My one and only New Year's Resolution

I'm way excited about an idea I found off of CreatingKeepsakes.  It's called Project365.  It's a way to document a year by taking a photo every day.  A kit by Becky Higgins is the focus of their project.  I was thinking about buying the kit, but knew that if it involve printing pictures in 4x6 fashion I would never do it consistently.  It's perfect for those who work with prints but I was thinking I wanted to do it digitally and was thinking it would be cool if a digital designer would make templates.   I was over the moon excited tonight to sign into my LiveMail blog feeds to find Meredith at Moriginals is creating templates for just that purpose.

And.... One of my favorite designers, Pam at Digitreats is doing a year in review "megakit" in 3 color schemes called, smirk, giggle, and shout.  And she does a monthly calendar template which I will use at the start of a new month so my book will all co-ordinate throughout the year.  So cool! 

And if I run out of ideas of what to take pictures of other than my smiling (or not so smiling) kiddos I found a list of 365 ideas to use. So I think this is a resolution I can keep.  I'm even setting daily reminder in my phonebook to remind me to take my pictures. 

Now I just need to get an Eye-Fi card make downloading pictures completely efortless!

Octa-claus

For weeks Trevor has been talking non stop about "enemies"  I could not figure out where on earth he picked up that word.  Tonight at bedtime I told him we would go see Santa Claus.  He said, "tell octa-claus enemy for kiss-mas, choo-choos, James, Henry, and uhhhh Harwold, and uhhhh enemy.  Yeah, enemy."

Light bulb moment... enemy = Emily.  Whew, he's to young to have any enemies!  It's funny because most of the words he says with perfect enunciation but a few things leave me scratching my head.

Something that has left us puzzled for more than a month now is his constant use of the word "fawk-horse" it sounds slightly naughty.  I think it has something to do with Thomas, and he seems to use it most when playing with something that has a trailer.  Any ideas?  Unfortunately a google search of fawk-horse did not help me out.

Completely unrelated but equally funny was something that happened at work today.  A woman runs into our store about an hour before close and said, "I dis wanna look at sum glasses real quick"  I told her, "you have plenty time we don't close until 7."  She replied with a wag of her head, "Dat's not what your dow-r seys."  Mmmm-kay our door has a sign I typed that says please use other door with an arrow pointing to the other door.  It's been super windy and was blowing open so I latched the one side.  Apparently an arrow is universal sign for closed.  So as her husband tried on some frames I heard her exclaim, "shiiiit you look like frankenstein!"  It left me wondering what kind of glasses exactly would frankenstein wear. 

Will I ever get a nice family portrait

I had this super cute dress for Jayden that I planned to use for Christmas family photos.  I wanted a coordinating outfit for Trevor in red, black, and white.  I searched every store in the mall and all the suitable boys holiday attire had navy blue in it, while all of the girls clothes were all red and black.  Why oh why is this?  I finally found the perfect sweater at Old Navy and it was on sale.  Then I just had to find black slacks for him to match.  One wouldn't think this should be that difficult.  Again I went to every store in the mall and Target.  No luck.  The closest I came was 2t black sweat pants at Walmart.

Fast forward to the next day, picture day, all was going good.  The kids were excited and I promised Trevor if he was good he would get to go see "Octa-claus"  (Santa Claus in Trevor speak)  He said he would, "Say cheese, smile."  The photographer arranged us and did his thing.  Trevor was smiling nicely and the photographer snapped one picture but Jayden was scowling.  The next ten minutes were spent trying to get Jayden to smile and Trevor was still cooperating.  But Jayden wanted no part of it, finally by the time she cracked a little smile, Trevor was D.O.N.E.  He had a full scale meltdown and we gave up.  We had to drag him out of the studio and carry him through the store screaming.

The scheduled us for 5pm to try again.  But I decided to give up and not even try.  It's just not worth the hassle.  Maybe in another 3 or 4 years I can get a decent family picture.  So there's no evidence of our little photo shoot.  But, here is a picture of their super cute clothes.   I guess you'll have to take my word for it how extremely adorable they were.

It's Real Life: STORE IT: KITCHEN

  

     I told myself next time Jessica had a It's Real Life I would play.  Much to my chagrin it was the kitchen.  My kitchen is a bit of a mess, so here it is!  The photos are of course not staged and are not photoshopped, except for a little bit of cropping and exposure correction in a few.

 

I don't use "tupperware" I use gladware.  It's so much cheaper and stacks so nicely.  Why is it that the containers always disappear (or is it the lids reproduce?)  The lower shelf has my recipe binder for recipes that I've printed.  There's also the cookbook "Deceptively Delicious"  I use to try and sneak veggies into everything.  Most times Trevor isn't fooled.

Stainless steal container that holds all my cooking utensils, I love bamboo spoons.

2 baby bottle drying racks that hold sippy's and other misc. plastic things while they drip dry, they never get dry in the dishwasher.

