Sunday, March 30, 2008

Eat, Clean, Scrap

Another weekend bites the dust. It seems like my weekends just fly by these days. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I now work from 9-2 on Saturdays. After work on Saturday I met up with the AZ girls from SIS. Heather R. was in town, so we organized a little shopping and dinner adventure. I missed out on Melrose Vintage, but met up with them at Retro Redux before heading to Sierra Bonita for dinner. We had a great time and it was fun getting to know these girls a bit better. Here's a picture of us taken by Julie before we headed to dinner.


I got home about 8pm, chatted with Ms. Jessie finally got to play with my Studio Calico March kit a little before climbing in bed early.

I spent today catching up on a few things, doing the usual weekend laundry and cleaning, resting and scrapping. I even took a little nap this afternoon, something I rarely ever do! I think my body needed to catch up on some sleep. I did not leave the house all day, but enjoyed the nice cool breeze coming through our open windows all afternoon.

Tonight I am snuggled into my bed with fresh clean sheets...nothing quite like clean sheets on the bed...with my laptop and a cup of tea. I'm thinking a little reading and early to sleep sounds good to me.

Good night!

Friday, March 28, 2008

Catching Up

I finally had some time today to get caught up on my 52 Cards. I have actually had a few of these done for weeks, but haven't gotten around to posting them. I apologize if any of you are playing along by checking our blogs. Jessie, Andrea and I haven't been that great with posting them on our blogs in a timely manner. If you want to be added to the email list, contact me at smither77@hotmail.com. Without further ado, here's a recap of the past 8 weeks!

Kristie's prompt back in February was "Friendship." Here's the front of my card:


and the back of my card:


My prompt back in February was "Memory or moment of the week." I happened to be lucky enough to attend CHA during the week of this prompt, so here's the front of my card:


and the back:


Next up, Jessie's prompt was "favorite color." As if there was any wonder what my card would involve! I pulled out some red paint and red glitter and went to town:


A favorite quote for the back:


Andrea's prompt was "Celebration." I went simple with this one and used a little scrap of a Hambly overlay instead of my playing card:


Silvia gave us our first March prompt--"What's on your mind?"


I had a lot on my mind it seems:


Since I've been in a "going green" mode lately, my prompt was to reuse something you would otherwise get rid of on your card. I saved bits and pieces of my week to make this little collage:


More bits and pieces, including reusing the fun new little label from my Studio Calico kit:


Jessie's prompt stuck to my green direction and/or honored St. Patrick's Day--"How do you go green?" Free for interpretation...I went St. Patty's on the front (um, my name is Erin)


and environmental on the back:


This week's prompt from Andrea was "Fresh." Perfectly suited for my unused March Studio Calico kit and my favorite new butterfly punch:


love this little remarks journaling book from American Crafts:


Hopefully, I will not get so far behind again. This week, there is no prompt..we email them on Friday with intentions of posting them the following Friday...free to take inspiration from your life and do with your card as you like.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Been MIA

I've been a bit MIA from blog land and internet land lately. It's been a really busy couple of weeks. I have a lot going on and have been a bit over worked, over tired, over stressed and under appreciated. I'm still very tired and need a good lazy day to catch up on sleep and get rested. Hoping next Sunday will be that day. Until than, I'm going to continue to plug along, crossing things off my to-do list and hoping to get caught up, uncluttered, and unburdened.

In the mean time, did you see this page in the April issue of Creating Keepsakes? I'm so excited to be published in CK for the first time! It's a page that tells one of my favorite stories from last summer, so I'm really happy to see it in print!



I still need to post about Stephanie's wonderful baby shower and share the lovely handy work of Ms. Andrea. But for now, enjoying some pink flower goodness from the arrangements I made for Steph's shower and I'm off to file away 2007 business paperwork before heading to my afternoon clients.

Oh and Happy Belated Birthday to you Ms. Stephanie! I hope you had a wonderful day full of lemon pancakes and family fun!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Erin Go Braugh

Here's some music from pub sessions in Ennis, Ireland. I have been lucky enough to participate in this traditional music festival and would love to go back someday!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Living the Green Life

Lately I've been making efforts to be more green. I've always been good at recycling and reusing items, but for the past couple months I've been wanting to do more. Here are a few changes I've made:

*using less chemicals--I've been doing this for awhile, using greener cleaning products and natural beauty products...more on this later...
*changing light bulbs to compact flourescents, but I am concerned about the mercury that can be found in these....did you know these are considered household hazardous waste and should not be thrown away in your normal trash?
*eliminating plastic bag use and instead bringing my own reusable shopping bags--I've been really good at this when grocery shopping....it's been a little bit harder to remember when I just run in to Target, Michael's, Staples, etc. I keep these bags in the back of my car and have been trying really hard to remember to bring them in with me. Even though I have several bags, I'm considering ordering these bags as they fold up small enough to fit in your purse.
*bringing my own mug to Starbuck's
*eating organic and local...I order from Boxed Greens about once a month and get a lovely box of organic produce delivered to my door. We got a box this morning containing lettuce, collard greens, squash, parsnips, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, pears, apples, bananas and tangelos.
*reading, listening to and watching information on living green. Purchased this book at Barnes and Noble and thumbed through a couple issues of Edible Phoenix tonight.

My next big hurdle is water bottles. We drink a lot of water in plastic bottles. I know this is a problem both for the environment and for the leeching of chemicals from the plastic. There's a couple of reasons this is a hard habit to break. First of all, I'm on the go and in my car all day long. Grabbing a couple of bottles to take with me when I leave the house is a lot easier than washing and refilling. Until we get our kitchen remodel going, we won't have a water dispenser on the fridge or a water purifier under the sink or attached to the faucet. Plus, Shawn is much more likely to drink water when he can just reach in the fridge and grab a bottle and not have to pour himself a glass from a Brita pitcher. However, I am going to try to reduce my use of bottled water. I purchased this stainless water bottle at Whole Foods this week and will attempt to fill this and take it with me all week next week. Not sure how this will work during the summer though when it's a million degrees in my car....

