a consensus aide. That initially led to lots more communication booklets and making a bug observation book for the kids.

The tropical storm Isaac neared Florida and I started to fret a little with the media hype but my friends there reassured me that everything was going to be fine.   

September: 
I crocheted owls, finalized plans about our Christmas cards, our kitty caught an upper respiratory infection, realized I was working for free for the time being, the tomatoes and peppers continued to ripening, and I continued stockpiling yarn gifts again. 

Skyped more with my closet of friends, reaffirmed my thoughts on marriage, finished up the Florida scrapbook album, reflected upon an end of era with my WoW playing as the new expansion came out, and went on fall break.

I found out that one of my high school mentors, who inspired my degree, had passed away after battling cancer.

October:
We had to get a new fridge, the weather began getting chilly, I finally made the Christmas cards, had my hours doubled at work, reorganized my beauty and nail polish storage, wrote up a story for my Flat Stanley adventures in Florida, and reorganized around the house some more.

I began extensive note-taking inspired by my new obsession of Project Life, updated the garden monthly summaries tab here, and watched tons of shows on Hulu with the SO. There was a field trip to the Sabino Canyon, I gave my teenage self some beauty advice, assembled the Florida album, created a master plan about growing up, carved pumpkins at the last minute, and created a bunch of cards.

The hurricane- super storm Sandy devastated the New England area.

November:
I started finding something different I could be grateful about for each day of this month, started walking home as part of my bigger plan to grow as a person, harvested the last of the major bits of peppers and fruits from the garden, went to a fun baby shower, became determined to document more of life, largely failed at my walk home, and majorly bonded with our kitty.

I found some of the joys of using Evernote, began to receive and send packages, worked earnestly to control my temper, lined up a ton of creative consulting jobs that nearly all fell apart, reviewed a bunch of beauty products from throughout the year, wrote the Christmas cards, and went to two Thanksgiving dinners- one of which was vegetarian. 

The garden was prepped for winter weather, started up some new seeds indoors, and obsessed over dancing musical Christmas light videos online. Walking home got easier with a simplified route that came with long phone conversations with my brother and mother, and thought extensively about what I wanted to do in the new year when I got my new planner.

December:
I got sick more often (it happened to coincide with when the students would get ill, imagine that), began to winterize the evaporative cooler on my own, finalized the cards and wrapped up the gifts as they arrive, and commenced cooking new recipes again.

I went to the bi-annual street fair, began getting gifts early on, the SO and I began planning out home renovations in the next coming months, made cake pops for the staff, went to the staff holiday party, and learned about a family illness and the appointments, fretting, and treatments that go along with that.

There was a terrible shooting in Newtown, Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary that rocked the nation and the world. 

There was much baking of holiday treats, was sick for much of my vacation, watched many YouTubers participate it in Vlogmas, played many hours of Dokapon Kingdom and Super Mario Galaxy with the SO, spent Christmas with the in-laws, the SO and I went on a road trip to meet up with a friend, and wrapped up the year by reflecting upon the past twelve months.