This is pretty much the extent of cleaning supplies I use.  I guess I do use dishwasher detergent.  Very vinegar spray with a little tea tree oil.  A bottle of foaming dish soap.  I just keep refilling it with very diluted dishsoap.  Perfect for a little squirt when cleaning pots and pans, everything else goes in the dishwasher.  I don't imagine it would work as good for washing a sink of dishes

A very poorly used space, this is where appliances such as my food processor, blender, and who knows what else gets piled up, there's an identical cabinet below crammed to the brim.  In this cabinet is also my magic bullet which I love and use all the time.

The green and white thing my vidalia chop wizard which I think is one of the best inventions ever.  I gave it to everyone for Christmas last year.

This is where we "wee-cycle".  It's a really grimy landing on our basement stairs.  Muddy dogs stained the brick and it never comes clean.  Oh and that nice hole in the wall is where Cheyenne (our former Great Dane) decided to snack on drywall.  Repeatedly!

This is my compost bin, I just started composting in the fall so we'll see how it goes.

 

My favorite part of the kitchen and probably the only thing that will remain when when we remodel in a few years.  I love my pantry, it's one of the things that I fell in love with when we looked at this house.

My laptop is my cookbook!  I use Mastercook software after trying about 5 different  programs, I think this one is the best.  I have a stepstool I put my laptop on though so if there is a spill it doesn't land on my keyboard.

And that about does it.

A little too ambitious?

In my livemail blog feeds I have numerous digitalscrapbook freebie sites.  This photoshop template came via another site and I thought it was a clever way to showcase 1 picture each day for the month of December.   I didn't take a picture picture yesterday but I did the day before that I could sneak in.

Speaking of sneaking, I came upon this idea after the kids were in bed so I snuck upstairs and snapped a picture of them both sleeping.  Bad mommy... I had my fingers crossed that they wouldn't wake up.  They didn't even stir.

So I'm going to try and take a picture every single day this month.  With all of the Christmas happenings, there will be plenty of photo opps so it's a good month to do this.

For your reading pleasure

These are posts that I wrote in september but backdated.   Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't. 

Scared Mama

End of an Era

Spring, Glorious Spring!

Funny things

The other day at the doctor's office a voice came over the intercom perfectly clear.  Trevor looked up at the ceiling and said, "Mama, sky's talking!"

Jayden was throwing a major fit and Travis was trying to get her sitting still for a time out.  She was screaming like crazy and Trevor warned, "She gonna bite you."  In this told you so kind of tone.  He should know, a few weeks ago she bit him hard on the cheek and left a big mark.

A few weeks ago I was walking out of the house with the kids in the morning to go to daycare.  Trevor excited said, "Mama Mama wook, bunny!"  I looked all around and there was no bunny to be found.  Trevor said, "In da tree, in da tree!"  I look up and saw the "bunny" a squirrel happily chewing on a nut.  I said, "Silly boy that's a squirrel." Trevor asked, "What he doing?" I said he was eating his breakfast.  Trevor asked, "He eating fruit woops?"  I just laughed and agreed with him and hurried him towards the garage.   As we were walking away he was hollering over his shoulder, "Bye quirrel, Hab a good day quirrel, see you soon quirrel!"  Jayden was just shrieking with glee through this whole exchange.

Trevor's new "thing" is after asking him to do something numerous times and getting really irritated with him he says with disgust, "Okay okay okay" but still doesn't do what it is we are asking him to do.

When he is done eating he almost always asks, "be 'cused?"  And he almost always says please and thank you without being prompted.  Jayden usually says "peas" when she wants something and says "see sue" with an added head nod when you give her something.  I have such polite babies!

My poor, sad, neglected little blog

I must say I've been rather lazy lately.  I think I may have seasonal affective disorder.   I have absolutely no energy to do anything.  My house is a pit and I have a mountain of laundry to do.  Today I went and looked at getting a new stove, since ours seems to only have one burner that works.  Maybe that will motivate me to actually cook a meal... or maybe I'll just hibernate until spring.  Maybe I should just hire a maid!

I do have a new addiction in facebook.  Previously I was more into myspace and thought facebook was boring.  But I'm finding a lot of long lost friends and former classmates.  So if you're reading this and you actually know me rather than stumbled across my blog via some whacked out google search feel free to look me up.  You can find my by my first name and maiden last name.  If your stumped on that leave a comment and I may give you a hint.  Yeah, I've seem some pretty absurd google search hits come up in my stat reports... odd!

So I know one of my last posts, back in ohhhh September, was somewhat of a promise to backdate some  posts and do a little more updating.   I'm going to really try and focus on getting some of the gaps filled in because I really want to get my '08 family journal/scrapbook printed around the first of the year.  Wow that's really scary... only exactly a month away and it will be time for new resolutions so easily broken! 

Lot's has been happening, but before I do too much I have to get about 3 months worth of pictures off my camera and edited so hang tight for a few days anyway!