Last Month's Loose Ends

That's all I think I have been up to today.

Doing my best to finish up the projects I started and did the bulk of during last month. It's a tad frustrating not to start anything yet but on the other hand, I don't really have a sense of closure in terms of last month. I still haven't done my two page layout yet but time waits for no one.

Roar!

Bit of a bind, isn't it? When my computer is acting up, I am left with awkward downtime so I did start a scarf. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that at least twice already. It's pretty straight forward so I'm not sure if I'm grossly underestimating my speed or... well, not sure what the other option is but am sure that there is one. :P

Ugh, I know I did stuff today. Don't just want to post about nothing... think, think.

Oh! Remember that fundraiser dinner and raffle that I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into most of last week? (For once, it wasn't that dramatic.) Well, FMIL won a Wildcat tee and cap and apparently I won two separate gift certificates! I didn't even buy tickets, but FMIL and another teacher insisted I use some of theirs because of the effort I put in. With much reluctance, I did. Luckily, they are both to the same place: a salon! I have never been to one before. Well, I have to visit people but not to get something done to myself.

Heck, up until nearly a year after I moved here, no one else has ever even cut or dyed my hair besides my mom. That was super weird enough. It's still gets me panicky. I have been due for a haircut recently though. Its naturally very thick in the back so I tend to get it thinned during warmer months. Well, haven't had the chance to lately and now whenever I pull it into a ponytail (which is definitely more often than not), I'm destroying my hair ties because they can't handle the bulk. Sigh. Oh, I guess I should mention that one was for a haircut and the other was for a shellac manicure. That's a toughie to use because I do so much crap with and to my hands. It's just worse with school, lol.

The SO and FMIL have heard of the place and it's not exactly down the street but it isn't quite across town either. I'd like to use both services at once but I'm more likely to give the manicure to someone else. I can more or less do my own and have it come out half decent. That way, I won't feel nearly has bad when it gets destroyed in two to three days. We'll see.

There. Now I feel better about this post. XD

Two Cups Short

Today was consumed by the fact that I was two cups short of a heart attack.

Two cups of coffee is way more than I can handle. I don't even drink it straight. There's all sorts of things added in. I was bouncing off the walls.

Thankfully, I've crashed.

As per Superbowl Sunday tradition, I turned on some Mario Party (that I've been borrowing from my dear brother for nearly two years now) on the Wii and played a few rounds. We are not currently receiving the channel that the game played on today so... yeah. It wasn't a terribly eventful day.

I had fun messing around on FB with all of my energy, was playing games on my laptop, and crocheting another food-related scarf all at the same time. Yeah... I may have been able to feel my body pulsing. XD

For the record, I was sort of rooting for the Patriots because I originally hail from Boston. Long, long ago. Heard it was a pretty fun game to watch. Just another specific time I get a bit homesick for my friends. Some day, things will balance out and I'll be able to visit them.

That's all from me today,

Simple Celebration

Today is the SO's birthday, so I'm going to make this a quick one. ^_^

Here is a stack of cards I made a few weeks ago that I absolutely adore. I got the idea from another SU! demonstrator and changed the color scheme to some of the limited edition colors that I really like using. Its the same stamp set that I got for free because of an annual special event (every $50 = free gift!) but I didn't have a big selection of ribbon in my personal inventory. Instead, I used my texture embossing folders on scraps of paper to make faux ribbon. Don't mind the butterflies, just covering up my signature. : )

I also took some pictures of the process of embossing the stamp images in the background using a Versamark (watermarking) ink pad, clear embossing powder, and my heat gun. It's really cool to see the change in texture and color when the powder melts. Silver is fun to watch too.

I think they turned out so well that I'm preparing to make a bunch more to add to my somewhat outdated stash soon.

Refueling My Creativity

I'm so worn out and running on caffeine right now. I actually feel guilty about the amount of sodas I've had this past week. On the bright side, it's income from doing something beneficial to the community and the future. After work was done, I turned into volunteer-mode and have hopefully finally finished creating all of the PCS cards that we'll need to launch this important campaign in the classroom.

