day of giving thanks

So the other day at dinner my sister decided we should all share three things that we are thankful for. A fabulous idea that never the less left everyone at the table weepy and emotional. Ha. So today let's focus on the other things that I am thankful for in life that don't leave me in a puddle of tears:

Target
my Lululemon yoga mat
Instagram
Pinterest
my iPhone
fruit
coconut oil
yogurt- frozen and regular
blogs
flip flops
basil
hair straightener
my Kindle
teeny bopper tv shows (guilty pleasure)
cheese
headphones
tv on demand
our dvr- for all the stuff not on demand
Brita filters
sushi
cozy blankets
argan oil
wine
my own craft room
my new car
Bluetooth
trader joe's
scrapbooking
my sister's sewing machine :o)
iMessage
food trucks
my fabulous running shoes
the library
mascara
pajama pants
slippers
oatmeal
Pangea face cream
old t-shirts
T Swift
new recipes
cute shoes
a good vet
hand cream
camera
laying out by the pool

And because it's not fair to leave them out: I am most thankful for the people I can't live without- my husband, my fur babies, and the rest of my family- that which I was born into and the one I married into, and our friends. I am thankful that we are all in good health, that we all have good jobs, and that we are happy more days than not. Amen. Cue the water works.

around here

watching the first episodes of the new shows The Mob Doctor and The Mindy Project.

eating peanut butter oatmeal.

drinking water, water,water!

planning on going to yoga class tonight.

recycling piles of old magazines- Self, Glamour, GQ, Esquire, Maxim.

needing to pick up photos and drop off library books.

folding laundry- the boy has been working out twice a day so the gym clothes is piling up fast. 

dreading any more people walking past the open window- the dogs hate it!

sorting through my closet and saying goodbye to sundresses and hello to sweaters.

sewing on my quilt- hand quilting always sounds like a good idea until you have to do it.

wondering what to make for dinner.

feeling like it's time to change my routine.

The amazing Ali Edwards invited her readers to play along with the prompt of documenting a little bit of your life right now.

dear sentra,

 

This has been my car for six years. 

This car is practical.

This car is not exactly sexy.

This car had 13 miles on it when I bought it.

This car now has 90,961 miles. 

This car drove me to my college graduation.

This car moved me from Davis to Sacramento.

This car drove me to my first "real" job.

This car is the first that I ever paid for myself.

This car often had to parallel park on the street.

This car has a bent front license plate.

This car suffered a scrape from a hit & run while parked on the street.

This car took me to countless girls' nights.

This car drove my first puppy Howie around town.

This car drove thousands of miles between Sacramento and San Jose for three years.

This car is where I cried on more than one occasion when life got too overwhelming. 

This car is where I met someone who changed my perspective for the better. 

This car moved me back home to Rocklin.

This car brought home my second puppy Olive.

This car moved me to a new life in San Jose.

This car has gotten lost and found again with me as I explored new places.

This car brought home my wedding dress.

This car took me to my bachelorette party.

This car never had my married name on the title.

This car shakes a little on the freeway.

This car needs new tires.

This car needs a 90K mile service.

This car needs to have the transmission fluid flushed to remove rust particles. Again.

This car has been with me through so much over the years, and has been reliable until recently.

This car will not come home with me tonight.

This car will be missed.

written 6/25/12

brewery tour

Hello June.

It's been super warm the past couple of days. Yesterday was also the third day of Devin not having a car- so glad that's over. It really wasn't too bad, but it's so much easier being a two-car family.

Luckily we made it home pretty quickly from picking up his car. We had plenty of time to walk across the street to the Gordon Biersch brewery to go on the tour that our apartment manager organized for us.

It was a very informative tour (it even made me miss my food chemistry classes), but sadly our tour guide was hardly able to say two words before these three older ladies on the tour kept interrupting him with questions. Annoying. He was a really good sport about it and did his best to make it fun and keep everyone entertained. We had a couple of beers in the main office while he gave us an overview of the brewing process (they have a fridge full of beer in the office!) and then he tapped a keg after we walked through the factory and we all got a souvenir pint glass. After that he walked us into the cold storage area to show where they keep all of the beer before they ship it out. Everyone on the tour got a six-pack to take home and a tee shirt :o)

It was fun to experience a cool part of our little neighborhood. I was pretty impressed that our apartment managers organized such a cool event for us, and it was so nice of the brewery to give us such generous freebies!

summer manifesto

I never know what magic I will find when I read Ali Edwards' blog. She is amazing. This morning she wrote about her Summer Manifesto- a list of intentions for what she wants to have happen this summer. I think this resonated with me because lately I've been feeling like I have zero control over certain areas in my life. But I know that the only way to move on is to take specific actions on the things I can control, or at least take steps to bring about change. So, why not jump into summer with a plan for fun, right? I think so.