All in all I think it's about making a series of little changes. Doing things one step at a time so you can break old habits and keep new ones and ultimately make a small difference because of your changes and efforts.

Friday, March 7, 2008

More Oregon Fun

As promised, here are a few more pictures from my trip to Oregon. The first picture is Nicole opening presents at the beach house and discovering planner paper on her birthday card from Jessie and on canvases created by me (Jessie, Nicole and I have an inside joke with planner paper from our college days and they keep on sneakily showing up)


Cupcake time. We had cupcakes with cupcake birthday candles on a cupcake shaped cake stand. How fun is that?


Here's the birthday girl, 30 crown and all.


On Saturday we headed back to Salem for pedicures before our dinner plans. Here's a shot of the 3 of us getting pampered.


Here's us girls enjoying fun cocktails at dinner. We each order something different and passed them around in a circle so we could all try each others. My pomogranite martini was the best I think.


Me and the birthday girl...with eyes open surprisingly! Nicole and I are both known for closing our eyes in pictures. It takes forever to get good group shots when the two of us are involved!


I love this picture of Nicole looking cute as can be.


Thanks Jessie and Tim for some of these pictures. I didn't take any on Saturday night...that's what we have Tim for after all! I had a wonderful trip to Oregon and am so lucky to have such great friends. I love that Jessie, Nicole and I were able to spend each of our 30th birthdays together. We all had great birthdays over the past year and owe a lot of that to each other. Here's to more milestone birthdays together ladies!

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Random Facts

Ok, I've been tagged by Ms. Emily and am to share 7 random facts about me. Let's see....

1. I hate bananas...it's a texture thing...bleh!
2. I don't like wet socks...one little drop of water on my sucks and they must come off!
3. I almost always have my toes painted red
4. I sometimes go to the mall just to get a sandwich from P.B. Loco...the Cinny Nilla is my favorite
5. I could probably live on tomatoes and fresh mozzarella
6. At work, I will do almost anything to make a connection with a kiddo or get them to participate and/or talk...let's see, today I imitated frogs (a lot), sang a song about the potty, did lots of really silly things with my face and body and stopped singing (mid word or phrase) every time I lost eye contact...it was a fun day!
7. I listen to NPR a lot in the car. I get tired of music about 10am and switch over for most of the day...my sister believes this makes me old.

I'm supposed to tag 7 more people, but this little thing has been moving all over blogland and I'm not sure I know 7 people who haven't yet been tagged, so how about I issue an open call for random facts...if you want to play along on your blog, please do so and let me know so I can go read your random facts too.

Happy blogging!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Ten on Tuesday

It's been a while since I've done one of these....here's on for the right now:

1. this book
2. honey lattes...YUM!
3. my new cute punch
4. SPRING
5. an affair in red square on my toes
6. reusable shopping bags
7. my new red notebook (photos will appear later)
8. girl scout cookies
9. flowers in my garden
10. missing my girls

Monday, March 3, 2008

Oregon Adventures-Numero Uno

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to see my girls in Oregon. The primary reason for my trip was to celebrate this:


Nicole's 30th birthday. Those are the cupcakes from night one of surprise celebrations. We managed to really surprise her with a little overnight at the coast with her girls. We even made her cry...several times...she's not a crier...but we saw lots of "tears of joy" during her weekend of surprises!

I flew in Thursday night. Jessie retrieved me and Tim (returning from business) from the Portland airport and we returned to Jessie and Tim's house for a little slumber party with Nicole. The next day we headed to Cannon Beach, because "Erin (the desert dweller) wanted to go to the coast." Really, we needed an excuse to get her near the surprise at the beach house. This departure required some planning (we had plans A, B and C) so we could get overnight bags and supplies into the car without Nicole knowing. Jessie purposefully stalled with her hair, so Nicole and I would be ready before her. I suggested to Nicole that we go get coffee while Jessie finished getting ready. I also pretended to not like the "fake" Starbucks found in the nearby Safeway so that we could drive farther to the regular Starbucks and give Jessie more time to frantically pack the car, throw Nicole's stuff into a suitcase and be ready to go without arousing suspicion. Plan A worked and we did not need to worry.

In typical Oregon coast fashion, it was miserably wet and cold for our beach adventures. We decided to eat lunch and shop in Cannon Beach, darting in and out of stores and getting wetter and wetter. Here's how much of our day was spent:


We told Nicole we wanted to visit a store in Manzanita that we'd heard about from Jessie's friend. As I read Jessie directions to the "store," Nicole seemed to get confused when we drove through the center of town into the residential section. We turned in the drive and she saw a happy birthday sign and said "look it's someone's birthday....wait, it's my birthday!" She was quite surprised that we we're spending the night at Beth's family's beach house. The surprises continued as Jennifer arrived and the tears started when Brenda arrived a little bit later. We spent the evening eating pizza at a cute little place by the water, drinking Nicole's favorite "umbrella drinks," playing games, hot tubbing, eating cupcakes and laughing a lot. The next morning we enjoyed a big breakfast complete with mimosa's before heading back to Salem for more surprises. The sun was shining (finally) on our way out of town, so we stopped at the beach to enjoy the view and take a couple pictures.

Here's Jessie and Nicole looking cute as ever:


and me and Jessie:


The story continues, but I figure you might not want to read it all in one sitting. Stay tuned for more Oregon adventures and fun pictures later this week. We had a great weekend, but it went by way too fast. I miss my girls already.

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