My plan is to create more booklets this weekend and, come Monday, laminate and bind them at school. I hope to get a picture of each of the students who will be receiving these systems and of each of the remaining teachers. Then to print, trim, laminate, and Velcro those as the finish step. Yay, ambition! Lol.

I also continue to lend a hand in the fundraiser prep tonight. Mostly made sure that our area of the raffle baskets, gift certificates, and auctions were set to go. I hadn't even signed up to volunteer for the event, but I did stuff anyways. FMIL signed-up for the first cooking shift and that didn't pan out for them but instead served salads. This is on top of the fact that she also stuck it out with me yesterday to heavily help set up the raffle area. She didn't sign up for that either. Got to love giving spirits. We'll give 'til we drop and then keep giving from the ground/ whatever hole we're in. :P

I was too tired to stay, so I headed home with the intent to take a solid nap. However, that didn't work out because I used what little momentum I had left in me to start doing a bit more research into the fun topic I mentioned a few days ago.

In preparation for tackling another big personal project for this month, I found myself becoming increasingly intimidated by the sheer size of the project. I'm talking about my goal of scrapbooking each month and my family's summer album. To try to curb that growing panic, I looked into different kinds of scrapbooks one can make. It's worked! I've spent the past few hours absorbed into reading about various ideas, tips, and suggestions on scrapbooking. Now, I'm super excited!

Most of it stems from this one site: LOAD (Layout a Day!). Here are my favorite ideas from all of the reading that I've done so far:

• Don't go crazy setting standards and expectations that are too high for yourself. Don't limit yourself to a certain style, size, medium, or rules that try to dictate what's "right" or "wrong". Just let go and start doing something. It'll grow organically and you can always draw bits of inspiration here and there.
• Can't narrow down your photos to a few favorites or the cream of the crop? Then don't make yourself miserable trying to crate a scrapbook that looks like your local phone book. Try a printed photo book or a digital picture frame. My folks love their frame and are continuously rearranging and adding new pictures.
• Early on, try making a small mini album about a specific recent event or theme. This could be a once a month photo during the school year for your kids, she talked about fall favorites, or a recent holiday. 
• In terms of a family vacation album, she talked about family favorites. Each person choose three of their favorite moments/ memories, you find and set up the pictures, and they provide the words for journaling. You can also do a photo album scrapbook which inserts the average 4x6 into a large photo album but has just enough room for you to add little embellishments, notes, and pieces of memorabilia.

Awesome stuff to think about. You can probably tell by my past moaning and groaning why these tips meant so much to me. Another project-product I have recently learned about and am fascinated by is Project Life. It's a photo album scrapbook package-system that gets the job done in a simple, beautiful, and fun way. I don't even know how to really explain it without including all of the information they did, so just trust me and check out their website.

Once I get the scrapbooks that have already been planned done, I would love to try some of these new fresh ideas to practice more scrapbooking.

Basketcase

I was going to update about something fun but I have spent several hours at school doing my observations, developing those communication folders for half a dozen kids, did mini demonstrations of crafting techniques, helped finish wrapping baskets of donations, and then helped set up over 60 baskets, nearly 30 gift certificate displays and over 70 individual kids items for the auction-raffle tomorrow night.

I'm kind of tired after a few nights in a row of just a few hours each.

Really looking forward to relaxing a little this weekend with it being the SO's birthday and him being really easy-going about that kind of thing and how the both of us are kind of staying away from Super Bowl insanity this year. It'll be the closet thing to doing nothing as we'll get for a while.

I hope we raise a lot of money for the school. I know that many of teachers could use all of the help that they can get after pouring so much of their own funds in already.

Because I can barely keep my eyes awake,

Really? Already?

That pretty much sums up my feelings about the fact that February started today. What is going on?