• go wine tasting with friends (this is a bit of a cheat- we're going this weekend to kick off summer and celebrate my girls' birthdays!)
• Hawaii vacation at Aulani!!!
• have at least 3 picnics
• go to the beach at least once a month
• go hiking at least 3 times
• read by the pool
• enjoy cocktails in my "margarita bowls" (an awesome gift from my bridal shower last year)
• perfect the recipe for white sangria
• make an Instagram photo book from Hawaii pics
• try at least 3 new food trucks
• enjoy riesling and watermelon (and enjoy the flood of college memories that go along with it)
• go to the farmers market once a week
• fully enjoy our friends' weddings (we have 3 this year!)
• make popsicles
• read at least 12 books (this is an improvement on my goal for 25 books in 2012)
• keep the basil plants alive
• make a new salad once a week
• go through an entire bottle of hot pink nail polish
• go on a "night walk" once a month
• make our own ice cream
• American Idiot!

project life: weeks 11 & 12

Yay, getting caught up on sharing here! Week eleven actually sat mostly finished on my desk for a while. I had moved on to other things and never finished the title card, so I did that this past weekend. I used some of the newer product I picked up recently including some Amy Tangerine and SMASH tape.

I still love using the Incredibooth app and including the cute little strips in this book. Braden thought it was fun too- he loves hamming it up for the camera! I had lots of photos from their visit so I made a couple of mini collages. It was fun having our two youngest nephews meet again- they are only two months apart, but Braden is sooo much bigger!

 I think that the week twelve title card is my favorite yet! The month sticker is one I've had since my first attempt at a homemade project life in 2010. I forgot I had it, but it paired nicely with some black letter stickers I've also had for a while. And who doesn't love a picture of really good pizza?

This week also documented my latest obsession- The Hunger Games. Devin surprised me with a new Kindle Touch and of course my first download was Catching Fire (the second book of The Hunger Games trilogy). I had been on the wait list at the library FOREVER, and with the movie coming out that weekend I was dying to finish the series. It totally worked out- I finished the second book on the Kindle and then I got the third one just in time at the library (and finished it in about 9 hours).

Friday night we had the Lady Antebellum concert which was a blast. I had been looking forward to that concert for months- I think we bought the tickets back in December, and then they won a ton of music awards at the beginning of the year so the show was totally sold out. I used another flip-up page protector to hold a couple extra pictures I had from the concert and some journaling.

My favorite thing about this project is having a place to document all of these little stories :o)

project life: weeks 9 & 10

I kept week nine super simple using just the journaling cards from the core kit and my photos.

Week ten was another simple week with just a couple of punched tabs and tags.

The picture on the bottom right is actually a flip-up mini page protector. Love using those to add extra photos and journaling.

I like how the overall look of my book is coming together. There's a nice flow  between the weeks when I keep it super simple and weeks where I have more time to play with bits of paper and embellishments. Makes me happy.

project life: weeks 6 & 7

I'm playing catch-up on blogging about completed layouts and completing the last couple of weeks. So here goes- week six started with my birthday and the birth of our newest niece Leyla. And of course a random work schedule and silly dog pictures to round things out :o)

Week seven was the week of Valentine's Day. We had a couple of yummy dinners out- tried a new pizza place and then a classic sushi dinner later in the week. Yummy cupcakes from Belle, chocolate truffles, and flowers were special surprises during the week.

Uses some new Dear Lizzy paper, October Afternoon, and my new tag punch. And of course some washi tape for good measure.

a to z list love

I don't know where the last two hours have gone, but I ended up doing some blog hopping which led to reading archives from this super cool scrapper. Here's a fun little list I found on Ann-Marie's blog. I thought it would be fun to play along.

A. Age: 28
B. Bed size: Queen
C. Chore that you hate: Putting things away- dishes, laundry, you name it. I'll clean it, but I don't want to put anything away.
D. Dogs: One spunky pekingese and one lovely poodle mix.
E. Essential start to your day: laying in bed for 5 more minutes.
F. Favorite color: PINK.
G. Game: I hate games.
H. Height: 5’3″ on a good day.
I. Ideal Day: One that doesn't require me to be on time for anything :o)
J. Job title: diet clerk
K. Kids: 2 fur-babies
L. Lives: In California.
M. Movie: Currently re-living my Twilight obsession. Any movie, anytime. So what, I'm not ashamed!
N. Nicknames: Pat, PJ, Peej, Patty, Babe, etc.
O. Overnight hospital stays: None!
P. Pet peeve: People who don't turn on their headlights when it's dark- HOW CAN YOU SEE???
Q. Quote from a movie:  "If you're a bird, I'm a bird."
R. Right or left handed: Right
S. Siblings: Two younger sisters. It's more of a two-headed monster kind of situation.
U. University: UC Davis.
V. Vegetable you hate: Perish the thought! Vegetables are our friends!
W. What makes you run late: Finding parking.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: Teeth.
Y. Yummy food that you make: My faves are usually something I make up on the fly, and then I can never re-create because I forget what I put in it.
Z. Zoo animal: Big cats. Love 'em.