I'm lacking a bit of sleep today. Okay, two-thirds of it, but I have a few more things to do before I crawl into bed early tonight. So soon. So close.

I ditched the purse today in favor of a big honkin' tote bag so I could carry crafting goodies and my usual gear to school today to lessen my chances of forgetting half of it there. FMIL took pity on my carrying multiple plastic bags lately and got me a cute lunch bag that I forgot the first time I got to use it in her classroom when we rushed out yesterday. Fail.

I didn't get to showcase the craft products that I brought because it was a packed day from beginning to end for many of us. I spent a lot of my volunteering time working on a program called Boardmaker to make PECS or PCS (picture communication system) cards. Little picture exchange communication system cards for a few of the kids in FMIL's classroom who are having an especially difficult time communicating verbally. We have quite a few around the classroom but are testing out a more personalized system by making each of these guys a booklet catered to their needs and preferences. I am so fascinated. It feels my desires for organization, technology, and customization, lol.

We're running a basic version that is a few years old and a tad frustrating right now, but I guess I've been spoiled with my glimpses of more current versions. I customized over 130 cards and got them cut out with the corners rounded for the sake of all of our safeties. I hope to have them all laminated by the end of the week and that's a somewhat tedious and difficult job for one person to do: feed each little piece into the machine and pray that it adheres but doesn't jam. As long as that step gets done, I'll be able to bring the curtain home and cut them out, possibly adding the necessary velcro to the backs as well.

I might have been able to cram the laminating in today, but I mostly came to volunteering packing and wrapping baskets upon baskets of donated goods for the annual raffle-auction dinner happening this Friday evening. There were so many goodies, I was pleasantly surprised and a little scared, lol. We actually got all but six baskets done, labeled, and recorded because we ran out of wrapping supplies! There are also tons of individual kid items that will just be displayed. Each toy or basket will have it's own little box and description in front of it. If you like what you see, you place at least one of your tickets into the container and see if you win it later on! Pretty cool idea, me thinks.

Can't wait to chat at you tomorrow about something I'm currently researching.

End of January

This month has flown by but for the past few days I feel as if I've at least caught up and am only overwhelmed by current issues.

It's not so much drowning but more floundering? Okay, it's not nearly as terrible as it sounds. I guess I'm trying to say that we're more or less back to normal/typical daily stress, lol.

So I took a look at how I felt at the beginning of the month. Things didn't get much better until the past few days so I'm still in a very tentative state. Part of me feels that if I let my guard down and fully enjoy the good fortune that has come our way, that life will just backhand me hard for getting cheeky. Sigh.

I've done a pretty good job keeping up with the makeover in the room with a few worrisome spots. However, with a free weekend, I'm sure it'll all be taken care of quickly. I'm still working on making a habit of developing (in a reasonable sense) and accomplishing my daily to-do list but have done pretty well when we don't consider the unexpected surprises life tends to throw. In that way, I've managed to surprise myself. XD

Still haven't found a comfortable balance between schoolwork, chores, work, and um... more work. Just trying to make ends meet with on-call jobs. However, I've been keeping up more than ever. "Ever" being in recently recalled memory and that doesn't necessary mean a whole lot, lol.

Oye, I must be much more delirious than I thought given how goofy and disjointed my thoughts are... I just wanted to sum up that so far so good, all things considered, doing better than expected but I'm on the brink of being overwhelmed completely (I'm sure), I still need to scrapbook about January but I did start making a list of events that will be included in the layout, and I only have 350 pictures left to edit online! Woohoo! That means I've done over 1000 (not including the ones I've deleted for whatever reason) so it means a lot to me. After that big step I have the big choice of tackling the task of relinking or fixing the picture links here on the blog OR starting to tackle the epic summer family scrapbook again. I took a break when I realized how screwed up my online picture storage was here. Or rather I freaked out and couldn't focus on anything else for at least two days and then kept on going.

If I'm going to get some sleep tonight, I need to stop thinking about that crossroad right now. : )