week in the life

 

I'm doing it! I've followed Ali Edwards' posts about this project for years and I always think, "I want to do that." Of course I never did. This changes today! I've already been snapping pictures and jotting notes on my iPhone. Devin has been warned notified that there will be even more camera action going on, and he's on board. The pups are too :o) So here's to a great week of memory keeping fun!

blurb: wedding day book

A few weeks ago Elise posted  a photo book she created on Blurb of her Instagram photos during her husband's deployment. I LOVE the way her book turned out and started thinking I should give online photo books another try (I've only ever made one). Of course I immediately started over-thinking it and played with the idea for about a week before I finally decided to JUST DO IT (felt a little like a Nike commercial).

I have been thinking about what I want to do with the professional photos from our wedding this past September. Our amazing photographer Karl Ko captured so many wonderful images (as in over 800!) that frankly I've been overwhelmed when I thought about what I wanted to do with them. For the sake of just "getting it done," I decided on a simple, full-page photo format highlighting my favorite pictures and basically following the timeline of the day. Clean and simple. About 100 pages total. Eventually I'll work on another project the includes words about the day, but for now I just want to have something I can hold in my hands and show to people.

10x8 hardcover book with upgraded premium matte paper

I completely love the way this book turned out! I smiled when I opened the box it came in and kept grinning as I flipped through the pages. The website is totally easy to use, and the quality of the finished product is more than I even hoped for.

I can't wait to share this with people who haven't seen seen our photos yet. I also imagine our future kids thumbing through this book to see pictures of "mommy and daddy's wedding day." This is what memory keeping is all about for me. At the end of the day, it's always better to have something preserved, out in the open, rather that sitting on a hard drive somewhere.

project life: week five

This week's spread covered the end of January and the beginning of February. Last year I wasn't to concerned about how months would be designated in the album because the kit contained monthly dividers. I just placed the divider wherever the new month started and left it at that.

Since this year all of the project life products are sold a la carte, I didn't buy the dividers. Instead I've been including tiny calendars from Bananafish Studio (no longer available) on my "title card" for the week when a new month starts. Luckily this week was evenly divided between the two months, so I treated each side as a one page spread. Used a page from a new 6x6 pad for the title card. Simple.

For the February title page I used a banner paper from a My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad from the Love Me collection. So cute! Love Valentine's Day products because they can be used all year when you need a "love" theme. There were only a couple of patterns in this pad that explicitly show the 2/14 date. Used some old letter stickers to spell "dragon" for the Chinese New Year pic. Those stickers were actually from a Christmas line a while back. Don't be afraid to use themed products for other uses, get creative and use your stash!

happy easter!

This has been a wonderfully relaxing Easter. We went to church this morning, followed by pastries at Panera, and lunch at my in-laws with the whole family. The kids had an Easter egg hunt and then colored their own eggs. And I took a bunch of photos that I am now in the process of editing :o) The scrappy ideas are flowing! But for now I'm going to enjoy time with these loves!

project life: week four

Hello inserts. This week included Brady's first birthday party so of course there were lots of extra photos.

Here's the left side of the layout:

The first insert is a 6x12 enlarged photo of the birthday boy. The banner is the one from his birthday cake that my sister made. I'm not sure which paper line she used, but it is so cute. I added the "happy birthday little man" to the photo in Photoshop before printing.

On the other side of the insert is a 6x12 collage of Instagram photos from the party. I really love how the small size of the photos allows me to include all of the details from the party without taking up a lot of room. The second insert is another 6x12 insert that holds six 4x6 photos. I added tab I made using my new Jenni Bowlin punch (love it!).

The final insert is a 5x7 page protector that holds the party invitation. It was custom made by my super talented sister Christy.

The right page of the layout is a mix of the week and some journaling about the party. Love the size of the October Afternoon letter stickers for this project. Also added some Amy Tangerine washi tape and Studio Calico wood veneer pieces.

This is one of my favorite spreads of all time. I'm really happy with how it came together and the overall look.